March 4,
2012
David Timbs
The
Transfiguration
One
very intriguing way of interpreting the Gospel according to Mark is to read his
story with God as narrator.
Mark’s Gospel is a God’s
eye view of Jesus, his calling, ministry and message. The members of
Mark’s community and readers of his Gospel – that’s us - are the insiders
who are privy to the deeper revelations and secrets not immediately clear to
the other characters in the Gospel.
The
transfiguration story is an excellent example of this. It follows the first of
three predictions by Jesus of his suffering, death and resurrection and
Peter’s subsequent rejection of all this – Jesus calls him Satan!
There followed a rather blunt and challenging
lesson on authentic discipleship.
The
setting is ‘a high mountain,’ the typical place of encounter with God and
revelation in Scripture (Mk 3: 13-19); the characters are Jesus and the three of
his closest disciples, Peter, James and John, all generous men
but of inadequate understanding and faith; the occasion is Jesus and his
closest companions seeking time ‘to be apart on their own.’
The
action is the Transfiguration (metamorphosis,
transformation) of Jesus, his garments becoming dazzlingly white which is
another inside secret for Mark’s readers that Jesus’ garments are really
symbols of his future resurrection. Mark
speaks of a young man dressed in white who announces and
interprets the empty tomb to the women who had come to honour the body of
Jesus. (Mk 16: 5)
The
principal attending characters in the story are the two great representative
figures in Israel’s sacred history, the Law and the Prophets, Moses and
Elijah. Elijah with Moses are seen to be in conversation with Jesus. Readers are
not told what was discussed (Luke mentions his Exodus) but their presence speaks for itself. Moses is God’s agent
of Israel’s liberation and the receiver of the Law; Elijah is the great
prophet of the One God who calls Israel back to repentance and conversion.
Judaism
taught that Elijah would appear on a mountain three days before the coming of
the Messiah to assist Israel to repent and prepare for the moment of Redemption.
The prophecy of Malachi explicitly concludes on this note, Behold,
I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord
comes. And he will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts
of children to their parents, lest I smite the land with a curse. (Mal 4:
5-6)
The
apparition of God’s great three characters in the story of Salvation provides
Peter with the opportunity to voice one of the great understatements of all
time, Master, it is good for us to be here. In the sheer excitement and
confusion of the moment, Peter suggests that he and his companions might set up three
tents – as memorials?! Mark, however, adds with a satire typically
reserved for the bumbling disciples, For
he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid.
Mark
in his narrative constantly refers to the tension between fear
and faith in the lives of the
disciples. Fear is the key obstacle to
an adequate faith, do not fear, have faith
(4: 40; 5: 15-17; 5: 33-34; 6: 50; 10: 32-34; 16: 8).The moment of
faith-challenge for Jesus’ inner circle comes in God’s semi-public
disclosure, This is my beloved Son; listen
to him. (Mk 1: 11).
The
era of the Old Testament Law and the prophets is over. Now, they saw no one but only
Jesus. The literary and narrative devices available to the other evangelists are
a great deal more developed than in Mark but the point is clear enough. With
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the age of the Law and the Prophets of the
old covenant had been fulfilled (Mk 7: 1-23; 9: 9-13).
The
Temple had been destroyed. The Jewish nation was no more in any political sense
but it was regrouping spiritually under the post 70 CE Rabbis. The Jesus
Movement of rural Palestine had become a diaspora in the great urban centres of the Empire and had
been transformed from being symbiotic to a mixed community of largely
Greek speaking Gentile Christians.
The
community of Mark’s Gospel was largely one which had made the Greco- Roman
world its own. So it should come as no surprise to this community and for its
lasting comfort that a Gentile like them, a Roman centurion, made the ultimate
public confession of faith about Jesus. Seeing the way he died
on the cross the Roman proclaimed, Truly
this was the Son of God. (Mk 15: 39).
The
Second Sunday of Lent 2012.
David
Timbs writes from Melbourne, Australia.