Today is the Last Sunday after the Epiphany; we stand at a definite turning point in the church year, with Christmas and its aftermath behind us and Lent and Easter ahead. And at this turning we hear, as always, the story of the transfiguration of Christ— a story which in three of the gospels stands at a decisive turning point in the proclamation of good news.

Let’s put the story in the context of that proclamation. We are in Galilee, where Jesus grew up, where his ministry began, where he has been teaching and healing and has gathered around himself a band of rather feckless, uncomprehending men whom we call the disciples. A week before today’s story Jesus had asked them who folks thought he was. They responded with a variety of answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets of old. Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” And Peter, without having a clue what he was really saying, blurted out, “The Christ of God.” Immediately Jesus told them of the sufferings and death and resurrection which lay aheadfor the Son of Man— none of which, it needs to be stressed, made any sense to the disciples at all.

And now, a week later, we are on a mountain. None of the gospels name this place; to name it would, I think, tell us too much and rob the story of its power and mystery. For here on this nameless mountain we are looking back to other mountains, to Moriah, where Abraham took his son Isaac to do the unthinkable, to sacrifice him to the God who had promised so much and would, at the last minute, redeem Isaac and redeem those promises; we are looking back to Sinai where the law was given to Moses; we are looking back to Nebo, where the dying Moses looked out over the promised land; we are looking back to countless places where God made his presence and will and love for his creatures known and manifest.

There on this mountain of revelation, Jesus takes three of his disciples off to pray. They—as usual, totally out to lunch— keep dozing off, just as, later on, the disciples will all sleep at another mountain, the Mount of Olives, while Jesus prays before his arrest. But now, as Luke tells the tale, through their befuddled and bleary eyes they see the appearance of Jesus’ face change and his clothes become dazzling white with a brilliance akin to that which shone forth from Moses as he came down from Sinai bearing the revelation of God’s will. With Jesus, shining with the glory that will be his when he returns to the Father, are Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the Law and the Prophets, of the sacred scriptures of their people, and they are discussing a new exodus, the exodus Jesus would shortly begin as he set his face for Jerusalem and his suffering, death, and resurrection. A turning point indeed—Luke has us look backward and forward in the same moment, backward over the entirety of the story of Israel as it is contained in the Old Covenant, forward to the New Israel to be established through that new exodus and a New Covenant.

How little the disciples “get it” is made abundantly clear when Peter suggests they build shrines to commemorate what they have just seen, as if somehow in that moment Jesus’ life had reached its culmination. But then, or so we are told, comes a cloud and a terrifyingly unexpected voice crying out, “This is my Son, my Chosen.” And again we look back to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry when, after his baptism, that voice proclaimed “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And again we look ahead to the Resurrection, when the disciples will at least begin to grasp who Jesus truly was and what he was about in the months they followed him.

How little the disciples understood then on that strange, unknowable mountain of revelation is made clear by their reported silence and clearer by the resolution with which Jesus led them down the mountain to continue his work of teaching and healing and to set his face for Jerusalem and the certainty of his death.

So we stand at a turning pont as we too, like Christ, begin on Wednesday to turn our faces toward Jerusalem and the forty days of Lent. The glory that the strange and compelling tale of the Transfiguration describes is only a foretaste of that glory we shall celebrate after that long forty days reaches its fulfillment on Palm Sunday and Good Friday and is transfigured as utterly as Jesus’ face today into the eternal and everlasting glory of Christ’s resurrection and our eternal Easter Day, when we shall all behold Christ’s glory face to face.

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