Text: Matthew 17:1-9
Date: Transfiguration + 3/2/14
“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5). “But no! Wait a minute! That light! It’s too bright! That light is scary!” Like Isaiah cringing in the corner of the temple when he saw the Lord, so the three disciples on the holy mount fell in fear with their faces to the ground. But the title of our consideration this morning is from the old fifteenth century hymn for the Transfiguration Caelestis Formam Gloriae translated O Wondrous Type! O Vision Fair in our hymnal. Another translation is:
An image of that heavenly light,
the goal the Church keeps ay in sight….[1]
Or by John Neale:
A Type of those bright rays on high
For which the Church hopes longingly….[2]
A wondrous “type” is any earthly person or image pointing to a greater heavenly reality, “those Old Testament persons, institutions, or events that have a divinely intended function of prefiguring the eschatological age inaugurated by Christ.”[3] “No,” Jesus says to the terrified disciples, “Rise, and have no fear.” Why not? Because “when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”
I’ve always thought that the account of the Transfiguration of Our Lord observed among us on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany before Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent was intended to serve as a sort of last minute shot in the arm, an encouragement to help us endure the supposed “downer” of Lent and especially with the goal of Holy Week. After all St. Matthew tells us this event followed Jesus’ foretelling of His death and resurrection and His talking about taking up your cross and following Him. And it does serve that purpose to a certain extent. As the more familiar hymn concludes:
‘Tis good, Lord, to be here!
Yet we may not remain;
But since Thou bidst us leave the mount,
Come with us to the plain. (LSB 414:5)
But this festival and this gospel serves another purpose in addition to merely preparing us for Lent. That purpose is to hold before our eyes the great promise the “type” of what God intends our future to be in eternity and the effect of that certain hope for every day of our pilgrimage now. It is, as the hymn says it, “of glory that the Church may share,” or “the goal the Church keeps ay in sight,” or glory “for which the Church hopes longingly.”
As we try to see what this event is to mean to our lives our attention is at first naturally drawn to those three disciples as if they represent us somehow, and in a sense they do. But what do we see? At the vision of Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, Peter begins to babble, (I’ve heard plenty of aimless babbling in the Church in my time) inspired by the mountaintop experience, interpreting it as Luther would call it as “a theology of glory” where he immediately wants to hang on to the experience. But this experience is useless all by itself unless it draws us through the theology also of the cross. God interrupts Peter’s blathering, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” In other words, it is as if He says, “Get your eyes off of yourself and your experience and your feelings and fears and look, rather, at My Son and listen to Him.” So even as we consider the great hope of eternal life for ourselves we do so most productively and faithfully by looking to Jesus, by listening to Him.
This vision is no empty or deceiving theology of glory. But it is meant to hold out to us the promise of the glorious future we have by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That glory is ineffable, inexpressible. As St. John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-2). Mysterious words! The best St. Paul could do to describe the eternal life in the resurrection are in the words, “what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel…. But God gives it a body as he has chosen…. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body,” (“spiritual,” by the way, not meaning ethereal, unreal or not physical) (1 Cor 15:35-49). “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”
And how have we heard our Lord describe our future eternal life? He compared it to a wedding feast or joyful banquet where we are ushered in dressed in the baptismal garments of His righteousness. “I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 8:11). “You are those,” He says of us, “who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:28-30).
The vision and this future is as He said for those “who have stayed with me in my trials.” And we will do that again liturgically as we walk through the valley of the shadow of Lent until we recount His arrest and fixed trials, His abuse at the hands of sinners and finally His atoning death on the cross. But staying with Jesus in His trials also includes, to a certain extend, the trials we endure because we belong to Him. That staying and endurance is the cross He bids us to take and carry ourselves. It is the cross of repentance, daily repentance that is, of a continual awareness and sorrow or contrition over our sins, which continue to cling so closely. It is the cross also of continual faith that, though it does not see the glory or the deliverance now but dimly, believes it to be ours because of God’s sure Word and promise. It is the cross of enduring all the effects of sin from physical illness, disease and injury to the separations borne of quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit and disorder (2 Cor 12:20).
The promise of eating and drinking at His table in His kingdom is, of course, already foreshadowed as we eat and drink at His table set before us sacramentally in the fellowship of His Church. But the Holy Communion is no mere “type” or symbol. For here we already have the heavenly table fellowship with Christ. Here the same, true and substantial body and blood that hung on the cross for us and for our salvation is given to us, giving us the very forgiveness, life and salvation that flows continually through that sacrifice of His.
So this wondrous type, this vision fair, is a glimpse both of the Lord’s glory and victory in His resurrection and also of the very glory and victory He shares with us in our resurrection! As we journey in this vision and faith we are to lift up our eyes and see no one but Jesus only.