Transfiguration, Second-Hand

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I'm preaching on the Transfiguration tomorrow.

What's interesting to me is that here's a scene where three guys experience what many non-believers have said they would require in order to believe in God (and what many believers seem to prefer as well): A direct, privileged encounter.

It is the fact that we get revelation second-hand that is the problem, isn't it?

Some would say, however, that this is Christianity's hidden strength--since revelation thus requires our participation in its sharing in order to be known. Perhaps that's what Jesus meant when he said "blessed are they who will believe without seeing"? 

It doesn't feel like a blessing to many of us, I daresay--I mean, who wouldn't prefer a direct unmediated encounter with God to the patchwork through-a-glass-dimly thing we get instead?

But maybe that just tells us we totally miss the point of God revealing Godself to humanity. An unmediated, privileged encounter would run contrary to God's purposes.

Even the three who witnessed it were told to hush up about it until much later on--when Jesus was halfway gone. Perhaps that tells us something very important about how this thing was all supposed to go.