Epiphany | The Transfiguration

Following on the heels of Christmastide, the church now enters the season of Epiphany. During Epiphany, we turn our attention to the gospel stories of Jesus, specifically to the moments that reveal, or manifest, his divinity.

Now, if I were to ask you which events in Jesus’ life most clearly show his divinity, what would you say? Feel free to answer out loud…and if you don’t want to, I will attempt to read your minds.

I think many of us would name the incarnation, Jesus’ baptism, the raising of Lazarus, the ascension, or I don’t know, possibly even the resurrection. And you’d be right—those are defining moments in Jesus’ life and in our Christian faith.

But how many of us thought about the Transfiguration?

I didn’t grow up in a church tradition that paid much attention to the church calendar, and while this is a common text for the end of Epiphany, I honestly can’t recall ever hearing a sermon on the Transfiguration. I’m sure I must have at some point in the last 40 years, but nothing comes to mind. And while the Transfiguration is often overlooked, it is deeply embedded in Scripture. It appears in all three of the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—and is echoed throughout the New Testament.

So what’s the deal? What does this short, strange, and often neglected story have for us?

Part of the answer, I think, is that how we understand who God is—distant or near, glorious or suffering—shapes how we live, especially when life feels uncertain or disorienting.

I want to suggest that the Transfiguration is one of the clearest moments in the gospels where we see both Jesus’ transcendence and his immanence—his glory that is beyond our comprehension and his presence that is intimately near. Holding these two realities together is not always easy, but it is essential to a faithful understanding of who God is.

The Transfiguration, then, is an epiphany of who God truly is, and of the future God is already bringing into the world.

So let’s turn to the story itself, and consider why Jesus gives this vision to his disciples at this moment, what it might have meant for them, and what it might mean for us.

Six days later Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John the brother of James, and led them privately up a high mountain to pray. 2 And while he prayed he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. 3 Then Moses and Elijah also appeared before them, talking with him  about his departure that he was about to carry out at Jerusalem. 4 So Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you want, I will make three shelters—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my one dear Son, in whom I take great delight. Listen to him!” 6 When the disciples heard this, they were overwhelmed with fear and threw themselves down with their faces to the ground. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Do not be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, all they saw was Jesus alone. 9 As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Do not tell anyone about the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

So Jesus ascends a mountain to pray with his three closest friends. And while they watch Jesus praying, (I mean, hopefully they were praying too, but maybe just like my kids pray at the dinner table with their eyes open), something starts happening: Jesus’ face begins to shine like the sun, as does his clothing. Then to make it even stranger, two men who have been dead for over a thousand years appear, and they’re talking with Jesus about what lies ahead for him in Jerusalem. His exodus. Then God speaks out of a cloud so the disciples can hear, “this is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy. Listen to him.” The whole scene is “glorious to see” and the disciples fall to their faces in reverent fear. Wow.

Now, I’m going to nerd out for just a moment, but I promise this is helpful for how we read the Bible on our own. 

One of the most important keys to interpreting Scripture is paying attention to where a text is placed. We ask questions like: What comes before or after this text? Why is it included here, and not somewhere else?

The gospel writers sometimes arrange events in Jesus’ life for theological or pastoral reasons, not strictly chronological ones. But what’s fascinating about the Transfiguration is that all three Synoptic Gospels frame it in the same way: following Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Son of God and sandwiched right in the middle of repeated predictions of Jesus’ suffering.

This epiphany is given because suffering is coming.

Jesus’ glory is inseparable from the way of the cross, and the same is true in reverse. Neither the radiant mountain nor the cross can be understood in isolation. 

It is our belief in God’s transcendence that ignites our yearning to see God break through. It stirs our hearts to cry out for God to make right the brokenness of this world and of humanity; to show up in unmistakable ways. When life feels overwhelming, unjust, or unbearably dark, we long for a God who is bigger than all of it.

At the same time, it is our belief in God’s immanence that sustains our faith. It assures us that God is already present, already at work, already breaking into the world, even when outside appearances don’t make it seem so.

The Transfiguration holds these two realities together.

If we lean too far into God’s transcendence, we risk missing something essential: that the one true God shared our human nature. The glory revealed on the mountain does not override or erase Jesus’ humanity. It shines through it. Jesus’ body is not incidental to God’s revelation—and if that is true of Jesus, then our bodies, our pain, our ordinary lives are not incidental either.

But if we lean too far into God’s immanence, we risk missing something just as important. We risk forgetting that God intends more for humanity than simply surviving the world as it is. We are not meant to remain forever in a creation marred and enslaved by sin and evil. 

In his book about the Transfiguration (which I highly recommend) Professor of NT, Patrick Scheiner says, “Jesus descends to this earth so that we might ascend to God. Jesus, the one full of light, will share his light. The face of God transfigures us.” This is not to say we will become God, but we are meant to share in God’s life, God’s glory, as God always intended.

What the disciples see on the mountain is not Jesus becoming less human, but fully human. His humanity is brought to fulfillment, it becomes radiant with glory. And this glory has been present in Jesus all along. At the Transfiguration, for a moment, the veil is pulled back, and the glory that has always been present in Jesus is made visible to his disciples who had eyes to see. Not because God suddenly arrives, but because God allows what is already true to be seen.

God did not create humans only to forgive us, but for us to become like God, by beholding God.

And this is why Jesus gives this vision to his disciples when he does. He knows that when he enters Jerusalem, suffering and death lie ahead. He knows their world is about to crumble. This vision does not cure them of doubt or confusion—but it gives them something to hold onto. A glimpse of God’s future, revealed in the midst of fear and uncertainty.

God’s presence was not more real on the mountain. God’s glory was simply more visible.

All this matters because we are living in the painful reality between promise and fulfillment, between glory glimpsed and suffering endured. We do not get a blinding vision of Jesus shining like the sun. But, we do have the testimony of those who did. I challenge us to let that witness shape how we see God, how we endure suffering, and how we live in the world as it actually is. I challenge us to let the face of Jesus—not fear, not violence, not despair—be what forms our understanding of God.

And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is seemingly small: to pray to behold the face of God. Let’s be a community that prays for our own transfiguration: to be formed in the likeness of Christ, from glory to glory. That is our future, God promises it, so we pray for it more and more on earth as it is in heaven.

Let’s do that now together in our practice of breath prayer. 

Our prayer for today is: “Lord, give us eyes to perceive your glory.”