Transfiguration

George Allin-Roberts (Ordinand, Westcott House)

Matthew 17.1-9

Sunday Next before Lent

15 February 2026

Where do you feel closest to God?

Is there a time, a space, in your life where your prayers feel clearer, your heart feels more open.

It is a challenge of our faith, that God is always present with us, reaching out to us, and yet in our human nature we do not always feel the closeness, not because God has stopped reaching out but because in the business and messiness of our lives, we are not always reaching back to God.

Or indeed, we are reaching but not finding what we were searching for.

Our scripture this morning, and many other places in the Bible, point towards the mountaintop as a place to reach out to God. The psalmist looks to the skies for righteous justice and protection.

Moses ascends the mountain to receive God’s law and instruction, for building the tabernacle to receive God. And it is indeed not the first time he has climbed a mountain to speak to God as if from a fire.

And so too with another character of our Gospel, Elijah, if we were to turn to the 19th chapter of the first book of kings, we would find him too climbing a mountain to hear the voice of God, through wind, earthquake, and fire, God speaking at the top of the mountain in the sound of sheer silence. Or if we allow the hymnist some poetic liberty, that ‘still small voice of calm’.

But! Fear not Cambridge, it is not only on the mountain top that we can encounter God. We need not condemn the flat fens as a Godless land.

For there are other ways in which we can step away from the pressures and crowds of the everyday to make time and space for God.

We do it when we pause at the end of a busy day to pray, we do it when we cease from the rush of day to truly encounter the stranger walking beside us, we do it this morning as we take time to come together in worship, to meet God in bread and wine.

Where do you feel closest to God?

Now indeed, Jesus, Peter, James, and John, do climb a mountain. But it is in the differences of this story that we find its deepest wisdom.

Much like the Moses and Elijah, they ascend the mountain and like with Moses God speaks out of the clouds.

But instead of the law provided to Moses, or the call to prophesy from Elijah, we hear a repeat of the words of Jesus’ baptism.

“This is my Son the beloved, with whom I am well pleased”

And this time, a short imperative is added. “Listen to him!”

The wisdom of God received on the mountaintop, the law and the prophets fulfilled and understood through the life of the beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

We perhaps shouldn’t be surprised that Peter, as a devout Jewish man, seeks to follow the pattern laid out before. As God meticulously instructs Moses to build a dwelling place in the tabernacle, Peter likewise sets out to create booths as a dwelling place for the divine.

But blessed Peter, ever eager, and yet ever seemingly just off the mark, he has missed the ultimate extent of the glory revealed to him.

For the life, teaching, and example of Jesus is not only to be received on the mountain.

And when Peter is overwhelmed in reverence on the ground, Jesus approaches him, rests his hand on him, and offers those words of encouragement: “Get up and do not be afraid”.

Elijah, Moses, and the dazzling rays of light have passed, but his friend and teacher, Jesus, remains. The divine revelation is not a passing moment but incarnate in front of him. To live and learn alongside.

After all this has passed, God the Son climbs back down the mountainside, with his disciples.

It is not arbitrary that the lectionary compilers decided to offer us the transfiguration this final Sunday before Lent. It is firmly bookended in Matthew’s Gospel by two reminders of the passion of Holy Week. It is preceded by a call from Jesus to take up our cross and follow Christ, and it is followed by a reminder that the Son of God will suffer by human hands.

The transfiguration of Jesus is foretaste of the glory of the resurrection before the horror of the cross. A glimpse of the light of God shining into the world, through the pain and suffering to guide us through the wilderness.

I do not know if the disciples thought of the transfiguration in the darkness of Holy Saturday. If they dared to hope. Or like, as in the case of many of our lives, we only see the unceasing light of God from the other side…

But as we enter Lent, and look towards the empty wilderness, the suffering of the cross, we are given a glimpse of the resurrection to come, the incarnate light to focus our goal.

Where do you feel closest to the light of God?

God is on the mountaintop yes, but God also came down the mountain, is present as the body of Christ made up of all the people around us.

For I am afraid if giving up chocolate, biscuits, and coffee simply makes you miserable it is not an effective Lent discipline. Where do you encounter God, and what distracts you from getting there.

The transfiguration reminds us that before the cross was the incarnation, God in flesh, in person, in relationship.

It reminds us this Lent to put down our distractions and reach out to our risen God who is reaching out, living among us.

In the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.