I closed my eyes, pulled back the curtain...

<sup>Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

2 Corinthians 3:18</sup>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; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

Luke 9:28 - 9 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 

The first line of a popular song from the Musical Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat, goes like this:

“I closed my eyes/pulled back the curtain/to see for certain/what I thought I knew…”

Today’s Gospel shows us the peeling back of a curtain between earth and heaven as Jesus is revealed in all his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration.

It’s a glimpse of glory, which is very tantalizing.

We’ll firstly take a look at the word GLORY, then have a digression on the difficulty of imagining Eternal Life and thirdly, we’ll ask where in our lives do we experience glory?

1. Glory is a fascinating topic in Scripture – I wonder what images the word conjures up for you?

Perhaps something akin to a bright light, something white and blinding, maybe images of a coronation service…certainly not an every day occurrence.

The Westminster Catechism talks of glory: to the question: ‘What is the chief end of man?’ the answer goes: ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.’

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, a Sunday all about GLORY.

It’s a Sunday when we think of Jesus, an otherwise ordinary looking man, who had no particular physical attractiveness, and who experienced all the common emotions and troubles known to humankind, being suddenly revealed to be who he truly was, behind the curtain (so to speak).

The word ‘glory’ in Greek is doxa, from where we get our word ‘doxology’.

A doxology is what we say after a psalm: ‘Glory to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, Amen’.

Saying a doxology is a little repetitive reminder that despite all appearances to the contrary, the glory of God is his very nature, and that nature is something we can fully rely on to be real.

‘Glory’ in the Old Testament has a special word: Shekinah.

The Shekinah of God was His manifest presence in a local place, like the Temple.

It was said that when Moses came down from his mountain top experience, after receiving the 10 commandments, that his face shone with glory, the glory of having been in the presence of God.

The glory shining in his face was so bright he had to put a veil over it when he talked with ordinary people; otherwise they could not bear to look at it.

On Transfiguration Sunday we see Jesus revealed for a moment in all his true glory.

It’s a moment to savour, because soon we will enter Lent and it will be a while before the resurrection glory of Easter Day dawns (though let’s not forget that every Sunday is a resurrection morning really).

We can picture the mountain top scene perhaps:

Jesus has taken his closest three friends up the mountain to pray.

Can you imagine going up a mountain with Jesus to share a time of prayer?

It would be pretty special.

While he was praying the appearance of his face changed and suddenly his clothes became dazzling white.

Now strange things can happen at the top of mountains.

There’s a lot of cloud up there, the weather might be unpredictable, the atmosphere might be a bit rarified; you might be worn out from the climb…

Can you really believe your eyes as Jesus’ appearance begins to change – is that the sun bursting through – or just Jesus getting whiter and whiter till you can hardly look,

As the curtain is peeled back for a moment….

…..the curtain that separates this age from the age to come?

2. A little digression on the nature of the afterlife…

We have problems in our language describing the afterlife/heaven/eternal life etc.

We think we live here now, then we’ll progress to something that comes after.

We struggle when we use time-related words.

But another way to think of it, is that Life Eternal is present alongside ours and that’s possibly much more helpful.

There’s a scene from the Harry Potter movies where Harry sees his godfather die in a battle against the forces of evil.

In the film the sequence is slowed; in slow motion you see the fatal blow fall on the godfather, Sirius; you see him stop for a moment, fall backwards slowly, and a curtain appears – a very flimsy curtain - and he falls through it and into the other side, wherever that is…

Sirius falls through the curtain...

Granted it's separate from 

Harry, in that Harry is distraught and cannot see his godfather anymore; but in fact he is apparently only on the other side of the curtain…

That’s a good visual image of Life Eternal being just out of sight, NEXT to ours…

Or imagine you’re at a theatre, and the scenery is stacked up one screen behind the other, each screen ready to be brought out at the right time.

As the scene changes, the scenery that you can see now, is lifted for a moment to reveal something much more spectacular behind it.

On the Mount of Transfiguration, the reality behind the ordinary mountain walk is suddenly revealed, and the disciples ‘see’ the Old Testament prophets alongside the exalted Son of God, talking with him about his forthcoming death.

They suddenly see reality. And NOTE: when this happened they were praying.

3. So finally, when have you suddenly glimpsed spiritual reality right in your midst?

Sometimes it’s at our most testing moments that we see the reality behind the curtain…

Moments when I have glimpsed the glory have often been at funerals, or with the bereaved who are reaching out to God; as well as the moment when couples make their wedding vows, or a baby is christened, or I’m singing an uplifting hymn, or sitting in silence in the presence of a flickering candle….you will have your own moments.

Be encouraged that probably the times when we’re most likely to glimpse the glory poking through the curtain are the hard times – so we mustn’t lose heart.

