Letters From Timothy

Commonly titled “The Transfiguration of Jesus,” Matthew 17-9 describes one of Jesus’ many famous miracles. At the top of the mountain, not only do his clothes shine with a bright white light, but he is joined by Moses and Elijah, as if to very clearly drive the point home to his Jewish friends: “I’m the real deal.” Alternatively, you can picture Jesus saying “Oh these guys? These are Moses and Elijah. You know, your most revered prophets. We were just catching up.” The entire scene is crammed with obvious references to the divine, just to make sure the disciples and the reader absolutely know that Jesus is really supposed to be the Son of God. First, his garments turn white; then, he’s joined by two prophets; THEN, a cloud passes over them, and THEN the voice of God tells the disciples to listen up. As if they needed any more encouragement. The disciples, of course, are understandably overwhelmed, and the only thing they can think of to do is to build symbolic tents in honor of the three men. What would you do? I know I’d feel obligated to do something, and I’m sure I would be in no position to think of something really creative.

It’s interesting to note that the three disciples he pulls aside for the vision are the same three he pulls aside in Gethsemane later, and earlier for the healing of Jairus’ daughter. So, the question is: why these three? Peter, of course, would become the first leader of the church and, so they say, the keeper of the door to Heaven. But why James and John? James and John would later ask, in the Gospel of Mark, to have a special place with Jesus in Heaven. (Mark 10:35-37); but this does not explain why Jesus pulled them aside earlier. It may be, as I suspect, that there is nothing really special about James and John—the “Zebedee brothers.” They may have been selected by Jesus repeatedly to illustrate their failure to understand basically anything he did. They could serve as a general example of the other disciples or, perhaps, mankind. Why Jesus could not have used the rest of the disciples for either of these purposes, I’m not sure. It could have to do with the number three: somehow the three disciples are related to the three aspects of God or the three men who appear on the mountain. IF this was the case, then it would make sense for Jesus to choose Peter and two brothers.

Whatever the reason was for Jesus to choose those two disciples, it is less fascinating than Jesus’ command at the end of the story: the three disciples are told not to tell anyone at all what they saw until “the Son of Man” was raised from the dead. Why does Jesus order that? It would certainly seem that if other people heard about this miracle, they would come to believe in Jesus as the fulfillment of the Messiah prophesy. But perhaps this was exactly why Jesus told the disciples not to speak of what happened to anyone before he died. It is feasible that, if the disciples HAD told others, they might have gotten enough people to believe in Jesus to stop him from being killed. And if Jesus had not been killed, then of course he could not have died for the sins of mankind and there would be no Christianity. Thus, Jesus instructs the disciples to keep their mouths shut until everything is safely taken care of. The story would then serve to hammer home the point to early believers that Jesus was the Son of God. Therefore, we see that “hammering home the point” is a common theme in the Gospels, even though Peter, James, and John never seem to get it—just like us.

-Timothy