Being transformed or transfigured in Christ

In the Church of Norway, the feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated on the Second Sunday before Lent (on the day that has historically been Sexagesima Sunday). While that is not in tune with how it is celebrated in the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church (as they celebrate it on the 6th of August), a theologian pointed out to me that it actually makes sense from the biblical chronology. After the transfiguration, Christ started proclaiming that He was about to be captured and killed but that He would rise from the dead. Anyway, here is my homily for the feast of the Transfiguration. I had the Sunday off, but decided to write the homily anyway.

Texts: Exodus 3:1-6; 2 Peter 1:16-18; Mark 9:2-13. Unless otherwise noted, I use the New Revised Standard Version of Scripture (NRSV).

13th century Byzantine Transfiguration icon. Source: Vassil, at Wikimedia Commons

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The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours;

the world and all that is in it—you have founded them.

The north and the south—you created them;

Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name.

Thus says Psalm 89:11-12, which is the biblical psalm sung during the liturgy on the feast of the Transfiguration in the Church of Norway.¹ Two mountains are mentioned; Tabor and Hermon. The first of these is the mountain where, according to tradition, Christ was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, as we read in the Gospel reading.

This story is very central, especially in Eastern Orthodox theology. It is called the transfiguration because something happened to Christ’s figure, His appearance, as we read in the second verse of the Gospel reading, Mark 9:2: “And he was transfigured before them.” Eastern Orthodox theology emphasises that what Peter, James, and John saw was the divine glory, manifested as light, the divine and uncreated light. For the incarnation, that God became man, became flesh, in Christ, is precisely the full union of the created and the uncreated, and through the incarnation, we also are made partakers, as St. Paul notes in Colossians 2:9-10: “For in [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.”² Peter the Apostle writes about this in the second reading (2 Peter 1:16-18), where he looks back on the day when he, James, and John got to be with Christ on the mountain:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

We see something similar, but a little more hidden, when the apostle John hints at this in John 1:14b: “And we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” The focus is therefore on the fact that these three apostles got to see Christ in His glory, in his divine majesty. Christ had this during his entire life as a man, but it was hidden from people. But here, on Mount Tabor, Peter, James, and John were allowed to see it. And here I think the name of the day is important.

In Norway, we call this Kristi forklåringsdag. The word forklåring or forklaring can mean ‘transfiguration’ or ‘transformation,’ but the most common translation of the Norwegian word to English is ‘explanation’ or ‘clarification.’ Here, it is a translation of the Greek word metamorphóō, found in Mark 9:2: “And he was transfigured before them.” In the current Norwegian translation, the word is translated forvandla, which means ‘transformed’ or ‘transfigured.’ But in an older translation, from 1978, it says: “Då vart han forklåra for augo deira” (“And he was transformed/explained before them”). In Norwegian, this word means both transformation, transfiguration, and explanation. The Greek word, metamorphóō, may be familiar to some of you. We find it in the English word ‘metamorphosis.’ In Biology and Geology, this concerns radical physical changes, where a type of rock, for example, can be transformed into another type. And transformation is what this feast is all about. But is it mostly about transformation, transfiguration, or explanation?

Yes, it does say that Christ was physically transfigured or changed, so that the three disciples could see Him for who He truly was, and is. But was Christ truly the one who was transformed? Was it not the three apostles? For Christ was not transformed in his being. Something physical happened to Christ, or at least appeared to happen to Him, so that He as revealed to His three apostles. They got to see Him as he really is. And in and through this revelation, something happened to these three. They were transformed.³ They got to see Him as he really is, yes, but also how we shall become. This is not primarily about whether Christ was handsome or not. We do not know what he looked like.

No, this is about the disciples getting a glimpse of Christ as He really is, in all His glory, in the divine light, the true light “which enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). Here, on the road to the humiliation of the Cross, where Christ took on all that is ugly and horrible, and where He was probably also physically ugly and horrible from the whipping and His toil, Sts. Peter, James, and John get a glimpse of what came after all this. But these things can not be separated from each other.

Later in the same chapter as the Gospel reading, Christ spoke about what had to happen to Him: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again” (Mark 9:31). Yes, Christ took responsibility for everything we have done and took a stand against it, settled it. Christ came to save us from our sins, our iniquities.

When I look around the world, I see many good things. I see new and old parents raising their children. I see young people helping the elderly. I see people fighting for the poor and oppressed. I see people who care. This reveals a lot of the beauty of creation, that beauty which God creates through us.

But we also distort this beauty. Because I also see people killing. I see people bullying. I see people saying things about immigrants that make me wonder if we are back to Germany in the 1930s. And I see that I am a sinner, that I often do what I ought not do, but also that I refrain from doing what I ought. History has shown us that the world is not just good, and that ordinary people can do great harm. We all have potential in us for great things, both good things and bad things, and none of us are innocent. Christ reminds us of this. But then he also reveals the Gospel to us, that we may partake of God’s forgiveness, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

He took on our sin and guilt and reconciled us to God. As St. Paul puts it, in Colossians 1:19-20: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” It is precisely by being humiliated, beaten, and killed that Christ showed Himself to be the One who had the fullness of God. And through this, He took a stand against sin and gained new life and salvation for us.

Through the Gospel reading, we learn that even there, hanging on the cross, Christ shone with the glory of God, even though it may not have been visible for us. And through this he reconciled us to God, so that we may see this. For we can only see this if we ourselves are transformed, if our blindness is removed. As the well known hymn puts it: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

Up there, on Mount Tabor, Peter, James, and John’s eyes were made to see past the outer, everyday and worldly, all the way in to the True and Incorruptible. They were allowed to see that after the ugly and horrible, after the torment, the Cross and death, comes the Resurrection and the Ascension. Through the transformation or transfiguration, the disciples began to learn to see the beauty in what the world sees as ugly.

And through this, they, and we, get a glimpse of what we have in store. Not only will we get our sight back, so that we can see Christ, see God, but we must also ourselves be transformed. As St. John writes in 1John 3:1-2: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

Yes, we still do not know what we will be, for, as St. Paul puts it, our life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). But we must, therefore, look to Him, to Christ, to get a glimpse, not only of who He is, but what He wants to give us and do with us.

And we see this perhaps most clearly here, in the celebration of the Eucharist, where we partake of the work of God. We get a glimpse of the transformation that comes to us, yes to the whole of creation, through bread and wine, which is the work not only of God’s creation, the earth and the vine, but also human hands, and which, by the promise of Christ and through the Holy Spirit, are transformed for us into the body and blood of Christ, and which makes us into the body of Christ.

Yes, by eating the bread which is the body of Christ, we are strengthened as the body of Christ, the Church, and we gain a little more insight into the glory that we already share in, through Baptism, but which awaits us even more in the future. Yes, as St. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 3:18, this is the work of the Holy Spirit in and for us:

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

So celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration, celebrate that God became man and has revealed His glory to us and that we, through Him, may become partakers of this glory.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

1. See Norsk koralbok, bind 3 (Stavanger: Eide forlag, 2016), hymn 918.

2. Ola Breivega, Austanljos: Glimtar av ortodoks kristentru (Bergen: Norsk Bokreidingslag, 1994), 42-43.

3. Breivega, Austanljos, 43.