Sermon for Sunday, February 15, 2026

February 15, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 17:1-9






In Protestant churches, Transfiguration Sunday is always the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Because we’re on a three year lectionary cycle, we get the story from all three Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, one per year. There is no transfiguration story in John, but the fact that the other three Gospel writers include this story tells us how important the story was to the earliest believers.


In all three versions of the story, the disciples do as they are instructed and keep quiet about what they’ve seen, at least at first. We celebrate this festival thousands of years later, so at some point they told someone. Some stories are just too good to keep quiet, after all. Church scholars think this is the kind of story that makes sense and is more helpful in retrospect, in those post-resurrection years when everyone is trying to make sense of what they have experienced.


The Transfiguration story comes in the middle of the story of the life of Jesus, yet it may feel familiar, like some elements of an earlier story have been transfigured into this one. With the heavens opening again and the voice declaring the worth of Jesus again, the Transfiguration echoes the baptism of Jesus, which we celebrated a month ago. At his baptism, Jesus hasn’t yet started his ministry, and God is pleased. Now, 14 chapters later, God is still pleased.


So why does Jesus command silence? Why not have the disciples go out and tell what they have seen? In this text, we see the tension between knowing when to keep God’s glory hidden and when to reveal it. If you’re like me, you may remember last week’s Gospel passage that told us not to keep our light hidden away—and yet, here is Jesus, seeming to tell us to wait a bit. Ancient lamps were more like candles than modern lamps, and we know that sometimes, flames need to be protected or they will go out. Maybe that’s why Jesus asks for silence, at least for a little bit.


Throughout the life of Jesus, we see that God’s way is not the world’s way. In the transfiguration story, we see this tension operating in ways that we might recognize. Peter’s reaction is the same across all of the transfiguration stories in each Gospel: “Let’s stay here longer! I’ll put up a tent for each of you.” This word tent is sometimes translated as booth.


The actual word in Greek is not tent or booth but tabernacle. A tabernacle is a sort of tent, designed to be a movable temple, the very first type of worship space the Jews had when Moses led them, the design of which would also be the foundation of the design of the Temple.


I’ve often been suspicious of Peter in this story, as if he’s some sort of modern influence peddler. What’s next? Will they sell souvenirs? Charge admission? But there’s nothing in the text to support my view of Peter. What’s more likely is that he wants to make the moment more permanent. Let seekers come up the mountain to them, if they’re so eager. And meanwhile, Peter gets to be part of the conversation with Jesus, Elijah and Moses.


It’s understandable that Peter wants to make this time of togetherness last. Who among us has not had a similar mountain top experience? In fact, I’d say that’s one of the big issues believers face, the tension between wanting to be away from it all, learning from wise ones in a small, supportive community, and the requirement to be with strangers in the world. It’s most striking, for me at least, when I’ve been part of a great retreat, and I find myself weeping as I’m driving home because I don’t want a great retreat to end. However, one of the purposes of a retreat is to give us space to strengthen our faith, so that we can live in the world, meeting strangers, sharing the truth with them when the time is right. We can’t stay permanently at the retreat center, although it is so very tempting. We strengthen our faith so that it stays a strong fortress as we go about our lives in the non-retreat world.


So, it’s easy to understand Peter wanting to stay on the mountain top. But why are the disciples so afraid when the cloud descends and they hear the voice proclaiming Christ’s glory? They’re fine with Elijah and Moses appearing and Jesus shining in a new way, but a voice from the cloud makes them fall down in fear?


Notice what it takes to restore them. The Gospel of Matthew is the only Transfiguration story across the three Gospels that has Jesus touch the disciples and tell them not to be afraid. Here is where we see the human side of Jesus, after seeing the holy side of Jesus in the Transfiguration. It’s his touch that calms their fear, and this detail is reminiscent of other ways that Jesus shows that God is not remote, but that we serve a God who is intimately involved in our lives. This detail reminds me of the post-resurrection stories, where Jesus lets Thomas touch his wounds, his wounds which are very human, still bloody, but also holy. By touching the wounds, Thomas believes.


At the point where the disciples hear the voice come to them from the cloud, do they know who Jesus is? Just a chapter earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Peter has declared that Jesus is the Messiah—but what does he mean when he uses the word messiah? It’s a question that threads its way across all of the Gospels as we see everyone asking it: the crowds that follow, the tax collectors, the wounded and sick, the Pharisees and religious leaders, and soon, other types of leaders too, Roman rulers ask—who is this guy Jesus? And in this chapter, we have an answer from God: “my son, the beloved.”


The larger question is one that believers have contemplated since the time of Jesus—what does it mean that Jesus was the son of God? The Gospel of Matthew grounds the answer in the ancient Covenant, with echoes back to Moses in today’s Gospel reading. We have God speaking to humans out of a cloud in both stories, God both revealed and hidden. Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, we are reminded that God is not doing something brand new with Jesus—Jesus says again and again that Jesus did not come to do away with the law and the prophets, but to fulfill what is revealed to Moses on a different mountain, where Moses receives the law, the law that generations of prophets will call the people back to when they stray.


Jesus tells his disciples to tell no one yet, because he knows that there are difficult days ahead, days where God’s glory will be obscured. Surely he must hope that the disciples will remember, that during the darkness, the memory of Jesus transfigured will give them strength to survive.

On Wednesday, the season of Lent begins. In the ancient church, Lent was supposed to be a time when Christians remembered Jesus and his decision to go to Jerusalem, to battle all the forces of evil there, and earliest Christians remembered by waging their own battles against the forces that would lead them astray. In our modern times, this might be translated as giving up chocolate or caffeine, but early Christians were much more rigorous in their fasting. Lent is supposed to be the most difficult seasons of the church year, a time of penitence and fasting, a wilderness time where we test ourselves to get ready for the celebration season of Easter and Pentecost. The idea of having Lenten disciplines should also strengthen us for our own times of trial and tribulation, even though we can’t be sure when they will come our way or what they will look like.


It’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. It’s easy to lose track of God, particularly during times of chaos, as one season shifts to the next. On this Transfiguration Sunday, let us resolve to let Jesus touch our lives with his transforming power. May our Lenten disciplines reveal Christ’s glory to us and fortify to leave the mountain top, ready to do the work that is ours to do.