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Good Morning. Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. 

Jesus went up a mountain to pray, taking his closest friends, Peter, James and John, and while there, he was ‘transfigured’. We’re told ‘his face shone like the sun’, and beside him appeared Moses and Elijah.

Then a terrifying cloud of God’s presence descended, and a voice said ‘This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ 

And then suddenly, normality returned. 

St Mark says the three confused companions later discussed together what these strange events could mean. 

Theologians have various ideas. 

First, the Transfiguration prefigures how Jesus, through his death and resurrection, would fulfil everything to which the law, given through Moses, and the prophets, like Elijah, aspired. 

It also provides the disciples with a foretaste of Christ’s true glory, as the Son of God. 

They, like many gospel-readers through the ages, needed help to grasp the crucifixion wasn’t failure, but the means by which Jesus would bring salvation to the world. 

Just a week earlier, Peter was famously rebuked, ‘get behind me Satan’ when he opposed Jesus’ assertion that the Messiah must suffer and die. 

But God doesn’t always share our measures of success, or act by our standards! The Transfiguration awesomely insists he does things his way, and reminds us to look for godly glory where we least expect it. 

High and Holy God, open our eyes to recognise your saving presence in places and ways we hadn’t anticipated, so we may see your glory. Amen