<p>9:2 <em>And after six days- </em>Lk. 9:28 speaks of &ldquo;about an eight days after&rdquo;, reckoning inclusively and perhaps wishing to express the idea of &lsquo;About a week later&rsquo;.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><em>Jesus took with him Peter, James and John- </em>Peter is mentioned first. An over-reaction against Catholic views of Peter can lead us to under-estimate the undoubted supremacy of Peter in the early ecclesia. He was in the inner three along with James and John, and in incidents involving them he is always mentioned first, as the leader (Mt. 17:1,2; 26:37; Mk. 5:37). He is the first to confess Jesus as Messiah (Mt. 16:13-17), the first apostle to see the risen Christ (Lk. 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5), the first to preach to the Gentiles. Being given the keys of the Kingdom is language which would have been understood at the time as the Lord making Peter the Chief Rabbi of His new ecclesia. The Acts record without doubt gives primacy to Peter as the leader and chief representative of Christ&rsquo;s fledgling church. But, humanly speaking, he was the most unlikely choice. The one who in the eyes of the world and brotherhood should have sat a fair while on the back burner, done the honourable thing&hellip; in fact, many honourable things, in just keeping a respectful and bashful silence. And there is no lack of evidence that Peter himself would have preferred that. But no, he was commissioned by the Lord to specifically lead the church. The early church was to be built on the rock of Peter. Whether we like to read this as meaning the rock of Peter&rsquo;s confession that Christ was the Son of God, or as simply meaning Peter&rsquo;s work as the manifestation of Christ,&nbsp;<em>the&nbsp;</em>rock, the Acts record shows clearly that the early church was built upon the specific work of Peter.</p><p><em>And brought them to a high mountain where they could be alone- </em>Being led up Gk. a high mountain by the leader to be present at a theophany is very much the language of Moses taking Joshua and earlier another trio of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu) with him part way up Mount Sinai, and likewise experiencing a shining face (Ex. 34:29-35) and God&rsquo;s voice from a cloud (Ex. 34:5). Moses returned from the Mount with shining face and the people were afraid- just as happened here (Mk. 9:6). Perhaps Peter vaguely comprehended all this when he wanted to build &lsquo;tabernacles&rsquo;, because this was the task given to Moses for Israel to complete. Lk. 9:32 speaks of the&nbsp;<em>exodus&nbsp;</em>which the Lord was to make at Jerusalem- a reference to His death. It was the Passover lamb which died at the Exodus- the implication is that now God&rsquo;s people were free to leave Egypt. Again, those secular fishermen were being shown (through the obvious parallel) that they were none less than Joshua in this new Israel which was being created; and after the Lord&rsquo;s departure, they were to take His place and lead God&rsquo;s Israel into the Kingdom.&nbsp;</p><p>The idea seems to be that just as He had taken the twelve into Gentile areas for a period of intense teaching of them, so even within the twelve He focused upon these three and wanted to spend time alone with them. He &ldquo;took&rdquo; them means to desire association with, to come close to. This was His intention, and one wonders whether the transfiguration was therefore unexpected for Him. Previously when He had tried to get the twelve away by themselves, there had been unexpected events which hampered that, such as the crowds following them, and even in Gentile areas the Lord seems to have been surprised by the faith and need to perform miracles which He encountered. In this case, it would be unintentional that the transfiguration is recorded as following straight after His words about His coming in His Kingdom; it wasn&rsquo;t as if the Lord said those words knowing that some would witness the transfiguration. According to Lk. 9:28, the Lord&rsquo;s intention was to go up the mountain &ldquo;to pray&rdquo;, but whilst He prayed, the transfiguration occurred. See on 16:28.&nbsp;</p><p>Luke mentions that the Lord took Peter, James and John, started praying and then there was a theophany; but in their human weakness they missed much of it because they fell asleep. This was exactly the situation in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the same three involved; it was as if He was seeking to train them for it. They were &ldquo;heavy&rdquo; with sleep (Lk. 9:32), and the word is only used elsewhere in the Gospels to describe how the same three were &ldquo;heavy&rdquo; with sleep in Gethsemane (Mt. 26:43; Mk. 14:40). Even if Jesus Himself wasn&rsquo;t consciously doing this, we have here an example of how the Divine hand leads us through experiences in order to prepare us for others which are to come later in similar form.&nbsp;</p><p><em>And he was transfigured before them</em>- The Lord's transfiguration was a cameo of the change that should be apparent deep within us, for Paul says that&nbsp;<em>we&nbsp;</em>should likewise be transformed (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18 s.w.), and he uses a related word in speaking of how Christ is to be &ldquo;formed&rdquo; within us (Gal. 4:19).&nbsp;<em>Metamorphoo</em>&nbsp;means a change of&nbsp;<em>morphe</em>; not necessarily of essential nature, because we too are to be transformed in this life, and have a new&nbsp;<em>morphe</em>&nbsp;develop in us (Gal. 4:19). But it could be that the &lsquo;other form&rsquo; in which the Lord now appeared was in the form in which He will be in the Kingdom. The idea of a change of&nbsp;<em>morphe</em>&nbsp;of the Lord Jesus recurs only one other time- in the hymn concerning the Lord&rsquo;s death in Phil. 2:6,7 where we read that although Had the&nbsp;<em>morphe</em>&nbsp;of God, He went through a seven stage progressive humiliation until He took on the&nbsp;<em>morphe</em>&nbsp;of a slave in the final death of the cross. One purpose of the transfiguration was for Moses and Elijah (who had both had Divinely arranged deaths or departures from ministry) to encourage the Lord concerning His upcoming death (Lk. 9:31). And yet He appeared as He will in the Kingdom, with shining Kingdom glory. The suffering and the glory were thereby manifested to and upon Him at the very same time, to show how inextricably linked they are. Perhaps too the point was being made that when He would hang there with the&nbsp;<em>morphe</em>&nbsp;of a dying and rejected slave, in Heaven&rsquo;s eyes, He was in Kingdom glory. John&rsquo;s equivalent of this is to record how the Lord spoke of His death as a &lsquo;lifting up&rsquo;, an idea which in Hebrew has connotations of &lsquo;glory&rsquo;. The shame of the cross was only from the world&rsquo;s viewpoint, whereas from a spiritual viewpoint, His death was the very acme of spiritual glory. The blood drenched garment became in God&rsquo;s eyes a glistering white raiment (Lk. 9:29). This would explain why in one sense the transfiguration was a Kingdom vision, and yet it was also about the Lord&rsquo;s death. Peter later reflected that he could preach with conviction about the coming of Christ because he was present at the transfiguration (2 Pet. 1:16-18). The Kingdom element of the experience cannot be divorced from the fact it was also an encouragement from Moses and Elijah concerning the cross. Note that John was also powerfully inspired by the transfiguration, opening his Gospel with an allusion to it in saying that &ldquo;We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father&rdquo; (Jn. 1:14). James likewise appears to reference the transfiguration when he writes of how the Lord's glory is so surpassing that there should be no jostling for human glory amongst us His people (James 2:1). The descriptions of the Lord Jesus are very similar to the language used about the scene at His resurrection- Angels in shining garments (28:3; Lk. 24:4), frightened and uncomprehending disciples (28:5). And yet the theme of the conversation was the Lord&rsquo;s death (Lk. 9:31)- but it took place with a preview of the resurrection scene.&nbsp;</p>