Sermon for the *Great* Feast of the Transfiguration

 

Sermon. 6 August 2023.

The Feast of the Transfiguration

Luke 9:28-36

 

[On the day I preached without notes, but the sermon followed this form.]

 

Today is a day of great poignancy for me. I truly hope that it is not the last time we meet, nor that it is the last time I serve you by leading worship in some capacity. But what today is is the last time I will be rota-ed to serve you according to the pattern we have had. I will be moving much nearer to my place of work.

 

One of the things I have done as your preacher, at least at times, is seek to question some of the classical or settled or predictable or well-worn interpretations of Bible passages. Most obviously, I have done this by drawing things out from the original languages. It occurs to me that, in the world, one word for this challenge is that I have been something of an “iconoclast”. That’s ironic however, as one thing I am not is an iconoclast, a destroyer of icons. I worship with icons and cannot imagine worshipping consistently without icons. I am then, the opposite of an iconoclast, which is (as you’ll remember) an iconodule. I am also perfectly orthodox, by the way. I’d want to affirm that it is possible to be utterly orthodox, and still find Bible passages stranger than they are normally presented as being.

 

And today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, the mountain top experience enjoyed by Peter, James, and John, when they see Jesus lit up with a brightness beyond description, and are told to listen to him. I am, you will have guessed, going to be true to form, and question some of the standard statements that preachers up and down the country will be bringing, right now.

 

First, I raise this question: Who was changed? Who was changed in this meeting. At the surface level, this is easy, as the text plainly says “while [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” So the change happens to Jesus. But! But this might just be from the perspective of the disciples. At a deeper level, it may be that the disciples were changed. Their eyes were strengthened to see Jesus as he already and always was. The argument here is that the brightness they saw was the brightness of Divinity, for Jesus was always fully Gd as Gd is Gd, as well as fully human as humans are humans. This position is common among Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox insist that Gd is personal, is Person, and also insist that Gd is Light, is uncreated Light, Light like no other. So the disciples were given the gift of seeing fully the Light that was there.

 

My next question: Jesus is accompanied, at least for a while, by Moses and by Elijah. Why these two? Here, if ever, there is a standard answer: Moses represents the Law, or the whole Teaching of Sinai; Elijah represents the Prophets. This has a core plausibility to it, as one way of describing the Scriptures of Jesus’ day was as “the Law/Torah and the Prophets”. But! But I am not convinced. There is no tradition of Elijah “standing for” the Prophets, before this story. So it would not be self-evident. And Elijah is not a typical Prophet. He might be said to be more a wonderworker. The first person in the Bible to be called a prophet is Abraham. The first prophet who appears in the Prophetic corpus is Samuel. The greatest Prophet who wrote a book – greatest in terms of size and in terms of importance - is Isaiah. Surely a Samuel or an Isaiah would have a better claim to “stand for” the Prophets?

 

In fact, there are other reasons why it is precisely Moses and Elijah who appear here. It is that they are both already known in the Scriptures as the Shining Ones.

 

You may remember that when Moses ascends Mount Sinai to speak with Gd as a friend speaks to a friend, his face shines (Ex 34:29ff). He doesn’t realise it, but the Israelites are in awe of the sight, so much so that Moses wears a veil over his face when speaking to them. Elijah, you may also remember, ascends into heaven, on what? A chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:9ff). And Elisha his disciple cries out with awe himself: “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and their horses!” Such brightness! So surely it makes sense if, alongside the uncreated Light of Jesus as Gd, the disciples see the reflected glory already associated with Moses, and with Elijah. Maybe they don’t “stand for” anything in the story, other than the manifold glory of Gd in the world.

 

My third question is not a detail within the story, but involves taking a step back. It is: Do we really make enough of the Feast? We are marking it on a Sunday, but that is coincidence only. Next year it will fall on a Tuesday, and will be only a lesser festival. Optional, in other words. I think, however, that it is a great Feast of the Lord. Not as important as Easter or Christmas, but arguably in the rank below that.

 

I say this because “Transfiguration” (once we see what it means, and it is no longer jargon) is a good way of describing the difference Jesus makes. I know we are used to thinking of Jesus as fulfilling the prophecies and promises of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible). There is certainly a place for that kind of language. But, it’s complicated. The promises and prophecies of the Hebrew Bible grow in scope as the story continues. And by the time we get to Isaiah, then certainly we are led to look forward to a world put right. A world where there is peace with justice with freedom with forgiveness with feasting. And all this is for all. That little tiny Israel enjoys these things can only mean the world is healed. Gd lives with humankind. This is not my hyperbole. It is what the promise is.

