Vicar’s sermon: The Transfiguration: Luke 9.28- 43 2.3.25

A week away in the South Lakes, near Cartmel. Who knew the Furness coast was so beautiful. Spring sunshine, snowdrops and books. My read last week was Umberto Eco’s The Name of the rose, 2nd time round for me and I confess I enjoyed the film more than the book. Each chapter of this medieval murder mystery has a heading named after the hours of the monastery (mattins, vespers and so on) but also a cute sentence that says something bout what is about to happen inn the chapter that follows. So, for example, we get:
Prime on the first day: In which the foot of the abbey is reached and William demonstrates his great acumen. Compline of the fifth day: In which Salvatore tells of a prodigious spell.
Which made me wonder how this sermon might be introduced and I came up with this: The Transfiguration: In which a cigarette butt on Granger Over Sands provokes a fiercely strong memory in the Vicar’s wife and the Vicar connects her thoughts to Church Action on Poverty Sunday.
It’s true. There we were, sat on a bench looking out over the Morecambe Bay and a cigarette butt on the path called forth a story from ‘a while ago’ in which Kim and her best friend Kathy, (walking home from The Girls’ Friendly Society meeting – aged no more than 10) fell out over their theological exploration of the meaning and purpose of matter. (Sunday School at Chapeltown Methodist church was unlike any Sunday School I’ve known). The question occupying these two friends’ minds was whether there was a reason behind or within ‘all stuff’. ‘Even that cigarette butt?’ said one. ‘Yes’ said the other. Apparently, these best buddies didn’t talk to one another for a while after their disagreement but you’ll be pleased to know that they were on speaking terms by the next day.
The Gospel reading today, about the Transfiguration, is offered to us twice a year in the lectionary. Firstly, always on this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent: We’re reminded in our Collect that Jesus was ‘revealed in majesty before He suffered death upon the cross’ and (in the same prayer) we’re also pointed towards our being changed ‘from glory to glory’ into his likeness. But scondly we also read the Transfiguration story at the beginning of August- indeed, the event has its own Feast Day (August 6th) – so it is clearly important. The question is ‘why?’
There are a number of answers. You could land on the continuity shown between the Gospel and the Jewish history of faith that Jesus’ appearing with Moses and Elijah reveals. Or you could highlight the fact that Moses and Elijah disappear from view in the cloud of God’s glory leaving only Jesus and God’s command to ‘Listen to Him’. But our Collect points us towards the girls’ argument by highlighting the lesson from the reading that human beings (most especially those who are seeking to follow Christ’s pattern of life), are in process of becoming ‘more’. Indeed, we are not just human beings, we are ‘human becomings’. You are (and you are not) the person you were ten or twenty years ago: physically, mentally or spiritually. We are changing all the time. (We’d be worried if a child didn’t grow or change or develop). But more than this, the scripture suggests that our purpose as human beings is to become more Christ-like in and through whatever circumstances we might find ourselves in: our purpose is to reflect in our lives the glory of God. The key text for this would be in the First of John’s letters, chapter 3, verse 2
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. So the Transfiguration story sets before us Jesus’ glory but it also speaks to the whole of humanity (and by extension, the whole of creation) being transformed, metamorphosed.
That word ‘metamorphosed’, appears in Matthew and Mark’s version of this story as the word we read there as ‘transfigured’: it’s not used in Luke’s version this morning. Cally Hammond, (the Dean of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge who writes for the Church Times) highlights this difference in her commentary on the passage but she then goes on to remark on the three Gospel’s similarities (most especially that all three – Matthew, Mark and Luke – follow the Transfiguration account with the story of the healing of an epileptic boy.) This father’s only son, isn’t transfigured in the same way as Jesus was but he is most definitely healed, restored and presented to his father whilst the people ‘are astounded at the greatness of God.’
That connection of the mountain top experience of the vision of humanity’s representative (Jesus) filled with God’s glory and the healing of this child is not insignificant, suggests Revd Hammond. On the one hand (on the top of the mountain) we are shown the high calling of the people of God: ‘where Jesus goes we are called to follow’. But at the foot of the mountain we see a young life pulled to pieces by illness and a family in despair. The distance or gap between these two pictures of humanity is immense: our true purpose and calling and the messy reality of life.
It’s at this point that I’d like to draw your attention to the pictures issued to you alongside this morning’s pew sheet. (https://www.church-poverty.org.uk/sunday/paintings They come from a church based art project in Sheffield. There are 10 or so pictures so you don’t all have the same image. A caption is set alongside each painting describing the person portrayed, their hopes and dreams and the life they are currently living. Amongst them there are people with illness or disability, a refugee, someone struggling with their mental health, a young man who is seeking work, someone who has lived through domestic abuse and violence. These are pictures of real people but you could add to them images of those who you bring to church each week, carried on your heart and mentioned in your prayers. Up on the mountain top all seems wonderful, but the fact is we are here, down below with a grandchild perhaps struggling at school, a son or daughter in a difficult relationship. Some of our friends and neighbours live with chronic illness. Behind the front doors of folk we know there will be money worries, exhaustion and anxiety at paying the bills and the sheer fatigue involved in facing another day caring for parents, a partner or children.
I have given you these pictures this morning because they force you to look, to see, to wonder – what might transfiguration mean to this child of God? What might it mean for me? In the first part of our passage I notice that Peter and his companions were weighed down by sleep but then they ‘saw his glory’ (and I suspect that their seeing also involved an ‘understanding’ of his glory). But the next time we get the mention of ‘seeing’ is when Jesus is begged by the boy’s father to ‘Look at my son’. To be noticed by Jesus. To have his attention. This is what the man wanted and what Jesus gave.
‘Look’ says this passage. ‘Look at the glory of God, revealed in all things but revealed most perfectly in Jesus, God’s son.’ But then ‘Look again’. Look at the boy who needs care, the man who is so much more than the mental condition by which we describe him. Look at the woman whose gifts and abilities aren’t used because she is a ‘refugee’, an illegal alien. Look at the young man who keeps trying to find work despite the repeated rejections. ‘Please look at my son, my daughter’ says the Almighty, ‘they are all my children and I want to change their lives through you.’