On height, Torah, time and glory
Transfiguration Sunday is the highpoint between Epiphany, when the mystery is suddenly transparent, and the resurrection, when the ultimate epiphany breaks through what we had imagined was the full stop of death. Last year on Transfiguration Sunday our congregation hosted the Rivercity Gospel Jazz band. The service was an explosion of song and prayer and bold preaching that transfigured worship for a Sunday. Something like that seems called for this week.
• The texts are about a longing to know God’s way. With Peter in the lead, the disciples are confounded when Jesus leads them down into a world of suffering (Matt. 17:21ff). They imagined that the church was a place of ease rather than a community that bears pain. Jesus takes them up the mountain in the midst of their perplexity about the cruciform way of the Messiah.
Moses and Joshua were also once in search of God’s way of life in the Torah. In their absence, Moses leaves Aaron and Hur in charge. They are left to adjudicate disputes in the absence of Moses’ wisdom and of God’s law. They have only their own wits to sort out the inevitably messy legal disputes and sordid family arguments that are brought to them.
