It may be a good thing that Transfiguration Sunday happens only once a year. After all, it’s not just that Jesus’ transfiguration is even to his closest friends among the most puzzling moments in his earthly life. It’s also that the RCL editors seemed to struggle to find passages outside of the gospels that speak well into Jesus’ transfiguration.
Yet preachers might let the Holy Spirit help us address this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s truths by focusing on verse 18’s transformational imagery. We might especially point to Paul’s stirring claim that the Spirit is literally transfiguring us to be more and more like our risen Savior, Lord and friend Jesus.
But, of course, the apostle also alludes to other transformations. In verse 13 he writes, “We are not like [kathaper*] Moses, who would put a veil [kalymma] over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing [atenisai] the end of [telos] what was passing away [katargoumenou].”
This is Paul’s “take” on Exodus 34’s description of Moses’ descent from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments in tow. In verse 39 we read that Moses “was not aware that his face was radiant” after meeting with the Lord. It’s almost as if Moses could see in Israel’s eyes the terror caused by the transformation that came from his encounter with the living God. So once Moses finished speaking with God’s Israelite people, “he put a veil over his face” (33) until he met with God again (35).
Paul, however, interprets Moses’ veil as covering another transformation, what 2 Corinthians 3:13 calls “the end of what was passing away.” This is not an easy passage to interpret. Yet preachers may not need to say more about it than this: the old Sinai covenant was only temporary; it was katargoumenou (“passing away”). Like Moses’ glory, the Sinaitic covenant’s glory faded.
God made it temporary in part in order to point God’s adopted children ahead to the even greater glory of God’s covenant with us in Jesus Christ. In Christ God transformed the nature of God’s relationship with God’s people into a faith-based one that receives God’s grace with faith in Jesus Christ.
Yet Paul mourns that much of Israel just didn’t “get” that transformation. Some of his Jewish contemporaries tenaciously clung to the dead way of relating to God by trying to keep God’s commandments. “Their minds [noemata] were made dull [eporothe],” the apostle grieves in verse 14, “for to this day the same veil remains when the old [palaias] covenant [diathekes] is read. Even to this day [heos semeron] when Moses is read, a veil covers [keitai] their faces [kardian aouton].”
These are hard words to read and contemplate for anyone who loves people who don’t yet seem to love Jesus Christ. Some of my own dearest friends are Jews over whom the veil of unbelief in Jesus hangs. Preachers and hearers almost certainly know people whose hearts also seem hard toward the Savior of the world.
This “hardness” offers preachers an opportunity to pastorally and humbly lament with our hearers the plight of people whom we love who don’t yet love the Lord. However, it also offers an opportunity to proclaim hope for unbelievers who are still alive.
After all, we can almost hear Paul shout in verse 16, “But [De] whenever [henika] anyone turns [epitrepse] to the Lord, the veil is taken away [periairetai].” Stony hearts toward God need not have the last word. After all, whenever people, in The Message’s paraphrase, “turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are – face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone.”
Christians may disagree about the sequence of people’s turning to God and God’s softening of our hearts. But at the heart of Paul’s argument is that no one removes the “veil” that is his or her own unbelief. The covering is only and always graciously taken away by God. No person transforms him or herself into a follower of Jesus. The Spirit equips us with the obedient faith in Jesus Christ that receives God’s grace.
Yet even once God graciously transforms God’s adopted children from believers into unbelievers, God isn’t yet done with God’s gracious work of transformation. In verse 18 Paul celebrates how “We all [pantes], who with unveiled faces [anakekalymmeno prospopo] contemplate [katoptrizomenoi] the Lord’s glory [doxan], are being transformed into [metamorphoumetha] his image [eikona] with ever-increasing glory [apo doxes eis doxes], which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
This is a breathtakingly lovely as well as theologically and pastorally rich profession! Preachers might call attention to at least some of its more startling assertions. Paul insists the work of transformation is first of all not some DIY project. Even the holiest Christians aren’t transforming ourselves.
While we may cooperate in God’s renovation of us, we’re more like children who fetch the nails or bring something to drink to the contractors. The real “contractor” who’s doing all the remodeling work on us is the One who Paul calls Kyriou (“the Lord”), who is Pneumatos (“the Spirit).
