Can you imagine what it would have been like to be on that mountain with Peter, James and John? The three undoubtedly thought they were just once again retreating to pray.
But what a prayer! Moses and Elijah, the personification of the Law and the Prophets, appear with Jesus, and their garments become something more than just a dazzling white, more a terrifying white.
White is often the color of the good guys but it is also the color of terror, of nothingness, of white-outs in the mountains, of lost Arctic adventurers, of Melville’s whale. We want a world of color and people and order but all the disciples see is white, bright, blinding white.
Peter, the impetuous one, blurts out something about building tents, like at the Feast of Tabernacles, but the suggestion is ignored, as Jesus seems to have taken it as a sign of their confusion and terror.
Then a cloud comes and a voice says, “This is my beloved son. Listen to him.” I doubt this calmed them down much.
But the appearance ends as fast as it began, and the four of them descend the mountain, and Jesus tells them to say nothing to anyone until he had risen from the dead.
I suspect they were still shaking as they rejoined the world, and they couldn’t understand what rising from the dead meant. I think this prefigures the disciples after the crucifixion, terrified and wondering what rising from the dead means.
A final suggestion for Black History month reading: take a look at the March issue of The Atlantic with We Mourn for All We Do Not Know, about the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project collection of narratives of people born enslaved, A Forgotten Founder about Prince Hall, and When America Became a Democracy about the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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