NewCreation

Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration, Year C, RCL

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration. This is the time of year when in the Reformed Calendar you read the Feast of the Transfiguration just before the beginning of Lent. In the Catholic Calendar it comes on the second Sunday of Lent. It's the contraposition to the temptations which happens in the first Sunday of Lent. So the first Sunday the Temptation, second Sunday the Transfiguration. Here, because you're given it just before Lent, we have the whole passage, not only the passage about the actual Transfiguration but also the healing immediately after it. So I want to comment on both those for you because it's a good introduction to Lent which is about to start. So here we have Jesus. He's just a week ago according to St. Luke's Gospel — actually eight days ago — he's given his disciples the first warning about his forthcoming execution, forthcoming crucifixion. He talked about how he would be handed over, and he makes reference to people of his religious belonging. It'll be — let's just check exactly — "be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes and be killed." Now please notice: each one of these three — there are three such predictions in the New Roots Gospel and each one is different, and for very good reasons — and this is all tied up with today's Transfiguration. So of course, initially the disciples don't understand what he's saying. And after eight days Jesus takes Peter, John and James with him. He makes these three privileged witnesses. They're going to be witnesses to something which is going to be difficult to understand and can't even be shared in a sensible way until much later when it starts to make sense to them. It says "after about eight days." This is just a tiny little reference to the Book of Chronicles, where when the time came to try and find the remains of the Temple — it took, at the time of the re-founding of the Temple, after the return from Babylon — it took eight days before they managed to find the sanctuary. It took eight days before, but in eight days they found the sanctuary. So here, just a little hint that something to do with sanctuary and real presence is going to happen here. And they go up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed. This is more significant than it seems. It actually is the form of his face, and this is a reference to the form of faces — which is what Jacob saw at Peniel, which is what it means: "the forms of the faces." It's when he wrestled with the angel at the brook before going to meet his brother. And when he got a bad case of sciatica as a result of that wrestling. But the point was that he saw the faces. And this is the Greek word for those faces, for "phaniases," already. There's a sign that we're not looking at somebody who, like Moses, had reflected glory in his face. Do you remember when Moses came down the mountain his face was so bright it was referred to as "chromos" — it was shining, it was radiant, but it was because it was reflected. Here it's the faces himself. There's no question as to whose face is being talked about here. This is the Lord. And his clothes became dazzling white, and actually white as of lightning. "Astrapēn" is lightning, and again this is a word which appears in Daniel and Ezekiel referring to the appearances of the Lord of the Most High. This is what we're seeing here. This is the Lord. They are having a theophany, but of course it's a human being — the one who was seen in the midst of the figure by Ezekiel and Daniel, the Son of Man who was seen in the midst of the divine figure. And here they're seeing the divine figure as a human being. So suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. Moses representing the law, but also he was a symbol of death, because remember Moses had led the people to the brink of the Promised Land and had then died and been buried on this side, as it were, before entering in. The law was given — given, if you like, afterwards by dead Moses; it's handed on as by dead Moses into the hands of Joshua, who then carried it on. And Elijah, the prophets — the law and the prophets — the dead and the alive. In this case Elijah was the symbol of the resurrection, because remember that Elijah the prophet had been carried off by the chariot of Israel, to be glimpsed by Elisha his successor, and that therefore represented the life to come and the sense of the future things coming upon us. He was expected before the end. So the law and the prophets — one concerning death and one concerning life and resurrection — are talking to him. They appeared in glory, that's to say the fullness of the reputation, and were speaking of his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. So interestingly this is describing Jesus learning something — as a human being, learning something about his forthcoming. The word they use is "exodus" — his departure, his exodus from Jerusalem. In other words, he's foretold before this, before the Transfiguration, that he's going to be handed over to the scribes and the Pharisees and they will kill him and he will rise on the third day. He's now learning himself more about this. They're filling him in on what's going to happen. and the extent to which it's going to be the fulfillment of everything in the law and the prophets. In other words, this is both a manifestation for the disciples but also the suggestion is that Jesus is learning himself more of what he's going to be about. Now, Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep. And then, unfortunately, our translation says, "but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him." But in fact, the point of the deep sleep is that it's as they awake from the deep sleep that they see his glory, which is a reference to Psalm 17 – or 16, depending on which version of the Bible you have – whose verse 15 says, "when I wake I will contemplate his form, his likeness." So literally the psalm is being brought into action here to show us the sort of thing that happened: as they awoke, they were able to see his glory. It's part of the mysteriousness of this vision. It's as they were waking – they'd been put into a deep sleep by the whole thing, just like Elijah in the Temple and Abraham at the covenant – and it was as they awoke that they saw his likeness. And this is a reference to the psalm. So again, there's no question of whose likeness this is: the likeness of the Lord. So Peter – just as they were leaving