 

And (I am sorry if this shocks you)… we are not there yet. That’s not the world we live in. It didn’t come about with Jesus’ birth, or his death, or his resurrection, or with the founding of the Church at Pentecost, or with any Church movement since then. So we find we have to speak about Jesus as “the beginning of the fulfilment”, and that’s rather a different idea. So, other language to set alongside that of fulfilment is indeed… Transfiguration.

 

Jesus does not solve the problems of the world by his very presence. But he can and does transfigure lives. With Jesus, your life can know a radiance which can make all the difference. I did sow the seed of this thought with prisoners in this last week. Prisoners said of course it often does not feel like that. I agreed. In truth, for all of us, it often does not feel like that. But I think we all can have intimations of the brightness with which Jesus enlightens us and the world. And we can trust those intimations. We try them out for size, and we find they enable us to live more fully.

 

It may be that in saying this I am pushing at an open door. After all, let us all look East. Your stained glass window [of the Transfiguration] tells the story so powerfully. With Peter, we can say: “it is good for us to be here”. Certainly I say it, here and now. It has been good for me to be here. It is good for me to be here. The radiance of Christ is and has been present in this place, and not only in the stained glass. I thank you for your fellowship, fellowship which transfigures.

 

Amen.

Sermon. The Transfiguration. On Things Awesome.

Sermon. 26 February 2017. St Michael and All Angels. Little Ilford.

Sunday Next Before Lent (Year A)

Matthew 17.1-9 (The Transfiguration)

I have a friend who says she is not an atheist, she is an antitheist. This means that for her that Gd does not exist is the least of it. It is as important for her to make it clear that she finds the character of Gd to be (brace yourselves) difficult, unattractive, even repugnant, evil. She is 'ethnically' Jewish, of Jewish heritage. So she is thinking in the first place of Gd as portrayed in what we call the 'Old Testament'. But she doesn't think things improve with the New Testament, or the Qur'an for that matter. In all of this of course she is not alone – far from it.

One principal way in which she finds Gd a disreputable character is to do with all the talk – and there is a lot of it, to be fair – about 'the fear of the LORD' in the Bible. She says that people of faith overcomplicate matters. When the Bible talks about the 'fear of the LORD', the words have their normal meaning. So Gd wants to frighten us, is a supernatural monster, as it were, who wants us to be scared of Him.

You won't be too surprised to hear that I disagree. And if I were to look for a text to help us towards a different interpretation, I could do worse than turn to today's gospel. The Transfiguration. A mysterious event right in the middle of the gospels. A dramatic incident for Peter, James and John. A lot going on - but we can draw out two things.

Peter is clear: 'It is good for us to be here'. It is good or attractive or even beautiful for us to be here (says the Greek). And all three disciples 'fell on their faces and feared greatly' (that's my translation). Now you might say this refers to two stages: first the disciples were overjoyed; then they were terrified. But I don't think that works narratively. I think it's more natural to see the whole experience as one which the disciples found both attractive-and-wonderful and unsettling-and-frightening. At once.

We have a word for this. The word is awe. It was an awesome experience. But as I say that, it is already clear that there is a problem here. It's the way the word 'awesome' has come to be used. It has come to mean, well, 'nice'. I mean: it's quite plausible to hear:

'I'm going to the supermarket.'

'Awesome. Can you get me some teabags?'

A cheapening of the language no doubt, but you can't fight language-change.

We can still insist that, as in this example, 'fear of the LORD' can mean and often does mean 'being in awe of the LORD', rather than 'being terrified of the LORD'. It draws us in at least as much as it repels us. And if we do want another word, well, why not say 'excitement in the LORD'. Excitement too has an element that is like fear, doesn't it? The heart beats faster, our attention is keener, the adrenaline flows. Yes, today we are about 'the excitement of the LORD'.

It is surely good to be excited by Gd. It is something we can hope for. I want to suggest three possible ways in which we can just nudge ourselves in the direction of excitement in Gd, or being open to such excitement.

Firstly, if I am asked to pray before a eucharist service I may well say words like 'may we meet Christ as if for the first time, in his word, in his sacrament, in the company of each other and in the secret place...'. For we are free to think of each meeting at the altar as being as-it-were our first time. The Christ we are meeting is outside of time, and we are called upon to be converted every day, and so every spiritual encounter is in a sense utterly new. Pristine. Not limited by anything in our past. If we think: 'Now, for the first time, I am going to meet with Gd' – would we not be a little bit excited?

Secondly, it is not an accident that we have this reading just before Ash Wednesday, and the start of Lent. I've already emphasised for some years now that Lent is not a sombre or glum time. We should not be praying anything like 'Gd, may I have a boring Lent, as that's all I deserve' or even 'because that will be a proper challenge'. Lent is a time laden with hope. It is a season which insists that human beings are always capable of deep-down change. Or it makes no sense (why bother?). Forgiveness, for growth, to make a difference. All ours for the taking. If we can get a sense of that, is there not something exciting right there?

