One important aspect of the life of Jesus is that for every miracle performed in the Old Testament, Jesus does the same thing in his life only bigger or better. Elijah feeds the widow for eight days, Jesus feeds 5,000. Moses parts the Red Sea, Jesus walks on the sea. It is just like that line from the old musical, “Anything he can do I can do better.” Or “Anything Moses does Jesus does better.” Here we see again that Moses goes up to Mount Sinai where the appearance of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain. Moses would stay there 40 days, and he would return to his people transfigured.

As perfectly modern people, we can lean on science to help us debunk the miracles of the Bible. Walk on water? Nonsense. Raised from the dead? Preposterous! Feed 4,000 in the desert? Are you out of your mind? Turn dazzling white and talk to two guys who have been dead more than a 1,000 years? What have you been smokin’?

Thomas Jefferson felt exactly this way. His response was to take the Bible and cut out what he considered the “authentic words and teachings of Jesus.” The Jesus of the Jefferson Bible is nothing more than a “mild humanitarian moralizer” who was executed as a criminal by the Romans. The Jesus of rational thought is about as close to the real thing as the life sized cardboard cutouts of celebrities where we stand next to them and have our photographs taken.

Going back to the story, the elements of magic pile on so much here that it is impossible for a modern reader to take them seriously: the dazzling white robes, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, Jesus talking to them, the glowing cloud on the mountaintop, the voice of God from the cloud… Who could actually believe that all this happened?

Atheist writers these days are making quite a bit of money claiming that this whole Bible and religion thing is all just fiction that is too bizarre to take seriously. A recent book title says it all for this side: Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up.

Some writers in the ancient world held an equal disdain. In his Life of Nero, late first century author Suetonius described Christians as “a set of men adhering to a novel and mischievous superstition.” About the same period, the writer Tacitus took jabs at Christian belief as “pernicious superstitions.” Finally a second century governor in what is now Turkey complained to the Emperor Trajan about his efforts to prosecute Christians. “I judged it so much the more necessary to extract the real truth, with the assistance of torture, from two female slaves serving as deaconesses, but I could discover nothing more than depraved and excessive superstition.”

(A little aside here: One large denomination maintains that only males can be ordained yet here is a letter from a non Christian in the second century talking about female deacons. Hmmm…)

So here is my confession: I have been a scientist for more years than I have been a priest. Over the years I have tried to whittle down the mysteries and miracles. I have blended creative use of science with the literary devices of myth and metaphor. I find it breathtaking to consider the transfiguration might have happened just the way it is described.

C. S. Lewis noted that we should acknowledge those aspects of Christianity that we find obscure, difficult, or repulsive. When we own those things, we are less likely to “skip, slur, or ignore what we find disagreeable.” Even Harvey Cox, in his book When Jesus Comes to Harvard, warns us against whittling down the sweeping vision of Christian belief into something manageable and lackluster.

Consider the writers of the Gospel. In a time when being Christian was dicey at best and often life-threatening, why would the Gospel writers falsify a story that could easily be refuted? Why would they risk their cause knowing that outrageous claims would cause them harm financially, socially, politically, and even physically? No matter how bizarre the transfiguration may seem to us, would Peter, James, and John all have denied or downplayed the experience they had?

I can tell you that one of the humbling aspects of modern science is that for all of its accomplishments, physics and mathematics only have credible theories to account for about 1% of the known universe. You don’t hear much about this from the popular atheist writers. It might weaken their case and diminish their income. So in the 99% of the universe that we know nothing about, might there be room for realities we do not yet understand?

The important point here is not science versus religion. It is whether we can accept the breathtaking truth of these accounts. Can we allow the unsettling nature of the transfiguration to work on us? What if it really is all true? Can we accept a Jesus walking across the lake to us? Can we go up the mountain with him and meet long dead prophets? Can we begin to believe in the power of this Jesus so much that we can do similar things?

When we grow in faith to accept these things the way Peter, James, and John did, then we too will become like that burning bush Moses encountered. Scripture says it was on fire but it was not consumed by the fire. May this Gospel set you on fire, too.