Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Feb. 26, 2017
The Transfiguration, by Raphael (1516–20). Tempera on wood, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City.
Significant things happen on mountaintops, where earth and heaven come close together. As we reach the end of Epiphany and turn toward Lent, midway between Christmas and Easter, we see Moses, then Jesus and three chosen apostles, encountering God in high, mysterious places. In our first reading, Moses goes up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from a mighty God cloaked in clouds and fire. Turn back a page, though, and we discover a more approachable creator in a sapphire heaven, joining Moses, Aaron and 72 elders in table hospitality! Scripture often shows us both an intimate God who knows us deeply, and a transcendent God who is far beyond our understanding.
This Messianic Psalm of praise presents God as a mighty king, and more: King of Kings, to whom earthly kings must submit with fear and trembling. Those who seek to break away from God’s power and that of God’s anointed, the Messiah, will earn only divine derision and terrifying rage, for such actions have consequences. But God’s anointed is set on the holy hill of Zion, the temple; and this Psalm of anger and divine threats ends at last on a note of promise: Happy are all who take refuge in God.
Alternative Psalm: Psalm 99
In verses that hark back to Moses and Aaron following God’s sign through the desert and receiving God’s law, this hymn of praise shows us an image of God as a powerful king before whom the people tremble and even the earth shakes. But this is a fair God, who may have punished the people when they were evil, but who also answered their prayers and rewarded them. This is a forgiving and kind God who provides equity, justice and righteousness.
Second Reading: 2 Peter 1:16-21
Modern bible scholars generally accept that this letter, one of the latest in the New Testament, was not written by Simon Peter, the apostle, but by a church leader in Peter’s name a century or more after the Crucifixion. Still, it opens a window into the second-century church, when believers were trying to understand why Jesus had not returned as soon as had been expected. All that they have heard about Jesus is true, the letter insists. Recalling that Peter himself had been present at the Transfiguration, it reminds us to trust in God and wait for the dawn and the morning star.
Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9
“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.” In almost identical words, we heard the voice of God coming from above to declare Jesus his beloved Son, at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan at the beginning of Epiphany. Now we hear it again at the end of Epiphany in the Transfiguration. We see Jesus meeting Old Testament prophets on a mountaintop, glowing in dazzling light, revealed to the apostles Peter, James and John for the first time as both human and divine. The three, witnessing all this, were terrified to hear the voice of God, but Jesus reassured them with a loving touch and, for the first time, speaks of his coming resurrection.