Clearer discernment and deepening relationship
Second Sunday in Lent: 7th March, 2009
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
"It is good for us to be here," says Peter to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Lent is one of those times of the year when we actually do feel that, so far as coming to mass is concerned. There is a lot going on, there is something very significant being prepared for, there is a certain sense of urgency as the time is short. Just a few weeks. And yet, what we are about individually and together is absolutely central to our life as a community of faith. The readings for the Sundays of Lent each year of the three year cycle are doing the same thing from the various gospels: they are offering us the means to discern more clearly just who this Jesus is (and like last week who he is not) and they are inviting us into deeper relationship with him. Christian community is built on these foundations.
The immediate context of today's Transfiguration gospel is the Lord telling his followers that he is soon going to have to suffer and to die. The forces against him were gathering and getting stronger. The disciples could not accept or understand this. But this was central to the Lord's own addressing, confronting and defeating the very challenges that confront every one of us, and every person who has ever lived. It could not be avoided. Or at least, these issues could not be avoided if the teachings and life and fact of this Jesus, were to be anything more than a passing fancy. So in this Lenten context, this is no time for us to stop the travelling, to break off the journey. This is no time to be dazzled into immobility by the glory and wonder of God. But it is a time to thankfully acknowledge who and what it is that we are following. The journey takes him and us through to Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Day.
Peter and James and John up on a mountain with the Lord, apart by themselves. A vision of the glory of God in Jesus. A voice from heaven very much like at the baptism of Jesus: "This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him". This is an event described as beginning as a prayer and growing into an intense and striking religious experience, the exact nature of which is uncertain. Quite conceivably it lasted through a day and into night. It is placed in Mark after the highly significant confession by Peter that Jesus was indeed the Christ and the following very confronting teaching on the nature of discipleship. The two great figures representing the Law and the Prophets are present for a time. Moses and Elijah were heard as talking with Jesus — though Mark in his usual spare way does not tell us what about. The cloud of the presence of God is here, as in the exodus. Dazzling light and brightness give way to hearing, listening — simply being with and walking alongside the Lord.
Major signposts from the Old Testament. Allusions to the most central of the experiences of the people of God and the unfolding of their salvation history. Major signposts of the New Testament. Looking forward to the Lord's passion and death. Prefiguring the resurrection. God all in all.
In the middle of all this there is a quite characteristic piece of uncertainty and confusion coming from the disciple who is our patron. It is human, it is somewhat disarming. For a moment it relieves some of the building tension of so awesome a scene. Peter's suggestion about putting up some temporary shelters is passed by. We are told that he just didn't know what to say or how to respond. They were understandably terrified. But Peter wanted to do something. His concern could have been simply practical. They were up there without any shelter. It was something that he and the other two disciples could set about doing. In other circumstances after all he would have immediately offered food and refreshments to such visitors. One is reminded of Martha busying herself in Bethany.
There was after all, a strong scriptural precedent for booth making. Gathering together some branches and leaves for some sort of protection from the elements is of course what the Children of Israel did each evening in the wilderness of the Exodus. That putting together of such temporary shelters and indeed sleeping in them, was what was done, and is done, each year too at the Jewish Feast of Booths, as a reminder of those exodus wanderings, while giving thanks for the harvest of more settled times.
But this was all to miss the point. The point was the awareness, the discernment of God's glory in Jesus. The point was hearing this message — realising and accepting this truth, and then going on down the mountain to live out its implications. Our weekdays gospel lessons this week have been entirely from Matthew 5 — the Sermon on the Mount. That is full of guidance and instruction about a totally different way of engaging with the world and each other, in the face of the obvious failure of the existing patterns. We need to start afresh is the clear and continuing message.
Somewhere quite a way down from the mount of Transfiguration may be found the various places where we live and work all this out in our day-to-day lives.
Our parish Canterbury Readers group is working through Rowan William's Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles our Judgement. That book takes the reader through each of the gospel narratives of the trial, starting with Mark. We are all agreed that this is one of his best works, well worth getting from the Bookroom and reading with care.
The archbishop comments:
The way Mark tells his story has a quality more like a film than anything else.... Episode follows episode with a tumbling rapidity.... So it goes on. Jesus knows more than he can say; he is like a naturally gifted musician trying to explain to slow or even tone-deaf listeners how basic harmony works. And when the transforming power of his presence breaks through..., he hurries to forbid people to talk about it. It is as if he knows they will only find the wrong words, the wrong categories. So he presses on..., without delay, to the goal that no one around him wants to think about or understand.
Each of the gospels has some key moments when a clear shaft of light shines through as it were. It is suddenly much more apparent what is going on. The centurion at the end of Mark's gospel was left in no doubt: "truly this was the Son of God". Peter's blurted out "You are the Christ" came just before this section that we have heard today. Thomas's "My Lord and my God" came after the resurrection. Week by week these Lenten Sunday readings are positioning each one of us for our own renewal of just such an insight. Holy Week and Easter may well be that time. Maybe on Holy Saturday evening as we renew our baptismal vows. Maybe somewhere sometime completely unstructured and unexpected.
There is a standing invitation to take all this further than we have. That is what Lent is about. Welcome on that journey.
The Lord be with you.
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