NewCreation

Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year C

The Transfiguration Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the second Sunday in Lent. Our Gospel for this Sunday is Luke's account of the Transfiguration, and it's one of his gems. He's crammed it with references to show us what's going on. So let's start to unpick it. This could go on for a very long time, but I promise you I'll try to keep it within the normal homily length. So it says, "Now about eight days after these sayings." The sayings in question: Jesus has just announced his death for the first time. We've been given the first prophecy of his death, after Peter has recognized him as the Son of God, and Jesus has said, "Anyone who wants to follow me must take up their cross." So naturally enough they're all muddled by this; they don't understand what's going on. At this stage Jesus takes three witnesses. These are, remember, the same three he'd chosen as his disciples: Peter, James, and John. Curiously, again, Andrew doesn't get a mention. And these are the same three whom he's going to take aside for Gethsemane. These are people who were chosen to be witnesses to something rather special. It says, "Now about eight days after these sayings," and a good rabbinical reader will have picked up that eight days. It was after eight days of trying to clear out and cleanse the collapsed Temple that Hezekiah's followers came to the vestibule of the Lord. So here we are now coming to the vestibule of the Lord. They go up a mountain to pray, and while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Now again, Luke's very clever wording here: "the appearance of his face" — eidos prosōpou — immediately takes us to the book of Genesis and to Jacob wrestling with an angel before going to see his brother Esau. And after he'd wrestled with the angel and had his hip smitten, he says, "Behold, I have looked upon the form of his face" — Peniel — the form of the face is the Hebraism; the Greek is eidos prosōpou. So "the form of his face" is saying that they were looking upon the face of the Most High. This is what Luke is saying. And his clothes became dazzling white. Now again, this word "dazzling" — exastraptōn — is a direct reference to Ezekiel. Ezekiel's very first vision, the very beginning of the book of Ezekiel, where the prophet has a vision of one who is in the form of a man. One of the most difficult verses in Ezekiel, because for a Jewish reader it is shocking to think that the Most High might have the form of a man. But the prophet Ezekiel sees one having the form of a man, in the midst of the Most High, and he's described as this dazzling, flashing white. It's exactly the same verb. So there's no question here what we're seeing. We are seeing a theophany. This is not just a gentle bit of glowing. This is something That is showing the Most High is showing himself. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. So remember Moses: in one sense the founder of the whole thing. It was he who would set up the people of Israel, but also he who had died before going to the promised land. So he was the one who set it up but then died. And Elijah, the one who'd rescued the whole project of Israel several centuries later and had been taken away, had ascended, been assumed into heaven while alive — he is the one who represents the resurrection. So here you have a certain death and a certain resurrection being fulfilled in Jesus. We'll see how important that is to be in just a second. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, speaking of his exodus, the exodus that he was about to carry out. In other words, it's going to be different from Moses' exodus and different from Elijah's exodus, but both of them were pointing towards it. And this exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem — in other words, from this moment of revelation he's going to go down the hill to the altar of sacrifice in Jerusalem and make the great atonement sacrifice. Here he is, as it were, coming out of the Holy of Holies; soon he's going to go to the altar of sacrifice where he will make the great sacrifice. It's important that they mention the exodus here because of course we'll get a sense of Moses and the exodus at the end again — just a little reminder that all this imagery is kept constant. So Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep. And here our translation says "but since they had stayed awake." That's tediously unreferential. It's someone who's translated it without knowing where it comes from. "But since they had fully awoken, they saw his glory" — but that's a direct quote from, let me see if I can find it for you, Psalm 17: "As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness, beholding your glory, beholding your form." That's the reference here. What's being fulfilled is precisely the sense that they, on awakening, beheld his form. In other words, for them this whole scene happened in something like sleep. That's a reference back to our first reading where the first covenant is made, the covenant between Abraham — between God and Abraham. And remember that it's God who makes the covenant with Abraham. It's God who makes a promise to Abraham, and Abraham believes him, and that's counted as justice for him. But then he says, "How do I know that you're going to do this?" So God produces some animals, cuts them in half — doesn't cut the birds in half but he cuts the mammals in half — and then Abraham falls into a great sleep, and the Lord comes through them like a burning torch, a flaming torch coming through them, which Abraham only sees when he awakens. He only understands when he awakens. But, and here's the important thing, what is the purpose of this covenant? The covenant of that sort is: "I promised you X, and may it be to me as it is to these beasts, may it be done to me as to these beasts if I let you down." So the passing through between the beasts is, as it were, the Lord committing himself to being killed in order to fulfill his promise. That is what we're about to have: the Lord fulfilling his commitment given to Abraham. That's what's being shown here, that he's now actually doing this. "Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it's good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah'" — not knowing what he said. Three tabernacles. Curiously, the feast of Tabernacles was associated with the feast of Atonement. So part of it was right, but he hadn't understood the relationship between Moses, Elijah, and the thing that was about to happen. So while he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. And here is this wonderful moment. The cloud came and overshadowed them. This is exactly the word that is used at the very end of the book of Exodus when the cloud overshadows the Tabernacle. But there, Moses can't go in. Moses can't go in when the cloud overshadows the Tabernacle; he can only go in when it's lifted up and gone away. But here, the cloud came and overshadowed them and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. In other words, with Jesus they are on the inside of the glory now. This is no longer something being awaited from afar, something held off by death. "Then from the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him.'" Again, what happens at the fullness of theophany — what we'd seen already indicated at the baptism and thereafter — which is: God is going to speak only at the fraternal level, only at the level of a human among humans. No top-down God now, only sideways God. This is one of the great confirmations. This glory, this being with Jesus in the glory, is something which is going to come down upon everybody at Pentecost, and we are going to be inside it, and it's going to work sideways, horizontally, not vertically as heretofore. The voice speaks — the bat qol, the daughter of the voice, as in the Hebrew tradition — but it says: "This is the one, this is my Son, listen to him; he's the one I've chosen; all his words will be my words." "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, of course, one wonders why not. One wonders whether it was because they couldn't really imagine — there weren't words for it. They were being given bits of a vision… of what was going on around them that was far too great for them to work out what was going on, which is why they were planned witnesses, which is why also they saw the next moment of the theophany at Gethsemane, and why thereafter they were witnesses when it came to choosing who to fulfill the role of the missing member of the twelve. Jesus setting people up so that they could actually have an idea of the grandeur of what had been spoken amongst them, of what it was going to look like — God fulfilling his promise to Abraham — and that this, that they had seen this, was what all the weight of glory looked like in their midst. And I think that this is a wonderful thing for us in our Lenten journey, because often in Lent we just get little hints of what is being done for us. Just occasionally we can't put it together. And I think that that's right. I think that our experience is closer to that of the disciples, the apostles, than we may think. Luke is so good at giving us scenes that we think it must have been a very spectacular thing. But what he's doing is showing how something that can be described as very spectacular, if you unpick every detail, turns into something which is actually the sort of thing that we are on the inside of as we prepare to see his glory. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.