Preaching Paths 2.19.23

by Sally Brown

Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

The event we call the Transfiguration of the Lord can leave the preacher, as it evidently did the three disciples who experienced it, at a loss for words. Jesus is somehow changed, surrounded by a shining cloud reminiscent of the cloud signifying divine presence said (in Exodus) to accompany the escaped Hebrew slaves. Peter seems to recover from the initial terror of the moment to venture a proposal: “Let us build booths.” No doubt this is an allusion to the Israelite observance of the Feast of Booths, or Sukkoth, described in Leviticus 23:33-34—an annual commemoration of  the sojourn of the escaped Hebrew slaves in the wilderness. Dear, indeed, to Israelites were the ancient stories of that journey, when a sense of the immediate, life-sustaining proximity of Holy Presence, signified in the cloud by day and fire by night, was palpable. But a “voice from heaven,” echoing the designation of Jesus as God’s “my son … in whom I am pleased” we have heard earlier at Jesus’ baptism, commands something both simpler and much harder: “Listen to him.” No need to build a shrine on the mountaintop as if to recapitulate a purer, more spiritually “alive” past. In Jesus, this chosen beloved one, God again moves with redemptive power among God’s people. Jesus encourages his dumbstruck disciples to get up and not to fear. The cloud of glory fades; it is time to confront again the churning sea of human need and strife in the valley. The one thing, the necessary thing, for those longing to experience God’s presence in this wilderness is to follow and to listen.