TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY

Transfiguration of Jesus from Mafa

While doing graduate work in Communications for an art atelier at a university, an artist told me during an interview that there are two significant obsessions in the visual arts. The human figure and the landscape.
Thinking back generally about art expression over the millenia it appears this is a keen observation but also an insight with great import. Obsession with the self and one's environs is most likely expected as a given fundamental of human nature. But as with most obsessions, this can blind us to such other perspectives and opportunities that lend the possibility of seeing our selves and our environs as "transfigured." In the Mafa illustration above the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus acts as a fulcrum in the gospel story, the lives of the disciples and as well the early development of what would come to be called Christianity. 

How does the Mafa rendition of this event speak to transfiguraton? What else is being transfigured besides the figure Jesus? What do you take from this transfiguration? Does it change how you see your landscape?


Mark 9:2-9
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,

9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"

9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.