Read Matthew 17:1-13 – The Mount of Transfiguration.
The skeptics claim that Jesus was only an itinerate Jewish rabbi, a teacher of virtue, an apocalyptic preacher, a moral man, even an enlightened kind of Buddha—anything but a divine figure, heaven forbid! There's a lot wrong with this idea, but there's also a reason it’s so attractive.
For starters, in the first three gospels, Jesus never comes out and says, “Attention everyone, I’m the Messiah—more than that, actually. I’m ‘THE’ Divine Being who has come down from heaven, and you should listen to me!”[1] Even if he would have clubbed us with these claims the skeptic would have no reason to doubt any less. No amount of proof will be sufficient for those who doubt. The proof exists for those who would believe. That seems to be the way God works. He provides evidence sufficient to believe, but not enough to eradicate all doubt. The Pharisees saw the miracles and attributed them to demons. Interestingly enough, none of the non-Christian sources of the first century denied Jesus’ reputation for supernatural activity. That has only been scientific atheism’s objection in the modern era.
Faith or Doubt
Of course, Jesus’ disciples believed in his claims of prophetic authority. The evidence includes:
(a) his pedigree as an interpreter of Jewish law; (b) his innovative ethical application for gentiles to become YHVH-fearing; (c) his miracles; (d) angelic and miraculous activity validating his unusual birth; (e) the prophetic witness of his identity (John the Baptist, Anna, Simeon); (f) the witness of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit to his ministry; (g) his later resurrection; (h) the ongoing works of his believing community that validated his movement.
It was this diversity of evidence that makes Jesus so hard to deny even if he is hard to believe—the “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” puzzle.
What makes Jesus uniquely more than another prophet, teacher, or charismatic figure is exactly what makes him scandalous—his divinity and his disgrace! The idea of a God incarnating but then dying for our sins required an entire reinterpretation of Jewish history. The ingredients were there, just hard to detect. Skeptics later claimed that his disciples invented the whole thing, not Jesus.
Jesus Revealing Himself
Just a month before Jesus' journey to the cross, he began revealing himself more explicitly to his closest followers. As the veil of secrecy began to lift, Jesus displayed his glory to three people on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17). But why only three of them? And why so brief? Why didn’t he just show the whole world his glory? At the end of the Transfiguration episode, even these three disciples, who were caught in some euphoria—"his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light"—were suddenly seized awake as from a dream "When they looked up they saw no one but Jesus." Their account is quite candid about the transitory nature of the experience.
If we look back to Matthew 16:21-28, Jesus predicted his unexpected death and departure, which on the face of it seems contradictory to his display of glory. Jesus then defended the necessity of his suffering to Peter with a sharp rebuke.
If the gospels are anything, at least they are honest about the confusion of Jesus' disciples at this point. How do these jarring and conflicting puzzle pieces fit together? How does “God is in the flesh transfigured among us” make any sense? But then, how is “God is defeated up on that terrible cross” any less incoherent? Glory and suffering. Divinity and crucifixion. It’s no wonder his disciples were trying to conjure meaning out of these chaotic events.
It is this ridge line that severs our interpretations of history. Those who believe in Jesus’ identity as the divine sacrificial lamb do so because of the constellation of evidence available to us. Those who do not believe in Jesus’ divinity are forced to claim the historical record is a fraud. They claim the disciples who ate, slept, walked with, and ministered alongside Jesus for three years fabricated the miraculous lies.
Is Jesus the Son of God whom the disciples claimed died as a substitute for our sins? Or is Jesus only a Rabbi that the disciples fictionalized into a superhuman figure? The traditional Christian dogma may be challenging to swallow, but it seamlessly dovetails with the other interlocking details of history. The skeptical answer may conveniently resolve one issue but runs into other historical and critical problems. My objective in this article hasn’t been to marshal evidence to disprove the grounds for doubt. Rather, I’m affirming the mystery implicit in how Jesus chose to reveal himself.
If Jesus is God, what do we learn about God?
If Jesus is God, then what do we learn about God? If he is, in fact, the divine “Son of Man” figure that the prophet Daniel witnessed receiving heavenly worship, if he is indeed Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant” dying for the people's sins, what do these confusing paradoxes reveal about God?
Jesus waited until the end to fully reveal his identity. There on the cross was God’s greatest act of self-disclosure. He has let his actions speak louder than his words. This is what I’m like—Holy! God is a just judge and hates evil enough to destroy it. He does not leave the evils that destroy the people unpunished. But God is also a loving Father who does not want to destroy his beloved children in their sins. This is what I’m like—sacrificial Love! So Jesus satisfied the debt of justice in himself. Justice and mercy collide on the cross.
His disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was doing at that moment, but the cross was the mystery that split history into two. This is who I am. Take me, or leave me. I won’t coerce you. You are free to love me. I am holy. I am loving. Sin will be punished. But I have paid for those who would choose to live in me and claim my mercies.
I, for one, tend to believe this is a cosmic story that is too enchanting for uneducated fisherman to invent in their spare time. The flavors that saturate the Hebrew Scriptures are divinely arranged in a wisdom, goodness, and justice that is beyond our comprehension at the cross.
[1] Though even in the synoptic gospels, he makes plenty of nuanced statements that were an implicit claim to such ministry and authority, Matthew 9:1-8; Matthew 24:30. The gospel of John, the latest of the written gospels, is more theologically explicit about his claims to deity.
Tags: love, holiness, jesus, mercy, cross, justice, sacrifice, passover, mystery, fraud, rabbi, evidence, transfiguration, crucifixion, skeptic
