1. Transfiguration is transformation. No one and no situation is "untransfigurable" – Dawn Hutchings
In his book, God Has A Dream: A Vision of Home for Our Time, Desmond Tutu tells about a transfiguration experience that he will never forget. It occurred when apartheid was still in full swing. Tutu and other church leaders were preparing for a meeting with the prime minister of South Africa to discuss the troubles that were destroying their nation. They met at a theological college that had closed down because of the white government’s racist policies. During a break from the proceedings, Tutu walked into the college’s garden for some quiet time. In the midst of the garden was a huge wooden cross. As Tutu looked at the barren cross, he realized that it was winter, a time when the grass was pale and dry, a time when almost no one could imagine that in a few short weeks it would be lush, green, and beautiful again. In a few short weeks, the grass and all the surrounding world would be transfigured.
As the archbishop sat there and pondered that, he obtained a new insight into the power of transfiguration, of God’s ability to transform our world. Tutu concluded that transfiguration means that no one and no situation is “untransfigurable.” The time will eventually come when the whole world will be released from its current bondage and brought to share in the glorious liberty that God intends.
2. Transfiguration emphasizes the mission of Jesus -that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross
A. Travis Meir
"Jesus’ ministry continues with the trip back down the mountain. He will not take Peter’s advice and stay on the mountaintop. The mountaintop was a vision of the glory of God, but it is not to be confused with the way of the cross, the true ministry of Jesus. Jesus is to be found where the people are, leaning into their needs, and giving life back to those on the margins.
The disciples do not understand this, and will not understand it until they here the message from the young man at the tomb, delivered by the women. “He has been raised…Go back to Galilee..he is going ahead of you to Galilee (16:6-7).” That is where the ministry of the kingdom of God continues to unfold"
B. Lawrence "Disclosing New Worlds"
The shadow of the cross hangs over the narrative. And it is the cross, not the resurrection, which is emphasised here on the mountain… the Transfiguration is different from what most of us have been brought up to believe since we coloured in our first picture of the event in Sunday School. This is not a moment of glory, or of hope. It is confirmation of the second great cycle in Mark’s narrative: the Way of the Cross. The Way of the Cross is about engagement with the powers of the day. It will bring about suffering and death. It is the only way – both for Jesus and for would-be followers. The Transfiguration confirms the call to suffering discipleship issued in 8:34f. The divine voice underscores it: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to what he tells you!”
.. At the end of Epiphany, we stand on the threshold of Lent and have to be prepared to hear the call to the Way of the Cross as shocking, new, uncomfortable, divisive and repellent. We need to commit ourselves to dealing with our blindness and our deafness. In Mark’s narrative, the blind and the deaf symbolise the disciples’ condition and response to Jesus. But it’s a narrative of hope, because the deaf hear and the blind see – and the disciples on the mountain do deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Jesus! That, too, needs to be our story.
3 Transfiguration without a plan – David Lose "In the Meantime"
We desperately want an encounter with God – some sense that we are not alone, that there is something More than what we can see and touch – and yet in those very moments that God draws near we find ourselves afraid, unsure, and feeling suddenly very out of control and so we try to domesticate our experience of the Holy by fitting it into a plan.
Why? I suspect that as much as we want an encounter with God, we simultaneously fear the presence of God because we fear being changed, being transformed. What we have, who we are, may not be everything we want, but at least we know it, are used to it, have built a relatively orderly life around it. And so when God comes – perhaps not in a transfiguration as dramatic as Mark describes but in the ordinary hopes, encounters, and tragedies of our everyday life – when God comes and unsettles the orderly lives we’ve constructed we try to put those disruptive experiences back into line by cramming them into a plan.
But maybe, just maybe, there is no plan. Maybe there’s only love. And perhaps our job as preachers and leaders isn’t to fit our experience – let alone everyone else’s – into some kind of “divine plan,” but rather to create space for people to experience the wonder and mystery of God. Not a “safe space” necessarily – how could any experience with the God of the Bible be considered entirely “safe”? – but a space into which we will accompany them, neither building booths to make it neat and tidy nor abandoning them, but standing together in the mystery of God and God’s love
4. Transfiguration – an anchor to Jesus Identity – Paul S. Berge
In the midst of Jesus’ threefold teaching on his forthcoming death and resurrection and words on discipleship (Mark 8:31-9:1; 9:30-34; 10:32-45), the transfiguration story anchors our lives once again in the one whose identity is spoken to us by the Father: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). This word of identity reassures us for our journey, even to our death. In this journey we are instructed by the Father to “listen to him.” Jesus’ journey to the cross during the season of Lent will also be our journey. But just as death awaits us, as it did Jesus, so too do we walk in the hope of his resurrection. Jesus’ death and resurrection are paradigmatic of our death and resurrection; this is our identity as people of faith
5. The Transfiguration – see the Kingdom of God coming in power. -Brian Stoffregen
One purpose is that it may be the event referred to in 9:1: "And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." These three disciples have seen the kingdom of God in all its power with the transfiguration of Jesus.
Jesus is connected to the law and prophets and then Jesus who the prophets aniticipate. Jesus is at the climax of history, a picture of hope.