Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Hav­ing suc­cess­fully con­cluded his retreat, Jesus offi­cially begins his mis­sion. As soon as he came down from the wil­der­ness, and with the with­draw­al of John the Bap­tizer, Jesus moved to Galilee where he began his mis­sion with the fol­low­ing words “the time is com­pleted, and the king­dom of God has come, repent and believe the Gos­pel.” In the Gos­pel accord­ing to Mat­thew (4:12–13.17), we also read that imme­di­ately he returned from the wil­der­ness, and as soon as John the Bap­tizer was arres­ted, Jesus returned to Galilee, went to Naz­areth, then, moved to Caper­naum, beside the lake, in the region of Zebu­lum and Neph­tali, and there pro­claimed the Gos­pel say­ing: “repent, for the king­dom of heav­en has come near.” This is the sum­mary of how Jesus began his pro­clam­a­tion of the mes­sage of sal­va­tion. And all his teach­ings and actions revolve around this king­dom which has drawn near. The king­dom of God (or king­dom of heav­en accord­ing to the Jew­ish expres­sion), is a ref­er­ence to the sov­er­eign activ­ity of God as the ruler of his cre­ation and as One who brings his plan of sal­va­tion to ful­fil­ment. Imme­di­ately after his pre­par­a­tions in the wil­der­ness, and after the inaug­ur­a­tion of his mis­sion with the invit­a­tion to repent­ance, Jesus began teach­ing the people.

And he metamorphosed before them…

“And he was trans­figured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them” (Mark 9:2–3). “And he was trans­figured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matt 17:2). This is how Mark and Mat­thew described Jesus’ new look on get­ting to the moun­tain. Luke has a dif­fer­ent present­a­tion (cf. Luke 9:29). Jesus took Peter, James and John with him, but only he was trans­formed. This is inter­est­ing. The three dis­ciples were not trans­figured because they were there only as wit­nesses. The Greek verb stil­bō used by Mark means extremely bright, hence, be radi­ant, shine, dazzle. Mat­thew uses a dif­fer­ent verb (lampō) which, besides mean­ing to shine, be bright, has also a meta­phor­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance, refer­ring to the spir­itu­al light from God, show­ing things exactly the way they are (cf. also Matt 5:16; 2Cor 4:6b). In this sense then, the shek­i­nah of God radi­ated in Jesus before the three apostles. As a dazzling and radi­ant light is so bright that.…..

Conclusion

Jesus has taken over from Moses and Eli­jah. He is now in-charge even of my life, your life and the life of every per­son. Def­in­itely, he is doing all things well. He is not like many of our politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers, who buy their way to the offices just to work for their selfish interests. At this point, the Nigeri­an cur­rent situ­ation comes to mind. Presently, polit­ics and politick­ing are on their highest ech­el­on in many coun­tries, includ­ing Niger­ia. Politi­cians are using every means (espe­cially money) to con­vince every Nigeri­an that he or she is the only right­ful can­did­ate for the vari­ous offices. Dur­ing cam­paigns, politi­cians become vul­tures, in the sense that they are always every­where try­ing to win the people over. But after the elec­tions, Nigeri­ans will become vul­tures in the lit­er­al sense. Change can nev­er be wit­nessed in a coun­try where a good per­cent­age of the masses con­ceive the cam­paign peri­od as a moment and as an oppor­tun­ity to grab some amount of money or oth­er gifts from the politi­cians. The situ­ation is not even bet­ter with­in the reli­gious realm. Chris­ti­ans are ready to do any­thing to occupy one office or the oth­er in their vari­ous churches. Even the ordained class are not excep­tion to this men­ace. Most of them are involved in more dan­ger­ous and deadly polit­ics than politi­cians themselves.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the Second Sunday of Lent (B) is found in vol. II pages 122–130. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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