If I have a favourite prayer it is probably the General
Thanksgiving, when we praise God above all for ‘the
redemption of the world by Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the
means of grace and for the hope of glory’. These few words
sum up the whole of our salvation history. The experience of
the Transfiguration does the same – proclaiming Jesus as the
Messiah promised in the scriptures, assuring the disciples
of the real presence of God in their Master, praying
with them there on the mountain top, and pointing forward to
the future glories of the Resurrection and of the world to
come. But Luke sandwiches this transcendent experience
between two harsh realities. Before they climb the mountain
Peter acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus
immediately warns his followers that this will involve
suffering and death. And as soon as they return to the
valley, Our Lord is confronted by a noisy crowd, and by the
tragedy of a young boy whose life is totally overshadowed by
epilepsy.
We don’t really have time this morning to go into every
aspect of the Transfiguration, because Luke gives us so much
to think about. The presence of Moses (standing for the Law)
and Elijah (representing the prophets) certainly affirm
Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah promised in the
scriptures. And yet their message for the disciples is the
same as his, that his destiny in Jerusalem will be
departure, Exodus. To drive home the point, Peter James and
John almost miss the whole experience through weariness and
sleep – just as later they would fail to keep awake
when Jesus was arrested on the Mount of Olives. On the
Mount of the Transfiguration, Peter, in drowsy confusion,
even tries to put up some shelters, trying perhaps to
capture the moment, to build something familiar and
reassuring and secure, rather than face the awesome reality
of God on earth. And then comes the moment of holy terror,
when the presence of God overshadows everything, just as the
Spirit had descended on Mary at the Incarnation, just as the
Sprit had descended on Jesus at his baptism. And the still
small voice speaks: ‘This is my Son, my chosen, listen to
him!’ Our Lord’s relationship with his Father was the
whole essence of his being and mission. It was his guide and
inspiration. And yet his status as the Son of God was also
to be the stumbling block that sent him to the Cross – the
words that would later stick in the craw of his
accusers. Then ‘the chief priests and scribes gathered
together… and asked ‘Are you then the Son of God?’ He said
to them, ‘You say that I am.’ Then they said ‘What further
testimony do we need?’
The Transfiguration is not an easy story. If we want some
help with it, we can do no better than read St. Peter’s
second letter, when shortly before his death and martyrdom,
Peter poignantly records his memories of that dawn on the
mountain top. Peter does not re-tell the story for its own
sake, but to help his readers, to help us, to be the kind of
people we are called to be. Peter was always aware that
Christians have a life of exile – it often feels as if we
are resident aliens in a world estranged from God. As we
enter a new chapter in our church life, with a new parish
priest, we pray for a renewal of our Christian mission. But
we will no doubt still have to face dangers and
difficulties, and threats of one sort or another to our
future growth. And yet ‘God has not promised us safety, but
participation in an adventure called the Kingdom’. The
Christian life cannot be lived just ‘for now’, but neither
is it merely ‘for later’. It is lived now, in this
transitory and uncertain world, in the light of a glorious
and timeless future. And the story of the Transfiguration
helps us to achieve that balance.
A footnote, if I may. I don’t of course know exactly what
took place on the Mount of the Transfiguration – but strange
things can happen in the dawn light, particularly in winter.
On 2nd February 1461 the 18 year old Duke of York prepared
to do battle with the Lancastrian forces at Mortimer’s
Cross, in Herefordshire. His troops were exhausted and
demoralised, but soon after dawn not one, but three suns
appeared in the sky. Declaring the sight to be a sign of the
Holy Trinity’s favour, Edward rallied his troops, and the
Lancastrian army was routed. The phenomenon is of course a
natural one, caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere
refracting the sun’s rays and so producing two extra images,
or ‘sun dogs’. I’m not suggesting that this is the whole
basis for the Transfiguration story – but rather that it is
impossible to divorce our experience of the physical world
from our interpretation of it. The miracle of our world, and
the Providence of God, together enable us always to see
things in a new light – this is the very foundation of faith
itself.
I might take this one stage further. It is possible to stand
on a high mountain, when the sun is low, and see your own
shadow projected on to the clouds in front of you,
surrounded by a rainbow-coloured halo or ‘glory’. On
experiencing this for himself, the poet Goethe wrote ‘Who
could know heaven but by heaven’s gift, and discover God
save one who shares himself in the divine?’ An optimistic
view of humanity maybe, and one that Christians may only
dare to hope for. But Our Lord’s transforming truth and
beauty continue to draw us on, to follow him down into the
valley of the world’s uncertain shadows, and to begin again
the adventure of the Kingdom.