gutslog

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY RINGWOOD EAST
SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT (19^th February) 1989

 

READINGS

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18

Psalm 27:10-18

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 9:28-36

 

 

 

What is this bizarre and seemingly surreal experience of which we have read today? What were the disciples, Peter, James and John, doing with Jesus on the mountain? What did they experience there, this experience so out of the ordinary that the gospel writers struggled to find words to identify it?

To begin unpacking these questions we must first place this passage, this account of the event we know as the Transfiguration of Jesus, back within the context of the events given to us by the gospel writers. If we go back a handful of verses from these events, we find that Peter has just made his momentous confession of faith. Jesus has asked the disciples “Who do people say that I am?” and followed that question with the more telling, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter has responded rightly, “You the Christ of God.”

Although Peter is right, Jesus is not happy with his answer. Jesus alone knows that the meaning of his “Christhood” or “Messiah-hood” cannot be made clear until after the terrible event of Good Friday, the event of the Cross. So Jesus attempts to persuade his followers that the way in which they must follow him is the way of suffering and misunderstanding, far, far removed from the course of glorious victories and good times that they have in mind.

If anyone would follow me let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.

                                              (Luke 9:23)

The events of the mountain take place chronologically a few days later – six or eight, depending on whether you read Matthew and Mark on the one hand, or Luke on the other. Chronologically they take place a few days later, but in terms of the narrative, they take place immediately. And so it is by way of an explanation of his earlier words that Jesus takes his closest disciples with him to the mountain.

What mountain? Again we must speak symbolically here. In Luke’s usage a “mountain” or other high place is a symbol for a state of proximity to God. In Luke 6:12 Jesus ascends into the hills to pray alone. The experience is the same here, except that on this occasion he allows his disciples to accompany him on his journey to the inner depths of God.

A little less than a year ago I was standing in the desert two or three hundred kilometres south of Alice Springs. The temperature was pushing up towards 40°C and I was alone in a basin, with not even a trace of wind. There was not a sound to be heard. It is in those moments that we become a powerfully aware of our spirituality, of our vulnerability and seeming insignificance, and yet of the undeniable truth that we are thinking, feeling, spiritual creatures. We are alive, with all the potential that entails. We can care, we can love, we can, if we choose to, sing praises to the Creator that I believe placed us in this universe.

It was an awe-inspiring moment.

A couple of years ago I sat with a man and his family in hospital as he finally gave up a brief but brutal battle with cancer and slipped away into death. It was the early hours of New Year’s Day, and as I sat there holding the hands of the man and his grieving wife and daughter an enormous sense of peace descended on us all, punctuating the sense of sorrow.

It was an unforgettable moment.

I told these stories because I believe each of us will experience from time to time the sense of stillness and peace that is the signature of God’s presence with us. It is an experience not unique to Christianity, but it is most certainly an occasional part of the Christian experience of God. A sunrise or sunset, a powerful moment in a piece of classical or rock music, a moment of enormous sensuality: each can be a moment akin to the mountain experience of transfiguration.

In their moment of proximity, with Jesus, to God the disciples could not grasp the central truth that Jesus sought  to teach them. The overwhelming knowledge that they were with the long-awaited Messiah of God as he sought God in prayer proved to be too much for them. The blinding discovery that this charismatic carpenter from Nazareth was the Son of God, the Chosen One, was too much. The wanted to seize the moment, to make it their own, to fossilize themselves, Jesus, and the moment so that it might never be lost – or at least lost to them. The Romantic poet Keating well knew that vain hope.

      Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal – yet do not grieve;

      She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.

 But it is not enough to remain frozen on a Grecian urn. It is not possible to remain immobile on the edge of the Simpson Desert. The family of the dead man, and their pastor, must leave the hospital room and pick up once more their lives. Neither we nor the disciples can stay on the mountain of transfiguration.

It is then that Jesus’ words of a few days earlier ring true. It is then that we adopt the ghastly reality of the Cross and the sheer hard gutslog of true Christianity, and come down from the mountain. We too must come down from the mountain and turn our face towards Jerusalem and towards Good Friday.

Christianity can be no easy option, opting out of the brutal facts of life and death.

It is to face that truth that we must now accept the discipline of Lent. With that discipline in mind we must journey with Jesus and the disciples down from the mountain towards the tragedy of Good Friday.

Only then will we be prepared to grasp and to eternalise the joy of Easter. The joy of the coming of the light into the world. The joy of the resurrection and the hope of meaning that it brings to our lives.

TLBWY