Matthew has not chosen this story to simply wow us with Jesus' holy radiance. The Holy Spirit has not inspired the recording of this account so that we can marvel at Jesus' power. Because everything that happens on this mountaintop has a vital counterpoint in one, simple, humble truth: after going up this mountain, Jesus came back down. He came back down because He still had work to do. So in all that we see in the Transfiguration of Our Lord—and there is much for us to see and at which to marvel—the most stunning thing is that the Mount of Transfiguration is not the high point of Jesus' ministry. That privilege is reserved for something else. Something quite different.

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Salt has an essential character: it is salty. Which seems silly to say, but Jesus says something that I still find quite strange: What if salt were no longer . . . salty? What then?

Salt has a flavor. It adds its flavor to our favorite foods, and when it is absent, we consider the food bland . . . tasteless.

Salt has a function. It works as a preservative. Salt absorbs water, which pulls the moisture from meats and such, thus making them far less likely to rot and decay. If salt was used on a cut of meat, you could travel with it for quite some time, depending on its nourishment. If salt was not . . . well, you know it takes mere days—or even mere hours—before the meat is utterly inedible and spoiled.

And you, church, are the salt of the world.

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God allows us to witness the wilderness, the barren desert, of our lack of faith. To see the fruitlessness, the barrenness. And when we finally come to the end of our road . . . when we finally come to the sad realization that we are dead without Him . . . He forgives. He heals. He restores.

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In every way possible, King Jesus embodies the promises of Isaiah. In His person. In His rule. He is, in fact, the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. His rule in eternity will be, for us and all of creation, a rule completely characterized by peace. By harmony. By joy.

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This mountain—the mountain of God's holiness— is without doubt the most important mountain in the world. And Isaiah sees that in the latter days its preeminence among all other mountains will be established, its glory will be made firm.

It is here on this mountain we learn what both of our sin and His mercy. When God judges our sin, does He do so rightly? Without a doubt, and we who let His word have its way with us know that we have no recourse, no plea to make, but must simply agree that the very cause of all our strife and quarrels lies not in our hands, but in our hearts.

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To look upon Jesus' suffering and weep without repentance, without faith, is to miss entirely who He is. To miss what He does. Such weeping is mere sentimentality. And sentimentality saves no one. It denies that His suffering is necessary, as though we could find salvation some other way.

What is necessary is to see Jesus rightly. Not to deny suffering and attempt too take Him down off the cross, but to leave Him there and believe upon it. What is necessary is to see Him numbered among the sinners, to recognize that He takes that label upon Himself, and in that He offers you His peace, His Kingdom, His forgiveness.

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Jesus points out something that should be obvious, but was not to the Sadducees: there is a difference between this life and the next.

In saying that "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage," Jesus reminds us that God does indeed give us good gifts in this life, but that it would be wrong to cling to them, to believe that those gifts are so important that they are all Jesus gives, that He has nothing greater prepared for us.

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The saints John sees are those who followed Jesus in this life and who bore the brunt of the world's refusal to acknowledge Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The saints that John sees are those who have passed through death from this life to the life that is to come. The saints John sees are all those who have clung fervently to Christ, trusting in Him and His grace to carry them through to eternity. The saints John sees, then, are you . . . me . . . everyone who will die in the faith . . . everyone who has died in the faith. What John sees is the ones—all of the ones—who by the time eternity comes will have died in Christ.

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