Feast of the Transfiguration
[In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.]. I will admit that I haven’t really been into baseball all that much for a while. It probably tracks with how good the Tigers have been (or, rather, how bad they’ve been for so long). But I do know that one of the much-disputed changes in baseball has been the use of replay. For those of you who watch baseball, perhaps you’ll tell me that it’s not as controversial now as it was when it was instituted. And I’m sure it’s popularity varies between when it overturns a call that we like, versus when it overturns a call that we don’t like.
It is interesting to note how long baseball relied simply on the eyes of the umpires. And especially when it comes to major league games, sometimes the separation between a ball hitting a mitt and a shoe touching the bag was infinitesimal. But it was the way we did things in baseball.
I bring this up, because when it comes to our faith, we often go back to the old cliché, “you just have to believe it.” Sometimes this is a fine answer, and especially when it comes to teachings that are beyond our reason. But what we believe, though it may sometimes be beyond reason, is not unreasonable. In fact, it’s very reasonable to believe what we believe.
And that’s the point that St. Peter is trying to make in the second reading/epistle: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths…but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.” St. Peter is, of course, talking about what we celebrate today, the Transfiguration of the Lord. Christ didn’t simply walk up Mount Tabor by Himself, then come down and say, “You’ll never guessed what happened to me! My clothes because dazzling white, and then Moses and Elijah appeared, and then God the Father’s voice was heard, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’”
Speaking of which, the presence of Moses and Elijah also strengthen the case that Christ is who He says He is. By their presence with the Lord on Mount Tabor, they were witnessing to His divine identity. And not just Moses and Elijah, but also those whom they represented, that is, the Law and the Prophets, a shorthand way of saying the entire Old Testament.
But back to the Apostles. They may have been afraid. They may have been a bit confused. But they know what they saw. And after the Son of Man was raised from the dead, they told the vision to those who would listen. And if three people tell me the same thing, at least in the broad strokes of the story, I am very likely to believe it, because it is backed up by others.
While the Transfiguration was only seen by three, the Resurrection was seen by the Eleven, by St. Matthias, by St. Paul, and by other disciples in the 40 days the Lord remained on earth. And they shared what they had seen and heard. Not a ghost; not an apparition; but the real Lord, with the marks of His crucifixion, but also eating fish. These witnesses testified to what they saw, and that testimony was shared down to the present day.
We, too, are called to be witnesses of what we have seen. In some cases, that means our own personal experiences of God in our life. St. Peter tells us elsewhere that we should always be ready to give the reason for our hope to anyone who asks. Do we know why we have hope? Do we know the Lord? We should be ready to tell others about what God has done in our lives, whether a miracle, or even simply the times when we have felt his presence and the effects of His grace, love, and truth in our lives.
But we can and should also appeal to those first witnesses. They saw the Lord risen from the dead, in His glorified body. And then told the next generation of disciples, and they told the next generation of disciples, all the way down to us some 2,000 years later. And they were very careful about keeping the story straight, and not letting in unnecessary or factually wrong details. This wasn’t simply about whether George Washington every chopped down a tree, and told his father the truth about it. This was about salvation, about heaven or hell. And so the teachings have been kept throughout the millennia.
Our task as disciples is to get others to listen to the “beloved Son” of the Father. Christ desires glory for us. He wants us to be in heaven with Him, because that is why God created us: to know, love, and serve Him in this life so to be with Him in the next, as the Baltimore Catechism states. We, too, are supposed to have a glorified body like Christ revealed at the Transfiguration. But that only happens if we listen to Him. It only happens if we conform our lives to Him. And that transformation of life can only occur by God’s grace.
Our faith is not unreasonable. Our faith is not based on “cleverly devised myths,” or stories that have no basis in reality. Others have seen, and have testified both by their words and even by the shedding of their blood to the truth that Christ gave them. May we listen to those who have gone before us, and speak to those who come after us, the good news of salvation in Christ[, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever].
