SERMON PREACHED ON
THE FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
(August 6th) 1989
HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
READINGS
Exodus 34:29–35
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:13–21
Luke 9:28–36
What are we to make of this scene
that we know as the “transfiguration”? This scene of which we read each year,
and which seems to bear little resemblance either to our personal experiences
of Christ, or to the remainder of the New Testament story?
As is so often the case we can
only begin to comprehend this visionary passage in the life of our Lord when we
place it in context. What is the conversation that these events take place “eight
days” (or six days) after?
What happens when the bemused
disciples return with Jesus from the hillside?
For this scene takes place
between the moment that Peter recognises and confesses Jesus to be the
long-awaited Christ and the time that Jesus turns and sets his footsteps
resolutely towards Jerusalem, knowing only too clearly the fate that awaits him
there.
The meaning of this dramatic side
show can be understood, then, only in the context of Jesus being the Christ, the
long-awaited Messiah of Israel, and in his turning that vocation upside down to
make it not a glorious civil triumph but a tragic civic execution.
The event itself is saturated
with poetic imagery. It is the language of heaven, the language of the coming
Kingdom for which we pray each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer. The setting is a
mountain, traditionally, in the ancient world, a place “set apart,” set aside from
the daily events of life. One would expect an encounter with God on a mountain.
The clouds that surround the men
on the mountain are also symbolic. In biblical literature the cloud is always a
symbol of the presence of the glory of God. God’s presence, but not the sight
of God’s face. Luke reminds us again that the only way by which we may see God
is to look at the Son, Jesus.
Jesus himself at this point is
transformed in appearance from a mere mortal to one whose clothes are white,
dazzling beyond human possibilities. Jesus, momentarily, is seen by the three
disciples as he shall be. Shown as he will appear in the future Kingdom.
It is significant that he does
not appear again in this way even after the resurrection. Even now we await the
fully revealed glory of the Son. In that momentary supra-whiteness of Jesus the
disciples see the radical otherness between the realms of God’s glory and the
realms of human existence.
Jesus returns to the realm of
human existence.
The people of whom we read in the
Book of Daniel are longing for a saviour who will overthrow oppressive regimes and
re-establish God’s chosen people. They long for a military conquest. They are
in the end never wholly liberated by such conquests.
The “beloved Son” on the mountain
is a conqueror. But he conquers not by overthrowing the oppressive regime of
Caesar, but by turning away from the heavenly sphere and setting his steps
resolutely towards Jerusalem where he will die in disgrace.
It is not, as St. Paul sees with
penetrating clarity, in the miraculous realm of the mountain that Jesus reveals
his glory, but in the utter degradation of the Cross. For once the disciples got
it right and remained silent about the events of the mountain. In Mark and Matthew’s
accounts they are commanded to tell no one. Jesus sees only too clearly that
the miracle of transfiguration becomes clear only in the light of the Cross.
The Transfiguration then, is a
kind of parenthesis in the life of Jesus. it is a glorious insight to the
Kingdom which is yet to come it is a glorious sign of the hope that we have in
the resurrection. It is, in theological terms, an “in-breaking,” albeit
momentary, of the Not Yet, the world to come, into the already, this world. But
like Jesus, we too must come down from the mountain, and turn with him to
Jerusalem.
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