dar334

The first thing I need to get out there is Pastor reminded us of the transformer toys from years ago this morning as the message was going to be about Jesus’ transfiguration, or transformation, on the mountain.  He then went on to suggest that we try to transform Jesus into what we want him to be.  Well PT, you just opened a whole can of worms in my pondering mind because it didn’t take long for my pea brain to go to certain Biblical no-nos that the secular world wants to do, so we just transform our belief that Jesus in transforming his belief right along with ours!  THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS! 

Anyways …….

The gospel lesson today came from Mark 9:2-9  –  Jesus is Transfigured on the Mountain  2 Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone.  As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, far whiter than any earthly bleach could ever make them.   4 Then Elijah and Moses appeared and began talking with Jesus.  5 Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here!  Let’s make three shelters as memorials – one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Ok, I know I stopped at verse 5 and the gospel lesson was to go to verse 9, but when Pastor read verse 5 I had to grab my program and write “How did they know it was Elijah and Moses?”  I realize Jesus would have known who they were, after all, he was ….. Jesus.  (here is where I want to say “duh”, but that word annoys me)

My Bible refers us to the other books in the Bible where the same account was written by another person.  This particular account is also found in Matthew 17:1-13 and in Luke 9:28-36 so I went to each to see if I could somehow find the answer to my question.

Luke gives a more detailed version of the account, he tells us that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were speaking about Jesus’ exodus from this world and he also says that Peter and the others had fallen asleep; but I still didn’t know the answer to my question.  How did they know who Moses and Elijah were?!  Both Moses and Elijah had been long gone  before the disciples were born.  After going to google.com, I found it is believed Moses died in 1407 BC and Elijah died in 852 BC.  I haven’t read anywhere in the scriptures that Mary and Elizabeth would scrapbooked!

Perhaps the study notes will answer my question.  The study note for Mark tells me that God had appeared to both Moses and Elijah on a mountain.  It does say that Moses represented the law, and Elijah, the prophets, and their appearance showed Jesus as the fulfillment of both the Old Testament law and the prophetic promises.  I still don’t think that’s a clear answer; so off to the study notes for Matthew.  Here is where I read that the Transfiguration was a foretaste of heaven.  It also said Moses predicted the coming of a great prophet and Elijah foretold the coming of the Messiah ….. and Jesus is the Messiah ….. Well, I have one more set of study notes to read, Luke’s.  I found nothing in Luke to answer my question.

After the service we went to Bible Study ala Joe where we are studying 1 and 2 Samuel.  My answer to For Thought and Discussion which asked “How important is it to maintain a sense of mystery in our perspective of God?”  Now I am the queen of definitions, mostly because my vocabulary is very limited, so I went to google for the definition of “mystery”.  Now granted, I knew it meant puzzling, but I still wanted an educated definition.  Courtesy of google, I found mystery defined as something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. My answer to the question the study manual asked, was this:  “When the mystery is gone, so will our desire to remain in the Word.  When we don’t remain in the word, we slip away.”  Perhaps I’ve answered my own question, how did they know it was Moses and Elijah?  And the answer is …. It’s a mystery.

(I might add that I asked google how they knew and the short answer was “We don’t know.”)

As always,

-dar