[Propertalk] Sermon tidbits for Mt. 17:1-9, Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

Peter doesn't get the fact that they are seeing Jesus as he really is.  The voice of God identifies Jesus as the Messianic Son of God.  They are overcome with awe and fall to the ground in fear.  They are seeing Jesus with clear spiritual sight and God is present with an affirmation of Jesus' identity.

http://www.lectionarysermons.com/feb2899.html

John Jewell, 1999
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Transfigurations are big business today. I don't know anybody who doesn't want one, including me. And many of us work hard and spend a lot of money to get one -- a new face, a new look, a changed appearance.
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Larushka Shikne did not like the image he thought his name projected, so he changed his name to Laurence Harvey.
Issur Danielovitch Densky did the same thing and became Kirk Douglas.
In the same way, Frances Gum transfigured herself and her image into Judy Garland. Archibald Leach became Cary Grant. Aaron Schwalt became Red Buttons. And would you have paid money to see Marion Morrison in the movies? Maybe, but Marion didn't take that chance, he became John Wayne.

http://day1.org/747-transfiguration

Robert Johnson, 1999
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The story tells us what happened to Christ. He was transfigured before Peter, James and John, changed by his Father by such brilliant light that all else would seem dark by comparison. (Somehow this leads me to think of the chaos of creation, the brooding of the very primal elements, the turmoil and uncertainty, the foreboding and pain. Out of that chaos comes God's amazing words, "Let there be light." The world begins; God is in control. New patterns emerge; the darkness disappears, chaos becomes meaning; random becomes purpose; the inert becomes lively. Man is born, a child of the Creator.

http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/wiedrich_3624.htm

William Wiedrich, 1993
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 The story of the Transfiguration of Jesus in today's gospel in one of the stranger stories in any of the Gospels. Evidently Jesus had a powerful "religious experience" at some point in his public life, an experience which had a profound effect on him and on the apostles who were with him. As the story of this experience was related among the early Christians it took on a heavy overlay of theological symbolism. In the context of St. Matthew's Gospel it becomes a turning point in Jesus' life, an experience in which he saw that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die while he was there.

http://www.agreeley.com/hom08/feb17.html

Andrew M. Greeley, 1999
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All lives, the great theologian Karl Rahner once said, are unfinished symphonies. Jesus surely had other dreams. Undoubtedly he wanted to persuade his people that God loved them even more than they imagined.<> It is also perhaps the story of all our unfinished symphonies: We don't always do what we had wanted to do. But often what we do turns out to be even better. 

http://www.agreeley.com/homilies96/mar0396.html

Andrew M. Greeley, 1996
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To go "up to a high mountain" -- to which there are eight major references in the Judeo-Christian scriptures -- is always then to be seeking a very special relationship with God.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_18_37/ai_71763369/

Joan Chittister, 2001
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This familiar text functions for the three disciples in Jesus' inner circle much like his baptism functioned for Jesus. In that scene (Matt. 3), Jesus heard the voice from heaven--a voice that linked themes of Servant and Son. For the rest of his ministry he would be discovering what it meant that he was the Servant of God and what it meant that he was the Son of God. But the discovery wasn't Jesus' alone. It also belonged to the disciples. They had someone in their midst whom they needed to understand, if not fully than at least with enough insight to follow and serve him intelligently and faithfully. There is no reason to think that any of them had been present when Jesus was baptized;

http://www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryIV/Matt17.html

Bill Long
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