2ND SUNDAY OF LENT (C)

And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus 

Lk 9:28b-36

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BY G B. CAIRD

According to Mark it was in the neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi that Peter declared Jesus to be Messiah. Immediately to the north of Caesarea lay Mount Hermon, and it is likely that this was the mountain to which Jesus resorted a week later with three of his friends. The mention of a precise interval by Mark and Luke indicates that in their opinion the two events were intimately related.

For the three witnesses their experience on the mountain provided an impressive confirmation of the new teaching they had received at Caesarea. There Jesus, in response to Peter's confession, had made a threefold disclosure: that the Messiah must suffer, that his disciples must be prepared to share his suffering, and that his suffering and theirs must be seen against a background of ultimate and certain glory. Now they have a prevision of the glory to come and hear a voice from heaven bidding them heed the words of God's Son.

The form of the words spoken from heaven shows that the transfiguration of Jesus is to be linked also with his baptism. Then Jesus had accepted God's commission to be both Messiah and Servant of the Lord, and the voice from heaven had come to him to confirm him in the course he had chosen. Now he has begun to reveal to his disciples the secret of his calling, and the same voice comes to them to confirm his instruction.

But the transfiguration cannot be understood simply as a stage in the education of the disciples; it must also have been as a crisis in the religious life of Jesus. Luke draws our attention to this point in his usual manner. Jesus, he tells us, was praying; and his comment is borne out by the researches of Evelyn Underhill and others, who have shown that the intense devotions of saint and mystic are often accompanied by physical transformation and luminous glow. Many scholars, past and present, have treated the transfiguration story with suspicion, regarding it either as a misplaced resurrection story or as a legendary product of later Christian piety. But the account may be accepted as literal truth, if we suppose that Jesus underwent an experience so profound that his companions, in tire susceptible state between sleep and waking, were drawn into it.

The very fact that Jesus took with him the three men who were later to accompany him into Gethsemane suggests that, now as then, he expected some trial of his spiritual stamina in which he would be glad of their companionship. Luke gives us a clue to the nature of the trial when he tells us that Moses and Elijah appeared and, spoke of his departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. This was not the first time, according to Luke, that Jesus had contemplated the prospect of death in the service of God. From the outset he had accepted the prophecy of the suffering Servant of the Lord as the blue-print of his ministry. But it is one thing to believe that obedience to God's decree will lead ultimately to rejection and death; it is quite another thing to embrace rejection and death as immediate, human possibilities.

The Greek word which Luke uses for death is an unusual one - exodos; and it is clear that he used it because of its Old Testament associations with divine deliverance. At Jerusalem Jesus was to accomplish the New Exodus, leading God's people from a greater bondage than that of Egypt into the promised land of the kingdom. Like Moses of old, he was now standing on the brink of a great sea, the ocean of iniquity through which he must pass and in which he must accornplish another baptism (12:50).

He has always obeyed the Father, but the road he has travelled hitherto has been well marked by the feet of prophets and forerunners, like Moses and Elijah. Now God is about to lead him into a path never before trodden by human foot, a path which will lead him to Gethsemane and Calvary. Henceforth, as pioneer of our salvation (Heb. 2:10, 12:2), he must journey alone, and not even Moses and Elijah can bear him company. Others, indeed, like John the Baptist, have suffered and died in God's service, but the death that awaits this man is more than martyrdom.

Peter's proposal to build three booths, or tabernacles, was a plausible one, though Mark and Luke, from their vantage point of superior knowledge, judged it to be ill-considered. He saw three men, each one a manifestation of the divine glory, and he wanted to capture the fleeting and stupendous moment by providing for each one a tabernacle such as Israel had built in the wilderness to enshrine the glory of the Lord.

Perhaps it confirmed his faith in Jesus to see him in such company. For Moses had spoken with God as a man speaks with his friend, so that his face shone as he received the law at God's hand, and, like Elijah, he had stood alone as the champion of God's people. Both men had made such an impression on their fellows that they were believed to have been translated bodily to heaven, and both were regarded as forerunners of the kingdom.

What Peter did not realize was that Moses and Elijah belonged, with John the Baptist, to the old order that was passing away, and that a moment later he would see them vanish, leaving Jesus alone, and hear a voice say, 'This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!' (cf. Deut. 18:15). There was no need for three tabernacles. The divine glory, imperfectly and partially revealed under the old dispensation, was now being gathered up in the sole person of this Jesus who had set his face to go to Jerusalem. He stood alone, and the cloud of the divine presence overshadowed him and his disciples.