Hands On Care

Reaching out across the fear

But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” (Matthew 17:7)

This evening reading from the Gospel was welcome comfort after morning lessons that were intimidating.

1 Kings 13 featured one of those Old Testament accounts of God’s wrath falling on a seemingly decent guy for getting tricked into deviating from persnickity travel instructions. Hey, they were divine instructions and God is God. So there. It’s not a comforting picture of the deity.

The morning New Testament lesson from Hebrews 12 employed Old Testament passages to warn about failing to obtain the grace of God and messing up so badly that one is rejected, with no chance to repent. Scary stuff.

So it is small wonder that on the mountain of Christ’s Transfiguration, Peter, James and John fell on their faces and were terrified (Matthew 17:6). They’d just witnessed Jesus meeting up with Moses and Elijah, the ueber representatives of Old Testament Law and Prophecy, and then heard a voice from heaven extoling Jesus and commanding them to listen to him. As well raised sons of the Old Covenant, what could they expect but wrath from the sudden appearance of so much holiness?

But then God shuts down the whole sound and light show, and that’s when Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.”

He came and touched them. He didn’t issue an imperious command to “Approach!” He came to them, as he came to all of us, gently, as at his birth.

He touched them — it was personal and intentional. There were three of them with their faces in the dirt. He had to bend down and give a comforting touch to each.

All of a sudden the presence of God was mediated to them gently, simply, No more dazzling light and smoky cloud and heavenly beings and a booming voice from the sky:

And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only (Matthew 17:8).

Jesus only. The Law, the Prophets, the divine light, the heavenly voice — all are now present in the man who came over to offer them a comforting hand, and to tell them to have no fear.

Peter, James and John had a long way to go before they could comprehend this. Not long after his Transfiguration they heard him say, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed (Matthew 17:22-23).

But following him, even imperfectly and in fits and starts, they came to know him as the Savior of the world. It would be Peter himself who, when the young church was tempted to go back to the old way of unsparing rules and hovering fear, would speak up and say,

Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will (Acts 15:10-11).

Peter reached across the fear and told the church — our ancestors in faith and and us today — to look up and see Jesus only as the fullness of God, the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, the grace-giving Savior of all.