Transfiguration Sunday: An Anglican Perspective

The Last Sunday of Epiphany

The Last Sunday of Epiphany occupies a distinctive place in the Anglican liturgical year. It is not a Principal Feast and not a Red-Letter Holy Day. It is the Sunday that always closes the Season of Epiphany, and it has a name: Transfiguration Sunday. The BCP 2019 appoints a collect on page 604 and lectionary readings on page 720 for this Sunday, giving it a theological weight that sets it apart from every other Sunday in the season. It is the season’s climax and its hinge — the moment the Epiphany season’s great question is answered in light so bright the disciples fall on their faces, and the moment Lent’s first shadow falls across the path.

The Season of Epiphany begins with the Father’s voice at the Jordan — “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” It ends with the Father’s voice from the cloud on the mountain — “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” (Matthew 17:5, ESV) Between those two declarations, the whole of Jesus’ public ministry has unfolded. Transfiguration Sunday is where the season arrives: the same beloved Son, the same Father’s delight, the same Spirit’s anointing — but now disclosed not at the water’s edge to a prophet and a dove, but on a mountain top in blinding light before three disciples who will shortly be the first witnesses of the resurrection. The Epiphany is complete. Lent begins next week.

The Biblical Event

The Gospel for Year A is Matthew 17:1–9. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, and before them he is transfigured: “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” (Matthew 17:2, ESV) Moses and Elijah appear and speak with him. Peter, characteristically, offers to build three tabernacles. And then the cloud descends — the same cloud that covered Sinai when Moses received the law, the same cloud that filled the tabernacle with glory — and the Father’s voice speaks from it: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” (Matthew 17:5, ESV) The disciples fall on their faces in fear. Jesus comes and touches them: “Rise, and have no fear.” (Matthew 17:7, ESV) When they lift their eyes, they see no one but Jesus only. The vision is over. The descent from the mountain begins. And Jesus instructs them to tell no one until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.

Year B appoints Mark 9:2–9, the most compressed account, characteristically Markan in its urgency and its insistence on the disciples’ incomprehension — Peter did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Year C appoints Luke 9:28–36, where Luke’s distinctive touch transforms the event: Jesus goes up the mountain to pray, and it is while he is praying that the appearance of his face is altered and his clothing becomes dazzling white. In Luke, Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus about his exodus — his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Luke alone supplies the subject of the conversation on the mountain: the cross. The Transfiguration in Year C names explicitly what the collect in all three years assumes: the glory is revealed before the passion.

The Theological Significance

Moses and Elijah on the mountain are not incidental. They are the Law and the Prophets — the two great divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures, both represented by the figures who encountered God on mountains. Moses received the law at Sinai and his face shone with reflected glory afterward. Elijah fled to Horeb, the mountain of God, and heard the still small voice. Both are appointed in the Old Testament readings for this Sunday: Exodus 24:12–18 in Year A (Moses ascending Sinai into the cloud), Exodus 34:29–35 in Year C (Moses’ shining face on descent), and 1 Kings 19:9–18 in Year B (Elijah at the mountain of God). The Transfiguration does not set the Old Testament aside. It fulfills it — Moses and Elijah do not disappear because they are superseded; they appear because they are completed.

Psalm 2, appointed for Year A, is the great royal psalm of divine sonship: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” (Psalm 2:7, ESV) Psalm 99, appointed for Years A and C, is the holy mountain psalm: “He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud… Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called upon his name.” (Psalm 99:6–7, ESV) Both psalms frame the Transfiguration within the Old Testament’s sustained vision of the God who speaks from clouds on mountains to those he has chosen. The Father’s voice at the Transfiguration is not new. It is the culmination of the whole history of the divine voice speaking on mountains.

2 Peter 1:16–21, the appointed Epistle in both Year A and Year B, is Peter’s direct eyewitness testimony to the Transfiguration: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16–18, ESV) Peter stakes the entire credibility of the apostolic proclamation on what he saw and heard on the mountain. The Transfiguration is not a symbol or a theological metaphor. It is an event that happened to three named disciples on a specific mountain, and Peter was one of them. The Epistle then moves from the audible voice on the mountain to the written prophetic word: “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” (2 Peter 1:19, ESV) The Transfiguration confirms the prophets, and the prophets illumine the darkness until the full light arrives.

Year C’s Epistle, 2 Corinthians 3:12–4:2, gives the Transfiguration its ecclesiological application: where Moses’ face shone with reflected glory and faded, the glory given to those who behold the Lord with unveiled faces is transforming and permanent: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV) This is the verse the Transfiguration collect echoes in its petition: changed into his likeness from glory to glory. The collect does not ask that we would see the Transfiguration. It asks that beholding the light of his countenance by faith, we would be changed by what we see.

