Mount Tabor is the traditional site of The Transfiguration of Jesus. It is a large round hill in the central Galilee region. I have read that if you go there today you have to get out of your bus and take a taxi to the top. People say that God is especially happy with the Mount Tabor taxi-drivers because more people pray during the few minutes in those taxis going up the narrow mountain road than they do during the rest of their lives put together!
While Mount Tabor is the traditional site of the transfiguration, it is probably not the place where the event took place which we are going to read about in Matthew 17. It is much more likely that this took place on Mount Hermon, close to Caesarea Philippi where the immediately preceding events in Matthew’s Gospel took place. From either Mount Tabor or Mount Hermon there are beautiful views of Galilee. But Jesus, Peter, James and John didn’t go there for the physical view. The spiritual viewpoint they gained was worth far more than that.
Listen for God’s word to you from Matthew 17:1-9…
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
I see at least five lessons for us today in this story. Lesson #1: We all need time alone on the mountain with the Lord.
Why did Jesus go up on a high mountain with Peter, James and John? Luke 9:28 tells us Jesus went there to pray.
In the immediately preceding passage in Matthew, Jesus has just explained to his disciples that he must go up to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be killed and on the third day rise again. Knowing all that was potentially to come upon him, Jesus needed time alone with his Father, in order to make sure he was headed in the right direction. Jesus took his three closest disciples with him because he knew that they too needed to be prepared for the adversities which lay ahead.
All of us are going to face adversity at some time in the future. Our whole nation is facing a time of political tumult right now. Our nation is perhaps more divided today than at any time since the Civil War. We should not be surprised by these things. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
If we frequently spend time alone with the Lord, we too will be prepared for any adversities we have to face in life.
When I was going through a difficult time many years ago, I reached out to my brother Roger for counsel and encouragement. He urged me to spend time alone with God seeking his direction. I was in a panic. I was thinking of all sorts of things I needed to do. I was afraid that if I didn’t start doing those things life was going to collapse around me. But my brother urged me just to be still. It seemed counter-intuitive at the time, but my brother’s advice was right. As the Lord says to us in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Lesson #2: Time alone with the Lord is transformative.
When Jesus took his friends up the mountain for time alone with the Father, Jesus was transfigured in their presence. His face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light.
Jesus isn’t the only person who ever experienced this. In Exodus 34 we read of Moses:
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.
When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the LORD’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.
Why is it that Moses and Jesus both had glowing countenances after meeting with the Father? It all has to do with glory.
Reporting on this event many years later Peter said,
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. (2 Peter 1:16-18)
The bottom line is this: God is glorious. When we spend time with him, we get to partake of his glory.
But what is glory anyway? C. S. Lewis pointed out in his sermon, The Weight of Glory, that there are two senses of the word “glory” in the Bible; one has to do with fame and the other with luminosity. But isn’t it wrong to desire to be more famous than other people? Perhaps. But the glory or fame the Bible talks about is not fame or glory conferred by others; it is fame or glory conferred by God. To please our Creator is a good desire.
Think of the child who delights in pleasing his or her parent. When the parent says to the child, “Well done!” does not the child’s face glow?
And this is exactly what we see happening with Jesus on the mountain top. He was basking in the praise of his heavenly Father and his face glowed as a result. So here we see how glory as fame with God and glory as luminosity are connected.
As Lewis has written, “To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
Lewis goes on to talk about glory as luminosity:
We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. I think I begin to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more. . . We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. . . At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
Paul puts it this way:
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
The glory which Jesus experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration we all, who are believers in Jesus, will experience one day, and not in any transitory fashion. We shall put on a glory, which is both good report with God and luminosity, a glory which shall never end, a transforming glory which comes from spending time with God our Father.
Lesson #3 which I see in the story of the transfiguration is that even when we are “alone” with the Lord we are never really alone. We all share in the communion of the saints.
Notice that Jesus, Peter, James and John aren’t alone for long on the mountain. They are soon joined by Moses and Elijah who talk with Jesus. What a beautiful picture of the communion of the saints which we confess in the Apostles’ Creed!
The communion of the saints means that as Christians we have fellowship, not only with other believers who are alive now on earth, but with all God’s faithful people who have gone on to heaven before us. And here we see Jesus communing not only with Peter, James and John who were alive on earth at the time, but with Moses and Elijah who were “with the Lord”.
And what function do Moses and Elijah serve in this story? Luke 9:31 tells us that they spoke with Jesus “about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”
That word “departure” is an interesting one. The Greek word is “exodus”. This doesn’t simply mean that Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus about the exit he was to make from “this life” at Jerusalem. The word “exodus” would surely conjure up for any Jew the image of that great Exodus which the Lord accomplished for Israel when he brought his people out of slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Jesus is about to accomplish an even greater Exodus in Jerusalem when he delivers his people out of slavery to sin by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. Moses and Elijah are present in this scene to encourage Jesus to know that he is on the right road.
Not only that: but Moses and Elijah would also (in the minds of Peter, James and John) have represented the united testimony of the law and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. Their presence here with Jesus would certainly have confirmed to the disciples Jesus’ true identity as Messiah.
A fourth lesson I gather from this account of the transfiguration is that, like Peter, we too want to prolong our mountaintop experiences with the Lord. However, that is not the way God would usually have it.
Don’t you just love Peter? How like each one of us! This experience of being with Jesus on the mountain and seeing Moses and Elijah is so good that Peter just wants to prolong it; he wants to camp out on the mountain.
And isn’t that what we would like to do with our “mountaintop experiences”? We’ve all known them haven’t we—at least if we have been walking with the Lord for a while? We have all experienced those special times with the Lord, whether in private devotions, or at a spiritual retreat, or maybe on a pilgrimage to some special or holy place. And we deeply wish that those moments which seem to touch eternity could last forever.
But those moments don’t last, do they? Eventually we have to come down the mountain and deal with so-called real life again. Eventually the vacation or holiday is over, and we have to come home and do the laundry!
A fifth lesson I see in this story is that the Father’s voice is the supreme testimony to Jesus’ identity, and the utmost encouragement to Jesus in his journey to the cross.
It’s fine to have the testimony of Moses and Elijah to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. It’s encouraging that Peter recognizes who Jesus is, as he does in Matthew 16. But the ultimate testimony is that of God himself. When a voice from a cloud (reminiscent of the Shekinah glory of God in Exodus) says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” what more can be said? What more need be said?
This too is the ultimate encouragement for Jesus. He came to the mountain seeking his Father’s face in prayer. He wanted to be sure he was on the right track as he went on his way to the cross. The encouragement of Moses and Elijah was nice. But nothing could compare to hearing his Father’s voice: “You are my Son, whom I love; in whom I am well pleased.”
How many times must Jesus have thought back to this time on the mountain when he was “walking through the valley of the shadow of death”? These words must have brought him constant encouragement.
And notice how simple these words are! They are simple enough that Peter could remember them exactly, years later. I believe that when God speaks to us, he doesn’t speak in complicated circumlocutions. He speaks in a simple way we can understand and take to heart and remember.
And understand this: these words weren’t just words for Jesus. They are words for us if we want them to be.
John 1:12 says, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God…”
If we receive Jesus and believe in his name, then we too are children of God and he says to us: “You are my Son. You are my daughter, whom I love. In you I am well pleased!”
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