Seeing Jesus as he really is

I’ve written about the transfiguration before (see here). I’m a bit obsessed with it. It’s such an amazing story. This is when Jesus headed up a high mountain with only Peter, James and John. “There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.” (Matthew 17:2-3).

I’ve always really focused on the bits where it describes what he was doing rather than what Jesus looked like, because what he looked like seems a bit fantastical. Like the first time we see Captain Marvel shoot energy beams out of her hands and start to fly.

But while sitting under the teaching of a very wise man this holiday, something he said really cracked open a wide door in my understanding of this event and Jesus himself. That is, in my puny human sized brain, I guess I always thought of Jesus’ transformation in this scene as something he puts on to communicate who he is and to show that he is the one greater than Moses and Elijah (who some people were saying he was).

It did not strike me before that in his transformation he was removing his earthly image to reveal who he actually is.

My imaginings of Jesus are so earthbound. They are influenced by the myriad of actors who have played Jesus, from the blond and pale eyed Max von Sydow in the 1961 film The Greatest Story Ever Told, to the dark and bearded Jonathan Roumie in the series The Chosen. In none of my imagingings is Jesus shining like the sun, with his clothes as white as the light.

Which means that my God is too small.

I need to re-imagine Jesus, not how he was incarnated and how we humans imagine him, but as he really is. My brain can barely manifest this concept but its a useful corrective for me to make sure I am not imagining God too small. Even though his physical form means that he is accessible as the image of the imageless God, I don’t want to fall into the trap of making Jesus me-sized.

“There is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” (1 Corinthians 8:6)