2nd March 2025

2nd March 2025, the Sunday before Lent – David Matthews

Readings: Exodus 34. 29-35; Luke 9. 28-36

Have you read or seen the TV adaptation of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman? I think the books are brilliant. They are written for young people but owe a great deal to Milton’s Paradise Lost (which is where the title of the trilogy comes from) as they deal imaginatively with primaeval themes of good versus evil, redemption, consciousness and the nature of the human soul. One device which Pullman employs is that of a portal, allowing his protagonists to move between parallel universes. It is an inspired way, to my mind, of exploring the way that human beings, fixed in their mortal sphere, can still interact with another dimension. It is a device showing how the earth could exist alongside heaven, with connections between the two. This, surely, is what happens at the transfiguration as well as at the four other pivotal moments in Jesus’ life: baptism, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. The first three occur in all four Gospels. The ascension just features in Mark and Luke’s account and we only find the Transfiguration in the three synoptic gospels – John does not include it at all. Nevertheless, I think we can call all of these five events pivotal because these are the key moments when the veil between heaven and earth is, fleetingly, lifted.

His baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and it is the moment when God’s blessing is made explicit. Mark tells us that Jesus sees the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descending and he hears God’s voice saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.

At the transfiguration, God’s voice is again heard reaffirming Jesus as the Chosen or Beloved (the term varies from one gospel to another) one who must be heeded; Jesus is now God’s mouthpiece. The transfiguration is also clearly a sequel, following on from the baptism and, in Matthew’s account, it clearly anticipates the next two pivotal moments, crucifixion and resurrection, because Jesus tells his three companions, as they come down from the mountain to tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

So what specifically makes the Transfiguration so significant?  We note, first of all, that it takes place on a mountain with all the symbolic significance that brings. Irrespective of any spiritual associations, there is clearly something fundamental to the human psyche which draws us towards summits. To stand and look down upon the world from such a vantage point throws things into a different perspective, possibly only equaled by the view of the whole world – a floating blue hazed sphere – seen by astronauts. (That, of course, was never available to Jesus’s contemporaries nor their ancestors; they had to make do with mountain-tops.) Of course, one cannot claim to share God’s perspective when we stand on the summit of a mountain but we are prompted to step out of any parochial mind-set, moved, as we can be, by a sense of awe.

Mountains have their own Biblical a history. We heard about one example of this in our first reading. Moses climbs a mountain to encounter God and receive the law. He, like Jesus, is irradiated by the experience – a transformation occurs. And it is on Mount Horeb that Elijah – the most venerated of all prophets - experiences the presence of God, passing him by not in earthquake, wind or fire but as a still small voice. Jesus’s three companions also find themselves on a mountain. And so they are predisposed to encounter something ‘other’. What they see is Moses – he who gave the Children of Israel God’s law – and Elijah – most revered of all the prophets. Moses and Elija embody the way that God revealed himself to humankind… until the pivotal moment which we call the Transfiguration.

What happens?

The Law and the Prophets are replaced by Jesus. All that has gone before is now substituted for the Chosen One, the Beloved. This is monumental stuff. Everything those devout jews had believed is turned inside out because the words that the apostles hear – uttered by God –  are ‘Listen to him.’ ‘Listen to him.’

Jesus is the new Law. Jesus is the focus of all the prophecies. Jesus, because he is God incarnate is the embodiment of the Law and the Prophets. All the ritualistic living the Children of Israel were bound by, all the warnings and mysterious utterings delivered by the holy men and women throughout their turbulent history…none of that now matters compared to the significance of Jesus.

Jesus has stepped into history. Jesus has closed the gap between God and humanity. And at this pivotal moment he has allowed three of his apostles to see the portal thrown wide open. It is literally astonishing.

So what is the apostles’ reaction? Wholly understandable but fundamentally misguided. Yet extraordinarily, profoundly significant at the same time because it is by pondering their behaviour and what follows that the Transfiguration speaks most potently to us today.