Thirdly, as today is a preparation for Lent, so Lent is of course a preparation for Easter. And Easter is meant to be – and cannot be other than – 'the' season of excitement for Christians. I am not above a bit of early advertising: if we can really go through the whole story from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to the Easter Vigil, we will be inhabiting the most exciting narrative in the universe. Because it is a story of death, real death, and life out of death, real and unimaginably new life.

So we can hope and even pray that we have a measure of excitement

• each time we gather
• as we journey through Lent
• as we experience Holy Week and Easter.

Yes.

All of that said, it would not do if we only come to church when we feel a sense of excitement, or if we feel we have failed if we leave church unexcited. No. After all, in today's story, the disciples themselves have to descend, to come back down from the mountain, to return to their ordinary, mundane lives. Indeed, to tell no one about the light-filled wonder until after Jesus is raised. They can only take it in, stay with it, silently.

Now, this is important: we are not a church that insists on excitement or other intense emotion, each time we meet. And that is all to the good. Churches that do have such expectations can explode briefly and then collapse in on themselves. Or else they develop ways of manipulation. We don't want that; anything but that. Nevertheless, as we are on the threshold of Lent, we are still free to pray for some measure of excitement about our walk with Gd, in the ways that Gd knows best.

We can – and why do we not – pray that Gd will give us occasion to say with Peter,

it is good (it is attractive, it is beautiful) for us to be here'.

Amen.  

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.

 

In Memoriam Bridget Morrow

Funeral Homily for Bridget Doreen Morrow.
These are the words (or a version of them), which I spoke at the funeral of my aunt and godmother, Bridget Doreen Morrow (Memory Eternal!). In mortal life, she was a woman of such humility that she would hate the idea of anything of her appearing on the Wide-Eyed Web. But now she is in Eternity, she will know that t'aint so bad to have a record of her goodness, for goodness sake!
 
 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’d like to thank Nicky for granting me the privilege to preside and preach today, and Elaine and Carol and William for their part in this service. I also thank Jeff and Liz (funeral directors), Michael (trustee) and Barbara and Simon (family) for dealing with matters so efficiently, - Bridget’s most solemn wish. 

This funeral has been well planned, with Bridget, over the years. Really, I should thank Bridget too – the unseen MC to today. Not in scale, but in planning, this funeral might be said to rival that of Baroness Thatcher. We might think of this as ‘Operation True Blue Habit’.  

When, as part of that planning, I asked Bridget what she wanted from the homily, she said I should say: ‘Bridget! Bridget was… an enigma!’ and sit down. 

I warned her then, as I warn you now: this is one command I will not obey. Bridget was too complicated a character for her legacy to go without comment. To take an obvious example: she always claimed that she was shy. This is not without truth (she was a Morrow). But the complication is that she was shy… until she was in company, when her curiosity, warmth, humour, and… (how to put it?) her ‘suspicion of discretion’ almost invariably won the day.  

The well-planned, wholly deliberate theme of this service is transfiguration,

the glorification, the glory of Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the mountain top, yes!

But also the glorification of the apparently ordinary. 

Bridget lived for that glorification, and showed it in her life.  

Doreen Winifred Morrow was born on 6 October 1926 to Winifred and Charles William Morrow, in Hornsea, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Their firstborn. It is doubtful that she has ever been called Doreen Winifred. For most of her life, she had her name in religion, Bridget. And her name in the family was a corruption of Doreen – Nini. 

Nini’s interest in nature was innate, and her knowledge could appear that way too. As a young child, she knew the names of trees and flowers and could recognise birdsong. And as innate was her love of music, Gilbert and Sullivan being an early favourite.  Doreen trained as a teacher in Ripon, and taught eight- and nine-year-olds in various schools in the East Riding. Her speciality – and we should remember this if we are tempted to agree with her about the shyness thing – was drama. 

When she left teaching, the then head teacher said: ‘if you ever want to come back, I’ll shoot someone’, to make that possible.   

Probably during her training Doreen made her first visit to Ireland, to Killarney. She always remembered lying on her bed, listening with rapt attention to the folk singing coming up from the public bar below. I can tell you that even in these last days she could be roused to sing along in tribute and with relish.  

Doreen was throughout a loyal daughter of the church, and always felt she had more to give. She tested her vocation with the Convent of the Holy Rood in Middlesbrough, and took life vows in the early 60s. Here, then, she became Bridget, completing a cycle of rivalry with her brother (my father), who already had the other archetypal Irish name, Patrick.   