Suffering leads to glory if we let it.

Paul says that we reflect the glory as we are being made into God’s likeness,

That’s a huge privilege and also a challenge.

That challenge is that the transformation he speaks of needs our co-operation.

Lent is a perfect time to reassess this; to reassess our spiritual lives, our walk with Christ.

The Lent Course a perfect format in which to be open to each other in power of the Spirit.

But if you can’t come to the Lent Course, find a way to make room for Christ, especially in your prayer life this Lent.

Is there a book, a task, a daily discipline that you can practice to deepen your relationship with Christ?

Can I put in a plug for not just the usual ‘I’m giving up chocolate’?

There’s nothing wrong with a type of fast, but the reason for doing it is to draw nearer to God.

In Lent we pray for the grace to catch the glimpses of glory.

"I closed my eyes/pulled back the curtain/to see for certain/what I thought I knew..."

Amen.

About a child

Mark 9: 37a. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me.

This Sunday's passage from Mark takes an important direction from high and mighty (The Mount of Transfiguration) to lowly and domestic (a house, a chair, a child). We'll bear that downward direction in mind as we look at these seven short but devastating verses from Mark 9.

The passage begins 'Having gone forth from there...' and reading back slightly, we can see that 'there' refers to the mount of Transfiguration where Jesus has been spectacularly revealed to Peter, James and John as a dazzling figure of white, the exalted Son of God, or to use the language of the Harry Potter books, 'The Chosen One'. Scholars are not agreed, but this may have been Mount Tabor, 1843 feet of glorious elevated mountain, 17 km west of Lake Galilee. 

'Having gone forth from there...' 

So they're leaving the mountain behind...How many times have we had splendid ideas for our church, a dream that God will move in power, that God will be on that mountain top experience of healing, blessing or new vision. And then we 'go forth from there', and find that life is seemingly still mundane, ordinary, troublesome.

As we saw, the disciples are 'moving on' from the mountain top experience, and continuing with Jesus along the way, they discover that instead of talking about Elijah and Moses and the great coming of God at the end of all things, Jesus is talking about suffering. 'The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him and three days later, he will rise again'. Not only do they not understand what he's talking about, they are afraid to ask.    

If only following Jesus' teaching was as simple as following his footsteps through the Galilean countryside. At least the disciples are good at walking. Picture them trudging the dusty pathways in the heat of the day, Jesus always up ahead, forging onwards, but occasionally turning round to catch what it is they're discussing at the back of the group there. As the sun heats up the dry earth from its zenith in the blue sky, arguments are simmering...

They come to a house. A domestic setting, so different from the mountain top. A house with four walls, a family, arguments. A house where you eat, sleep, live alongside each other. Or feel the loneliness of empty rooms. Jesus is at home both on the mountain and in the house. In a house you can be intimate, sit and eat with friends and be honest about your nearest and dearest, as long as you're ready for them to be honest about you.

Here, in this house, Jesus brings out all the dirty linen. 'What were you arguing about on the way?' It's not that he doesn't know, even though they are silent. They are silent because they are ashamed. Family silences can be oppressive - better to get things out in the open - most of the time anyway.

From the mountain to the house. And now Jesus sits down on a chair. Not exactly sitting at God's right hand in glory, more sitting after a long journey, sitting to summon patience with your fellow travellers, sitting to be smaller. Perhaps the disciples continued standing, while Jesus was content to physically shrink in front of them. Did he sit because at that moment a child ran in from an adjoining room? Perhaps Jesus suddenly wanted to leave behind the adult world of bickering, one-upmanship and cover up. The child running in just then must have been a blessed relief, a breath of fresh air. Or perhaps Jesus was just tired. We all need to sit down once in a while. Even a servant sits at the end of a long day sweeping floors, cleaning cupboards and cooking meals for the whole family.

'Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. And then he took a little child and put it among them.' 

Jesus is good at visual aids. The disciples (and we) need them. The little child was perhaps 4 foot, 7 years old? Thrust into the middle of a group of adults who were busy trying to pretend they were not arguing over who was the top disciple. At that moment, looking down at the child in their midst, they must have felt pretty stupid. The child (let's call her Miriam) may have felt a touch frightened. Good job then that Miriam found herself in Jesus' arms moments later, the warm reassurance of strength, being special, being noticed, being the centre of Jesus' attention.

The Jesus of the mountain top is in a house, sitting on a chair, cuddling a child. Which parent, uncle, auntie, Godparent or grandparent has not felt this timeless moment of utter communion, this moment when we think we're offering comfort, when in fact the child comforts us, and the world feels right, this cuddle in a comfy chair, this one-on-one conversation with divine wisdom.

