TRANSFIGURATION: (Pre-Lent Sermon Series - 2: ‘Being Changed into the Likeness of Christ’)
Breamore HC 8.15 am Sunday before Lent Year C 27.2.22 Canon Nigel Coates
This Sunday the gospel reminds us of the strange and mysterious story of the Transfiguration. The three apostles, Peter, James and John, are taken up a mountain by Jesus to pray. They see a blinding light streaming from his face and clothes that have become dazzling white. They see Moses and Elijah and they hear the voice from the cloud that signifies the presence of God. It is a story that merits its own Feast Day on August 6th and, in the greatest of terrible ironies, this happens to be the date when 77 years ago there was another blinding light and an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
And today we experience another similar terrible irony. We celebrate the transfiguration on a day when appalling atrocities are taking place in Ukraine. We do of course want to join in with the call of our Archbishops to make this a day of prayer for Ukraine but I suspect many of us are feeling somewhat powerless to do anything in the face of such hostility and aggression.
When we are faced with the knowledge of humanity’s massive destructive potential and capacity for evil. When we see on our screens such dreadful and heart- rending scenes of carnage we feel anger and impotence, how do we react? Do we allow our feelings and actions to be determined by the hostility of others or can we look elsewhere to find our true humanity?
I want to make just one suggestion as to how the Gospel of the Transfiguration can help us. Today’s gospel encourages us to see the radiance and the glory of God expressed in the humanity of Jesus. Yes, humanity is capable of appalling evil but it is also capable of bearing the very image of God himself. In Jesus we see the face of God. On the cross it will be a face spat upon and bloodied but it will continue to bear God’s image.
We have to ask what kind of humanity are we to demonstrate? Are my actions and reactions to be determined by the hostility of others or do look for resources elsewhere? The gospel says to us they are evident in the humanity of Jesus. The voice of God says, ‘This is my Son listen to him’. There is a source of love and truth and goodness that we can draw upon even in the most agonizing of experiences. As Jesus did when he cries from the cross ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’.
In the epistle St Paul says we can be transfigured by the Spirit into the image of Christ. And where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. Freedom to respond and to act in the face of evil with love and compassion as Jesus did on his descent from the Mountain.
And such freedom means we are not helpless. We can turn to the source of light and truth. We can rediscover a hopeful vulnerability. We can look for the image of God in one another. We can recognize that there may well be things we can do in rebuking evil, in exercising love and compassion, and in becoming the people God would have us be.
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