One of the most dramatic scenes in the gospel narrative is the account of “The Mount of Transfiguration.” It is a popular subject of both theologians and artists alike. Above is the painted dome of a church built atop modern day Mount Tabor in Israel, believed by many Christian archeologists to be the mountain referenced in Biblical text.
And here we see the same story captured by master painter of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael. What I find interesting about Raphael’s painting is the large crowd watching in shocked amazement, when we know in scriptural text that only the apostles Peter, James, and John actually witnessed the event.
I’m a bit of an amateur art enthusiast, so I did some digging into the opinions and writings of several art critics on the nature of the extended crowd in the lower portion of the painting, and I was fascinated with the meaning.
If you examine this lower region, beneath the scene of Jesus’s transfiguration and the three stunned apostles, you’ll find it to be a representation of what Raphael imagines to be happening elsewhere, simultaneously with Jesus’s other 9 disciples.
Matthew 17 contains the story of the transfiguration of Jesus, which takes up the first 13 verses of the chapter. In verse 14, Matthew switches to a different story, picking up immediately after Jesus, Peter, James, and John are coming down from the mountain. They find a boy oppressed by demons and stricken with seizures. The other 9 disciples had been trying to heal the boy, but were unable to do so without the presence of Jesus. Jesus immediately heals the boy, and rebukes his disciples for their faithlessness.
The lower region of the painting depicts the disciples trying and failing to heal this boy, and metaphorically reaching out towards the mountain to Jesus as the one true source of their power to accomplish kingdom work… And, that brings me to the point of this article.
The entire point of the story of the mount of transfiguration is the supremacy of Jesus compared to the law and the established religious system of his day.
This is demonstrated very intentionally when we examine the two heavenly witnesses that appear beside Jesus in the moment his glory was revealed. These two men serve as powerful symbols that wouldn’t have been lost on a Jewish audience: Moses the lawgiver, and Elijah the greatest of the Prophets. When Jesus stands conversing with these great men of the Judeo-Christian faith he is essentially proclaiming himself to be the ultimate fulfillment of all that is written in the Law and the Prophets, which is what the Jewish people called their scriptures: our Old Testament.
But we’re just getting to the best part…
Peter sees this incredible scene before him and he boldly speaks up, as Peter was known to do… He says, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
(Matthew 17:4 ESV)
In his well meaning assertion, Peter makes Jesus a peer with Moses and Elijah. In essence he is saying, “Yes! This is perfect! We have Jesus AND we have the Law! We have Jesus AND we have tradition! Let’s make a tabernacle for each of them!”
God makes it pretty clear, pretty quickly that he is not cool with this idea…
“He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’”
Matthew 17:5 ESV
I love that it notes “while he was still speaking.” God the Father basically interrupts Peter before he can dig himself in too deep, and surrounds the area with a bright cloud. This is another symbol that a Jewish audience would have immediately recognized as being symbolic of the presence of God, since it was the way He had manifested himself during the wilderness wanderings and over the ark of the covenant in the Tent of Meeting in the book of Exodus.
Notice that after God speaks, extolling his beloved Son, the disciples fall to the ground in abject terror. (God’s presence has been known to do that to people) But Jesus comes to his disciples, gently places a hand on their shoulder, and tells them not to be afraid… And I love this next verse:
“And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”
Matthew 17:8 ESV
Jesus only…
The Divine Trinity is explicitly clear on Mount Tabor… The pure doctrine of true Christianity is Jesus only. It isn’t Jesus plus the Law. It isn’t Jesus plus the prophets. It isn’t Jesus plus years of tradition. It isn’t Jesus plus the way Great-Great Grandma always used to do things… It is “Jesus only.”
When we attempt to add anything else to his work, we are behaving the exact same way as Peter, speaking in ignorance of something more magnificent than he could comprehend. When we instruct others and give our own traditions the same validity as the words of Jesus, we walk in the spirit of Pharisees who loved to add burdens of tradition to the teachings of the Jewish faith.
Live today in the shining, incomparable glory of Jesus, and let everything else melt away in the overwhelming magnificence of Jesus… Only Jesus.
Ponder Thoughts 
Beautiful glorious post today, Seth…only and always, Jesus.
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