Then We Shall Be
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST
Thomas Kelly was born in Ireland on July 13th, 1769. At the age of 23 and being convicted of his sin through hearing the preaching of the Gospel, he surrendered his life and became a presbyter in the Church of Ireland. As it turned out, just three years later, his evangelical style of preaching led the Archbishop of Dublin to prohibit Kelly from no longer standing in the pulpit of the established church of Ireland.
In 1804, Kelly published his first hymnal, and over some fifty years, he composed nearly 800 hymns, which today are found in the hymnals throughout the various protestant and evangelical churches in Great Britain and North America: four of his hymns can be found in our REC Hymnal. Allow me to read the lyrics to his hymn entitled, "Praise the Savior, ye who know Him!"
Praise the Savior, ye who know Him! Who can tell how much we owe Him? Gladly let us render to Him All we are and have.
Jesus is the name that charms us; He for conflicts fits and arms us; Nothing moves and nothing harms us When we trust in Him.
Trust in Him, ye saints, forever; He is faithful, changing never; Neither force nor guile can sever Those He loves from Him.
Keep us, Lord, oh, keep us cleaving To Thyself and still believing, Till the hour of Thy receiving The victorious Bride.
Then we shall be where we would be; Then we shall be what we should be; Things which are not now, nor could be, Then shall be our own.
Kelly is on to something here. In the final verse, he distinguishes between two vastly different periods of time: the 'now' and the 'then.' THEN we shall be what we are not now. THEN we shall be where we would be. THEN we shall be what we should be. Things which are not now, nor could be, THEN shall be our own. But for NOW, we are not where we will be, and we are not now in ourselves what we should be. And what we are today is far less satisfactory than what we could, should, or perhaps, will be.
To become more than what we are is an innately human desire, a universal longing (sought in varying degrees), for, since the beginning, humanity has aspired to transcend the self. Icarus, desiring to escape capture and his earthbound existence, soars into the sky. Bedazzled by his airborne existence and bewitched by the sun, he flies too high, the wax melts from his wings, and he falls to the earth while the gods standby as heavenly spectators to his demise. But there is a greater truth in the flight of Icarus: people desire to escape not only their circumstances but their limitations as well, to overcome the limitations of being a creature, a human being entrapped in their humanity, imprisoned in imperfection and shortcomings.
The story of man's attempt to transcend himself is a very old tale,
"Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:1-5).
But the temptation to be more than what they were created to be was far too great because when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Aspiring to move beyond their humanness, to be more than an image-bearer, and to become the image-maker, they too fell from so great a height, just like Icarus.
We strive to be more than we are because we have an acute awareness (as fallen people) of our limitations. The firm boundaries of humanity are fixed, and try as we may to soar beyond, to shake off this mortal coil, we can only fly so high into the air of possibilities until we crash and burn. Men and women created in the image of God simply cannot of themselves transcend their fallen humanity. To transcend is to go beyond, rise above oneself, and climb out of human limitations as man naturally exists.
But God alone is the transcendent One, for God is wholly independent of this material world- the creator of all things is wholly independent and outside of his creation- He is beyond all physical and natural laws and their corresponding limitations and boundaries. On the other hand, we creatures are not but subject to the material creation and the laws which govern it: if you jump off a building, gravity will most certainly pull you down- you will not soar into the air. And yet, humanity so wants to be more than they are: they want to be like God. Truth be told (and I think Scripture and experience provide ample evidence) that humanity desires to be God.
The reimagining of self and the reconstruction of being is nothing new. Cosmetic surgery is standard fare. Technology is rapidly broadening the horizon of transhuman possibility- we are living in an age where man believes he can remake himself into whatever he can imagine for himself. Science, pharmaceuticals, and technology are the engines of progress, and humanity is the new frontier. This is a world of Pinocchio’s longing to become real.
One can sense from the picture just painted the immense tension people live with varying degrees. But no one escapes the weight of being, the fallen reality of imperfection and limitation. No one escapes, neither believers nor unbelievers. Imperfect creatures dwelling in an imperfect world create all sorts of challenges: we wrestle with faith and fidelity to Christ, struggle to love God and others and find true hope elusive.
Faith, hope, and love. Of these three virtues, hope is the most difficult to sustain. We can go for long periods of life believing and trusting in Christ, with enough confidence (even in the most extreme periods of doubt) that God is real, his Son is real, and he loves us. But hope is fleeting because we, imperfect creatures, are ready and easy prey in a world of worries and concerns. Life can be overwhelming- anxiety and fear displace hope.
What is hope, if not the possibility of things getting better? To hope is to desire with the expectation of obtaining, fulfilling, and arriving at a far better place than our present circumstance. Because we are creatures, we experience the limitations of time; we only experience the present; therefore, we can only experience God's presence in the 'now.' And periodically, when life takes a wrong turn, or we find ourselves in turmoil over our choices, hope is hard to have. In these moments, it's challenging to feel God's presence; he seems remote, and sometimes, we wrongly think he has abandoned us.
This instability of being is the reality of the Christian life, a life lived on the radiant mountain top and in the shadowy valley. Seasons of trust giving way to periods of doubt, despair, and hopelessness IS the spiritual tension experienced by all serious Christians; the reality of being an imperfect creature being made perfect by grace; of the redeemed but not yet glorified; those being transformed towards being transfigured. Today, in the here and now, we are not what we will be or where we should be.
