Luke 9: 28-43
So, as I said at the beginning of the service and hopefully you are picking up through the songs and stories, today is Tansfiguration Sunday. This Sunday marks the end of the season after the Epiphany which began 8 weeks ago with the story of the outsider magi, bearing their gifts to the baby Jesus. It now ends before Lent with the transfiguration of Jesus, when the disciples “saw his glory” on the mountain. Unlike Christmas and Easter or even Pentecost and Palm Sunday this is not a particularly well-known day on the church’s calendar, in fact I have to admit last year I just skipped as I decided to do a series on John last year and John is the one gospel that doesn’t have this story.
It is also not a story I have in the past been particularly drawn to. But some of you might have picked up in the sermons over the last few months that recently I have been finding new inspiration and encouragement in all the really weird and wild stories of Scripture. You know all the ones that don’t make much sense and so progressive Christians like me just kind of ignored them or tried to explain them away with rational explanations and focused on the so-called social justice gospel.
Now the less progressive types have a similar problem. They focused a lot on these stories and ignored all the social justice parts. But if we want to be true to Jesus and the gospels we need it all.
Now, I am not the only one. The idea of re-enchanting Christianity, it’s a thing right now. Well known people are converting to Orthodoxy, which has always been more comfortable with the more out there stories of the Bible and there are more and more podcasts, books and articles coming out on the topic. So I am not claiming any originality here.
Other people seeking a more enchanted world have also found it in the more Eastern traditions or the so-called “spiritual not religious” practices. Others in more market driven commodities like Santa Claus, unicorns and Harry Potter. Probably most people are more familiar with Transfiguration as a subject at Hogwarts than the story we read today.
Now I love Harry Potter. I’ve read the books and watched the movies more times than I would like to admit and lots of great people who I love and respect have found meaning, inspiration for a good life and truth in faiths and practices that are different from my own and so I hope I am treading carefully here.
But it does make me sad that so many people who are looking for enchantment (or social justice movements for that matter) simply reject Christianity, as having nothing to offer, without even finding out about it. Because I think the Christian story has all this within it and more.
Anyway, that is a long introduction to this wild story now known as the Transfiguration.
We have jumped forward a couple of chapters from last week’s sermon on the mount. Jesus and the disciples have remained in the area on the sea of Galilee teaching, healing and living out Jesus’ mission of proclaiming good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners and the oppressed and recovery of sight for the blind.
He has gathered quite a following. There are the 12 well known disciples of course but Luke tells us of others, including women, who have joined Jesus. However, just before this passage Jesus takes some time alone with the 12 to pray and he tells them for the first time about his impending suffering, death and resurrection.
When our passage opens with, “eight days after these sayings Jesus took Peter, James and John up to a mountain to pray” we should know that “these sayings” refer to Jesus speaking about his death.
And while praying Jesus’s face changes, his clothes become a dazzling white and his glory shines around. Moses and Elijah appear out of time and space and talk to Jesus about his departure, which he is about to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Peter struggling to comprehend this suggests pitching tents.
But then a cloud descends, it envelops the disciples and they are terrified. But a voice from elsewhere addresses them tenderly and gently, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to Him.
These words of course mirror the words spoken in the waters of Galilee at Jesus Baptism. Before Jesus heads into the desert to meet the devil himself (a story we will jump back to next week for the first week of Lent) God affirms who he is – God’s beloved and chosen Son. And now, as Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, where he will again face that which is evil in the world, God speaks the same words to the disciple who will go with him.
And then just as it started it is suddenly it is over. The cloud disperses and they are alone again with Jesus.
Later when Peter has had some time to digest all this he describes this moment in a letter like this, “We did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”
I have never had an experience like this but I believe I have experienced the glory of God. I believe I have heard God’s voice, seen God’s hand at work in the world, felt God’s presence. I cannot fully explain it and I am aware that it can sound crazy and let’s be real sometimes it is. I am also aware of the ways that saying stuff like that can be misused to control and abuse others. One cannot be allowed to simply state they have heard something from God and thus it is true and real and everyone else must be fall in line. As always we need to be discerning, to seek guidance from the community and so again I am treading carefully here. But I do believe that Scriptures proclaims that God is present and acting in the world, in strange and surprising and miraculous ways and that did not just stop after the Scriptures were written.
I think this is something many of us need to hear right now. I, like a lot of other people all around me, are becoming more disillusioned with human reason, progress and politics. I am becoming more aware of the limits of these things to explain everything and to solve anything. It is a great hope to me at these times that it is Jesus, who is the chosen, Jesus who we are called to listen to, not other local or world leaders who seem to think they are.
Also, as a culture we are becoming more aware of the fact that ancient cultures, traditions and religions who have always had a sense of the spirit world are not just primitive and stupid. Now that is not saying they can explain everything either and I am super grateful for what modernity has brought us in regards to understanding our universe, our world and ourselves. Particularly as a woman I do not want to turn simply back the clock to former times. However, I also do not want to simply dismiss that which as old as suspect. Look only forward and never back for wisdom.
And finally, with the climate crisis ever present and loneliness, lack of meaning, anxiety, depression, addiction and deaths of despair all on the rise we are all starting to see that for all the good that modernity has brought, and there is a lot, the story it tells us about the world and our place in it has left the planet and lot of people floundering.
Perhaps reason and religion both need the humility to recognise the questions they can and cannot answer and work together.
All that said, I am glad that Jesus and the disciples do not just stay up there on that sacred mountain praying and basking in the glory of their enchanted experience.
The next day they come down from the mountain and meet a despairing father and his beloved but very sick child. “I begged your disciples to cast it out but they could not”, he said. This line places this story not as an after the event story but a meanwhile story. While Jesus, Peter, James and John were on the sacred mountain having their mountaintop experience the other disciples had been in the valley with this sick child, his demon and his terrified father whose anger is mounting at them as they try to heal this boy but could not.
Earlier in chapter nine Jesus had sent his disciples out into the villages where they had journeyed bringing the good news and healing people and yet this night they couldn’t do it. I wonder if perhaps their resentment at being there and not the chosen ones on the mountain had anything to do with it. I don’t know that but I know myself and I think this would bother me. And I know that unfortunately, I am not totally above letting jealousy and bitterness get to me.
Jesus is not happy. He calls them a faithless and perverse generation. It seems mountaintop experiences are not the only experiences Jesus calls disciples to.
And so Jesus heals the boy. This is not to say the healing cancels out the suffering, the struggle of the night for the boy and his father and the other disciples remains. But Jesus redeems it.
In all three gospels this story is told alongside the Transfiguration. This pairing points us to a reality of the world. There is glory and there is agony. And Christianity holds them both. And so somehow, we as Christians also need to do the hard work of holding them together in faithful tension, denying neither and embracing both so that no one among us – whether joyous or anguished, feeling beloved or broken — feels alone.
As Christians we will experience the mountain and the valley but our faith enchants them both. This is in no way to minimise or romanticise suffering but the Spirit of God touches both, we can experience Christ and His Kingdom in both. And this is what’s enchanting.
Amen