Here, at last, is the heart of discipleship. From the mountain, to the house, to the chair, to the child. If we cannot sit with Jesus and know his tender love for us, how can we ever enter the kingdom of God? As we welcome the child in his name, we will find we're welcoming Jesus himself. And as we welcome Jesus, we will find we're welcoming the one who sent him - even God. 

'Are children welcome in all your services?' was a question asked recently of us as a church....In this question, as we ponder the downward direction from a mountain, to a house, to a chair, to a child; we surely (like the first disciples) have a great deal to learn.

Gospel, glory and veils

2 Corinthians 4:3-4 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 

Luke 9:28-31 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 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. 

The Westminster Catechism asks this question:

‘What is the chief end of man?’

Answer: ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.’

The word ‘glory’ in Greek is doxa, from where we get our word ‘doxology’: the ‘Glory to the Father’ said after psalms are chanted or sung.

‘Glory’ in the OT was a big concept and the rabbis had a special word to describe it: Shekinah.

The Shekinah of God was His manifest presence in a located place.

When God dwelt amongst his people for a protracted period of time, it was said that his glory, his Shekinah, was amongst his people.

His Shekinah inhabited the Temple; crucially when His presence left the Temple this coincided with Israel’s apostasy and their Exile.

It was said that when Moses came down the Mountain after receiving the 10 commandments from God, his face shone with glory, the glory of having been in the presence of a holy God.

The glory shining in his face was so bright he had to put a veil over his face when he talked with the people; otherwise they could not bear to look at it.

Paul, in our first reading, is defending his message against the so-called ‘super apostles’, who promised glory without discipleship/suffering.

Disciples are willing to suffer before they see glory – Paul never hid this fact.

Paul speaks then of the so called veiling of his gospel - the 'the god of this world' veils the gospel, but how does this exactly work?

Which are the things which veil the Good News today?

What things could we be putting in the way, things that act like veils?

Busy-ness, apathy, material comfort, distance from God: perhaps all these and more can act like veils today.

Are there things we do in church (or don’t do) which veil the message?

This is an important question: are we hiding Christ somehow?

Lent is a good time to consider, individually and corporately, what is veiling our walk with God...

It’s sometimes said of those who walk very closely with Christ that you can see something of God in their faces…

I wonder if you can think of anyone…

It’ll be someone who has walked daily with God; someone whose expression is peaceful but perhaps who’s suffered and come through; someone whose obedience and joy have been so much a part of their lives that their very face reflects God’s glory.

Our gospel is about Christ revealed in glory on the Mount of Transfiguration.

He has taken his closest three friends along, and it says he took them up the mountain to pray.

Can you imagine going up a mountain with Jesus to share a time of prayer with him?

While he was praying the appearance of his face changed and suddenly his clothes became dazzling white.

Now strange things can happen at the top of mountains.

There are clouds swishing around up there, the weather might be more violent; the atmosphere might be a bit rarified, you might be worn out from the climb…

All that was part of the strange experience Peter, James and John had.

But the mountain top is also a metaphor for a spiritual experience.

We say ‘I had a mountain top experience.’

We are usually elated during a mountain top experience; everything seems real and exhilarating.

It was as if Jesus was revealed for a few moments in all his divinity.

Yes, he was still the man they knew and talked with but now they saw ‘beyond the veil’ as it were…

The veil of this life was temporarily parted to reveal a deeper reality.

This reality is open to us and sometimes we sense it closely – if we’ve lost someone we love, or if God’s presence seems particularly real in a particular place.

Jesus is suddenly seen beyond the veil and at God’s right hand.

On one side of him stands Moses, law giver: on the other Elijah, representing all the prophets.

The Law and the Prophets…

What are they doing there with Jesus?

They’re speaking of his departure – his death, which, the text says ‘He was about to accomplish…’

Jesus had been speaking about his death and resurrection - he’s trying to get through to his disciples, but, understandably they are not able yet to equate the Messiah with suffering.

They too do not understand that the Messiah had to suffer before entering his glory.

But the glory they see before them on the mountain top is too much for Peter, James and John; Peter gets incoherent.

Here’s Jesus in all his glory…and the disciples are bamboozled by it…

Peter gabbles some nonsense about putting up shelters, but you cannot box spiritual experience in the hope of living off it for ever.

Because soon you get right back to 'normality'.

Suffering (daily life, the daily grind) and glory.

How do we suffer for our faith?

Certainly not like our persecuted brothers and sisters, but to put Christ first in a world which largely ignores him is tough.

To be brave enough to speak of our involvement in church can be tough.

Sharing your faith is not easy, but if we think of it as shining out automatically, it might help.

It is a natural outpouring of the heart.

We are veiled, if you like – it is Christ who shines out.

As we approach Lent and think about Jesus' Transfiguration today, we pray that our message may be unveiled and that we may reflect his glory to the world in which we live and the community we serve.

Amen.