MYTHOS
The story of the Transfiguration is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9: 2-13, and Luke 9:28-36. It is not recorded in the Gospel of John.
I have written several posts on the Transfiguration of Jesus and I invite the reader to take a look. The first is a homily I delivered at Christ Episcopal Church on February 14, 2021 which you can see here. I also wrote about the Transfiguration in a 2017 post that was the start of a series of posts on "The Mystic Journey" which can be viewed here.
As I have mentioned in other posts, visions are personal experiences such as Jesus experienced at his baptism where he heard God identify him as God's beloved son and saw the Spirit of God descend on him like a dove. It is rare to have a shared vision, although the Roman Catholic Church has recorded such multiple events, the most famous and relatively recent is the Miracle of Sun associated with sightings of the Virgin at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 which was reportedly witnessed by 70,000 people. I must let such things stand for those who experienced such events. It would be wrong for me to question their experiences as they remain highly personal regardless of how many or how few people experienced such visionary events.
Could the story of Jesus' Transfiguration which was witnessed by three of Jesus' disciples Peter, James, and John have occurred? Yes. What leans me towards it being presented as a myth in the Gospels is the construction of its telling and the purpose for being presented at all.
According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, six days after predicting his death Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain where Jesus begins to glow and Elijah and Moses appears and are seen conversing with Jesus. The disciples are afraid. Peter offers to build three shelters or tabernacles for them, after which a cloud overshadows the scene and the Voice of God proclaims, "This is my Son. Listen to him!" The cloud suddenly disappears as it appeared leaving only Jesus and the three disciple. Jesus instructs Peter, James, and John not to tell anyone what they have experienced. The disciples then question Jesus about Elijah's presence.
In the Gospel of Luke, this event occurs eight days after Jesus predicts his death. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain to pray and while they are praying Jesus' face changes and his clothes take on the brightness of a lightening flash. Then Moses and Elijah appear in "glorious array." Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are talking about Jesus' departure. Luke notes at that point the disciple become very sleepy and it is during this period of sleepiness that Peter suggest building three dwelling for Moses, Jesus, and Elijah. Suddenly a cloud appears and overshadows the frightened disciples who "enter" into the cloud as it envelops them. It is then they hear a voice saying, "This is my Son whom I have chosen. Listen to him!" After this, the cloud disappears and the disciple become fully awake and see only Jesus standing by them. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus doesn't need to tell his disciples not to tell anyone. They simply don't or can't tell anyone about what they experienced because they remain both frightened and confused.
MEANING
There is no small amount of the mystical about this story. As I am prone to do, I would point out some of the elements of this story usually overlooked when the story is presented as a factual event and taken literally. Speaking of facts, the most overlooked fact of this story is that all three of the Synoptic Gospels point out that a number days that pass after Jesus predicts his death to his disciples. Numbers are important in any story found in biblical literature. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, the transfiguration of Jesus takes place six days after he predicts his death and in the Gospel of Luke it is eight days after his prediction.
Six days after Jesus' predictions of his death symbolizes the near completion of Jesus redemptive ministry, in the same way that six days represent the near completion of God's creation. In light its numerological significance, Jesus taking three of his closest disciples represents half an equation of God's creative order, the mortal or earthly creation. Once the disciples reach the top of the mountain, Jesus begins to glow in brilliant radiance and two other radiant being, Elijah and Moses appear with Jesus forming the other half of the equation as the eternal divinized. The three of them are conversing, but the disciples are not able to hear or recall what they are talking about.
Peter intuitively, within his awestruck confusion, perceives that the fulfillment of creation, the harvest, the end of time is upon them and thus offers to build the dwellings used in the Jewish festival of Succoth. After this a cloud overshadows them and they hear the voice of God saying, "This is my Son. Listen to him."
