When we consider it, we might wonder why the transfiguration lasted apparently for such a short time. And more to the point, we might wonder, if God was capable of revealing his glory in Jesus in such a dazzling way, why he didn't do so more often, so as to make it easier for people to recognise Jesus and accept him as special, indeed as divine.
Another way of posing more or less the same question is to ask why our ordinary everyday world often seems so untransfigured and even empty of God. This is an easy question to ask and a difficult one to answer. But Christian faith has always seen in the world not God himself, but rather God's creation.
The fact that we so often experience the world as Godless, when we would want to see God himself in it, the way Peter, James and John saw Jesus on the day of the transfiguration, is a sign of this fundamental truth of our faith, namely that God is the creator of the world, but he is not the world itself.
And yet we often think that if we could only see God clearly in the world, then all the rest would be clear. But as we know, in life we can of course see many things directly, but we can't see God directly.
There is nothing new about that of course. An ancient Christian commentator on the passage in the bible that tells of Moses' attempt to see God, notes that Moses was only allowed to look on the back of God, and - the commentator adds - the back of God is the world. All we ever see or can see of God is the world itself. But our faith tells us that this world is God's creation, and, more contentiously, that it is fundamentally good. We would need God's eyes, however, to be actually able to see that clearly or directly.
God's ways are not ours, and God's eyes are certainly not our eyes. It sometimes sounds just too good to be true to be told that despite all the terrible things that happen in the world, it is nevertheless God's good creation. But if we're ever tempted to become pessimistic or even resigned about this world, it might be worth reminding ourselves that God can see things that we can't.
The philosopher Wittgenstein once wrote: "We tend to take the speech of a Chinese for inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognise language in what he hears. Similarly I often cannot discern the humanity in a man."
If we cannot discern the humanity in ourselves or in another human being, we have at least the consolation of knowing that the God who made us, does discern and understand and love the humanity in us, and wishes to transfigure and preserve it for all eternity, in the resurrection of the dead. That is the good news of the Christian faith that can always be relied upon to outshine the frequently bad news of the human condition.
But that good news was won at a heavy price. The price was what St Luke's account of the transfiguration refers to as the `exodus' or the death of Jesus in Jerusalem. The glory of the transfiguration, which Jesus promises to his followers in the resurrection, was won by his passion and death. It seems almost to be the law of spiritual truth that there can be no genuine transfiguration without some form of crucifixion. Or, as St John of the Cross put it, the path to salvation passes only through the thicket of the cross. And not just for Jesus, but for all his followers too.
The truth that the path to transfiguration leads to or, more so, through the cross, is an uncomfortable truth to live with. It's so easy to be literally dazzled by the thought of transfiguration and to forget or want to suppress the cost that it involves.
But Christianity's survival over two thousand years allows us to hope that the last word, the `last judgement', on our human condition has not been left, nor will it be left, to the dark forces of human history that put Jesus to death. We believe, rather, that the last judgement belongs to the living God who created us and, in the glory of the resurrection, can transfigure the dust from which we are made.
We may be created from dust and may be destined to return one day to dust, as we were reminded emphatically on Ash Wednesday. But we will be dust that can still be loved by the God who seeks our transfiguration here and hereafter, for all eternity.
:: Martin Henry, former lecturer in theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, is a priest of the diocese of Down and Connor.
