• Exodus 24: 12-18

In the narrative of the Book of Exodus, the story of the Lord’s interaction with humankind reaches a highpoint.  The event is shrouded in “glory.”  A chosen leader, Moses, is the mediator and the designated recipient.  The gift is a text, “the law and commandments.”

• Psalm 2

The Lord appoints a leader, a king, “My son.”  Worship him in fear and trembling, but also take shelter in him.

• OR Psalm 99

The psalmist declares:  “The Lord reigns– people tremble.”  The Lord’s leaders call and the Lord answers:  The response is the Lord’s “precepts and statutes.”

• II Peter 1: 16-21

Repeating substantial excerpts from the Book of Jude, the writer rehearses the essentials of the early church’s preaching: the ancient signs of God’s communication are now conferred upon “our Lord Jesus Christ”.  But this new use of ancient texts “is not a human invention,” the writer feels compelled to assert.

• Matthew 17: 1-9

In Matthew’s version of this important event, Peter, James and John are the Lord’s new mediators.  They are the recipients of another initiative from God to communicate boldly and definitively.  On this occasion, God’s gift to humankind is Jesus.  The reaction is “fear;”  the invitation is “do not be afraid.”

The biblical texts uses their own time-tested conventions to fulfill their unique function.  The occasion when the Lord communicates is surrounded by clouds and through appointed mediators.  The gift the Lord conveys to Moses is a text; to Peter, James and John, it is Jesus, whose deeds and words will be the new message (word/”text”) from God.  This communication is one-way.  Any sensible person will be frightened.  But, we are assured, “do not be afraid.”  On such occasions when God communicates so boldly and definitively, there are always contradictions:  direct/indirect,  hidden/revealed, remote/immediate, fear/ “do not be afraid,” clarity/sensory overload.  

“Indeed the most transfiguring thing,” Richard Kearney writes, “about this God of little things is that he gives with a gratuity that defies the limits of space and time.  Now he’s gone, now he’s here, now he’s gone again.  Now he’s dead, now he’s alive.  Now he’s buried, now risen.  Now the net is empty, now it’s full.  And more surprising still, the fish is cooked for us even before we get ashore and unload our net!”  (“Transfiguring God,” in The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology, pp 369-393)

Biblical texts oscillate seamlessly between routine descriptions of mundane human behavior and surreal descriptions of the spectacularly divine; between the (all too) familiar and the alarmingly strange.  When the strange makes an appearance in biblical texts, it is meant to cast the familiar in a new light.  Writing in the January 2011 edition of the the major postmodern journal, Modern Theology, John Milbank observes:  “…standing before the experience of the beautiful vision as something that terrifies us and commands us by manifesting something that is even more than visible self, we undergo a certain unsettling of the senses, whereby when we see, we seem to also ‘hear’ something”  (p. 150)  Crucially placed just before Jesus enters Jerusalem, the experience in today’s appointed gospel dazzles Peter, James and John, confuses them, and in the process, causes them to see and hear Jesus in a way they would not have otherwise.  For the reader of these texts (and the follower of the liturgical year), this event puts the imminent events in Jerusalem in a new light.  Jesus is on a mission ordained by the Father– to show the love of God, despite the gruesome actions of friends and enemies in that compact week in Jerusalem.  It is both frightening and fascinating.  We are shocked to look and listen, but we cannot turn away.