Mtr Kelli Joyce

“...we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

Dear friends in Christ,

Can you imagine what it was like to witness the Transfiguration of Christ? One moment you and two of your friends are on a prayer hike with your mutual friend, a fellow Galilean, the son of a craftsman from a little rural town called Nazareth. Then the next moment his appearance is radically altered - his face and his clothes become white, not like the wool of sheep, but like the light of celestial bodies, too immense for us to even look directly at.

Jesus was, in so many ways, absolutely ordinary. He worked and slept and ate and laughed and cried. He got calluses on his hands and his feet. He learned to walk as a baby and scraped his knees as a boy. He had a clever sense of humor and a heart that was moved with compassion when he saw people begging on the side of the road. He was so like us.

But he has also always been so unique - in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He wasn’t just an especially holy prophet, or a remarkably good moral teacher. Peter and James and John saw this, even if they did not understand it - their very human teacher and friend was also full of holy and divine radiance beyond easy description.

I don’t believe this is an analogy or a metaphor. I don’t believe the story of the Transfiguration is a tall tale invented by early Christians - a cleverly devised myth, as it were. I believe that Jesus was truly the creator of the universe made flesh, made human, made ordinary. And the disciples got to glimpse, even if partially, and even if only for a few moments, the supernatural splendor embodied by a poor carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli