Sermon Notes for Transfiguration Sunday

The Light of the World
Matthew 17:1-9
The Feast of Transfiguration
March 6. 2011

This is the final Sunday in Epiphany, the season marking the way in which God reveals his glory to the world, most especially in the sending of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in him supremely and fully that the fullness of God has been revealed. He is the Word made flesh. How easy it is for us to lose our way and forget that Christ is ‘the Lamb at the center of the throne’, and that we are to ‘fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith’. We are easily distracted; our eyes wander; our souls drift. God mercifully lays hold of his people and takes us to fresh places of seeing the majesty and centrality of Jesus and does so again today.

I. Light on the Mountain
Matthew’s Mountains and God’s Revelation
Shining, Light, and Brightness
Moses and the Mount – Exodus 24
Peter and the Mount – 2 Peter 1

II. Light from the Son
The Eternal Lord and Savior
Clothed in Humility and Majesty

III. Light for the World
The Voice of Moses and Elijah
Hearing the Old Testament in the Light of Jesus
“Moses and Elijah, the Law and the prophets, what avail they unless they converse with Jesus and bear witness of him?”: Augustine
This is why “Judges does not rank the same as John, nor Esther with Ephesians…Scripture is not flat like Kansas, but peaked like Colorado” (Bruner); all is God’s word and God breathed; but the centrality belongs to the Gospel, to Jesus, and then to the Apostles as they carry forward the witness of Moses and Elijah; they disappear, but the Apostles remain.

A. The Voice of Peter
We want to stay!
Peter’s Confession and Peter’s Confusion
The world does not come up the mountain to Jesus; the disciples must go down the mountain with Jesus for the world
“Come down Peter…come down and preach the word. God reserves this life of the Mount for thee after death; The Life came down that he might be slain; the Bread came down that he might hunger; the Fountain came down that he might thirst; and dost thou refuse?” – Augustine.

B. The Voce of the Father
“Listen to him!”: “Shema!”
The Father’s ‘Sermon on the Mount of Transfiguration’
The Father’s Confession and the Father’s Command

C. The Voice of the Son
“Rise and fear no more”: Here is the first word we must hear from Jesus and it is the word of Grace and Salvation. Not, “Get up and work” but ‘Rise and fear no more.”


In this incredible moment eternity past and eternity future meet in the fulfilled promise of the coming Messiah. Here is received ahead of time the eye salve the disciples must have to see through the Cross to Easter, what we need as well as we begin the journey with Jesus and his apostles. Here in the disciples response to the Light and the Voice of the Savior is the story of our own salvation. Slain by the holiness of God we are raised again by the Son to live free from fear and take his Light down the mountain to the waiting darkness.