Lent Week 2: Terror, Tremors, and Transfiguration

The second week of Lent is here.

Lent. This season of strangeness and paradox, this season where we have the incomprehensible privilege of walking with Jesus towards the cross. This season that calls us to quiet reflection and also to movement. To sorrow but also to hope. To move through the darkness and into the light.

This week, we will explore one of the most mysterious and strange moments in the Gospel: the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-10, Luke 9:28-36).

Moments of Paradox

The story of the Transfiguration is scene unlike anything else in Jesus' ministry. It begins by Jesus and his closest friends—Peter, James, and John—climbing up a mountain. They were tired. Hot. Probably hungry. 

 Then, suddenly, the mortal, wounded world is touched with brilliance, beauty and light. And Jesus stands before them, not in the dusty, impoverished garments of a wandering rabbi, but in dazzling white, his face shining like the sun.

"And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them." (Mark 9:2-3)

Beside him stand Moses and Elijah—the two towering figures of Israel’s history, men who themselves had been blessed to walk with God and talk with God. And then the voice of God thunders from a cloud above them:

"This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." (Matthew 17:5)

Terrified, the disciples fall to the ground. What else could they do? They have just heard the very voice of God. The air must have been electric, the energy of divine presence sizzling everything it touched.

And then—just as suddenly—it is over.

They look up. Moses and Elijah are gone. The blinding radiance has faded. Only Jesus remains, standing before them in the same familiar form. No more dazzling white. No more booming voices from heaven. Just Jesus. Just the road ahead.

The Strangeness of the In-Between

For Jesus, this moment must have carried both beauty and sorrow. In his transfigured form, he stood in his fully divine form.. For a moment, he stood in the presence of the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah), the fulfillment of both. 

But the mountaintop was not his destination. No, he had to keep going. To the cross. Only a few verses later, as they descend, Jesus tells his closest friends that his future is not that of Elijah's or of Moses'. No, his future is wildly different:

"The Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands." (Matthew 17:12)

Glory and suffering. Light and shadow. Jesus walked in the space between the two, and he knew that his disciples—and all who would follow him for millennium after millennium—would be called to do the same.

Lent can feel like that, too.

It is a time of both revelation and uncertainty. A time when we long for the clarity of the mountaintop but often find ourselves stumbling down into the valley, where things are messy, unclear, and hard. It's a reminder that, in walking in Jesus' footsteps, we too are choosing a path that is uncertain and confusing and challenging, a path that doesn't make sense in the way we tend to want to make sense of things. A path where, most of the time, holiness doesn't usually look like light and brilliance and glory on the mountaintop.

But it's a path that we are not on alone. For just as Jesus says to Peter, James, and John as they trembled before him, he does to us:

"'Rise, and do not be afraid.’" (Matthew 17:7)

Following Jesus This Lent

What does it mean to follow Jesus in this season?

It means embracing the mystery and the journey. It means we are called to trust--even when the mountaintop is distant. Lent is not about standing still. It is about moving forward, step by step, alongside Jesus.

And when we are weary? When the mystery feels too great? When the road ahead looks uncertain? He reaches out and touches us.

"Rise, and do not be afraid."

Discussion Questions

1. How does the phrase “Rise, and do not be afraid” speak to you this Lent?

2. Why did Jesus come as human? What does this tell us about the nature of God? What does it teach us about how we can grow in Christlikeness ourselves?