The Transfiguration
Sermon preached at All Hallows by Alison Terrell on 26 February 2006
Sunday before Lent
Readings:
Psalm 50:1—6
Mark 9:2—9
I have really struggled with this reading, and yet it seems as though it should be an easy one to preach from. It is such a famous story, and yet I find myself uncomfortable with it. It may be because it reminds me of the otherness of Jesus, and is hard to relate to. You could say that the whole of the gospels do that, they tell us about someone who heals people, feeds thousands from a few sandwiches, walks on water. But he is still a human being who gets tired, gets frustrated with people, one who needs to eat and drink and sleep. This is somehow different. It seems a bit surreal, all whiteness and light and visits from people long gone.
So what’s it all about? It is told in both Matthew and Luke as well, and seems to be what Peter is referring to in 2 Peter 1:16—18. ‘For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we have been witnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the majestic glory, saying, “this is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”. We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.’ So it is seen as a story of great importance. Moses was seen as representing the law and Elijah representing the prophets, so that their presence here may somehow be connected to the idea of Jesus as the fulfilment of the law and the one who would fulfil all that had been prophesied. Luke goes further and says that they were talking to Jesus about his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Mark places this story in the middle of the gospel, and there are links to both the baptism of Jesus at the beginning of the gospel and the crucifixion at the end. At the baptism of Jesus, there is also a voice from heaven, and in the crucifixion the expectation that Elijah will come. Both of these occasions show Jesus’ strong identification with human beings as sinners who mess up. In the transfiguration it is as though we see the other side of the coin and are given a glimpse of Jesus’ identification with the God of heaven. Philippians 2:5—8 talks about Jesus giving up something to become human, but in the transfiguration it seems as though something of the glory which he gave up comes seeping in, it can no longer be hidden and those chosen few disciples are there to witness it.
So why am I so uncomfortable with it? Is it in the reminder of the otherness of God? I grew up in a church tradition which emphasized the otherness of God, and it has been a real struggle to see God as near and present, someone I can sit and talk to, and maybe I am scared of losing that. And yet both are true and we need to hold them both in tension or we end up worshipping a domesticated God of our own making.
The disciples saw something here that terrified them, and Peter’s response is to try and bring it under control, let’s make some order out of this, and he says the first thing that comes into his head. Do you ever find God terrifying? I don’t mean the kind of fear we have when we project onto God our own fear of being disapproved of or looked down on, or some other fear of our own about God. But when we get a glimpse of such love and acceptance that we know that if we truly let the reality of it hit us we would be changed beyond recognition. That is the nearest I can get to an experience of that kind, and I suppose it is in a way seeing God’s glory because it’s getting a glimpse of God as he truly is.
Then there is the voice from heaven, similar to the voice at Jesus’ baptism, but addressed to the disciples now rather than to Jesus, saying, this is my Son, the beloved, listen to him — or go on listening to him, which is the force of the Greek. The gospel has reached a point of no return, there is no longer room for doubt about Jesus’ identity. He may be a human being but he is also God’s son, and the disciples are commanded to listen to him, not just on a one-off basis but continually.
Jesus came down from that mountain, to continue on towards his suffering and death. Was that experience really important for him? To give him such a sense of who he was in God that he could face all that was to come? I have always been struck by the introduction to the washing of the disciples’ feet in John 13 where it says ‘Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.’ etc. It seems such an unlikely start to foot-washing, realizing that you are the Son of God! And if it wasn’t for our familiarity with the whole story, crucifixion would seem an unlikely ending to such a transforming experience as this, and yet it was. There is something about the absolute assurance of who he was in God, that seems to have been of great importance to Jesus, to give him the strength to do the will of God wholeheartedly, and I think we need to learn from this. I think we frequently try to follow Jesus in the things he did, but we get so busy trying to do that or exhaust ourselves with the effort, without taking the time to let God tell us who we are in him first. We fear getting caught up in nice feelings, we have all probably known people who have gone on about God’s love and yet it seems to have made little difference to how they act, like the old saying ‘too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use’, that may make us cautious, but we need to take the time as Jesus did, to truly discover how much we are loved by God and to allow that love to transform us, not just knowing it in our heads but right down to our boots as it were. It is from that knowledge that we will be able to truly and authentically love others and serve them as Jesus did.
Copyright © 2006 Alison Terrell
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