I like the story of the transfiguration because to read it you need all the poetic elements of our language: allusion, intuition, metaphor, numinous-ness, evocative-ness. It’s like rolling down a sand dune: bits and pieces come and go but the thrill of the moment takes over but only lasts for seconds. Forget ever trying to get to grips with this in any logical, physical, intellectual way. That strips the story of it’s purpose, if not its meaning as well.
It is the turning moment, Jesus now faces Jerusalem and crucifixion. So he’s on a mountain high here, and high on a cross in a few weeks time; he’s all glorified here in light and glory, and on the cross there is a more gory glorification; Peter recognises who Jesus is here; it take a roman soldier to do that at the crucifixion: ‘truly he was the Son of God’. Its like Jesus is saying, “Right, here’s the evidence that I am the Son of God. I’m giving you transfiguration now because during what is about to happen, you may not be quite so convinced.”
So we’ve got two ends of the story, this is the beginning. That we know the end enables us to live in the follower’s great paradox: the glory and the suffering, the power and the weakness, the divinity and the humanity. Told you, you needed poetry to get this one.
So, poetic hymns?
How on earth do we read this story in the community on Sunday to make it engaging?
What symbols have brought us here to this last Sunday in Epiphany?
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