"Peter didn't know what the Hell he was talking about. He had no idea what the mountain-top experience really represented...Moses & Elijah represented encouragement and a reminder to be attentive to faithfulness, because dark days are coming..."
. . . one year we’ll defend our belief in an incarnation timed for Sukkoth as there is no way Jesus was born in December, and we’ll write the Card Talk about how the wise men did not show up until He was three years old. Eventually we’ll even address the fact that the little drummer boy was actually a drunk Roman solider looking for his estranged wife (okay, we just made that last one up) . . .
In discussing how fast "faith can move mountains," Matthew cuts Mark's three-day story in half. He speeds up the pace, chronologically and theologically.
"While we may be able to emotionally relate to some elements of this story, the world in which it takes place is utterly unrecognizable to us. We can’t bring really any assumptions into the narrative as we read. It’s a shock to the system."