The Transfiguration

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord; Transfiguration Sunday; Vardavar in the Armenian Church

August 6 in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches; the last Sunday before Lent in many Lutheran, Methodist and other churches

On a high mountain Jesus is transfigured before the three, and Moses and Elijah talk with Him. The Father’s voice says, “hear ye him”. Matthew, Mark and Luke tell it (S3, S4). It is an event, not a feast: Jesus tells the three to say nothing of it until He is risen, and Luke adds that they told no one in those days. The silence was for a time.

In his second letter Peter looks back on the mountain as an eyewitness. He does not call for a day to remember it. He uses it as proof of the power and coming of Christ, and calls the place “the holy mount” without naming it.

He is the earliest surviving writer to place the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. Cyril of Jerusalem and Jerome follow him in the next century. Some scholars hold for Hermon, near Caesarea Philippi, and others for other peaks. The Gospels do not name the mountain. This tells where people placed the event, not that anyone kept a feast.

Tells of imperial envoys received at Jerusalem in the festive time of the Transfiguration on August 6, so the feast probably began before then. It is the first surviving record of the feast, nearly five hundred years after the event. The feast is not in the Apostolic Constitutions or in Egeria’s fourth-century diary. Most sources tie it to the dedication of churches on Mount Tabor, and Britannica says it is not known when it was first kept.

The Jerusalem typikon shows the feast certainly kept under his rule. It was kept at the same time at Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai.

His homily is the first to describe the liturgical keeping of the feast, and not merely to mention it. From Jerusalem the feast probably passed to the Armenian Church.

The feast is accepted throughout the Eastern Roman Empire by the end of the ninth century, and at the latest in the reign of Leo the Wise.

The feast had been kept in parts of the West from the 9th century, on different days, August 6 among them, but was not universal there. In July 1456 the Hungarians broke the Ottoman siege of Belgrade, and the news reached Rome on August 6. In 1457, in thanks for that victory the year before, Callixtus III put the feast on August 6 in the Roman calendar for the whole church. Vatican News and Britannica both give 1457.

Its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says festival days, commonly called holy days, have no warrant in the word of God and are not to be continued. Only the Lord’s Day is kept. This reaches the Transfiguration with every other church feast.

The event is told three times in the Gospels and recalled once by Peter (H1, H2). The feast is far later. Most sources tie its beginning to the dedication of the churches on Mount Tabor: fifth-century pilgrims describe three there, one for Christ and one each for Moses and Elijah, matching Peter’s offer to make three tabernacles. Vatican News says the feast commemorates that dedication. The Tabor tradition itself comes from Origen (H3) and is a tradition, not a text.

The feast was in the East by about 518 (H4), spread across the Byzantine Empire by the ninth century (H7), and came to the West in local forms before becoming universal there in the fifteenth century (H8). Many Lutheran, Methodist and other churches that use the lectionary read the account on the Sunday before Lent instead, as a turn from Christ’s glory to the road to the cross.

The Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches

Roman Catholics

Lutherans (ELCA, LCMS and others)

The United Methodist Church

Churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary

The Armenian Apostolic Church

Most Baptist and other free churches

Strict confessional Presbyterians

The Churches of Christ

Vigil and afterfeast

The Orthodox keep an all-night vigil, a forefeast and an eight-day afterfeast. The feast falls in the Dormition Fast, which is relaxed that day so that fish, wine and oil are allowed.

Blessing of grapes and fruit

In Byzantine churches grapes are brought to be blessed after the Liturgy as first fruits, or apples and other fruit where there are no grapes.

The uncreated light

Orthodoxy, following Gregory Palamas in the 14th century, teaches that the light on the mountain was God’s uncreated energy and that the pure in heart can see it. Latin Scholastic theology never accepted it and read the light as a sign of heavenly glory. Rome has neither adopted nor condemned the teaching. The Gospels say only that His face shone like the sun, and do not settle whether the light was created or uncreated.

The Sunday before Lent

Lutheran, Methodist and other lectionary churches read the account just before Ash Wednesday, to turn from Christ’s glory to the road to the cross.

Vardavar water-splashing

Armenians splash each other with water in the streets. The Middle East Council of Churches says the name means “offering roses” and that the custom is older than Christianity, from a pagan water festival later given a Christian meaning. It is now also a public street festival.

The noon bell

In 1456 Callixtus III ordered bells rung at noon to call people to pray for the army at Belgrade. After the victory the prayer became thanksgiving, and in Hungary the bell survives as a national memory, apart from the feast.

