Sermon: Transfiguration Sunday
14 February 2021 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; and Mark 9:2-9; NRSV
A very happy Valentine’s Day
to you all! The pandemic has changed the way we see a lot of things, and
hopefully it has undermined the commercial nature of these celebrations. Valentine’s
Day is an opportunity to celebrate the gift of relationship in our lives, and I
hope that in some way during this weekend we will have found time to celebrate friendship,
especially the deep and life-sustaining relationships we share with a special
other, or with a group of good friends.
Today is also the celebration of Jesus’ Transfiguration in which Peter, James and John are able to share in the special encounter Jesus has with Moses and Elijah, an intimate and awe-filled experience in which God’s voice is clearly heard by these disciples. Interestingly, it is an experience they are asked by Jesus to keep confidential until such time as it will make sense for them to speak of it. The story is not new to us, so we largely remember the details without needing to hear or read the passage again. Yet as we’ve heard it read again, the question is, “What have we heard, what has been the whisper between the words we know so well; and what do we hear in that whisper?” There are a couple of questions that arise for me: why was it important for Peter, James and John specifically to be witnesses to this moment, and not others of the group around Jesus? What future leadership role will be required of them that they needed to be assured that Jesus’ ministry was so deeply enmeshed with the Law and the Prophets, and Jesus a voice of significant authority in such company?
In today’s collect we prayed: “… transform our lives in [Jesus’] image, … .”[1] This raises an interesting question: what is the link between transfiguration and transformation? In my mind I know there must be a difference, but it is difficult to describe exactly what I think it may be. In the Gospel narrative it clearly refers to the fact that Jesus suddenly looked different (and other images come to mind, in this instance of Moses’ face being transfigured during his time on the mountain carving out the tablets of the Law to the point where his face shone so brightly he needed to cover it when in the presence of the Israelite community). Transformation generally speaks to a process of inner change,[2] such that we move from one form to another, we become intrinsically different to what we were.
Transfiguration suggests not a change in form, but a change in perception.[3] Jesus transfiguration doesn’t in essence change who Jesus is; it changes how Peter, James and John see Jesus. Since responding to Jesus’ call to discipleship alongside the Sea of Galilee the three had assumed he was a Rabbi, special in their eyes in that his particular brand of morality and ethics had caught their attention and spoke to the values and desires and dreams that they held for a better future. Now, however, they see him as one who stands alongside key actors in the story of faith. Where Moses’ face was transfigured, Jesus’ whole body is transfigured: Jesus supersedes both the Law and the Prophets, and yet holds both in tension. Jesus transfiguration does not transform Jesus; it transforms the three disciples. Their perception of who Jesus is is fundamentally shifted, and as they climb down the mountain with Jesus they have been inwardly transformed by this encounter. I suspect that a part of Jesus reason in forbidding them to speak of the experience is that it would take time for them to comprehend the nature of the change this experience was bringing about in them; and it will only be Jesus’resurrection that will awaken the other disciples sufficiently to grapple with the implications of Jesus being so much more than just a Rabbi, more even than a prophet in the lineage of Moses and Elijah, in reality the Messiah and more: the one who will become the Christ of faith. When they do awaken, of course, not only are they transformed, but they become a transforming force in their own context, the impact of which has reverberated through history and carries echos in our own time and context.
In terms of today’s collect, it is not our lives that need to be transformed into Jesus image, but our image of Jesus that needs to be transfigured so that our lives can be transformed. I hope this makes some sense? I am suggesting that we too, like Peter, James and John, need to have our image of Jesus transfigured if our lives are to be truly transformed. I have no desire to have my life become a mirror image of Jesus, but I do have a desire to have my humanity transformed, changed into the fullness of life that Jesus proclaimed he’d come to awaken us to. This transformation can only happen if my limited image of Jesus is transfigured, and I begin to see Jesus – his life, purpose, calling, ministry – as one that enables this to happen. The three disciples were limited by their tangible experience of Jesus from seeing who he was as the one sent into their midst by God until the transfiguration opened their eyes. We have the benefit of knowing Jesus as the Christ of Faith, but I suspect we all carry limiting images of what this may mean in today’s world. These images we each carry need to be transfigured if we are to be transformed and if we are to become a transforming presence in our time and context.
We lament the ineffectiveness of the Church in our own time. Just last week Bishop Geoff was asking what has happened to the multitudes of people he has confirmed during the course of his ministry as a Bishop, and lamenting that the majority of those confirmed are not active in the life of the Church. In essence it may not be that their lives were not transformed, but that the Church they have been confirmed into needs transformation. I suspect many who have been confirmed experienced a moral and ethical transformation that they have not seen mirrored in the Church that brought them to faith. As I encounter people who have walked or drifted away from the Church, these are not people who lack faith, who have no spirituality, but they are deeply suspicious of the institutionalised Church, often hurt by it and certainly not inspired by it. You and I are this Church, we are here either because we love this Church, or perhaps out of some sense of duty, but whatever motivates our involvement there can be no doubt that we need a transfiguration experience that will enable the wider institutionalised Church to be transformed afresh into the living people of God. We need to rediscover the fullness of life Jesus preached and lived, and which drew those early disciples along the Galilean shoreline.
In today’s collect we went on – helpfully, I think – to pray, “… write your law of love on our hearts, and make us prophets of your shining splendour … .”[4] The essence of renewal resides in these words.
Let us pray,
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