The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ on Mt. Tabor is the promise that created man and woman can and will transcend their imperfect selves through faith in Jesus Christ. The Mount of Transfiguration reveals such wonders and mysteries, both divine and cosmic, but that which Peter, James, and John were given to experience is given to us in the Holy Scriptures as it was for them, a sign of hope. And hope is exactly what we hear and see recorded in today's Gospel.
The Transfiguration reveals to the world that Jesus Christ is "very God of very God." On the mount, the Divinity and very Godness of Jesus are on full display! Unlike Moses, whose face reflects the glory of God, Jesus radiates glory from within! On the mountain, Moses receives the Divine Law on tables of stone, but Jesus, standing atop the mountain, is the very embodiment of the Law because He is the Logos, the Divine Word, and Wisdom incarnate, the true Torah in the flesh. On the mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah bask in the glorious Light of the Son: Jesus, the true light, come into the world to save sinners.
On the mount, we behold Jesus in his true Divinity but also "according to the flesh," for by the mystery of the incarnation, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The catholic faith confesses Christ to be both fully God and fully man, born of a woman. This means that the Transfiguration event has both Divine and human implications because Jesus Christ is the archetype of the new humanity.
Jesus- his person and his life- reveals a great deal about this present Christian life and about the future. Follow along with me for just a moment: IF through the first Adam, death came to all, but through the Second Adam (Jesus) came eternal life to those who believe... AND IF through baptism we mysteriously participate in Christ's death and resurrection... AND IF we are being sanctified and conformed by the holy spirit into little Christ's... THEN whatever we see in Jesus, or whatever the Father has, is, and will do for His Son (resurrection, ascension, glorification, given a heavenly inheritance, etc.), is ours by faith and fidelity to participate in as well; this is exactly what Paul is describing in the opening chapters of his epistle to the Ephesians!
Today Jesus reveals Himself as the expected Messiah restoring our true nature to us—a nature made in the image and likeness of God Himself which we lost: The divine Light of the Transfiguration is the very light of God who, by the testimony of St. Peter, "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). On this feast day, we are beholding in Jesus the means by which God "called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Pt 2:9). You see that same shekinah glory which irradiated the holy mount is the glory of God in you, which the other apostle proclaims, "is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col 1:27).
The light of life, the life of Christ, is in you who believe- even now amid doubt, in future days of trial, when those dark nights of the soul overtake you, and even when you fall short of God's will and commandments, Christ is in you. Believe it. Be assured by it and mark the words of Peter himself, an eyewitness to this truth,
"We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto 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 there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the holy mount."
Thus, when we hear the Father's voice proclaim: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," we must hear those words spoken, not at a distance, not to Christ alone, but to us also. "You are my beloved daughter." "You are my beloved son." The Father who loves you, even in your most unlovable moments, has sent the Son who died that we might share in his eternal glory and finally overcome ourselves.
The mystery of today's feast should not only suffuse every aspect of the Christian life with hope but also show us, as he did to the three Apostles, what God has in store for those who are united to Him: our future hope. The Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ is humanity's hope of transcending the limitations of the fall, transforming beyond our wildest imaginings, and being transfigured from glory to glory. We shall be transfigured as the Lord Himself when the trumpet sounds and our bodies are raised to everlasting beatitude.
THEN we will, by the grace and love of God, eclipse ourselves. THEN we shall soar into the Son and be glorified. THEN, we who Christ "qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints in light" (Col 1:12) will dwell in the Light of the Son without fear, without imperfection, and without crashing to the earth. The glorification of Christ's body on the Holy Mount displays the eternal hope of every faithful Christian.
Beloved, be assured of this future hope because we have received "a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto we would do well to take heed," the Holy Scriptures, the sure Word of God which testifies to our future glorification, for "those [the Father] predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified" (Rom 8:30). The vision of the Transfiguration is the blessed glimpse of your future glory, the end and eternal state of all who love the Lord Jesus Christ and believe.
"Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias” (Lk 9:33). Peter wanted to stay. Can you blame him? The glory cloud of heaven has enveloped him and the other disciples. A cosmic convergence of heaven and earth is taking place; the saints who dwell in light (Moses and Elijah) are now among the saints on earth (Peter, James, and John)! On this final day of the feast of Booths, God the Father and God the Son are (in that fleeting moment) actually dwelling with men.
Through this mysterious tableau, God reveals an even bigger aspect of hope, something bigger than us- the future hope for the whole creation! The Transfiguration is a picture of the eternal age to come when the curse of Eden is finally reversed, the land healed, the beasts of the field and sea, and birds of the air, even fallen humanity, are finally restored to what it was always created to be: perfect creation worshipping a perfect Creator:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,” "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Rev. 21:1-5)
"To the thirsty, I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The One who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my Son." (21:6-8)
"And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there." (21:22-25)
Friends, this shall be yours when that final day dawns and the Morning Star arises over the new heaven and earth.
Then we shall be where we would be;
Then we shall be what we should be;
Things which are not now, nor could be,
Then shall be our own. Amen+
