The Day He Shone Like the Sun

That long road to Jerusalem had begun far up in the north, near a town called Caesarea Philippi. There, months before Jericho, Jesus first told his friends plainly what Jerusalem would do to him.

"The leaders in Jerusalem will make me suffer," he said. "They will kill me, and on the third day I will be raised to life."

Peter grabbed his arm. "Never, Lord! That must never happen to you!"

But Jesus did not take it back.

Six days later he led Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, just the four of them. They climbed until the villages below looked like crumbs on a tablecloth.

Then, right in front of them, Jesus changed. His face shone like the sun. His clothes turned as white as light, so bright that the three friends squinted and shaded their eyes.

Two men were standing with him, talking with him. One was Moses, who had carried God's law down from Mount Sinai. The other was Elijah, the great prophet. Both had been gone from the earth for hundreds of years. (Moses knew about shining faces. After he talked with God on Sinai, his own face glowed so brightly that the people were afraid to come near him, so he covered it with a veil.)

Peter was terrified, and when Peter was scared, he talked.

"Lord, it is good for us to be here!" he said. "If you want, I'll put up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

While he was still talking, a bright cloud came down and covered them all. A voice spoke out of the cloud.

"This is my Son, whom I love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!"

The three friends threw themselves face down on the ground, shaking. (Nobody mentioned the tents again.)

Then Jesus came over and touched them. "Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid."

They lifted their eyes. The cloud was gone. Moses and Elijah were gone. They saw no one but Jesus, looking the way he always did.

On the way down, he told them, "Don't tell anyone what you saw until I have been raised from the dead."

They had a question. "Why do the teachers of the law say Elijah has to come first?"

"Elijah does come first, to put everything right," Jesus said. "And Elijah has already come, but people did not know him. They did to him whatever they wanted. In the same way, they will make me suffer."

Then the friends understood. He meant John the Baptist, who had come in rough hair clothes and a leather belt, just like Elijah, calling people back to God, and whom King Herod had killed.

Jesus walked down that mountain with his ordinary face and kept going toward Jerusalem. There he was killed on a cross, and on the third day he rose, just as he had told them. His three friends never forgot the light. Years later, Peter wrote that he had seen Jesus' greatness with his own eyes and heard the Father's voice on the holy mountain.

John wrote something too: Jesus is coming back with the clouds, and every eye will see him. On a rocky island far from home, John had seen him again. His face was like the sun shining at full strength, and John fell at his feet like a dead man. Jesus laid his right hand on him, the way he had on the mountain all those years before.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "I was dead, and look, I am alive forever and ever."