Since Epiphany, we have been studying together the ways that we are created anew through the love and transformation we experience thanks to our relationship with God and Jesus Christ. Over the last several weeks, we have discovered how we are created for choice, for connection, to love, to witness, and finally today, the culmination of this series is an understanding that we are created to listen.

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, and as I read some commentaries on the text in Mark, I ran across a few different theologians and scholars who jokingly attempted to explain this bizarre text and its commemoration. Matt Skinner, a professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, opens his essay with, “Probably the greatest challenge about preaching on Transfiguration Sunday is dealing with the pressure to explain what the Transfiguration means.”[1] Helpful, right? We’re off to a solid start here. It’s the job of the preacher to help people make sense of this story…or at least maybe figure out why the writers of the Matthew, Mark and Luke included it in their re-tellings of the life of Christ.[2] Or maybe this story tells us something essential about who Jesus is…or who Peter, the rock upon which the foundation of the church is built, is.[3]

My spouse and I have started to watch the Marvel Universe movies in Marvel Cinematic Universe order (two weeks ago, I could not have told you anything about what that meant). To be honest, I don’t find superheroes very compelling. They’re too macho; too white; their stories don’t make a lot sense; they’re really violent; where are the women? Etc etc. However, I understand this is a big piece of culture I have no context for, so I’m along with the ride of this adventure. So I had to laugh a little reading this text – doesn’t this story sound like a superhero one? A group of friends are climbing up a mountain, they seem to be on some kind of quest, something inexplicable happens, transforming their beloved friend into some kind of super-human version of himself, some mythical figures show up, nobody seems to really understand what’s going on, but it seems important…

This text is…deeply strange. There’s no question about it, but we have to believe that there is some kind of revelation about who Jesus is…or who we are supposed to be, as the voice from heaven gives clear instruction to the disciples and to us. But, what a task we have to figure out exactly what’s going on here. I, like many of you, I’m guessing, like to figure things out, and I like when things make sense. When logic is abandoned in a book, a film or an argument, that’s normally about the moment I bow out. Skinner – he must have been writing directly to me when he wrote on this passage to challenge my preconceived intellectual needs here. He says: “When has the idea of a brilliantly glowing holy figure ever ‘made sense,’ anyway? The transfigured Jesus isn’t supposed to be figured out. He’s supposed to be appreciated. We should be drawn to him, as if we were moths.”[4]

Can you imagine what it must have been like – to have been up on this mountain like Peter, James and John were? Not only were they there with Jesus, but Moses and Elijah – two of God’s revered faithful show up. Perhaps they appeared as embodiments of the law and the prophets themselves, whose work as God’s faithful continued through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Perhaps they appeared as warning that the end times were near.[5] Sarah Heinrich, a professor emeritus of New Testament at Luther Seminary writes:

“Both Moses and Elijah, two figures whose passings were mysterious, were believed by many Jews to be God’s precursors of the end times. Because Elijah went bodily into heaven…and Moses’ grave was never found (he was buried by God himself in Deuteronomy 34:4-7), these two men of the faith were thought to be available for God to send back. God would send them to inform humankind that God’s reign was at hand.”[6]

When I was in divinity school, my Ne