Sunday’s Sermon, The Transfiguration

Just a mini-sermon this week (don’t cheer too loudly), as I’m tag-preaching with a colleague at a united service. We couldn’t decide between the reading below and 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, so we opted for two mini-sermons. This is mine.

Luke 9:28-36

Introduction
The late Malcolm Muggeridge once went to Calcutta to make a film about Mother Teresa called ‘Something Beautiful For God’. The Home for Dying Destitutes, where Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity take down-and-outs from the streets of Calcutta, was formerly a Hindu temple. It has very poor lighting, so poor the cameraman, Ken Macmillan, said it would be quite hopeless to film there. However, he was persuaded to take a few inside shots. When the film was processed, the inside shots were bathed in a wonderful soft light. Macmillan agreed this could not be accounted for in earthly terms.

Muggeridge said, ‘I have no doubt whatever as to what the explanation is: holiness, an expression of life, is luminous … The camera had caught this luminosity, without which the film would have come out quite black, as Ken Macmillan proved to himself when he used the same stock in similar circumstances and got no picture at all.’[1]

If that is what conventional film stock captured of Mother Teresa, imagine what it would have been like had it been possible to have a camera present at the Transfiguration. Maybe the brightness would have been so intense it would have been impossible to film. Perhaps it is like the story of the emperor who went to a famous Jewish rabbi, Joshua ben Hananiah, and asked to be shown the rabbi’s God. The rabbi replied that this was impossible but the emperor was not satisfied: he wanted to see the God of Israel. So the rabbi took him outside and told him to stare into the midday sun. ‘But that’s impossible!’ replied the emperor. ‘If you cannot look at the sun, which God created,’ retorted rabbi Joshua, ‘how much less can you behold the glory of God himself?’[2]

At the Transfiguration Peter, John and James are dazzled. But what does the dazzling glory of Jesus stand for, and what is a fitting response?

1. Salvation
Listen to the conversation that the disciples witness:

Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
(verses 30-31)

‘His departure.’ The Greek word for ‘departure’ here is exodos, from which the Old Testament book Exodus takes its name. It is the great story of salvation. In New Testament terms Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension would be the new great Exodus. Jesus would navigate a path not through the Red Sea but the deep waters of death to new life and salvation, and this is his glory.

This is the glory of the Gospel – nothing less – that the Son of God took human flesh, lived in humility and taught God’s new way of life, then died and rose that we might participate in that new lifestyle. The Gospel isn’t a self-help society, it’s not pop psychology lifted from tabloid pages or daytime TV, nor is it a political platform. It’s the power of God for salvation to be forgiven and live differently. It will lift our self-esteem and it does have profound political implications, but the key is the departure Jesus was to effect from Jerusalem, which leads to an ongoing deep conversion of every part of life. The hymn-writer was right to pen the words, ‘In the cross of Christ I glory.’ The Cross is his glory, and the light shines on the world from the darkness of Calvary.

But if that’s what the glory of the Transfiguration firstly means for us, what does its association with salvation mean for Jesus? Here is a wonderful spiritual experience, perhaps a glimpse of the glorious and beautiful light which he had always shared with the Father and the Spirit. We talk of having ‘mountain-top’ spiritual experiences – perhaps at great celebratory conferences or Christian events. Then when ordinary living hits us after we return we are discouraged.

But the mountain-top experience of glory for Jesus is surely to prepare him for what is to come. Here in his experience of glory, as he talks about his forthcoming departure that will accomplish salvation, perhaps he talks about the pain, isolation and suffering that it will entail. Is the Transfiguration strength for the road ahead? I suspect it is.

And so perhaps we might view our own mountain-top experiences like that. I have no problem in principle with Christians having extraordinary spiritual experiences of God. But I believe that often they are there as the spiritual refuelling before or during an arduous section of our journey. Some of my own most dramatic encounters with God have been while I was in a job I hated, while I was going through a broken engagement and while I was coping with various threats against me from church members during a couple of crises. I wish those spiritual experiences had lifted me out of the bad times, but more often they were the strength I needed to cope and the vision to see the situations God’s way instead of mine.

So it all begs a question: for what reason might we seek an ecstatic spiritual encounter? The Transfiguration suggests it might not be just for religious thrill-seekers: God has a mysterious purpose in these experiences. It is to build us up for the hard times.

2. Superiority
The other night Debbie and I caught a repeat of The Vicar Of Dibley. It began with the vicar, Geraldine Granger, opening the vicarage door to a tall, handsome man who said he had only met her once before when he had produced an episode of Songs Of Praise. But although they had only crossed paths once before, would he marry her? Geraldine – who has already been in a tizzy since seeing him – now turns completely to jelly, accepts his proposal, and as he disappears to bring someone, she tears down her poster of Mel Gibson. Only when the man returns a moment later does Geraldine discover he wanted her to conduct his wedding to his fiancée.

Ordinary people have a reputation for turning gaga when suddenly in the presence of celebrities, the powerful and the extremely attractive. And that’s what Peter – awake despite being tired (verse 32) – does at the Transfiguration. He blurts out nonsense:

‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’
(verse 33)

He wants a monument, a blue plaque, a tourist attraction to mark this auspicious occasion. But as the splendidly surnamed novelist William Faulkner once observed, footprints are preferable to monuments:

A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’[3]

A monument erected by a blabbering disciple won’t do for the Transfiguration. It is not an event that is reducible to a theme park or adventure playground. It requires not stopping there, but moving on. So Peter is rebuked by the divine voice from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (verse 35). The cloud disappears and only Jesus is left – Moses and Elijah are no longer there (verse 36). Listen to him. He is not their equal, he is God’s Son. He is superior: listen to him.

It is not a sufficient reaction, therefore, to spiritual ecstasy, to be an incoherent obsessive fan chasing after autographs. When we recover from our trembling limbs, when we get back up from our faces or our backs, there is only one fitting response, and that is obedience to Christ. He is superior to all other divine messengers, because he is God’s Son. Listen to him – and do what he says. Anything less makes us tourists not pilgrims, fans not disciples[4]. Jesus didn’t seek fans or tourists – he challenged them and they usually walked away. But disciples and pilgrims – they might also tremble and shake in the presence of Christ and his glory – but they don’t stop there. They follow. They walk with him. Do we?

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