Verse 18 uses, what’ more, transfiguration language when it speaks of God’s remodeling work on God’s adopted children (hence the RCL’s appointment of 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 as this year’s Transfiguration Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson). After all, the root of the Greek word metamorphoumetha that we translate as “being transformed” is the same as the root of the word English translations render as “transfigured.”
This suggests a stunning parallel between Jesus’ transfiguration and his adopted siblings’ transformation. After all, among other things, Jesus’ transfiguration revealed to some of his closest friends his true glory that his incarnation largely obscured. So preachers might suggest something slightly similar about Christians whom God is transforming. God’s ongoing transformation of us is revealing the glorious selves that God created us to be but that our sinfulness often disguises.
What the NIV and other translations render as “contemplate” or “behold” (katoptrizomenoi) can also be translated as something like “behold as in a mirror.” So it’s almost as if Paul suggests looking at the Scriptures portrayal of God is almost like looking God’s adopted children’s reflection in a mirror.
Through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit alone, Jesus’ friends in some ways resemble God. This echoes Genesis 1’s creative work of God fashioning humans in God’s image. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson suggests that the Spirit is recreating us to more closely resemble our first parents before they fell into sin.
Of course, that work isn’t done yet. The apostle’s use of the present indicative middle or passive verb tense metamorphoumetha (“being transformed into”) suggests that the Spirit’s transforming is both being done to Christians and ongoing.
What’s more, the Spirit isn’t doing that overhaul just on “super-spiritual” Christians. God is busy transforming pantes (“all”) of us. That work may be taking place more slowly in some than in others. The Spirit’s transformation of Jesus’ followers may take a variety of shapes. But Paul leaves no doubt: God is at work transforming all of God’s dearly beloved people.
But the apostle rejoices that God isn’t just continuing to transform Jesus’ friends and followers. God is also making us to increasingly resemble our Lord Jesus Christ. God is enhancing the “family likeness” by making God’s adopted children to be more and more like our “big brother,” the crucified, risen and ascended Christ.
God’s Spirit is transforming us, celebrates Paul in verse 18b, apo doxes eis doxes (“with ever-increasing glory”). God’s Spirit is transforming us so that we more and more reflect God’s own brilliant glory. The result of the Spirit’s transformation of us is, as The Message so beautifully paraphrases this, “our faces shining with the brightness of [God’s] face.”
This encourages, among other things, Jesus’ followers to stay patient with God, ourselves and each other. God isn’t yet done renovating our adopted brothers and sisters in Christ or us. God isn’t yet done making God’s dearly beloved people’s faces shine with God’s face’s glory. So we continue to beg the Spirit to make us as patient with our fellow Christians and ourselves as God is with us.
*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.
[Note: In addition to these weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, we also have a resource page for Lent and Easter with more preaching and worship ideas as well as sample sermons on the Year C Lectionary texts.]
Illustration
The December 20, 2016, edition of the New York Times included an article entitled, “The Brilliance of a Stradivarius Might Rest Within Its Wood.” It reported that for hundreds of years the best violinists have almost unanimously preferred Stradivari or Guarneri instruments. But no one had been sure why other makers couldn’t replicate their sounds.
The Times went on to report on a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggested the answer may lie in the wood: “Mineral treatments, followed by centuries of aging and transformation from playing, might give these instruments unique tonal qualities.”
Scholars found evidence of chemical treatments in the Stradivarius and Guarneri violins’ wood that contained aluminum, copper and other elements that aren’t found in later generations of violin makers. While no one is sure whether this was a deliberate move by the famous violin makers, researchers now suspect that it makes a huge difference in the quality of sound a violin makes.
However, top violinists also feel like the old violins of Stradivarius and Guarneri vibrate more freely, perhaps the result of centuries of vibrations caused by playing them. These vibrations allow violins to express a wider set of emotions.
All of this led a colleague to wonder if this is a kind of metaphor for God’s work of transforming us to be more and more like Jesus Christ. “Our Christ likeness, after all,” he writes, “comes from both the ‘soaking’ of the Holy Spirit and years of practice in acting, talking and even thinking like Jesus.”
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Sermon Commentary for Sunday, March 2, 2025
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 Commentary