Bible Text: Matthew 17:1-9 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Moses would talk to God and afterward his face would shine with the reflected glory of God. He had to veil his face after that, because the people were scared to see his face shining. What’s amazing about this is that Moses could never see God face to face. God made that clear. He told him he could only see His backside, which means only a reflection of God, because a sinner can’t see God and live. So here you have the people frightened at the reflection of the reflection of God’s glory. Then comes the New Testament. Then comes Jesus, and St. John says, “We beheld His glory.” And St. Peter says “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” When Jesus shines on the mount of transfiguration, he is not shining with borrowed light. He isn’t reflecting God’s glory. He is God’s glory. And yet Peter and James and John see Him. His face is shining like the sun. Can you stare into the sun without pain? Or blindness? Children don’t try this at home. But they are looking at Jesus’ face, and they CAN. That’s what’s beautiful beyond expression. They CAN look God in all His glory in the face, and they’re sinners, like you, but they can look Him in the face, because they are looking at the God who became their Brother and lays down His life for His friends.
What Peter sees is a glimpse of the resurrection. Not just Jesus’ resurrection, his resurrection, your resurrection, eternal life as we will live it with God. There was a seminary professor who annoyed me with his saying, “Heaven’s OK, but it’s not the end of the world.” I didn’t like it, because heaven’s not just OK, it’s amazing – the souls of the saints are with God in perfect, sinless, beautiful peace. But the professor’s point is a good one, especially in our time, where people equate heaven with the end of the world. But heaven isn’t the end of the world. If we die, we Christians, our souls will go to heaven. We will be with God. It will be amazing. But our bodies won’t be with God. They’ll be in the ground. And our blissful, peaceful souls in heaven will be waiting for that “yet more glorious day” when the saints triumphant rise in bright array. Our eternity will not be a disembodied existence in heaven. Our eternity will be what Peter saw.
What did Peter see? He saw Moses and Elijah. Why those two? Why are they there with Jesus? There are all sorts of reasons – Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible and Elijah stands for the prophets, the rest of the Old Testament, and the point is that all the Bible talks about Jesus. But what is unique about Moses and Elijah? Elijah has his body. We know that. He was taken body and soul into heaven in a fiery chariot – his body was changed, its corruption taken away, however God did that – St. Paul talks about those of us who are alive when the Lord Jesus returns and says that our bodies will be transformed on that day, so something similar happened with Elijah. And then Moses, we know he died, but we also know that God Himself buried Moses, and no one knew where his body was. In the book of Jude, we hear that Michael the Archangel and Satan do battle over Moses’ grave, and many thought that God had taken Moses’ body to heaven also.
So what does Peter see? He sees not heaven, not disembodied souls, but Elijah with his body and Moses talking to Jesus. And he sees it on a mountain, not up in the clouds. Because in the resurrection, we will be body and soul. And as God promised long ago through Isaiah, “I will make a new heavens and a new earth,” there will be mountains, a new Eden, a paradise. St. Paul says that all creation groans with expectation of that day, because even the stuff of this earth will be freed from its corruption and everything will be made new, without sin, and we will live body and soul in a remade Eden, where this time there is no serpent to tempt.
That’s what Peter saw on the mountain. When people hear this – that our eternity will be body and soul with new heavens and new earth – they immediately turn to carnal thoughts. We can’t help it. Even Luther would get into this – talk about how far we will be able to see, how fast we can run, the pleasures of the body we’ll be able to enjoy fully when there is no sin and no pain. And that’s true, that we will have it all, but what do we end up doing? We end up describing a beautiful heavens and earth without mentioning God. Jesus becomes tangential. Because frankly our sinful minds and bodies can’t handle the vision of life in the resurrection. If God were to describe all the beautiful things we will see and do and feel, we would focus on those things instead of on the God who gives them, because that’s exactly what we do here, and that is the essence of sin. We replace God with His creation, the fruit of the tree becomes better in our eyes than the command of the Lord not to eat it. But in the resurrection, everything we enjoy, which no doubt will be seeing far, and running fast, and so much more than we can even imagine, all of it we will enjoy because we are enjoying God. We’ll have absolutely everything, and we’ll still confess with all our hearts the Psalm’s words, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.”
We enjoy God only by listening to Jesus. Peter talked too soon. I’ll set up three tents. Let’s enjoy it now. But Peter needed to listen. The Father interrupts him from heaven: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” And if you listen to Him you will hear what He will use all His power and glory to do. That’s the whole point of the transfiguration – this glory and divine power Peter sees shining from Jesus’ face – Jesus will hide it all and go to the cross and love us to His death, use His divine power to destroy our death and consume our sins in the suffering of God Himself on that cross.
This brief glimpse of glory and power Peter sees stands in perfect contrast to what Jesus looked like when He went to the cross. When he was a baby, he looked like every other baby. There was no halo around his head. Jesus slips away into the crowds, because he looks like every other Jew around. When Judas betrays him in the Garden of Gethsemane, he has to go and kiss him, point him out to the soldiers, otherwise they couldn’t tell who he was. Isaiah describes Him, “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” That’s the Jesus people saw. Our Savior is beautiful because He made Himself ugly. He is glorious, because He hid His glory. You want to see God in His glory, see Him hanging on the cross. There He loves you, there all His power is directed toward you.
Because everything that made it impossible for you to stare your Creator in the face, because you are a sinner, because you are like Adam and Eve hiding in the garden, ashamed because you are naked and God sees all you have done, and He is a righteous God, a holy God, who must punish your sin, and you cannot stand before Him. All that the devil brought into this world by your sin, Jesus takes it away from you and puts it on Himself.
And when He rises from the dead, He is still bearing the marks of His crucifixion. And when the angels and saints surround Him in heaven, they are talking to the Lamb who was slain, the one who even after He rises from the dead, is labeled by angels and His Father and by us in loving admiration, the Crucified one. This the superscription be, Jesus crucified for me, is my life my hope’s foundation, and my glory and salvation. You will see Him as He really is, you will look Him in the face, and when you do you will see all the glory of God in the Crucified.
Peter wasn’t ready for it. He would be. After he denied His Lord. After He wept bitterly and finally gave up on his own powers and saw what it took to be one with God, that Jesus was divinely serious when He said the Son of Man must suffer, then Peter knew what made for peace and glory.
So look with Peter at that glorious face of Jesus. And see there also what you will be. This mortal must put on immortality. This corruptible must put on incorruption. But not before you suffer. St. Paul says that our light and momentary suffering is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond any comprehension.
Our Father’s voice still sounds loud and clear: “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” When you sin, listen to Him and hear that God is angry with sin every day. It put the Father’s Son on the cross. It grieves Him. When you are sorry, Listen to Him and hear that His blood washed it all away. When you suffer because you are weak and your body is dying, listen to Him, I am the resurrection and the life. When you obsess over what you don’t have, and you want to see God’s glory in Him giving you the things you want, Listen to Jesus. You have everything already in Him. He gave you His name. You are a Christian. He gave you His status. You are a son of God. You are baptized into Christ. He feeds you with His body and blood. Everything He has is yours. And you will see it.
When you listen to Him, He is preparing you for the resurrection, for a new heavens and a new earth. When Peter and James and John finally looked up after the Father’s voice thundered from heaven, they saw Jesus only. And that too is the picture of everlasting life. He will be your joy and the mountains and everything beautiful and good will direct your eyes and heart constantly to the face of your Savior. Amen.