“The Lord is great in Zion!” In today’s Psalm the Psalmist declares:
“The Lord reigns,
let the nations tremble;
he sits enthroned between the cherubim,
let the earth shake.
The Lord is great in Zion.
he is exalted over all the peoples.”
As the world looks on at the abhorrent invasion of Ukraine, many will believe that God isn’t reigning, or that there is no God at all. Perhaps many bunkering in the Ukrainian cities might believe this themselves, where the earth literally is shaking and trembling from missile attacks.
When the Psalmist first penned Psalm 99, the Lord was great in Zion. The people had seen the great power of the Lord as he led his people forth from slavery in Egypt, going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to light their path. He rescued them through the Red Sea, before throwing the military superpower of the day, the Egyptians, into confusion, and drowning them behind them. He had spoken to Moses on Mount Sinai. The cloud of God’s glory covered the mountain, and on the seventh day God called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. (Exodus 24:15-18). The Lord led them to their own land where they had an abundance of lavish fare, but most of all, they had the Lord in Zion; his gracious presence at the Temple in Jerusalem, where he promised to hear the prayers of his people and speak forgiveness and blessing. The prophets proclaimed that from Zion God would show his salvation to the whole earth.
In today’s text Luke takes us in to the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus, where the presence of Moses on the mountain brings to mind the Sinai imagery of God giving his law to his people. They had broken these commandments before Moses even came down from the mountain, but God determined that the people’s sin would be paid for through the sacrificial system. All through the Old Testament the prophets continuously called the people to repent, as they waited for the promised Messiah. This is why the presence of Elijah, as a representative of the prophets was so significant in the Transfiguration event.
The Transfiguration scene also recalls a prophecy from the last of the prophets in the Old Testament before John the Baptist—the prophet Malachi who prophesied:
“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty.
Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.” (Malachi 4:1-5)
The Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah, the mountain, the cloud which veiled God’s presence, and the voice of the Father attesting to Jesus’ identity and authority: “This is my Son, listen to him”–reveal Jesus as the Messiah. Here, on the mountain is the Son of righteousness; the Saviour of the world the Old Testament promised and pointed to.
And Peter gets it! It might seem as if Peter rushes in and puts his foot in his mouth again, but he actually gets it—the long awaited day of God’s salvation has arrived in Christ! Peter’s seemingly strange offer to make three shelters for them is a confession of faith deeply rooted in Israel’s remembrance of their salvation. In Leviticus 23 God commanded his people to observe the feast of booths, by which they were to commemorate his rescue of them by living in small huts or tents, for seven days (Leviticus 23:42-43). It would remind them of how God housed the Israelites in temporary shelters when he brought them out of Egypt. The Feast of booths was also understood as looking ahead to the glorious day of Israel’s final deliverance (Zechariah 14:16-21).
Yes, Peter gets it…but he doesn’t quite get all of it. So before he rushes off to the local hardware, the Father tells him to hold his horses: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him” (verses 34-35).
The conversation involving Moses and Elijah tells us why. They were speaking with Jesus about his departure which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. The word for departure is ‘exodus’—yet another connection this text makes with God’s rescue of his people in the Old Testament. Jesus has come as the fulfilment of God’s salvation; the Messiah who would bring salvation beyond Israel to all nations. Jesus’ exodus—his departure—would begin in the upper room after he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, to the Mount of Olives, to the courts of Pilate, then to Golgotha. Having been stripped, whipped, mocked, and shamed, he would be lifted high on a Cross and breathe his last. It would be just as he had told his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Luke 9:22).
At the Cross, there was no shining face above dazzling white clothing, but a face smeared with sweat and blood underneath a crown of thorns. There was no cloud of glory with the proclamation of Jesus as the Son of God, but this time silence from the Father, and the wailing of grief, and the voices of mockers and scoffers that pierced the air. There was no dazzling visual display of glory of the Son of God, but in the words of Isaiah the prophet, only one whose appearance was transfigured—marred beyond human likeness; so disfigured beyond that of any human being (Isaiah 52:14).
To human eyes Jesus’ suffering and death seems anything but divine victory but a catastrophic failure—horrific suffering to a decent and moral man; a gross miscarriage of justice. Yet Jesus’ death was the very way he fulfilled God’s plan for the salvation of the world, promised right back in the Garden of Eden.
To human eyes, things appear just as out of control today—floods causing fatalities in Queensland, the devastation and terror of the invasion of Ukraine (and not that long ago the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan), pain from the COVID pandemic as businesses and families are driven to the brink, violence, fighting, and homelessness on our doorstep. In today’s society—a society which commentators now describe as ‘Post-Christian’—the thought of listening to God’s word is laughable, regarding such as an imposition on human freedom—a freedom that is ironically lived out in all kinds of harmful and destructive ways, and which can turn into the worst humanitarian atrocities.
That is why God has given us the Transfiguration account, with the fleeting revelation of Jesus’ divine glory: to assure his people that his death was no failure—in fact the very way he would conquer death, sin, Satan and evil. It was a revelation to his disciples then and now, that the Lord is still great—but not in Zion.
The Lord is no longer great in Zion; in the Temple in Jerusalem. It no longer exists there. The Lord is great in the person of Christ, who has redeemed the world by his precious blood, the risen and ascended One, enthroned high above the earth.
With threats all around us, it is the human way to trust in our own resources; to look to worldly comforts and strategies for coping in life; to blaze our own trails in the search for identity, meaning and purpose.
But through this time of renewed threat to stability and peace on a global scale, God again calls us to listen to his Son. May all the prideful leaders of the world listen to him. May all the families displaced and fleeing in terror who long for peace listen to him. May those who perpetrate evil, violence, hatred and hurt listen to him, and repent, for Jesus says: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
And may Jesus’ church also, always, listen to him. For it is one thing for the world to have closed ears to the Holy Scriptures…but our ears have been opened by the Holy Spirit to hear from Christ, the way, the truth and the life, to keep on listening to his voice and follow him all the days of this precarious and fleeting life.
So dear brothers and sisters, do not build for yourselves shelters of your own design. But find your refuge in Jesus. For he has promised you eternal lodgings of his own making: He says: “Let not your hearts be troubled…In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (John 14:1-3).
Then, on that day, when the church’s exodus in this world is finally over, you will see what Peter, James, and John saw: you will see Moses and Elijah, you will see Christ’s shining face and clothes as white as lightning, not for a few seconds, but for all eternity. And you will join the praise of the angels, all the other saints who have had their shining white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, and with the Psalmist, in shouts and song of victorious joy: The Lord reigns! Amen!
