He Was Transfigured Before Them

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”

Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.

Mark 9:2-10

“I felt like I had touched a live wire,” said Professor Holly Ordway, describing her reaction to John Donne’s majestic poem “Holy Sonnet 14.” There’s something happening in this poetry, she thought. I wonder what it is. Ordway recalls it as the moment her previously atheistic worldview allowed for the possibility of the supernatural. Eventually she would believe in the transforming reality of the resurrected Christ.

Touching a live wire—that must have been how Peter, James, and John felt on the day Jesus took them to a mountaintop, where they witnessed a dramatic transformation. Christ’s “clothes became dazzling white” (Mark 9:3) and Elijah and Moses appeared—an event we know today as the transfiguration.

Descending from the mountain, Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone what they’d seen until He’d risen (v. 9). But they didn’t even know what He meant by “rising from the dead” (v. 10). 

The disciples’ understanding of Jesus was woefully incomplete, because they couldn’t conceive of a destiny that included His death and resurrection. But eventually their experiences with their resurrected Lord would utterly transform their lives. Late in his life, Peter described his encounter with Christ’s transfiguration as the time when the disciples were first “eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

As Professor Ordway and the disciples learned, when we encounter the power of Jesus we touch a “live wire.” There’s something happening here. The living Christ beckons us.

What are some of your “live wire” experiences: moments when you encountered God in a radically new way? How has your knowledge of Him changed over time? 

Father, when we approach You in prayer, we come to what we don’t comprehend. Forgive us for taking for granted the majesty of Your presence.

Our Daily Bread – March 4, 2020