Transfiguration is one of those church occasions in which we need to reflect on ourselves, rather than engage in factual inquisitions. I love the story of Jesus and the apostles. Jesus has whatever experience he has and the apostles interpret it in the light of their own experience and belief system. They are able to tell us nothing about Jesus, but everything about what happens when we are surprised by the holy.
The apostles see their historic heroes, Moses and Elijah, the leader and the prophet respectively, in Jesus. This moves them to want to honour the sacred space with a monument to mark the occasion. Moses had been commissioned by a sacred fire in the wilderness; Elijah received the divine in a whirlwind. Both were people who spoke directly to God, through natural phenomena, in the memory of Israel. It is not surprising that, as the apostles came to see Jesus in a new way, they would relate him to Moses and Elijah. In Jesus, they had found a leader and a teacher, a person close to the divine, a prophet, and maybe even the promised messiah.
If we choose to think about Jesus as the living word of God, then we remember that the Word is the same in every era; it is we who change. You will notice this as you return to places you experienced as a child and how different they seem now. The people to whom we are the closest may seem to change too. The parent, once so omniscient, becomes fallible; the strong partner experiences loss and fear. The baby we held goes off on new and sometimes terrifying adventures, from a parents’ perspective. 
The relevance of this story of the transfiguration is not who Jesus is or was to those disciples, but who he is for us now. The truth that was in him remains the same, but we approach it from a different perspective. We, as the church, proclaim the hope that we find in the life and person of Jesus, but that is not monochrome; rather it is a tapestry of colour and varying weave; unfolding and incomplete. Even when we return to other points on the map of creativity, we see them differently. We read meaning and significance into the present and in the imagination and scholarship of the past.
May the light of the Holy One shine through us now, revealing the glimpse of infinite beauty revealed in and to Jesus. May we see in each other the possibility of the divine presence calling us in joy and peace. May we allow ourselves to be delighted and surprised by the unending variety of the expressions of God.
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