Mark 9:2-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling bright, such as no one on earth could brighten them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing clearly the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. For it is the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
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"What is the glory of the Lord? Is it that Jesus is hugely powerful and could destroy us all if he wanted? This is how many Christians portray him—like Superman shed of his Clark Kent glasses, business suit and paten leather shoes. Suddenly he is sporting red and blue tights with a cape and mask and we can see his muscles rippling as he soars through the air faster than a speeding bullet.
"I think Mark is giving us a hint when he tells us that Jesus takes them up the mountain six days after he announced his coming suffering, death and resurrection. Six days is incomplete and calls for a seventh to complete it. It’s like saying “Puff the Magic Dragon that lived by the____. If you know the song you have to say “sea” to complete it. The same is true of the glory of the Lord. It starts on the mount of Transfiguration but it reaches its completion and finality somewhere else. And that place is the hill of Golgotha on the far side of Lent. Just before Lent begins we go to a high mountain and see Jesus’ glory as he is about to go into the valley of Lent before again ascending on a cross on the other side. The Cross is where the glory of the Lord is fully seen and finally completed. The Cross is Jesus’ glory!
"But here is the question. Was Jesus glorifying himself when he went to the cross? Was it some sort of slam dunk that had everyone enthralled? I don’t think so. When we put Jesus in this context suddenly we see the glory of Jesus not as self promotion but self-giving. He went to the cross to show us where we are stuck and what we must do to become unstuck. He did this because he loved us. He died to teach us to stop killing.
"Now we see that the dazzling one dazzles with his infinite capacity to love us. We have begun to grasp that there is nothing we can do to prevent him from loving us. Even if we murder him, he still forgives us and loves us. This is a white whiter than any bleach on earth can make pure white. It goes beyond anything we humans know or can do. His tenderness is absolute and his non-violence has no limit. This is his glory. His glory finds its completion on the Cross. The transfigured glory of Jesus is his limitless self-giving.
...
"We know about this! We are discovering it! Our love may not be as deep as Jesus’ but we follow him by going as deep as we can. We know it is sacrificial self-giving that counters and subverts the violent god of this world. We have learned this from Jesus who modeled it on the Cross and lived it in the world. When the cloud overshadows the three disciples, the voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”"
- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, sermon from February 19, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Transfiguration-Listen-to-Him-2012.doc)
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"Now we come to, really, the center at the middle of Mark's Gospel, Jesus' transfiguration. And we get a key word - beloved - which had also last come just before Jesus went out into the wilderness. At Jesus baptism, he heard a voice which said, “You are my beloved son” - agapetos. And here on the Mount of Transfiguration that is going to be the key word, beloved.
...
"So, then a cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud there comes a voice: “This is my son, the beloved.” - agapetos - “Listen to him.” Okay, so here we have curiously the center of what is expected to be shown to them, this strange mystery of dying and rising, which is what this is supposed to be about, which is what they hadn't understood before and still won't get to understand, and which God is trying to get through to them is about to come into their midst.
"And there's no question that it refers to the Genesis [story of the command to sacrifice Isaac]. It refers to “your son, your beloved son.” (Gen. 22:2) Now let's just remember something about the Genesis text... The Genesis text, the sacrifice of Isaac, is a terrible, scandalous text as we have it now, and it requires us to do a good deal of hard work to be able to imagine it as what it actually was, which was deliberately and from the beginning a prophetic text, undoing the world of child sacrifice.
"In it, immediately Abraham is taken out as a test. He sees from afar the place where the sacrifice is going to be. And the place where the sacrifice is going to be here is also going to be the place on which Solomon is going to found the temple. In other words, what does he see in the distance? He sees in the distance the place where a temple based on the sacrifice of lambs instead of humans is going to be set up. In other words, the place where Moses's redemptive lamb religion is going to replace the older religion, in which some people at least thought they were justified in sacrificing their firstborn.
"When Isaac, reasonably enough, noticing that there isn't a victim as he's taken up the hill asks his dad what's going to happen, Abraham says, “God will himself provide the lamb for sacrifice, my son.” God is a third person it's referred to as Elohim. But all of this, of course, is before the Moses revolution in which God is “I AM.” And it's an angel from I AM who, theoretically, Abraham has never heard of, it says in the book of Exodus quite clearly: by my name, I AM, I did not prefer to refer to myself to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, I had other names for them. But I AM speaks as it were from Moses's future into Abraham's past and countermands the sacrifice.
"And remember that the very same phrase that I've just recited for you: “God will provide, God himself will provide the lamb for sacrifice, my son,” if it's I AM who's saying that, then it is I AM will provide Myself for sacrifice, the lamb, my son. In other words, it's a prophecy of the One who is going to give himself up as an act of self-providing so that we never have to be involved in the world of sacrifices again. So there's already the hint of that in the I AM, God undoing the Elohim God's instruction.
"And of course, this is part of what is being fulfilled and Jesus is actually the acting out of God giving himself as a lamb, his Son himself to be the sacrifice. This is what Jesus is saying. He's saying, “Yes this is what's going to happen, this is going to be a gift for you. And what your life is going to look like is entering into that gift, that's what's going to be made possible. Now, how could they have understood this? How can we understand this? it's immensely difficult to understand that God gave himself a sacrifice to us, undoing our need for sacrifices in order to establish our stability our security and all that. Not because God needed sacrifice, but because we need sacrifices, such is our fear and our dangerousness to each other. And that he's entering into that space to take us out of it, and to enable us.
"“Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.” Okay, so the vision that's attempted to complexify what they were about to see vanishes. Now they're left just with a human being - Jesus. “And as they were coming down the mountain he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” In other words: don't attempt to explain all this until this actually happened, then you can find yourselves on the inside. ...
"All of this is about rising from the dead. What [the disciples are] being asked to do, what we're being asked to do, ... is to enter into the dynamic and wonder what it is that God is bringing us to life, what that's going to look like."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLRs17xyFqA)
[Source of link to Thomas and Laura Truby sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/transfigb/]
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