Little trade of its own

Apart from Vardavar’s street festival, no separate commerce or civil holiday was found for the day.

The church’s remembrance is weekly, and it looks to the cross

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord gave the memorial Himself, and Paul says what it proclaims: “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). That is the remembrance God appointed, on the day the apostles kept it. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly feast to its worship.

The record bears this out. The first sure sign of a feast of the Transfiguration is at Jerusalem about 518, nearly five hundred years after the event (H4). The Roman church made it universal in 1457 (H8). A feast that began that late is not part of the worship the apostles delivered.

The Transfiguration is told in full and given no day

Three Gospels and Peter tell of Christ’s glory on the mountain; none appoints a feast to remember it (S3, S4).

Matthew, Mark and Luke tell it: Jesus’ face shines like the sun, Moses and Elijah talk with Him, and the Father says, “hear ye him” (S3, S4). Luke adds that they spoke of His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The church rightly preaches it on any Lord’s Day: it shows who Jesus is, and it comes just after He first foretold His death.

The silence Jesus asked was for a time only: “Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen from the dead” (S3). Afterward Peter writes of it as an eyewitness (H2). But none of these gives a date, a command or a church keeping it yearly. Preaching the event is given; a feast of it in the church’s worship is not.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves a believer free to regard a day, and Colossians 2 says no one may judge another by a feast day (S5, S6).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S5). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian feast. It does give the rule for a Christian’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord, and no one may judge him for it (S6).

So a Christian may keep August 6 as a day to think on Christ’s glory. What they may not do is make that day binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1).

Peter wanted to build three tabernacles, and the Father answered with a voice from the cloud. The churches built on Tabor did what Peter was cut off from doing, and a feast of the place does the same.

Luke says Peter spoke “not knowing what he said”, and the voice turned the three to hear the Son (S4). That much is plain. But it cannot be pressed into a charge against the feast. A church dedicated to Christ is not Peter’s mistake, and Matthew does not forbid building. What the passage shows is the response the event itself asks for: hear Him. The case against a feast in the church’s worship rests on the New Testament’s silence about one (A1), not on this verse.

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years”. A church calendar is such a thing.

The Galatians were Gentiles who had once served “no gods”, and teachers were pressing the law on them (verses 4:21 and 5:4). Paul fears his labor was in vain because they were taking up the calendar as part of standing right with God. Read in context, the text strikes at any day made necessary for God’s favor, which fits a feast imposed as a duty on the church. It does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S5). The research behind this page asks that Galatians 4:10 not be cited against a Christian feast without that context, and it is given here.

A feast the Lord never gave, taught as a duty, is worship by the precepts of men.

This is a right use where a church binds the feast. Jesus condemns teaching human rules as God’s doctrine, and a church that makes the Transfiguration a day of obligation does just that. It weighs against the feast in the church’s worship (A1). It does not reach a Christian who marks the day quietly and calls it no command of God (A3).

Peter looks back on the mountain as an eyewitness and calls it “the holy mount”. If the apostle held it worth remembering, the church may set a day for it.

Peter does hold it worth remembering, and so does the church, in every sermon that tells it. But he uses it to prove Christ’s power and coming, to the readers of a letter. He does not appoint a day. The name “holy mount” does not name Tabor, and Tabor is a tradition from Origen onward (H3). The passage gives the event as testimony, not a feast (A2).

The face shining like the sun and the garments white as light give the feast its theme of light, and in the Orthodox teaching they show the uncreated light of God.

The text does say His face did shine as the sun, and the church may praise God for it. The text does not say whether the light was created or uncreated, a question later theology raised (see What is done). And it gives no day for it (A2).

Study

• Matthew 17:9 tells the three to say nothing until the resurrection. What does this suggest about when and how the event was meant to be told, and who was to tell it?
• Peter writes of the mountain as an eyewitness (2 Peter 1:16-18) and does not name a day. What would we need to see to call that a command to keep a feast?
• The feast is first recorded nearly five hundred years after the event (H4). Does it matter how early a practice began, if Scripture does not give it?
• Romans 14:5 says “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” Where does a Christian’s liberty over a day end, and the church’s worship begin?
• Some churches read the Transfiguration just before Lent for its place in the Gospel story. Is choosing a text for a Sunday the same as keeping a feast? What is the difference?

Pentecost

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Christmas

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