When Muslim raiders were repelled from Europe at the Battle of Belgrade, Pope Callistus III celebrated by declaring that 6 August would forever be Feast of the Transfiguration, a day which takes precedence of a Sunday. In an apparently unrelated development, the Episcopal Church always celebrates the feast on the last Sunday of the Epiphany. So, today will have to be Transfiguration 201, but I promise no repetition from earlier in the year.
Assuming John's gospel is wrong about the one-year duration of Jesus' ministry and the Synoptics are correct about three years, imagine what it might be like to be a participating disciple that third year. You have followed this radical rebel rabbi for three years. During that time, he has managed to alienate just about everybody. The military establishment has to be fed up with his absolute pacifism which does not even allow violence in situations of self-defence, let alone warfare. [The early Church would not baptise a soldier unless he renounced his commission and excommunicated any member who enlisted.] The politico-economic establishment must have been alienated by Jesus' rejection of wealth and power and his support for social justice to the poor, oppressed and the marginalized. The religious establishment would certainly have hated his catching them out on their hypocrisy, the manipulation of widows and orphans, and their games of inventing loopholes for the Law to allow the letter to be observed and the spirit denied.
Now he wants to go to Jerusalem, a political powder-keg. Is he nuts? Well, that question becomes answered when Jesus leads his executive committee on a mountaintop retreat. Matthew tells us that what happened there was ahistorical. It was a vision in which Peter, James, and John came to realize the divinity of the Christ. They came to know Jesus as, to borrow Ben Herbster's phrase, all of God that can be packed into a man. That epiphany gave them to strength to make that journey on to Jerusalem from where they would scatter to the four corners and all but John would be martyred.
The point I want to drive home is that. even as the Transfiguration reminds us of Christ's divinity, the feast can also feed a disorder in Christian culture, namely to miss the humanity of Jesus. How many really believe Jesus sweated, feared, got angry, felt sexual tension? If Jesus is a godlet, whose miracle stories are strictly historical, how can we relate? If Jesus is simply God in disguise, how do I follow? I certainly can't change water to wine, and even my mother didn't think I could walk on water. We need the real, human Jesus. And we need to follow his real teachings in our lives. Jesus himself told us that the 'Lord, Lord' prayer-and-praise bit doesn't cut it, that we must do the will of the Father if we are to be Kingdom people.
A balanced view of the Saviour is very important. I know other traditions have a range of beliefs, but we, as Catholic Christians, accept the definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) and thereby are called to embrace his full humanity as well as divinity. To do otherwise is to worship a phantom.
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