The Mount of Transfiguration and The “Valley” of Transfiguration

This sermon on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane suggests that we read the passage as a dark parallel to the transfiguration account of Matthew 17.  It notes that God is always doing a work of transfiguration or glorification in the lives of His children, but that glorification is a process that never bypasses wilderness trecks, Gardens of Gethsemane, or crosses. In fact, the wilderness becomes a highway to the Promised Land, the empty garden becomes a garden-city full of life, and the cross becomes a conquest.