One explanation I read on this passage compares
it to giving birth, to that moment when, as I still
remember well,  one part of you wants the
birth to happen and the other part of you,
which I suppose finds it just too large an event
to contemplate, doesn't. It is a moment in life
when everything is about to change for ever, and
I suppose its a moment when joy and fear meet,
and most importantly we have no control over it,
we have handed ourselves over to God.

The Transfiguration is just such a moment
for the disciples were called into a new being,
a moment they wanted to remain, in a way they
neither wanted to go forward or back. As it is
hard to describe how a mother feels giving birth
so it is hard to imagine how the disciples felt
at that moment.

Jesus was preparing the disciples, teaching them
that he would be rejected, suffer death and then
rise again.

He takes the three disciples up the mountain,
believed to be Mount Tabor, with its winding
road still taken by pilgrims, and at the summit
comes this transforming experience.

 Christ's robes become dazzling white, and they
 have been joined by Moses and Elijah, and for
 Peter it was a moment he wanted to cling on to.
 Try to imagine how you would have felt if you
 had been there.  It must have seen quite
 beyond comprehension or even reason, it must
 have filled them with every emotion.  Peter
 knew it was special, and yet in it was perhaps
 security, it was a a scene embedded in the Jewish
 faith for they were in the presence of Moses and
 Elijah, the prophets they had learned about and
 followed. But that moment was only to be a
 transforming moment, the cloud came Moses and
 Elijah disappeared, and Jesus is alone with them
 in his normal clothes.

 But that moment had transformed them for
 not only had Moses and Elijah spoken to Jesus
 about his coming death, but they had heard God
 speaking and telling them that Jesus was his Son.
 The disciples were called to listen and see Jesus
 not only in the line of the prophets but also as
 the beloved son of God acting in the world in a
 new way.

 Their prophets were not being denied, but the
 work is passing on to new people, there was new
 work, and most importantly there were new ways
 of being in a relationship with God.  The disciples
 may have been terrified, but they moved on to say
 yes to God’s call, to truly answer God's call.

 As the disciples were called to leave that safe
 feeling of that moment on the mountain, so we are
 called to leave our comfort zones, to meet the
 challenge of reaching out to those who do not know
 the Gospel, to meet the challenge of the 21st century.
 To look at what the church calls 'Fresh Expressions',
 to see if we are really making the church seem
 relevant to those on the outside. For however
 unfortunate it may be, it is no good us saying ' we
 are relevant, we are teaching the Good News' if
 those who never come to church do not perceive us
 as doing so.

   Like many thousands of others I have made a
 pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I have stood at all the
 sites we know so well from the Bible, and I have felt,
 what I can only describe as a strange power, as I
 stood there. Like Peter I suppose I wanted to
 keep those special moments and stay in them, to
 be cocooned in the emotion without having to share it.

 For Peter wasn't alone when he wanted to keep that
 moment, most of us would like to keep things as they
 are/? were, but faith is not like that.  We have
 to move on.  A pilgrimage can't be just a visit to
 a Holy place, it surely must also be our life's
 journey of discovery, we must be pilgrims all our
 life.

 Our eyes may suddenly be opened to some new
 challenge, we may not like the look of it, but
 something tells us we have to listen and look.
 For it may be that moment of personal
 transformation, we may be about to make a quantum
 leap in our interpretation of God's message for us
 personally.  We may feel we do not want to leave
 our comfort zone, we do not want to change, but
 when God is working in us, both individually and as
 a church, new ideas are like new birth, we
 cannot stop them. We may be scared , think we
 won't be able to cope, but we will, for God
 never lets us down, he wants us for his own, to grasp
 the challenge and to share the vision he has given us
 with the non-believers and sceptics.

 In the passage the disciples heard 'This is my Son,
 listen to him.'  God is saying that to us today, now, -
 Are we truly listening to him?  Amen