Peter wants everything to stop. He wants to build three shelters: one each for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. These would be sacred spaces. Peter knows he is confronting a spiritual phenomenon and his deepest urge is to hold it, preserve it, worship it. He wants to stay on the mountain, embraced by the radiant aura.

It is not to be. Even as he speaks, a cloud descends and with it comes terror. A moment later and Jesus is alone. The mountain is just a high place with a view, and it’s time to climb down to the plain.

Peter, James and John face the fact that they – that we – do not have the physical or emotional capacity to remain long in the presence of God: God, the creator of the universe; God, the life-force unparalleled. It is only God when God is made manifest in Jesus that we can abide with.

But there is more. And this is, I think, a key lesson; it is that we are not called to isolate ourselves on a metaphorical mountain top, cocooned by radiance; we are called to follow Jesus down the slopes where the rest of human kind is to be found in all its diversity, its beauty and its ugliness, its purity and its squalor. We are called to listen to Jesus and follow him through his crucifixion to the resurrection.

This is not to turn our backs on mountain-tops. We need these encounters where we are energised, irradiated and quickened. But we cannot bask in these environments or luxuriate in them. They are the means by which we are primed for action.

If there is any doubt about this, it is surely dispelled by God’s command to listen to Jesus. We listen, do we not, in order to find out what to do, in order to respond or understand. Whenever we listen intently, we open ourselves to potential growth or change. We listen in order to develop.

It took me many years to understand that prayer should be, primarily, a time to listen.

Of course, when we pray, there will always be times when we want to articulate our troubles. We may have longings we want fulfilled. We may desperately want God to step in and alter the course things seems set to follow. It is easy to approach God with a list of requests but now, when I do this, I always try to package them up as preoccupations, as distractions that need to be put aside:

“Heavenly Father, I want to get closer to you, to align my will with yours, but I am distracted by this, by that, by the other. Help me see things from your perspective. Help me pray, ‘Not my will but yours be done.’”

And then, if am lucky, or disciplined or sufficiently sincere, I am more likely to be able to listen and, in listening, discern how to be, what to do, what not to do. Never, is such listening answered by a ‘do nothing’ and a shrug,

After the law, after the prophets, after Moses and Elijah, God sent his only Son, his beloved, his chosen one. The transfiguration is the pivotal moment which makes Jesus’ function supremely clear. He is to be listened to.

Coming down from the mountain, Jesus knew what had to happen next. He was to die and he was to rise from the dead. And only after those pivotal events were his disciples to tell others what they had learned on the mountain-top. The Great Commission of proclaiming the Good news had then to begin.

That work continues. Which is why it is unlikely that, when we listen in prayer to God speaking, he will say, “Do nothing. All sorted.” Today, as we head towards Lent in the year of Our Lord 2025, it is clearer than ever that the Gospel work is far from complete.

There is little in the world today that is comfortable. The world order is on the cusp of change. International affairs are dominated by men with a thirst for untrammelled autocracy. Environmental, economic and political instability creates waves of dissatisfaction, anger and fear. This brings turbulence as people are displaced or forced to abandon their homelands. Even societies like ours in France or the United Kingdom, cushioned from major turmoil, are shaken. It is difficult to know what will happen in the years ahead or to predict the extent our lives and the lives of others will be disrupted.

But let us not forget that we can climb the mountain. We can stand on the summit and pick up something of God’s perspective. We can take the long view, which reduces the racing torrent to a thin stream, where precipitous hills and ravines are mere blips on the landscape. From the mountain top we can see the first light of dawn on the far horizon before the sun’s rays dispel the shadows that engulf the plain.

And with this perspective, armed with the certain knowledge that the resurrection followed the crucifixion, we can climb down the mountain with a spring in our step: listening, heeding, doing.

In the midst of the mess human beings create, it is surely our role as Christians to strip away the distractions – however terrifying they may appear – to show the pure white core that sits at the heart of everything. It is hope. Hope undimmed in the saving grave of Jesus. It is trust. Trust in the Beloved, the Chosen One.

Let us take a moment to listen.

Pause.

Amen.