The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ - 6th August 2022
With the feast of the Transfiguration we find ourselves encountering an archetypal mountain top experience – a story found in each of the synoptic gospels. As our hymn for this feast says:
To the mountain apart with his own
Christ has come, as the servant God-seeking,
And the Word, the light-giver,
In flesh immanent.
Mountain tops are places where the holy is encountered in many religious traditions and Moses and Elijah, who came to Jesus at the Transfiguration, both encountered God in the mountains. Mountains are places apart where the veil between transcendent reality and the here and now becomes thin. Jesus often went away to pray by himself in wild and mountainous places and on this particular occasion took Peter, James and John with him. I wonder whether he often met and spoke with Moses and Elijah and maybe others during these times? We don’t know. But we do know that at least this once the disciples found themselves in the presence of transfigured reality where time and place no longer mattered and Jesus could converse with these figures from way back in their tradition. They saw Jesus himself glorious and transfigured in his full humanity and divinity, ‘the Word, the light-giver in flesh immanent’.
I sometimes think how wonderful it would be to have such an experience and to be so sure of Jesus’ divine manhood. Maybe some of you have been blessed in this way? I fantasise that life could be so different, I would never be the same again, all my doubts gone and problems solved! Yet for those who have them these mountain-top experiences fade and we have to get on with life. Such experiences may set our lives on a new course but it can take time for us to ‘live in’ to what it all means. Indeed our tradition tells us that dramatic visions can be dangerous and a distraction from true discipleship.
Peter, James and John saw Jesus in all his glory, an experience that overwhelmed them. Icons of the Transfiguration show these three tumbling backwards down the mountain in their shock and covering their eyes from the blinding light. Peter wanted to hold on to the vision, bring it into normal physical reality, by building three dwellings for Jesus, Moses and Elijah but the vision was soon gone, he couldn’t pin it down. He was left with his memories of that moment but I wonder what lasting impact it had on him?
This was the same Peter who denied Jesus on the night he was arrested – where was that vision now? Where was the certainty of what he had seen? The women who stayed with Jesus to the bitter end had not been party to that vision, their love and devotion was nurtured by travelling with Jesus and serving him, providing for his needs. Is it through this quieter, undramatic way of humble service that deep, enduring transformation actually happens?
The voice from the cloud said ‘Listen to him’, and that listening means making space for Jesus to speak, it means travelling with him and being in conversation. I wonder if for Peter the experience that finally brought about enduring transformation was that conversation on the beach recorded at the end of John’s Gospel. It was a dialogue in which Jesus went to the heart of Peter’s denial, opened him up to love and then entrusted the nascent church to his care. In a quiet and undramatic way Jesus called Peter into his vocation.
This is not to deny the value of visions for those who receive them. Mystic visionaries through the ages have been important and have often brought new and deeper understanding of God’s ways with us. But the visions are just a starting point. Think of Julian of Norwich who spent a lifetime unpacking and wrestling with what was revealed to her. I imagine the disciples who were present at the Transfiguration held that vision as a backdrop to all that happened subsequently. Although at the time they could not comprehend it, as they continued to journey with Jesus, especially into his risen life beyond death, it would have been an important sign for them of Jesus’ true identity.
The final verse of our hymn says:
By transcendent transfiguring sign
Christ’s disciples have known the beloved, the Son.
Keep your Church, Christ
Seeing none save the Lord.
Through the tradition of the Church this vision of the disciples has been passed on to us so that we too may know ‘the beloved, the Son’. He calls us to keep the Lord, his Father, before our eyes and through the inspiration of this feast to see ‘none save the Lord’ in all the mundane circumstances of our lives. Then maybe like the women who followed Jesus even without the assurance of that dramatic vision, we will be where it matters when the time of trial comes.
Mother Anne - 6th August 2022