NewCreation

Homily for the Feast of Transfiguration, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration. This is not the only time in the year when we get the text of the Transfiguration, but this time in the middle of the year, outside any particular selection of feasts like Lent or Advent or the Easter season, we get the Feast of the Transfiguration on its own ground, as it were, for itself. And it's an immensely rich text, and we'll be looking at it of course this year in St. Mark's version, to try and see what we are being asked to do. So first of all, not long before this, Jesus has asked his disciples who people say he is, and some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others some of the other prophets, and Peter says, "You are the Christ, you are the anointed one," and Jesus tells them to tell no one about this. In other words, whatever that word means, he doesn't yet want it to get abroad. He then starts to tell them about how the Son of Man must suffer, so we get the first announcement of the Passion, and he then starts to explain to them how they're not going to understand anything unless they associate with the poor, those who are persecuted, and those who are prepared to be ashamed alongside him, because that's how they're going to find glory. And of course all of this they are not really understanding. That's not typically what goes along with the word Messiah. He realized he's got to show them this. So six days later, Jesus takes with him Peter and James and John. Six days later — the suggestion that we're going to be shown something of the seventh day, something of the day of rest, something of God outside and beyond the work of creation. And he takes with him Peter, James, and John. It's not the first time it's just been them three, and it won't be the last time. They'll be in Gethsemane, which is very important, because Gethsemane is, if you like, the other end of this diptych, if you like. That which starts on the mountain is then revealed even more fully for what it is in the garden. Then of course finally in the crucifixion. But so here we are with these three who are going to be the witnesses to something special. They're going to be asked to undergo a period of learning something that they are not going to yet be able to understand. So he leads them up to a high mountain by themselves, so the three of them are with him. And he was transfigured before them — so he changed form completely before them. And it's in their presence; that's the key thing. There's not something different between Jesus and them. If you remember, when God spoke to Moses, Moses had to put a veil on so that other people in Israel wouldn't undergo the same experience. that he had had because it would destroy them. And yet here Jesus changes without it destroying them. They are able actually to see this is done before them; they're included in this. We're going to see how important that is. This is going to be a transmissible form of glory. And his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. Well, that's the RSV. The King James of course refers to a fuller, and of course the word "fuller" is in the Greek. But we are so unused to using the word "fuller" — meaning someone who used a lye to launder things — that we don't tend to use the word "fuller" any longer. And so it's not stupid that the NRSV have said "no one on earth could bleach them." Now, bleach, yes, but dazzling white. This is obviously a sign of the Holy One himself. This is the Most High, and this is the Most High as someone who emanates something. And it's curious that if we look at the words of whitening — if we look at forms of whitening in the Hebrew Scriptures to which this word makes sense — the words to do with whitening come specifically in Psalm 50. You know: "Thou shalt sprinkle me with the hyssop and I shall be purified; thou shalt wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." And in Isaiah: "Come, let us reason together, says the Lord, and though your sins be as purple I will make them white as snow, and though they be as scarlet I will make them white as wool." So here we're having the garment of the great high priest — the Lord who is the great high priest who is coming into the world, who is the one who is going to make white. This is the sort of whiteness that makes white. There it says no one on earth could bleach them. That's the kind of thing that humans could make white. Here is the one who makes white, one who is not whitened but makes white. So this is the one who is going to bring in and offer the fullness of sacrifice, even more than the promise in the book of Malachi — that the Lord would send in: "Who shall stand on the day that he comes? He will refine them with a great fire." But there it refers to gold and silver. Here the whiteness — and it's referring to a corrupted priesthood whom the Lord when he comes in is going to make a true priesthood — but here he's actually talking about the doing of the whole work of atonement himself. This is the one who is going to make white, the white-making one. "And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses," talking with Jesus. So the two hugely central figures for Israel: Elijah symbolizing the prophets and Moses symbolizing the law. But also Elijah symbolizing resurrection, or beyond death, because he had been taken into heaven and had not died and was going to come back at a certain time; and Moses, who had given the law but who had died before getting to see what it was all about. So the Prophet, the two prophets if you like, the Prophet and the lawgiver — they are talking with Jesus. And the word "talking" here, sulalontes, refers to the same word with which Moses talks to God. It refers to a friendly dialogue. They're talking; they are with Jesus. They're seeing how what they point to — resurrection and coming and law, death and hope — are going to be brought together in Jesus. So Peter says to Jesus, "Rabbi, it's good for us to be here." In other words, he's aware that he's undergoing something particularly marvelous and doesn't want to lose it, as how would one not? "Let's make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. And immediately he gets his answer, because it says then a cloud overshadowed them. He hasn't seen that he's on the inside of this. The cloud overshadowing them is the cloud overshadowing the tabernacle, the tent. They're on the inside of the tent. This business of building more tents to have more tabernacles is completely unnecessary. They're on the inside of the tabernacle. When the holiness of God descended on the tabernacle, not even Moses could go in. He had to wait until the holiness of God had left. But here the holiness of God overshadows them, and from the cloud there comes a voice — the daughter of a voice, the Hebrew thing, the bat kol. "This is my Son, the beloved." The beloved referring to the son who would be provided instead of Abraham's son Isaac. God will provide. So this is the one, this is the provided one. This is the one who is actually going to be the great high priest, who is the provided one who's going to bring to an end all sacrifice, who's going to enable all witness to happen, who is going to be more than the resurrection and more than the law. "This is my Son, the beloved — listen to him." Of course, in a Semitic language that would have been the equivalent of Shema: "Hear, O Israel." So here they're being told, listen. Suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore but only Jesus. Now I've sought to give you some of the background density to each one of these elements, because naturally what's being Described here cannot properly be described — precisely as it could not properly be put into words at the time by those who were undergoing it. It's too much, and it takes too long to sink into the reality of what they're being told. But they have undergone a hint of the depth of what is going on in the one with whom they speak: words whose depth they don't understand. So Peter said, "Rubbish, you're not going to suffer." Jesus tries to explain to them what it's about. This is, as it were, the beginning of the rite of atonement. This is the great high priest coming through the veil — which is into created reality — with an entirely white robe, because that is the robe of the great high priest. That is the indication that the one who is bearing it, with the turban with the name on his forehead — in the case of the great high priest — is the Lord for the day, as it were, is coming in to the court of the Temple to make it glorious, and will then go up to the altar of sacrifice. And of course this is just the beginning of the process. They will not understand what it is to be the Son, the Beloved, the one whom God will provide, until they have gone through Gethsemane and the crucifixion and then the ascension. These are the movements with which they're going to have to learn how to listen to the one who is in them, to listen to what is really going on, so as to understand that obeying him is obeying the fullness of what Israel had always been about. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.