What Happened to Jesus?

“For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.””  (1 Peter 1:17)

It’s Transfiguration Sunday this week, and these are the words of the Apostle, Peter, describing that mysterious event. It’s not clear from these words how fully Peter understood what happened that day on the mountain, but what is clear is that it was an experience he did not forget. He says, “We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.”  (1 Peter 1:18)

Whatever happened that day, the transfiguration of Jesus was evidently an awesome and life-changing experience for everyone who was there. The only problem is, we weren’t there. That was not our life-changing experience, and, speaking personally, I haven’t seen a lot of transfiguring going on around here lately!

I was at the Town Hall rally last Monday evening—the rally protesting the invitation of the Israeli president to Australia—and it was, for the most part, an orderly and peaceful affair. We were packed tight in the Town Hall Square, yet people were polite and apologetic when they bumped into one another. The speakers made clear that our protest didn’t target any race of people but opposed the actions of the government, and when the rally was over, I snuck down the back stairs and avoided the crowd, which is how I missed getting embroiled in the violence!

I was a block away when my partner, Joy, who had gone the other way, called me to say she’d been pepper sprayed! I don’t know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that I wasn’t closer to the action, as there’s no way I could have stood back and watched while those men who were praying were assaulted by the police!

I’ve had the privilege of being in quite a few war zones in Syria. I was in a riot outside of Jerusalem and almost killed. I’ve been in a sinking boat off the crocodile-infested shores of Manus Island, and I think I’ve learnt to handle intense and life-threatening situations with a good degree of self-control. Even so, there’s something particularly unsettling about seeing these things happen in your own backyard – when the police – our police – the people we look to to keep control, lose control!

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it. I saw that mob mentality with police once when running the youth drop-in centre in Dulwich Hill, and I saw it again during the protest rallies against the COVID lockdowns. Even so, I can’t get used to it, and I don’t want to get used to it. It unnerves me, and my question is, ‘Where is Christ in this?’ Can’t the Lord come and calm the mob in the same way He calmed the raging sea?

I was asking myself the same question while we were at the rally – well, not exactly the same question. My question then wasn’t ‘Where is God?’, but ‘Where is the church?’ I could see thousands and thousands of people, and no doubt there were many solid Christian folk there, but where were the Archbishops of Sydney and our other senior religious leaders? We seemed to be on our own, and then I heard that another friend of mine had been punched in the back of the head by the police!

I read our texts this week, and they’re all focused on the amazing experience Jesus and His disciples had on the mountaintop. ‘It was insane!’ says Peter (or words to that effect).  ‘You should have been there. It was life-changing!’ And my problem is that I wasn’t there, and I’m feeling a long way from that mountaintop right now. The experience of the numinous and the holy is not my experience at the moment. I’m seeing something much darker happening around us.

And then it clicked with me that that is actually the whole point of Peter’s letter. Peter wasn’t boasting to his mates about what a great time he’d had with Jesus on the mountaintop. He and his people were in a very dark place, and Peter was trying to hang on to some of his memories that gave him hope!

In 2 Peter 1:14 (two verses prior to today’s passage), Peter says, “I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.”

In other words, ‘I know I’m about to die!’  He uses a euphemism – the “putting off of my body” – which in the original Greek is literally “the removal of my tent”, which is a beautiful phrase, recalling the wilderness wandering where everyone lived in tents and where even God had a tent – ‘the Tabernacle’. Peter, according to legend, was crucified upside down, probably in the mid-60s, when Nero was emperor. It would have been a horrific and terrifying way to die, yet Peter speaks of it as the ‘casting away of his tent’. And we know what replaces the tent. It’s the temple!

Times were dark for Peter, and the believers he’s speaking to seem to be on the verge of giving up. They had come to believe in Jesus, who had died and, three days later, rose again, but now had gone again, and how long was it going to take Him to come back this time? Another three days? Three years perhaps. Well, it had been thirty years! When was He coming back?

The days were dark. Instead of experiencing the reign of God, as they’d hoped by this stage, they were in the reign of Nero! Rome was burning, and Christians were being fed to lions.,Peter was about to be crucified. The holy mountain of the transfiguration must have seemed a long way away and a long time ago, but what Peter was trying to do was to get his people to focus less on when Christ was returning and more on who Christ was, because if Jesus really was ‘the beloved Son with whom God was well pleased’, He could be trusted to come back exactly when the time was right.

It would have been good to have been on the mountaintop that day with Jesus. It would have been almost as good if Peter had taken a photograph or video to pass on to us – something that we could stick up on our bedroom wall or use as a screensaver on our computer so that when things get dark – when society seems to be collapsing around us and we’re being pepper-sprayed or punched in the head by the people who are supposed to be protecting us – we could look at that photo or video and remind ourselves that the beloved Son ultimately has it under control.

We don’t have a photo or video, but we have the account left to us in the Gospels, and we have this word from Peter, left to us as his final legacy.  “We heard the voice come from heaven: “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” “