“after six days…”
On August 6th the Orthodox Church celebrates the great feast of Transfiguration, that amazing event in the life of our Lord that is represented on our beautiful wall icon.
Let’s reflect a bit on the way this event is described in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke, all describe the transfiguration in almost identical language. But there are some differences. Note how the event is set up.
Mark: And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” Luke’s wording is similar, but Luke did not include “with power”.
Matthew: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”
There are reasons to prefer Mark’s version. But clearly all three understood Jesus to be saying that something powerful, something extraordinary was about to happen: something about the kingdom of God coming soon – not in a thousand years later, or a million years later, but soon, in their lifetimes. Maybe even after six days!!
Mark and Matthew both go on to say: “And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain….” And there he was transfigured.
The greatest theologian and Bible interpreter of the early church was Origen (184-253 AD). He wrote about 2,000 books by one estimate (6,000 by another estimate), but most of his books disappeared long ago. Nevertheless what we have by Origen is still much more than what we have from the other church fathers. He wrote his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 1,800 years ago! Origen wrote at a time when the church had not yet been defiled by aligning itself with governments and emperors and presidents and millionaires. Origen himself was a very original and creative thinker, who made some mistakes – and it was an emperor, Justinian, three hundred years after Origen’s death who decided that Origen was too original, too much of an independent thinker, not enough of a company man, and ordered that his books be burned.
Origen liked to look deeply into the biblical texts to find mystical pointers to connections and meanings that most other readers did not see. So he found significance in the statement “after six days” that Mark and Matthew wrote to introduce their narratives of the transfiguration. He drew a connection between the “six days” in the transfiguration narrative and the six days it took God to create the universe and everything in it (in Genesis chapter 1). And Origen then went into an almost meditative state about how we can ascend with the Word of God beyond the visible world that was created in six days to enjoy a new Sabbath on the mountain, as we see Christ transfigured “before the eyes of our heart.” Then he says this: “But the Word of God has differing appearances, appearing to each one in proportion to what he knows to be advantageous to the one who sees him; he shows himself to no one beyond what the person comprehends.”
Let’s stop there with Origen and see what we can put together about the transfiguration of Jesus Christ with the help of Origen’s insights.
God created everything in six days, and he created with his Word – that very Word (Logos) that became incarnate as a human being. And with his coming as a human being, the Word creates again, a new creation in the hearts of men and women. And let’s not ignore the fact that the verb “transfigured” comes from the verb μεταμορφόω, which denotes change from one morphē to another, a transition into something new, something different.
Peter offered to make three tents up there on the mountains, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah – τρεῖς σκηνάς. But, John’s Gospel told us, Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν (John 1:14). When he became incarnate, the Word (Logos) pitched his tent, ἐσκήνωσεν, “among us” or “in us” – the preposition ἐν can mean both. Jesus needed no tent of Peter’s construction. His tent is every one of us. He lives among us, he lives in us. We are the new creation, when we live in him and he lives in us. As Paul wrote about himself in Galatians 2:20, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
Just before he led them up the mountain, Jesus had told his disciples: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Luke’s version inserts the word ‘daily’ – “take up his cross daily.” It’s a daily struggle, after all, to follow Christ. The false, easy gospel of instant conversion taught by thousands of American preachers has nothing to do with Jesus. It’s a daily struggle, a daily picking up of our cross, because every one of us is different, and Christ reveals himself differently to each one of us – as Origen wrote with great insight and understanding of human nature: “he shows himself to no one beyond what the person comprehends.”
We are not in competition for God’s favour. None of us is more important in the kingdom of God that is already present, that has already been unveiled. It’s not the fulness of the kingdom yet. Maybe that will come when the last black hole has evaporated with the last particles of matter in the universe, trillions of years in the future. Who knows? All I know is what Origen knew, and what Jesus tells us in the Gospels. Rejoice, there’s a new creation and we are part of it. Christ dwells among us, in us, transfiguring our existence and the entire world around us so we can live in him, in unity with each other and in unity with the natural world that is sanctified and transfigured together with us. Our Orthodox tradition through our various services and rituals of sanctification regularly reminds us of our unity with the natural world, just as Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, chapter 8. What Paul describes in this passage is nothing less than cosmic transfiguration:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:19-23)