Mark 8:27-9:8 Peter’s confession, passion prediction, bearing the cross, Transfiguration.
This is a great sneak peek into what is going to happen in Lent. The journey to Jerusalem is really an expanded and extended version of what happens here. It opens with the crowd of disciples asserting who Jesus is, with names varying, until it comes to naming Jesus as the Messiah. This is much like the entrance into Jerusalem, when Jesus is both past prophet and incoming Son of God. Jesus predicts the cross, the suffering, and the denial. Jesus then says that some will not die until they see the kingdom of God coming with power.
6 days later, just shy of a week, just the amount of time it takes for God to create everything, some of the disciples go up on the mountain with Jesus. And there is an encounter high on the hill/mountain when the identity of Jesus is revealed and cannot be denied. When things are done on the mountaintop, there is just Jesus, no one else. At the end of Lent, we close this story with just Jesus, high on a hill top. The other two who were there with him fade away, and the story on the top of the hill is just about Jesus.
We never get told the story just once. Before it happens, Jesus tells us it will happen. Before Jesus, God tells us he will happen in the prophets. We’ve been told, and told, and told. How is it we recognize what God is doing in the world and in our lives? Can we see that it happens over and over again? Can we see that God will not rest until we get it?
