The Transfiguration of our Lord Same Jesus, Different Form Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! In today’s Gospel, Jesus “took with Him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them.” Dear Christian friends, In the history of Lutheran preaching, two church holidays seem to have lent themselves especially well to sermons on the Holy Communion. • The big day for thinking about the Holy Communion is, of course, Maundy Thursday, the night when our Lord was betrayed unto death. Before submitting to the cross for us, Jesus took bread and said, “This IS My body” (Mark 14:22). Of the cup Jesus said, “This IS My blood…” (Mark 14:24). Here we have the Holy Communion, that the bread we eat and the cup we drink ARE indeed the body and blood of our Lord Jesus, not merely represented or symbolized, but miraculously present in our midst, delivering to us the benefits of His cross and death. • Historically, Ascension Day was also a good time for Lutheran preaching to take up the Holy Communion. Forty days after His resurrection (Acts 1:3), when our Lord ascended into heaven, He did not go away to some distant place, as if heaven is located somewhere out beyond the moon. In His ascension Jesus filled the entire universe (Ephesians 4:10). That means Jesus has power to be anywhere He wants to be. Jesus can even occupy such forms as bread and wine. Today is Transfiguration Day. Like Maundy Thursday and Ascension Day, today might also be a good day for us to renew and clarify our thinking concerning the Holy Communion of our Lord. What happened in today’s Gospel? “Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them,” literally, “Jesus was changed in His outward, visible form.” Jesus did not change into something or someone new. Absolutely nothing about our Lord’s nature or substance or inwardness was changed. Jesus is and was and always shall be God-Joined-to-Man, as we say in the Athanasian Creed: Begotten of the substance of the Father before all ages… born from the substance of His mother in this age, perfect God and perfect man (Athanasian Creed). What changed on the mountaintop? Only the outward form of Jesus changed. The shape and appearance of Jesus changed. “He was transfigured before then, and His clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.” SAME JESUS, DIFFERENT FORM. For a few moments in this Gospel, Peter and James and John were allowed to see a different appearance of their Lord—a different form of their Lord—than they normally were allowed to see, full of brightness and light. We should also not feel too surprised that our Lord’s outward form would change according to the will and desire of God. The Scriptures declare that • When He entered Mary’s womb, Christ Jesus set aside His “FORM of God” (Philippians 2:6). God the Son “made Himself nothing, taking the FORM of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). This was not a hologram or a mask or an impression. This was the eternal and limitless God confining Himself to the physical form of a human body and in His human body Jesus was nailed to a cross (Philippians 2:8). • At the very end of his book, St. Mark also explains that, when Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples “in another FORM” (Mark 16:12). Who knows what that form was? The Scriptures do not say. The Scriptures only indicate that Jesus the God-Man approaches His people in various forms. In one place, an unattractive (Isaiah 53:2) preacher, going from town to town in Galilee; in another place, transfigured and beaming with light as you heard in today’s Gospel; after His resurrection some other, undescribed form. It is always the same Jesus; it is only a different form. That is what makes Transfiguration Day such a good day to think about the Holy Communion. What is the Holy Communion? It is the body and the blood of Jesus, as the Scriptures repeatedly declare. What do we see in the Holy Communion? We see bread and we see wine: SAME JESUS, DIFFERENT FORM. Why should this matter to you, that it is always the same Jesus, only a different form? Simply this: Jesus allows Himself to be transfigured—He allows Himself to be changed in His outward, visible form—for you, for your salvation, and for your own personal needs. What I mean is this: • Jesus took the form of a servant, born of the Virgin Mary, so that we would have no reason to fear Him or run from Him. If Jesus had taken the form of a conquering warrior, or a powerful king, our sin and guilt would have compelled us to run away from Him and hide from Him. But Jesus took the form of a newborn baby. Who can feel afraid of a baby? Jesus knows what the entire world needed. • In today’s Gospel, Jesus was transfigured especially for the sake of Peter, James and John, those closest disciples of our Lord. Why did Jesus allow these three to see how “His clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them”? These same three were also about to witness Jesus suffer and die for us and for our salvation. Before going down the mountain to Jerusalem and the cross, the Lord Jesus graciously gives His disciples exactly what they need. “He was transfigured before them” to strengthen them for what they are about to see. The intense darkness of Jesus’ crucifixion will be made somewhat more bearable for these disciples because of what they saw today on the mountaintop. This Gospel of the Transfiguration is absolutely beneficial also for us; that is why God wrote about it. But the Transfiguration was especially good for Peter, James and John that is why Jesus took them with Him “up a high mountain.” Jesus knew what these men needed. • Why the Holy Communion? Why the Body and Blood of our Lord under the forms of bread and wine? Because Jesus knows was we need. Jesus knows the form of His Presence that is best suited for us and for our salvation. In the same way that He took the form of a servant for us; in the same way that He was transfigured and bathed with light in today’s Gospel; so also our Lord also takes the forms of bread and wine for us in the Holy Communion. SAME JESUS, DIFFERENT FORM. Jesus knows that we cannot live on bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4) So Jesus inhabits the forms of bread and wine to assure us with these Words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Perhaps we each should think of the Sunday Holy Communion as our own personal participation in the Transfiguration of our Lord. No, there is no divine light that shines brightly from our altar. (No, we will not be adding special effects and pyrotechnics to heighten the visual effect.) But what do we have here? We have Jesus in the form that is best suited for us and for our eternal nourishment. We also have here the living Word of God, whose Words to the disciples in today’s Gospel may be equally applied to the Holy Communion: “This is My beloved Son.” Here we have Jesus. Wherever we have Jesus—no matter what the promised form—we also have everything that Jesus earned for us: forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.
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