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March 6, 2011

1) The document discusses the transfiguration story from the Bible and various attempts to explain it through natural phenomena or as a misplaced resurrection story. However, these explanations are no more believable than the original story. 2) It argues that we struggle with the mystery of the transfiguration because we live in a scientific age where we want rational explanations for everything, but God's ways are higher than our ways. 3) While it's important to investigate our faith, we should not fear questions or feel we have to explain everything, as the mystery of our faith is also a strength - we need a God greater than what we can understand. The transfiguration reminds us that God loves us and

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
58 views3 pages

March 6, 2011

1) The document discusses the transfiguration story from the Bible and various attempts to explain it through natural phenomena or as a misplaced resurrection story. However, these explanations are no more believable than the original story. 2) It argues that we struggle with the mystery of the transfiguration because we live in a scientific age where we want rational explanations for everything, but God's ways are higher than our ways. 3) While it's important to investigate our faith, we should not fear questions or feel we have to explain everything, as the mystery of our faith is also a strength - we need a God greater than what we can understand. The transfiguration reminds us that God loves us and

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Paul Sandberg
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March 6, 2011 2 Peter 1:16-21 Matthew 17:1-9

“Let the Light of Jesus Shine”


Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

As He came down from the mountain with the disciples following the transfiguration, Jesus
commanded them to tell no one what they’d seen “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the
dead.” When the disciples did begin to speak about what had happened on the mountain, they must’ve
discovered the wisdom of Jesus’s counsel. Indeed, one suspects that this is when the expression,
“Well, I suppose you had to be there” may have been born. No matter what we say about the
transfiguration, we never quite seem able to explain it.
A century ago it was fashionable to account for the transfiguration in terms of natural phenomena. On
a snow-capped mountain Jesus encountered a pair of men dressed in white robes. The glare of the sun
reflected on their garments by the snow was so dazzling that the disciples thought ... When we try to
untangle the transfiguration, often the explanations begin sounding even more improbable than the
gospel story itself.
Recent theories that have arisen in literary archaeology have suggested that the transfiguration is a
misplaced resurrection story. The white robes, resplendent light and transformed personages make
that sound reasonable enough. Some have gone so far as to identify the story as a refugee from the
apocryphal Gospel of Peter; after wandering from church to church, the story finally found a canonical
home in the middle of Mark’s Gospel and then Matthew and Luke picked it up from there. But why
would Mark, who doesn’t have any resurrection accounts at the end of his book, why would he put a
resurrection account right in the middle of his Gospel? With some of these literary scholars of our
day, we’re right back to the question from 100 years ago. The explanation is even harder to believe
than the Gospel’s account of what happened.
So why, we want to ask, why do the scholars, why do preachers, why does the layperson in the pew,
why do they struggle so with the transfiguration? The answer I think, is that we have trouble today
with mystery. We’ve been raised in a scientific age, and we want to know the how’s, why’s and
wherefore’s of everything. Like Peter, we use whatever tools we have at hand to come to terms with
the transfiguration. If the idea of hammering together 3 booths and enclosing the event within the
celebration of Sukkoth, the Feast of the Booths, suggests that Peter was straining to find a fit for what
he’d witnessed, surely we can be sympathetic. In Mark’s account of the transfiguration, Mark gently
explains that the apostle really didn’t know what to say, so he just said something.
We can understand Peter saying what he did because we understand that he, like us, wanted to get a
handle on what was going on. Nothing in Peter’s experience, nothing in our experience, prepares us
for what Matthew, Mark, and Luke describe to us. Nowhere among the concepts by which we order
our lives is there a category where the transfiguration might “fit.” The story was too astounding. The
meaning was too unbelievable. The whole episode made no sense to the rational mind of Peter’s day
or of our own day. The transfiguration was too mysterious for many to believe.
Yet such are the ways of God. We human beings keep trying to understand God according to our own
design, according to our own categories, according to our own knowledge base. We want to make
God fit into our computer banks, when the reality is what the prophet Isaiah records for us, “For my

