Transfiguration Sunday: Up and Down the Mountain with Jeffrey Pugh #LectioCast

Tripp Fuller

God breaks into the present: with a glory that humans embody. The Lectionary sets us up with a series of interlocking texts that richly inform one another.

Exodus 24:12 Moses goes up a mountain, as do Elijah and Jesus after him. God meets Moses in the cloud, and tabernacle and glory ensue.

Psalm 2 If we want to know what God’s words to Jesus mean, we first have to listen to what God’s words meant when spoken to Israel’s king. Handle’s Messiah, anyone?

Matthew 17:1-9 Rampant parallels with the Exodus text and other OT passages. Critical parallel with the baptism scene. Jesus is being disclosed in his future, post-resurrection, God-given, enthronement glory. (Thank God for hypens!)

2 Peter 1:16-21 Go crazy with eyewitness testimony that’s not, actually, being given by an eyewitness!

Books discussed this week: The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the End Times.

Jeffrey C. Pugh is the Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of Religious Studies at Elon College. His scholarly work has spanned the spectrum from Nazi-era theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to discussions of religion and science. He is the author of several books including Devil’s Ink: Blog from the Basement Office and Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times. Most recently and most importantly he is author of The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the End Times.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, and blogger who lives in San Francisco, CA where he is currently Pastoral Director for the Newbigin House of Studies. His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is hot off the presses. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.