Sermon before Lent: Glorious Things of Us Are Spoken!

Sermon. 7 February 2016. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

The Sunday before Lent (Year C, Transfiguration)

Exodus 34.29-35

2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2

Luke 9.28-36

You know that I am someone who asks questions. Real questions, looking for real answers. So my question now is: do you think I am so cruel – or so naïve – as to ask you now what it was I said when I last preached on the Transfiguration, on today's gospel reading, on seeing Jesus and Moses and Elijah lit up in glory? The answer to that question is: No. I am not so cruel, or so naïve. So let me give you my own summary.

The usual – almost universal – reason given for the appearance of Moses and Elijah alongside Jesus is that Moses represents the Law (Torah), and Elijah represents the Prophets. The problem with this is that there is no tradition at all of thinking of Elijah as 'representing' the Prophets before this story, and it is not obvious to see how he might actually 'stand for' the Prophets. I gave an alternative reason: Moses and Elijah are, in the stories of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, preeminently the Shining Ones.

Elijah is lit up in glory as he ascends into heaven by miraculous chariot. And Moses –

well, we see Moses shining, lit up in glory, supremely in today's First Reading. '[T]he skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God' and he puts a veil over the bright radiance. So the First Reading and the Gospel do exactly what they are supposed to do: they reinforce each other. Both insist that meeting with Gd – intimacy with Gd – leads to glory, brilliance, light. In all senses, en-light-enment.

But! But, we have a problem, brothers and sisters. The problem is the Second Reading, where Paul really complicates things. (I know that many people at this point would make a joke to disparage Paul, as always getting it wrong, as the woman-hating, gay-hating, cold-fish they believe him to be. I won't do that. I am an admirer of Paul as the first Christian genius, and loving pastor. All of that said, he does often complicate things. No doubt about that.)

You see, Paul changes the story. From being a story of brilliance and light, it becomes a story of fading, of loss. In the original Exodus account, we are not quite told why Moses wears a veil. But the clear implication is that the light was too bright; he wore it to protect the eyes of his fellow Israelites. That's also why it makes sense for Moses, still shining, to appear alongside Elijah and Jesus on that other mountain, as in the gospel. But Paul changes things, and says that he wore the veil so that the Israelites would not see his light fade away, fail. Because for Paul, here at least, all the light of the Jewish covenant, outside of Jesus, is fading away. A very different account, a very different image altogether.

Does this alarm you? Does this undermine Paul for you? That he gets a story so wrong, that he is so cavilier with another Bible passage? Well, if so, I cannot offer you much reassurance. Changing elements of biblical stories is actually quite common, in the biblical and in later Jewish tradition. And I don't just mean tiny details.

For example King David is incited to take a census of the people of Israel and Judah. But by whom? In 2 Samuel it is quite clear: it is Gd [2 Sam 24.1]. Yet when the Chronicler, in 1 Chronicles, comes to retell the story, it is just as clearly Satan [1 Chron 21.1]! Whether we are talking about Gd or Satan is scarcely a trivial matter. Or again in the New Testament. How did Judas die? In Matthew [27.3-8], he hanged himself. But in Acts [1.16-19] he rushed headlong in a field and somehow fell fatally. In these and other cases, people do try to harmonise the accounts, so that all are true, and fit together. But frankly, it's forced. The more natural explanation is that there are different versions of the same story, and/or that people felt free to change the story in retelling it.

And this happens all the time in later Judaism. There are stories known as midrash. (It means something like 'seeking' – seeking the full meaning, the fullest possible meaning to a story.) These are the stories around the stories in the Bible. But they are also stories which often deviate away from the plain meaning of the text as we have it. It is something of a refrain among the rabbis: Do not read X (as the text stands), but read Y (a similar sounding word, which means something quite different).

And again the differences are not only in the details. For example, there is a midrash [Gen Rabbah 56.8] which says that Abraham did actually sacrifice Isaac, but that Gd raised him from the dead! It's not what the text says, but the later story-tellers felt free to change the story, not to be wilfully disrespectful or rebellious, but to make a profound theological point - here, about the reality of the resurrection. (But in saying that, I should stress: this story has nothing remotely like the authority in Judaism that the accounts of Jesus's resurrection have for Christianity. It's not an article of faith; it's just a story to ponder.)

So Paul changes a story about Moses wearing a veil to shield others from brilliant light into a story where he wears it to hide the fading of the glory. In feeling he could change the story, I am suggesting, he was in good company. And to be fair to Paul, if we read the whole passage, we can see he's not making some crass contrast (as others later did) between Judaism now in the dark and Christianity all lit up by glory. That's not the distinction he is making. Rather he is constrasting blessed-but-earthly glory – all earthly glory – with heavenly glory.

He does that to make the point that we are all on that journey, from one degree of glory to another, towards full intimacy with Gd, which quite simply is heaven.

Let me say that again. We are all on a journey, from one degree of glory to another, towards full intimacy with Gd, which quite simply is heaven. That is why we have these Transfiguration readings today, just days before Lent. It is to remind us, sisters and brothers, that we are glorious and made for glory!

Christians are often accused of going on about sin, all the time, and of going on and on and on and on about sin, during Lent. That's not wholly wrong. But we speak of sin not because we think we are rotten to the core and cannot do good (some Christians may come close to saying that, but not us). We speak of sin precisely because our vocation is to be made fit for the light, the brightness, the brilliance and the glory of heaven. And we're not there yet. And we forget this. Or we deny it. Rather than letting Gd make us fit for the glory of heaven, we prefer to act out of pride or habit - and behind both of those lies fear. And to act out of fear and to deny our own glory – that is what sin is.

We won't actually deal with our sins, our coldness of heart, our compulsions or our fears, unless we first allow ourselves to bathe and be bathed in the light of Gd's glory, of Transfiguration. It is there – it is here – for the asking.

Let us attend to Paul, the great story-reteller. For he gets it exactly right when he says: '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.' We are invited to trust this. Amen.