The Incredible Transfiguration

            Thirty-one years ago, in 1983, Rosie and I took a wonderful trip with our dear friend Nancy Lapp to the Middle East.  We were in the company of a number of other clergy, Harold Scott the Executive Presbyter of Pittsburgh and his wife Mary Ellen, John Baiz, the Rector of Calvary Church and his wife Mary, and a number of other good friends.  We landed in Jordan, toured the astonishing Petra in the south of the country and also the old Roman city of Jerash in the North. We then went across the Allenby Bridge into the West Bank, where we saw Jericho and a number of other sites.

              It was a great trip that eventually took us up to the north, into Galilee where we visited Capernaum and Nazareth and found our way to Mount Tabor. This is the mountain on which Jesus experienced the Transfiguration.  In the several descriptions in the Gospels, He took Peter, James and John with him and went up the mountain.  Up there, they saw their Lord shining, covered in a haze, and Moses and Elijah with him, and then they heard a voice call out to them, This is My Son, My Beloved, with whom I am well pleased! Listen to him! The disciples were stunned by this and fell to the ground, but Jesus touched them and told them not to be afraid, and not to tell anyone what they had seen.

            When we got to Mount Tabor, we parked the tour bus, got into a taxi driven by a Palestinian man who raced up the mountain with all of the five of us in the car holding on for dear life.  I think another cab passed us on the way down, which certainly got our attention.  When we got to the top, we got out and saw a fascinating site.  There was a low fog covering the place; and a chapel of the monastery was there with a choir of German tourists inside singing beautiful hymns.  I was struck by the correspondence between what we were seeing and the verses in the Gospel that described this place.  It was a deeply spiritual experience for me.  I could imagine Jesus in that place and his disciples around him and what they must have seen. 

            What are we to make of the Transfiguration story?  Jesus wanted it kept secret, so he told his disciples to keep it quiet.  The truth is that Peter, James and John saw something profound on that mountain that changed them deeply.  They saw their Lord through the eyes of God and heard God speak of the power that lay in his Son.  It changed their ministry and their lives.  If they had previously had any doubts about the role of Jesus, those doubts were erased and they continued their work in the certainty of who Jesus was.  At Caeserea Phillipi, when Jesus later asked Peter who people said he was, he confidently told him that some people said he was a prophet, others said that he was John the Baptist returned from the grave, but when Jesus asked him who HE said that he was, Peter replied, you are the Messiah, the Son of God!  And so He was.

            This Jesus, who we follow, has the power to change all of our lives.  That trip certainly changed my life.  I came back with a certainty that I had never had before.  I had learned a great deal about the power of Jesus to affect the people around him.  I saw the places where he had worked, and I knew the effect that he had had on all of those who knew him. I got no factual evidence of who Jesus was, but the content of that trip convinced me that Jesus was certainly for his disciples, the Messiah, and with all that they went through with him, including the crucifixion, that information was certainly valid.

            We are about to enter the long season of Lent, a time for reflection and preparation for the incredible experience of Easter.  It is because of Easter that we can all confidently live this life, with all of its confusion and headaches and know that our God is with us, not only in the moments of our worship, but in the knots and creases of our lives.  May you all have a profitable Lent and a glorious Easter.