Musings on Metamorphosis… and “Rising From the Dead?”
A lot of questions come to mind after reading a passage like Mark 9:2-10: What does transfigured even mean? What did Elijah and Moses talk with Jesus about? Would I have been better than Peter at coming up with something to say? And how could they not understand what “rising from the dead” meant?
What does transfigured mean? Metamorhposis is the biological term for the process by which a lowly caterpillar completely changes its form into an adult butterfly. It comes from the Greek word being used here. No wonder Peter, James, and John were terrified!
What did Elijah and Moses talk with Jesus about? I could almost imagine them commiserating about trying to teach people who aren’t ready, or even able, to listen. Maybe they were comparing notes on their own wilderness survival experiences. It’s too bad the three disciples were too terrified to pay attention to that conversation!
Would I have been any better than Peter trying to cope with what he was seeing? Would any of us? Peter was the kind of person who seemed to always need to make comments, even if he didn’t understand in the slightest what was going on. I can relate, can’t you? Sometimes, our best response might not be to say anything, but to just watch and learn. James and John might have had the right idea. Either they recognized that they couldn’t possibly say anything useful right then, or perhaps they were just too terrified to say anything at all. I can relate to that, also.
But the big question is why couldn’t they fathom what “rising from the dead” meant? Had they not just witnessed Jesus sitting and talking with two characters who, presumably, had themselves died long ago? Hadn’t they been present when Jesus literally raised a young girl from the dead (Mark 5:35-43)? Hadn’t Jesus already told them that it was going to happen to him? Of course, Peter had rebuked him for saying so (Mark 8:31-33). Perhaps that was the thing they really couldn’t grasp: the idea that Jesus, their teacher—no, their Messiah—who had power to cast out demons, power over illness, power over weather, and even power over death—someone else’s death, anyway—was himself going to be killed. Jesus couldn’t possibly rise from the dead, because there was no way he was going to die…
—Rick Rossing
