The Glory of the Lord on Tabor

Sermon on the Transfiguration

Deacon Nicholas Kotar
Aug. 6/19, 2024
Holy Trinity Monastery

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

Dear brothers and sisters,

Familiarity can breed contempt, especially in our reading of the word of God. Our experience of the major feasts of the church is also prone to such familiarity, especially if we have been Orthodox Christians for a long time. If we pay attention, and adjust our perspective a little, we can reinvigorate our vision of every one of the major feasts.

If we read the Gospel account of the Transfiguration, we might, at first, be surprised at the lack of detail used in the language describing the event. It is almost as if it is beyond human language, beyond human experience – which, of course, it is. But to stop at that is to miss the deep and layered meaning of what happened to the three apostles on Mount Tabor, and what it means for us Christians today.

If we pay attention to the poetic metaphor of the hymnography of the feast, we begin to pierce beyond the veil of the meaning of the event,

The mountain which before was dark and gloomy is now honorable and holy, for thereon did Thy feet stand, O Lord; for in the latter days Thou didst make manifest the hidden, preëternal mystery, Thine awesome transfiguration, to Peter, John and James. (Sticheron at Vespers)

Which mountain before was dark and gloomy? This verse at “Lord I Have Cried” doesn’t immediately say. We should be able to figure it out in context, though, and if we can’t, the church helps us along even more. After the small entrance at Vespers, the reader goes out to the middle of the church to read three Old Testament passages that have special significance for the feast we celebrate. And here, our understanding is deepened and bit. 

We hear about two Old Testament figures: Moses and Elijah – but not just any moment from their eventful lives. We hear specifically about two things; ascending mountains for the purposes of prayer and fasting, and subsequent theophanies, or appearances of God. In fact, these two theophanies are the only times in the Old Testament where God shows Himself to man in a way that is possible for him to endure it without dying.

Both times, we encounter language of darkness and obscurity. God’s appearance to Moses on Mount Sinai is described this way,

Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
(Ex. 24:16-18)

Later, God shows Himself again to Moses. But He only shows His “back parts”, as the reading tells us. There is a veil on God’s face, as it were – a fact beautifully echoed by the veil Moses wore on his own face, when the light coming from his face was too bright for the Israelites to endure. 

As for Elijah’s encounter, it is described largely through the language of negation, 

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. (3 Kings. 19:11-12)

Now we begin to understand what the hymnography is telling us. God had been trying to show Himself to fallen man for ages. Now, finally, the time had come. It is an event resonant with symbolic realities, layers and layers deep, that are so filled with meaning that simplicity in descriptive language is required. Just as there is an apparent simplicity in the style of iconography – flat as it is in appearance – but beneath this apparent simplicity we find incredibly profound symbolism and meaning.

When you put all these symbolic realities together, you can begin to piece together what this event meant for the apostles – and what it should mean to us. The apostles would have grown up on stories of the theophanies to Moses and Elijah – some of the most mystical events of the history of the chosen people. And now they join them in a new theophany. But more than that, we must understand the meaning of the cloud. For, the second temple in Jerusalem, the temple that these apostles would have prayed in, was not the original glorious temple of Solomon. I’m not only speaking of architecture – I’m speaking specifically of the fact that the original temple had a physical manifestation of the presence of God, a cloud that came down from heaven and settled on the high place – the symbolic mountain of God in the holy of holies. It was the great tragedy of the people of God that the second temple, built after the Babylonian captivity, never had this visible presence of God. 

And now, the three apostles enter that presence as the cloud that they had yearned for descends on them, and they are enveloped in it. It is the fulfillment of all the yearnings of the people of the Old Testament to meet God whose people they are. No wonder that Peter, in ecstasy, asks to stay there forever. He knows – they all know – exactly what’s going on. The Messiah has revealed Himself, and He has revealed Himself as God.

What does this mean for us? St Peter, remembering this event later, tells us quite plainly,

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.(2 Pet. 1:16-18)

And what do we do in our own spiritual lives? We fast, we pray, we live lives of self-denial and self-sacrificial love, we follow commandments that can be difficult to follow – not because we fear an angry God who will punish us, but because God revealed Himself to us in His glory, in His light, and He gave us access to that light, unto union with Him in love. And that is reason enough to suffer our own little crucifixions and deaths on a daily basis, as we ourselves slowly climb the mountain of God, through fasting and prayer, hoping for our own personal theophany and transfiguration in the divine light of God. 

In light of this, let us close with the words of St Gregory Palamas,

“Let us have done with the works of darkness, then, and practice the works of light, in order not only to live decently as we should on such a day, but also to become children of the day. And come, let us go up the mountain where Christ became resplendent to see what took place there; or rather, when we have become children of the day and are worthy of such a day. And come, let us go up the mountain where Christ became resplendent to see what took place there; or rather, when we have become children of the day and are worthy of such a day, at the appropriate time the Word of God will himself lead us up. But now I exhort you to make every effort to raise the eye of your mind toward the light of the Gospel message, so that you may in the meaning be ‘transformed by the renewal of your minds’ (cf. Rom. 12:2) and, by drawing the divine radiance down upon yourselves from heaven, come to share in the glory of the Lord whose face shone like the sun today on the mountain.”

Amen.