The presence of God's voice reveals the presence of a seventh being, the fullness of all creation, God's self, the cloud that envelops all of them, that being in which all things exist. When the cloud lifts, Jesus awakens his disciples back to the reality we know and warns them to say nothing about this vision to anyone. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark the disciples question Jesus about the presence of Elijah. They ask when will Elijah come to which Jesus replies, that Elijah has already come, implying that John the Baptizer was/is Elijah. Such talk almost borders on describing a multiverse in which past, present, and future have no real meaning as everything is eternal in God's being. Identity, itself, is nebulous. Elijah and John the Baptizer are interchangeable characters or identities.
In the Gospel of Luke Jesus takes his disciples up to a high mountain to pray eight days after he predicts his death. Luke seems to like adding some nuances to these shared stories. The number eight is significant in this story as it is after eight days that a male baby is named and circumcised, thus Jesus in this myth is named (identified) in the presence of both living in this life and those living in the next life. God gives Jesus his identity as God's Son; that is, the person God has chosen to be God's Son. This is an interesting twist to the earlier birth story of Jesus in Luke, where Jesus is the conceived Son of God via the Virgin Mary. In this myth, Jesus is God's chosen one to be God's son, which begs one to question whether this myth or the birth myth of Jesus were later additions to this Gospel.
In Luke's account, the three disciples become very sleepy when Moses and Elijah appear. Sleepiness represents a state of liminality - a place where visions and dreams emerge. It is in this liminal state that Peter offers to build a shelter for Moses, Jesus, and Elijah. That the disciples immediately understood who Moses and Elijah were is a bit of mystery. How did they know?
The suggestion of liminality strips away the mask of mundane reality to reveal the holy other. The disciples just know. James and John are rendered speechless during this event. In fact, Jesus doesn't have to remind the disciples not say anything to other disciples, suggesting that they were too overwhelmed by the experience to be able to do so. Was it a dream or a vision? At this point, the disciple are not even talking about this experience amongst themselves, which is supposedly due to its being so otherworldly; as such, they have no point of reference to make what they experienced as real for them. The time will come, according to all three of these Gospels, when its meaning will become apparent as the point of reference needed to understand Jesus' death and resurrection.
In Luke, the nebulous is expressed by the claim that Jesus' face changes; that is, was "heteros" meaning other in Greek. The transfigured Jesus is a vision of something other than the mundane likeness the disciples recognized. There is no description of what this face looked like, but it was different.
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The myth of the Transfiguration of Jesus is like something out of a sci-fi movie. Reality as the disciples knew it became altered. The long-ago dead are not dead or as Jesus once said, "(God) is not the God of the dead, but of the living," Matthew 22:32. Identity is nebulous and indeterminate as this vision demonstrates. Elijah is John the Baptist in another age. All of which leads me, at least, to say there is more to this story than merely pointing out that Jesus is the Son of God; that there is more to life than this life. For the moment, we are who we appear to be, who we think we are, and who others think we are but there is larger sense of life that is obscured by the cloud of God's Being that overshadows us.
All three of the Gospel presentations of this myth proclaim in the presence of witnesses, what at Jesus' baptism was only presented to him; the Voice of God proclaiming Jesus to be God's beloved son in whom God is well-pleased. In this myth that proclamation comes with a command, "Listen to him." It is that command which is the true purpose of this myth. One can walk away from its telling thinking that this is simply another myth telling us that Jesus is God's Son, but there is more to it. "Listen to him" is what this myth is telling us to do. Ingest Jesus' teaching.
Traditional theological conclusions draw attention to the fact the Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets. Undoubtedly that is a meaning derived from this myth. I would suggest that there is more it than that. Jesus is portrayed as central to understanding the law and prophets, not merely the ultimate keeper or fulfillment of the law nor merely the fulfillment of what the prophets prophesied. Jesus is the ultimate voice of God's law and prophetic vision. Jesus represents a new vision and a new version of law and prophesy. He is Jesus. He is Moses. He is Elijah. All are one in the Being of God; as all are one in Christ (Galatians 3: 28).
That's a lot to wrap our finite brains around, but in this twenty-first century, we are faced with trying to wrap our finite brains around a lot of things that border on the unreal. Accepting the nebulous nature of our being is the first step to understanding the meaning of this myth and its pointing to the truth of a greater reality.
Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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