Quinquagesima sermon

Sermon for the Sunday next before Lent

Exodus 34.29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2
Luke 9.28-36

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The lectionary can be a difficult thing. The readings we hear on Sundays can sometimes be obscure, apparently irrelevant, and finding oneself having to make some sense of them in preaching can be a real challenge. At other times the lectionary can be a real gift and we are presented with three readings that cohere nicely and are appropriate to the season. I am happy to say that today’s readings fall in the latter category.

Here we are, on the last Sunday before Lent: our last chance to live it up before things take a more serious turn. So we find ourselves at the hinge of the Church’s year, at the moment when we ready ourselves to embark on the disciplines of Lent, to hear again (even to live out) the story of Christ’s passion, and to carefully prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter.

Likewise, in the gospels the Transfiguration itself is a hinge in the narratives. And today we are presented with Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is that moment when Jesus ascends a mountain with a few of his disciples and while he is there his appearance is changed, or transfigured and Moses and Elijah appear with him. The voice of God is then heard, proclaiming “This is my Son.”

It is at the Transfiguration in Matthew, Mark and Luke (that is, the synoptic gospels – those gospels that share a common structure) that the emphasis in the story of Jesus changes. We move from a focus on his itinerant ministry, moving around Judea preaching, healing and performing miracles, to a focus on his journey into Jerusalem where he would be rejected by those who are closest to him, falsely accused, tortured and crucified.

Yet, it is not just the parallels between the context of the Transfiguration, and our own moment in the Church’s year that are significant, we can also say something about the Transfiguration itself. In the Transfiguration, as with the Old Testament story of Moses, we hear that the presence of God changes a person. Both Jesus and Moses ascend a mountain and experience a theophany. A theophany is a moment when God reveals something of himself, it is a Greek word meaning literally “God-revealing”. In these theophanies, these experiences of God’s revelation of himself, a change occurs for both Moses and Jesus: both appear afterward to have become whiter, brighter, one might say “more luminous”. For, from them, after their meeting with God, the light of God radiates. So, we see that the presence of God changes a person, it makes the presence of him more visible, more tangible, it makes them more like himself.

And so, for us, in contemplation of the Divine, in our prayer where we encounter him, he is forming us more into his likeness that we might shine with his radiance. In our prayer and in our worship we might glimpse that glory of God in-breaking from heaven to earth; as Moses beheld it on the mountain, and as the disciples saw it reflected in Jesus at the Transfiguration. We might just for a moment reflect his light and become, bit by bit, more like him.

The climax of this, for us, is of course to encounter God in the Eucharist. Here, in these gifts of bread and wine we encounter the very presence of God himself and are transformed, transfigured by consuming them more into the likeness of him. Our bodies are united with his body and his blood flows into us, and so in consuming him we become like him. His presence here will transform us. The continuation of this Eucharistic encounter, between those actual moments when we come to the altar, must be lived in a Eucharistic life, in a life of prayer; in a life of intentional encounter with God, of purposeful remembering of his presence as we make remembrance of his saving work here. Our prayer is the place where this continuity of encounter is maintained.

The glory that the disciples see in Christ is the same glory of God that will transfigure Christ even more fully at the Resurrection. After his crucifixion and death the true identity of Jesus is disclosed: the Saviour of all, who dies for us and raises us with him to new life – this identity is his glory. So, the Transfiguration is a foretaste of this full disclosure of the identity of Jesus, it is Easter anticipated. And yet, we could not know this identity without the Cross coming first.

An understanding of the Cross is necessary for an understanding of the Resurrection. And this is Peter’s mistake: he wants to capture this glory now. “Master,” he says, “it is good to be here, let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He wants to establish Christ’s glory prematurely, before he has accomplished that which he came to do. He wants to make permanent now something that is yet to come, something that can only be fully realised after going through a process.

The same must be true for us. As we, for a moment, before we embark on Lent, have Easter-anticipated in this Transfiguration account we must not want to cling to it, to prematurely establish the full glory of Christ on this event. Because, for us between now and then there is Lent. We are on the way to this glory, via Lent and the recalling of Christ’s Passion. As Christ, from the Transfiguration was on his way to glory, via the Cross.

In the meantime, to prepare ourselves to receive the theophany of Easter, the great revelation of God in the glorious transfiguring of the body of Christ, it will be our desire to become more like him. To gaze on him, to contemplate him, to be with him in prayer. For then, we too shall be transformed to reflect his glory, as Paul says in our Epistle:
“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2Cor3.18)
The Authorised version has this as “changed from glory to glory”. And so in gazing on him we shall become like him, until we are finally one with him. We shall be moved from the temporary glory of the Transfiguration to the permanent and fuller glory of the Resurrection, via our Lenten journey of prayer.

“This is my Son,” the voice of God says of Jesus at the Transfiguration. When we encounter it, the glory of God will make us more akin to him, more and more like him until, when at length, we come into the fullness of his presence and he will see us as his own and greet us saying, “This is my child.”

May we be ready to receive his glory when he greets us at Easter as our Risen Lord, and may we prepare ourselves so to do by a prayerful keeping of a Holy Lent. Amen.