him, which is when Peter was speaking – Peter says to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings, three tabernacles: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah," not knowing what he said. In other words, he realized that this was a good thing to see, wanted to do what I guess we would all want to do: quickly turn it into a theme park, grasp something solid that we can hold on to, realizing that all of this is going to be immensely mysterious, it's only going to be understood over time. But while he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Now the cloud comes and overshadows them. The word is episkiazein, which is the same word as in Exodus when the cloud overshadows the tabernacle. But there – this is the important thing – Moses could not enter. Here the cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. In other words, with Jesus they're actually going where Moses and presumably Elijah could not go. And from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him." In other words, from this they learn that the real speaking voice is much more than Moses and Elijah. They are now inside the vision, inside the tabernacle. It is this voice who will speak. to them alongside them, who will tell them what to do and where things are going, who will open up for them what he's about. When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent, and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. Well, it's not surprising. Anything to do with seeing something of God appears to have a — how would you say it — a time bomb effect in it, a depth charge, so that little bits of it start going off and it takes you a very long time to work out what's really being said. You don't say anything at the time, and it's only afterwards that you're able to put a narrative to it. In other words, there is something about meeting pre-narrative God that can only be lived by us in narrative, and that takes time. Which is why it's rather wonderful that immediately the next day we begin to get something of the narrative that's going on. "On the next day, when they'd come down from the mountain, a great crowd met them." So here we're not sure what place this is. The crowd is mentioned, but it's not clear whether they're Jews, Gentiles, what sort of admixture of the two. It's just a crowd. It seems to be a huge, dispersed group of people, and this is going to be important. "Just then a man from the crowd shouted, 'Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks and convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.'" So amazingly, this is the third of the instances where Jesus is asked to heal a demoniac. When Jesus heals a demoniac in the first two instances, it's clear where he is, and the reference to why he's doing it is clear. The first is in a synagogue at Capernaum, where it's the Spirit that recognizes him and starts to call out. The second is the Gerasene demoniac — so it's in a pagan setting, it's in a Gentile setting — and again the Spirit recognizes him and doesn't want to be thrown out because it's part of the pagan world, and Jesus does a sign of what's coming upon the pagan world. And on this third time, it's in a crowd, amorphous. But here's one very interesting thing: just one man, and he asks for him to look at his only child. Well, immediately the reference is to Abraham, because of course Abraham's child was the one who Abraham found himself led into thinking that he must sacrifice. And here there is a man, a father, with a child, his only child — just as that's the the term that Abraham used to refer to Isaac, even though in fact he had another son by Hagar, Ishmael. "It's my only child." And then he describes all the different sorts of disturbance that the Spirit brings upon this poor child, poor boy. Different sorts of disturbance of the sort that we'd seen before, but with one thing particular: this one couldn't even speak. There's something about the crowd. There's such a lack of structure that, with all the crowd's vibes, terrible things can happen to people. But the spirit can't even speak. At least in the other two, the spirit was able to speak. The spirit in Capernaum said, "Call Jesus the Son of God," and with the Gerasenes, "the Son of the Most High," recognized him as the Jewish high priest. Here the spirit can say nothing. The spirit can say nothing. The amorphousness. This is to do with humans in which Abraham, with his child and sacrifice and all the story of the sadness, is just a distant memory. Not Jew, not Gentile — more than that, everything. Humans. Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation" — in other words, the whole human generation — "how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. So the demon is attempting to do the same thing that Satan had tried to get Jesus to do to himself, and the same thing that the people of Nazareth had tried to do to Jesus: cast him down, literally to knock him off, throw him off a cliff. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, so Jesus is able to speak to it and heal the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God. So here was Jesus doing something with a group of people where the evil spirit was such that there was not even a cultural base for it to be talked about. It was just a disturbance. And this is where — although strictly this verse is not in today's Gospel, I'm bringing it in — it's because it's tremendously important. "While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, 'Let these words sink into your ears: the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.'" But they did not understand his saying. Jesus has learned something coming down the hill, having seen this amorphous crowd with only the reference to Abraham. He's had learning from Moses and Elijah up on the mountain. But now he realizes that his mission is even further: it's for humans. He's learned something from this interaction — that he's going to be betrayed into human hands, and that it is as humans that we will put him to death, because that's what humans are like, and it is as humans that he will love and save us. So as you prepare for the Lenten journey that is coming upon you soon… Think of the extraordinary way in which our Lord, as a human, learnt — was given greater and greater insight through his interactions — into what he was doing, so that he could do something for us that was fully human as well as fully divine in his self-giving up for us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.