This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday in Lent.  The scholar Pheme Perkins (632) provides a good final reflection for our Sunday gospel:

Despite providing the most dramatic evidence of Jesus’ relationship to God of any epiphany scene in the Gospel, the transfiguration cannot override the necessity of Jesus’ suffering and death. It does sharpen the paradox of the cross. Although God spared Moses and Elijah from the normal processes of death, not only does God’s own beloved Son die, but also his death is at the hands of his enemies. Even the affirmations of exaltation and entry into the glory of his Father (8:38) cannot nullify the scandal of the cross. God’s command to heed the word of Jesus gives his teaching the authority of divine revelation.

Christians frequently think of the divinity of Jesus in terms of heavenly glory or the triumph of the parousia without recognizing the real presence of God on the cross. We tend to think that Jesus is most clearly the Son of God in glory, not in suffering. This passage challenges us to revise our understanding of how God’s presence comes to the world. The command to silence reminds Christians that glory and suffering cannot be separated. Appearances of glory do not provide evidence for God’s truth. Sometimes people expect historians to describe Jesus as such an overpowering personality that others will be compelled to believe. Or they are scandalized by books that treat Jesus as someone whom the educated elite of his time would hardly have noticed. Mark warns that faith grasps hold of a different reality. Dramatic miracles and heavenly visions do not create faith. Christians know that the crucified Jesus is now risen and is exalted with God. Jesus Christ is present to believers without signs and wonders.

Although Mark never lets us forget the reality of the cross, the transfiguration also reminds us of the heavenly basis for our faith in Jesus. At Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:9–11) God declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” The transfiguration confirms that testimony just as Jesus begins to instruct his disciples about the cross. The presence of Moses and Elijah reminds us that the death and resurrection of Jesus are the goal of the story of God’s salvation in the Law and the Prophets. The God who delivered Moses and Elijah will certainly be with Jesus and his disciples. The living presence of Moses and Elijah also reminds us that Jesus is not merely a great figure from the past. The Jesus of Christian faith lives as God in a way that transcends the life of the saints in heaven. As Paul says in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39)

Image credit: Detail of “The Transfiguration of Jesus” by Raphael (1516-1520) | Vatican Museum | PD-US