Kirk Reflections 19th February 2023.

Rev. Erick du Toit brings our weekly reflections from Kirkliston Parish Church, Scotland.

This week we look at Matthew 17 and focus on Jesus' Transfiguration.

The late Leith Fisher, in his commentary on Matthew, ‘But I say unto you' (St Andrew Press), writes about the Transfiguration:

"The  event of the Transfiguration takes place on a quiet hill before three  amazed disciples far from the corridors of power. It occurs at the  margins, far from the metropolitan heartland, yet we should have no  doubts that this is a story about power. It's a story which raises the  question of where the real power lies in the world."

He  goes on to recall Hiroshima, which took place on the ‘old' date of the  commemoration of the Transfiguration, 6 August, and more recent wars. He  goes on:

"It  remains much easier to win a war than to build a peace. The  resurrection of a nation is a slow and painstaking business, as is the  healing and mending of bodies and souls, the nurturing of new life and  the care of the vulnerable and the frail. Such is the cross way, and as  the Transfiguration affirms, the God way. The power to nurture and mend,  to bring new life out of the deadest of ends by the slow way of love …  is the power of which the Gospel speaks and makes manifest in Jesus … It  is the power of God entrusted into our human hands."