The BCP 2019 Collect and Preface

The BCP 2019 appoints the following collect for the Last Sunday of Epiphany on page 604: “O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” Every phrase of this collect carries weight. Before the passion: the sequence is deliberate and non-negotiable. The glory is not the reward that comes after the cross. It is the revelation that precedes it and interprets it. The disciples who see the Transfiguration are the disciples who will sleep in Gethsemane and flee at the arrest. What they have been shown on the mountain is not a consolation for what is coming but the ground on which what is coming can be endured. Beholding by faith: we do not ascend the mountain. We behold by faith what the disciples saw by sight. And the beholding, the collect insists, is transforming: we are strengthened to bear our cross and changed into his likeness from glory to glory. The Transfiguration is not only something that happened to Jesus. It is something that is meant to happen to the Church.

The BCP 2019 appoints the Preface of the Transfiguration for this Sunday’s Eucharist: “Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh, you have caused a new light to shine in our hearts, to give the knowledge of your glory in the face of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 2019, p. 153) The preface names the mystery of the Incarnation as the ground of the Transfiguration. It is because the Word became flesh — because God took on a human face — that the knowledge of God’s glory is now given in the face of Jesus Christ. The Transfiguration does not reveal a new God. It discloses the glory that was always present in the Word made flesh, briefly and deliberately unveiled before three disciples on a mountain, so that the Church might know whose face it looks for.

Transfiguration Sunday as Hinge

Transfiguration Sunday is the hinge on which the liturgical year turns from Epiphany to Lent. The Season of Epiphany has been the season of the light growing — the successive manifestations of who Jesus is, from the star over Bethlehem to the dove at the Jordan to the healings and teachings and controversies of the ministry. On Transfiguration Sunday the light reaches its fullest earthly disclosure. And then, in the days that follow, Ash Wednesday arrives and the Church turns its face toward the cross.

The collect names this turn explicitly: the glory was revealed before the passion. The cross is not the surprise that interrupts the glory. It is the destination the glory was always pointing toward. Moses and Elijah on the mountain speak of the exodus Jesus is about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The bright cloud descends, the disciples fall on their faces, and Jesus says: Rise, and have no fear. Have no fear of what is coming. You have seen who I am. That seeing is meant to carry them through what follows.

This is why the Transfiguration belongs at the end of Epiphany rather than the beginning of Lent. It is the last gift the season gives before the season of the cross begins: a sight of the glory that makes the cross bearable, a knowledge of whose face will be among the dead, a confirmation that the one walking toward Jerusalem is the one whose face shone like the sun. Lent does not begin in ignorance. It begins in light — a light the Church has been given, a light it carries into the forty days ahead.

Transfiguration Sunday in Anglican Worship

White vestments are worn on Transfiguration Sunday, appropriate to its festal and luminous character as a Sunday of divine glory. The liturgy on this Sunday stands in marked contrast to the Ash Wednesday service that will follow within days: the brightness of the Transfiguration against the ashes of penitence, the Father’s voice of delight against the words of mortality. Anglican parishes observe both in close succession, and the proximity is intentional. The Church that has seen the glory of the Lord on Sunday is the Church that will receive ashes on Wednesday — and the ashes are not the cancellation of the glory but the path through which the glory is appropriated.

The Transfiguration Sunday sermon has a natural shape given by the collect: the glory before the passion, the cross borne in the strength of that vision, and the transformation from glory to glory that comes through beholding. It is one of the richest preaching Sundays of the year — the convergence of the mountain theophany, the eyewitness testimony of 2 Peter, the Moses and Elijah typology, and the 2 Corinthians theology of unveiled faces all press toward the same pastoral point: what have you seen, and are you letting it change you?

Observing This Sunday

Transfiguration Sunday always falls on the Last Sunday of Epiphany, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The collect is on page 604 of the BCP 2019 and the lectionary readings are on page 720. Ash Wednesday follows in four days.

To observe this Sunday: pray the collect from BCP 2019, p. 604, and let its three petitions be the day’s prayer: to behold by faith the light of his countenance, to be strengthened to bear the cross, and to be changed into his likeness from glory to glory. Read the Gospel for the year and sit with the disciples on the mountain — the shining face, the cloud, the voice, and the touch: Rise, and have no fear. Read 2 Peter 1:16–21 and receive Peter’s eyewitness testimony: we were with him on the holy mountain. Read the appointed Old Testament passage and trace the mountain theology from Sinai to Horeb to the mount of Transfiguration.

Let the Sunday do what it is designed to do: give the Church a sight of the glory before it turns toward the cross. Ash Wednesday is four days away. The question Transfiguration Sunday puts to the congregation is the question the disciples faced on the descent from the mountain: having seen who he is, will you follow him where he is going?

Conclusion

Transfiguration Sunday is the last Sunday of the season of light before the season of the cross. It closes the Epiphany season with the fullest possible disclosure of who the child in the manger, the voice at the Jordan, the teacher on the hillside actually is: the beloved Son in whom the Father delights, the one whose face shines like the sun, the Lord before whom Moses and Elijah stand in attendance, the one who descends from the mountain and sets his face toward Jerusalem. The season has been asking the question. Transfiguration Sunday is the answer. And the answer is given before the passion so that the passion can be endured — and more than endured, entered willingly, by those who have seen the glory and know whose cross they are being invited to bear.

“O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory.” (BCP 2019, p. 604)