The Glory on Its Way to Die

Peter, John, and James climbed the mountain to watch a man pray, and came down having seen the inside of heaven. Luke tells us it happened while Jesus was praying — the most ordinary thing he did, done ten thousand times where they could see him — and this time, as he prayed, “the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29). For one blazing moment the veil slipped, and the glory that had walked beside them all along, hidden inside a face they thought they knew, showed through.

Then two men stood with him: Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets — the two figures in Israel’s memory who had each met God on a mountain and lived — the whole Old Testament come to attend its Author. And of everything they might have discussed, Luke records the subject: they “spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). The word Luke uses for departure is exodos — the going-out. Israel’s first exodus led a people out of slavery through blood and water; this one would lead the world out of a deeper bondage through a darker sea. On the mountain of glory, the conversation is about the hill of death. The two are one road.

Peter, half-asleep and wholly overwhelmed, wants to build three tents and stay — to freeze the shining moment and move in. It is our instinct too: to seize the mountaintop and refuse the valley, to want a glory that never has to go down and suffer. Heaven answers him not with a rebuke but with a redirection. A cloud comes, and a voice: “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). Moses and Elijah yield the floor. The Law and the Prophets have spoken for centuries; now they fall silent and point. There is one Word left to hear, and he is a person.

Why unveil the glory at all, only to hood it again and walk down to die? One reason the church has long given, reaching back to the ancient fathers, is that the disciples would need it. As Leo the Great wrote of this very moment, its foremost purpose was “to remove the offense of the cross from the disciples’ heart, and to prevent their faith being disturbed by the humiliation of His voluntary Passion by revealing to them the excellence of His hidden dignity.” They were shown the splendor so that the horror to come would not break them — so that when they saw him bound and beaten and dead, some memory of the light would hold, and keep their faith from shattering on the cross.

And here is the wonder we can miss: the brightness on the mountain was not new — it was the glory usually hidden. “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14) — the very glory that tabernacled among us, veiled in flesh so that he could come near enough to save. When the Word became flesh, he drew the veil over the light on purpose. He did not climb down from the mountain to lose his glory; he laid it aside to carry ours up.

So we are not left staring up a slope we cannot climb. The Son the Father chose came down it, on purpose, toward Jerusalem. When the light of our own days dims and the valley is long, the command still stands over us, gentle and sufficient: listen to him. Everything the Law required and the Prophets promised is standing in one place, with our name in his mouth and our exodus in his hands.