NOTES for Luk 9:28-45

For the first readers of Luke’s Gospel, the parallels between the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ and the accounts of Moses and Elijah ascending the mountain were clear. Both prophets heard on the mountaintop the most important revelation, the foundation of the message they brought to Israel (Exodus 19; 1 Kings 19). Now the apostles take their place: together with the ancient prophets, they stand before the Source of revelation and, like them, hear the Father’s voice from the cloud of light. This testimony is the foundation of the Gospel they are to proclaim to the whole world: “This is My beloved Son; I delight in Him!” As in ages past, the most important thing is revealed not in theological formulas or in the form of a secret doctrine, but in these words of Light about Light.

Today's reading includes two events that, at first glance, are connected only chronologically: the Transfiguration (vv. 28-36) and the healing of the possessed son of an unnamed man (vv. 38-45). And yet the Evangelist does not connect these two stories by accident. It would seem that, against the background of what had just happened, another healing, even one unsuccessful for the apostles, was an ordinary enough event that one might not even mention it.

Meanwhile Jesus' reaction to it was unusually harsh (v. 41). Commentators, of course, have still not come to a single opinion about whom Jesus' words primarily concern: the man who brought his son to Him, or the apostles. But against this background an important detail is the mention that, precisely after the unsuccessful healing, Jesus again and again reminds His disciples of His suffering and death (vv. 43-44), while they cannot understand Him at all: something hides from the apostles the meaning of what the Savior has said (v. 45). It is especially noteworthy that they were even afraid to ask the Teacher again. Until then He had never left their questions unanswered, and not once had He become angry at any question; what, then, could the disciples have been afraid of?

Of course, it was frightening to hear about the Teacher's death from His own lips, but the apostles were not children or cowards ready to hide their heads in the sand at the sight of danger. Apparently they did not simply fail to understand; rather, they did not accept Jesus' words, hoping that they were only a slip, a misunderstanding, or some image, a parable whose meaning would in time be explained. For on the day of the Transfiguration the apostles saw the Kingdom already in all its fullness; one could say that they came home to their Teacher, who had invited them to Himself in order to show them His true home. And there, on that day of triumph, He suddenly begins to speak to them about His death, which for them could only be defeat and catastrophe.

Such a thing, of course, could not fit into their consciousness: for the resurrection, in which the apostles of course believed, was still something too distant for them to become real within their own lives. And so they still did not trust Jesus to the end. But distrust destroys relationships, and when the moment of healing came, the moment of witness to the Kingdom, the apostles failed. Seeing this distrust, which had gone so far, Jesus may well have judged the situation with utmost severity. And no wonder: for the unreadiness mentioned here by the Evangelist to accept Jesus' words about His death and resurrection would later become the cause both of Peter's denial and of Judas' betrayal.

Soon after Peter's confession, as we can see, Jesus showed the closest of His disciples visibly what the Kingdom is and what human nature becomes in it. In church usage this event received the name Transfiguration. As the Savior appeared before the disciples on the day of the Transfiguration, so every person becomes in the Kingdom, if he can contain its life in all the fullness available to him. The fullness of the life of the Kingdom transforms every human nature, but for that to happen, the nature being transformed must be freed from the power of evil and sin, just as the Savior's human nature was free from it. And then, immediately after the scene of the visible manifestation of the Kingdom, another scene follows: the scene of no less visible a triumph in this world of the evil in which it lies.

Indeed, one can hardly find a brighter example of triumphant evil than possession, where the power of darkness manifests itself almost openly, as though challenging everything bright that exists in the world. And the disciples, who have just seen the triumphant Kingdom entering the world, can set nothing against this evil. They are unable to help the possessed man. This is no surprise: the Kingdom is still only on the threshold; the process of its entering the world, in essence, has not even begun yet, while all its fullness is concentrated entirely in the person of the Savior.

The Kingdom is not of this world, and it will remain outside the world until Jesus completes His earthly path. It is no accident that after all these events Jesus returns again to the theme of His earthly path and His death on the cross. Again and again He repeats: the Kingdom is not at all what most people imagine it to be. It will not become a triumphant earthly power. Evil cannot be defeated by external force; within the fallen world it is indeed invincible. The Kingdom of God is impossible in principle as a kingdom of this world.

The Messiah cannot be a triumphant victor not because God lacks the strength to drive evil out of the world and defeat it, but because, if He acted that way, the world would disappear together with the evil in which it lies. In this sense, the salvation that Jesus brought into the world most closely resembles an operation to free hostages, which is what we all are. Such an operation can be carried out only at the cost of the death of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world, at the cost of His death on the cross. It is an infinitely hard path, but there is no other.

In the account of the Transfiguration, the themes of Christ's glory and His sufferings merge into one. On the mountain He speaks with the prophets about His "exodus" - about Golgotha. Coming down from the mountain, Jesus foretells to the disciples what awaits Him in Jerusalem.

It is interesting that the disciples prove unable either to see the glory of the transfigured Jesus or to hear His words about the Cross. These things are connected with each other. This can be judged from one's own experience: the less we see the presence of the Lord in our life, the less we know what glory is, the worse we understand words about the cross. The cross appears to us as certain everyday troubles of ours, not as the path of faith and self-denial.

This new understanding of the cross can be acquired only by seeing the Glory, the living presence of God - openly, as the apostle Paul did, or hiddenly, through recognizing His action in the circumstances of life.