Life in the convent was blessed by a godly Mother Superior, Margaret, and Bridget thrived in the making of vestments and other embroidery. However, it also needs to be said that in these days, in the 60s and the 70s, Bridget suffered some severe depression. She was helped by a wise psychiatrist, and her own readiness to turn to poetry. She wrote fiercely, honestly and thoroughly. For a time, it looked that the order might become contemplative, which would have suited Bridget. But in the 1970s church, contemplation was not yet trendy again, and this move was resisted.   

As a sister, Bridget combined her annual retreat with her holiday, staying at Marygate House, Holy Island (Lindisfarne). Here began an affair to rival that with Ireland. She was one of the first guests at this now hugely popular pilgrimage site. She was insistent that things were a lot more austere in the early days than they are now. Bridget spoke to me without any pretension of seeing the sunset from the island and remembering: ‘I lost my heart to Holy Island’.   

The community moved from Middlesbrough to Sowerby in 1979, but it was not to grow there; they received no new vocations. With all due prayer and reflection, they took the unusual and courageous step of formally closing the order. The sisters were released from their vows. 

Before long, Bridget settled into Mitchell House Abbeyfield, and made new friends, including her neighbour the late Earnest Myers, with whom she enjoyed many a crossword (but not to my knowledge a cross word). And throughout this time Bridget was helped by her spiritual friend, Elaine, and her friend-sponsor, Jean.   

Bridget’s faith was not without complication. She could so readily speak of God the Father, God the Creator, seeing the glories of creation as signs of the Glorious One. As easily, she trusted in the Holy Spirit. Without any affectation, she would say to me: ‘When I want to write something, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me’. And he/she does! She did sometimes wonder if her sense of God the Son, Jesus Christ, was as lively as perhaps it should have been. 

But I think this is really part of her contemplativeness. 

As a true contemplative, she resisted any notion that the Son or Word of God somehow made God easy to understand, or safe. It is not that we – ever – know God well. But God knows us well, and wills by His grace, to be in our company.  

You will have your own stories of when Bridget was herself transfigured, caught up in glory. I’d number:  

• painting Easter eggs on Holy Island; 
• dancing and singing along to a final song in synagogue; 
• marvelling at the miles and miles of fuchsia in Clonakilty in the West of Ireland. 
• I’d also include these last days, and her preparing herself for death with calmness, curiosity and her matter-of-fact way. 

But most of all I think of a journey back from a Holy Island Easter, when Bridget told me of her very first poem. Transfigured, she recited it then and there. Driving down the A1, I was in the presence of a seventy-something-year-old who was at that minute an eight-year-old...
 
Beware of the tramcars coming down the street. 
Beware of the people you don’t want to meet. 
But go into the wild woods and gather flowers there. 
It is lovely in the wild woods when primroses appear.

If you go into the wild woods when daffodils are out, 
You’ll find a lot of other flowers a-growing all about. 
The dainty little primrose and the little violet too, 
You’ll find them all a-reaching towards the sky so blue.   

And this seventy-odd-year-old eight-year-old told me what happened after she recited this original work in class. She was prodded in the back by the girl behind, who said accusingly: ‘I’ve heard that before’. But she hadn’t. It was Bridget’s own transfiguration. Then, at eight years old. Then at seventy-something. And now, as we might say that she shares this memory with us again.   

It is all transfiguration. 

What she said towards the end of her life holds good for the whole of her life:  ‘My prayer is really looking. Seeing beauty brings prayer.’  

 Someone once said there is a difference between a good person and a holy person. In the presence of a good person, the rest of us feel bad about ourselves. In the presence of a holy person, however, the rest of us feel better about ourselves. Holiness is always encouraging, and always generous. 

I think I am going to stop just short of claiming Bridget as a holy person. (I say again that she was a Morrow!) But I am going to say that she was always oriented towards that holiness. As people have insisted in these last days: ‘she was real’, ‘she was alive/so alive/fully alive’.  And so, for the vast majority of us, on the vast majority of occasions, we left an encounter with Bridget feeling better about ourselves, our world, our life, and its capacity to bear humour, certainly, and glory too…  to be transfigured.  

You know, the Christian faith actually has very little to say about life after death, in the sense of what happens and to whom and how. Rather, we come back to a hope, a hope based on the faithfulness of God. The one who transfigured Bridget, and who led her so to value the transfiguration, is faithful. And since God is faithful to Bridget, we can have confidence that all is well with Bridget. That all is now transfiguration, with and for Bridget. She is, finally, in the immediate, glorious presence of the source of all Glory. Alleluia!   Let us say an Eastertide Allelulia for Bridget. ALLELUIA! CHIRST IS RISEN! AMEN.