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thoughts are not your thoughts,’ says the LORD, “nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
We can’t comprehend the power and majesty of God.
Even more important perhaps than that confession was Jesus showing the disciples that he “must go to
Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
killed, and on the third day be raised.” Peter didn’t want to hear that message. Now, six days later, the
Voice of God says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The
connection between Jesus showing the disciples the way to the cross and God’s proclamation that God
is pleased with Jesus and Jesus’ acceptance of what lies ahead is too strong for us to ignore. The
transfiguration was God’s stamp of approval that Jesus was correct in going to Jerusalem to suffer and
die on the cross. As Peter and James and John needed to understand that Jesus was doing God’s will,
we need to understand the same thing today. We need to know that Jesus was obeying God’s will
when he went to the cross to die for us.
However, perhaps for us, the transfiguration can have a further meaning. Perhaps for 21 st century
humans, the transfiguration can serve as a reminder that though God has given us wonderful minds to
study and learn, though God has given us a curiosity that probes and investigates the wonders of
creation, though God has made humanity only a little lower than the angels, God is still unknowable.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways and God’s
thoughts higher than our thoughts.”
Far from apologizing to the world for this message, we Christians can rejoice in its truth. Sometimes I
think Christians feel almost ashamed of our inability to explain all there is to know about the Bible and
about Christianity. We’re so upset by our inability to answer the world’s questions about Jesus Christ
that we react in one of two ways. Either we throw out anything in the Bible that can’t be explained by
scientific, rational thought, or we throw out scientific, rational thought completely because we’re
afraid that if someone shows us a disagreement between the two creation accounts in Genesis, our
entire faith will be destroyed.
Neither of these approaches to the Bible and to faith are very productive. Because we live in this
scientific age, if we’re afraid to investigate our faith, if we’re afraid to ask questions and understand
God’s message for us in today’s language, we won’t be able to reach today’s unbeliever with the Good
News of Jesus Christ. If we react defensively to every question raised about the creation account, or
the flood, or the resurrection itself, those who are seeking the truth of the Gospel message will decide
that we’re afraid of their questions, afraid that our faith can’t stand to be questioned and they’ll look
elsewhere for answers to their questions about God. We don’t need to fear the questions asked today.
The Bible is true. The Bible is God’s Word. We may need to change our understanding about how
the Bible teaches us, but we don’t need to fear the questions that anyone raises about the Bible or
about our faith in Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, we should not ever believe that we’re going to be able to answer all the questions
that can be raised, because God’s ways are not our ways. I think that sometimes we Christians have
shrunk back from saying to nonbelievers, “I don’t know how prayer works. I can’t explain why some
prayers seem to be answered while other prayers are not. I only know that prayer does work; that God
has spoken to me through prayer, and in turn, listens to me while I speak to God.” “I don’t have all the

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answers about the crucifixion and the resurrection. I don’t know why specifically God required Jesus
to die on the cross, but I know the message of the cross is a message of salvation for today and
tomorrow.”
I believe that rather than being a weakness, the mystery of our faith is a strength, because our God is
mysterious – not because God tries to stay hidden, but because God is too wonderful for us to even
imagine. And that’s good, because I don’t need a God whom I can fully understand in human terms. I
need God to be greater than I am. I need God to be powerful, to be the God I can’t hope to control. I
need the God that has created the universe, but still loves me enough to count what few hairs I have
left on my head. Groucho Marx supposedly said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would
accept me as a member.” I wouldn’t want to believe in a god that I could totally understand.
So the transfiguration reminds me, first that God loves me enough to send Jesus Christ to earth, to
walk with us, and show us God’s love for us, but then to suffer and die on a cross, and then to be
raised on the third day that we might have life and have it more abundantly. And secondly, the
transfiguration reminds me that this God, as much as God loves us, is a God of wonder and mystery
and awe. This God whom we worship is a God more loving and more powerful than any human can
comprehend, a God who has the power to bring about wondrous transformations within our lives, even
when we believe there is no hope. For a world that must realize that it can’t solve its own problems,
this is indeed Good News. For we who know that we aren’t sufficient unto ourselves, for we who
know that we can’t make it without help, this is indeed Good News to preach to the world. Amen.

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