Mad Padre: Daily Devotion for Thursday, 6 August, 2020, the Feast of the Transfiguration

Prayers at Mid-day for Thursday, 6 August, 2020 (Proper 18, Trinity 8)

Feast of the Transfiguration (readings and collect for The Transfiguration).

Invitatory

O God, make speed to save us.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.

Amen.

The Lord is our refuge and our strength: O come, let us worship.

Hebrew Scriptures

Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14

⁹ As I watched,

thrones were set in place,

and an Ancient One took his throne;

his clothing was white as snow,

and the hair of his head like pure wool;

his throne was fiery flames,

and its wheels were burning fire.

¹⁰ A stream of fire issued

and flowed out from his presence.

A thousand thousand served him,

and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.

The court sat in judgement,

and the books were opened. ¹³As I watched in the night visions,

I saw one like a human being

coming with the clouds of heaven.

And he came to the Ancient One

and was presented before him.

¹⁴ To him was given dominion

and glory and kingship,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion

that shall not pass away,

and his kingship is one

that shall never be destroyed.

Psalm

Psalm 99

The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble!

He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!

The Lord is great in Zion;

he is exalted over all the peoples.

Let them praise your great and awesome name.

Holy is he!

Mighty King, lover of justice,

you have established equity;

you have executed justice

and righteousness in Jacob.

Extol the Lord our God;

worship at his footstool.

Holy is he!

Moses and Aaron were among his priests,

Samuel also was among those who called on his name.

They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.

He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud;

they kept his decrees,

and the statutes that he gave them.

O Lord our God, you answered them;

you were a forgiving God to them,

but an avenger of their wrongdoings.

Extol the Lord our God,

and worship at his holy mountain;

for the Lord our God is holy.

Epistle

2 Peter 1.16-19

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.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Gospel

Luke 9.28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

Commentary (Father Michael)

The Transfiguration, like his baptism, is one of those moments where the gospels point us definitively to the identity of Jesus as the Son, the Christ, the presence of God on earth. This announcement is made most clearly by Jesus’ resurrection, but this moment on the mountain, when Jesus takes on something of the glory of heaven, the “majesty” mentioned in 2 Peter, and in the company of the principal Jewish prophets, tells us that Jesus is like nobody who else who has ever lived on earth. The Transfiguration is that moment when we see something of the place to which Jesus will return, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph 1.20-22, Col 1.16-20).

While it is not immediately clear in this biblical episode, the Transfiguration also speaks to the larger trajectory of Christian life. This trajectory is sometimes called redemption or sanctification, but the basic idea is that we too, by our belonging to Christ, become something new. We too are transfigured as followers of Christ, because his new reality in the resurrection transforms and renews our existence. As the theologian John Webster writes, “The human lives of Christian believers are a ‘converted’ reality”.

This is not to say that during the course of our Christian lives we won’t experience disappointment, disease, disaster, or our inevitable death. We all know these things, unless we take refuge in some distorted notion of divine protection such as the prosperity gospel (more on this another day as I work through Kate Bowler’s excellent little book, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved). What we know is that this brief, dazzling, change in Jesus’ appearance promises a similar change in us, that our lives, our identity, our very existence as humans, begin to be transfigured by the God of love and resurrection life who gives us a new humanity in Christ. We may not fully grasp this new humanity in our lives, but we know that something in Jesus is at work in us now, renewing us, reshaping us, and that at some day to come we will fully appreciate out own transfigurations when we can bear to look a Jesus in his full and complete glory.

Questions

What about you would you like God to change and transfigure? Have you asked God for that change? What other questions come to mind in today’s passages?

Intercession

Let us pray in faith to God our Father, to his Son Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit, saying, “Lord, hear and have mercy.”

For the Church of the living God throughout the world, let us ask the riches of his grace. Today we pray in the Anglican Communion Cycle of Prayer for the clergy and people of the the Diocese of Ogbomoso (Nigeria) and that they may find a faithful Bishop; for the clergy and people of the Diocese of Botswana (Central Africa) and their Bishop, The Rt Revd Metlhayotlhe Rawlings Beleme, and for the clergy and people of the Diocese of Brandon (Canada) and their Bishop, the Rt Revd William Cliff.