On the Boundaries '06

Texts: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Luke 9:28b-36

Things happen when Jesus prays – wondrous, mysterious things – especially in St Luke’s gospel. According to St Luke, it was while Jesus was praying after his baptism that heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove, and he heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ Also according to St Luke, when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed, an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.

And now in today’s reading from St Luke we are told that it was while Jesus was praying that he was transfigured. For St Luke, heaven and earth, body and spirit, time and eternity, meet in Jesus most obviously when he is at prayer. Prayer is the point of intersection, the boundary between the everyday world and the heavenly realms. Prayer is the meeting-place between humanity and divinity. Prayer is where human beings meet God.

And perhaps to emphasise that this meeting takes place in the so-called real world, St Luke is at some pains in today’s account of the Transfiguration to draw attention to the material aspects of the scene. He starts off by giving us a temporal reference. He says “about 8 days after Jesus said this”. That doesn’t mean that we can rush off to our calendars and fix the precise date of the Transfiguration; but it’s his way of saying that this extraordinary, mysterious event happened in real time, it is an historical event. There is a time sequence here. Something happened before this event, and something happened after it.

And what Jesus was talking about 8 days earlier was his so-called Second Coming, more accurately called his return at the end of time. So St Luke is giving us another temporal marker, as it were. He is suggesting that the Transfiguration somehow looks forward to the eventual return of the Risen and Glorified Lord Jesus at the Parousia. This, as we might say, is a foretaste of that glory still to come.

The next thing St Luke tells us is who Jesus took with him. So this is a planned outing, planned by Jesus. They didn’t just happen to be somewhere; at Jesus bidding they had gone to the place where it happened. He took with him just three of his disciples, his inner circle, perhaps. Knowing the rivalry that went on within the Twelve right up to Jesus’ death, we might wonder how these guys felt about this. Did they feel especially privileged or especially burdened, as they climbed up the mountain? And how did the others feel? St Luke doesn’t go into this, of course, but we can be fairly sure that egos were bolstered or bruised by events such as this.

Then, says, St Luke, while Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed. An interesting way of putting it, to say the least. Was his face actually changed, or only the appearance of his face? He looked different (presumably to his disciples), but whether in fact he was materially changed in some way, we’re not told. But we are told that it was not only his face that appeared different; “his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning”. There is no reference to any change in the surroundings; the picture is that of a brilliant light coming from Jesus.

Then they saw Moses and Elijah “in glorious splendour” talking with Jesus. Moses on the mountain is surely intended to remind us of Mount Sinai and the Law; Elijah on the mountain reminds us of Mount Carmel and the Spirit. Then comes one of those masterstrokes that we meet so often in the Scriptures. We’re told that Jesus, Moses and Elijah are talking together about Jesus’ “departure” – and the word in the Greek text is the word for “exodus”. So this event points us forward to Jesus’ death, which is the new exodus, the means of our escape from the land of the slavery of sin.

Then it’s immediately back to our humanity. Peter and his companions are very sleepy; there’s nothing supernatural about them! They are tired out – just as they will be when Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane . Peter the impetuous one, Peter the one who never knows when to keep his mouth shut, blurts out his offer to build three shelters on the mountain, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. At the practical level, of course, the idea’s daft – Moses and Elijah have been dead for centuries, so what exactly do they need shelter from? To stress the point, St Luke adds in parentheses (“He did not know what he was saying”).

But at the symbolic level, it is surely no accident that the word for “shelters” is the word for the shelters used by the Israelites in the wilderness; so again we are being reminded of the historical thread that runs through our faith history. The Transfiguration is an event that stands in the same sequence of events as the Exodus.

So there they are, on this mountain, startled and confused by this brilliant light coming from Jesus and his two heavenly visitors, when suddenly a dark cloud rolls in, and their nerve fails them. St Luke tells us that as the cloud moved over them “they were afraid”. Who wouldn’t be? And who wouldn’t be even more terrified when they heard a voice speaking to them from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” The cloud clears (presumably) and they see Jesus alone, probably still praying.

In our epistle reading today, we have what purports to be St Peter’s eye-witness account of this extraordinary event. Or perhaps we should say, his ear-witness account, because the interesting thing about his recollection to me is that he says very little about what he saw. He is much clearer about what he heard. It is the voice from the cloud that has really stuck in his mind: “we ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”

And perhaps the same point is being made when he goes on to urge his readers to pay attention to the word of the prophets now made more certain (we would say today the Scriptures) “as to a light shining in a dark place”. It’s almost as though the word coming to him in a cloud has become a light shining in a dark place.

In our first reading this morning we have a fairly obvious passage chosen as a warm-up act, so to speak, to this main event. And if you look back to the start of chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel, from which this passage is taken, we see a similar attempt to emphasis that Daniel’s vision takes place in ordinary time, in history. We are told that the dream came to Daniel in the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon ; and while that can’t be historically accurate, the point the writer is making is that his vision did not come “once upon a time”. It was an historical event; it came to him one particular night while he was lying on his bed.

And what he saw in his vision is, in Christian times, the return of Christ after his Ascension, his saving work complete. He returns to his Father in heaven, and is given all authority over all the peoples of the earth.

As I have said in the notes in the pewsheet, these passages directly challenge those who find the modernist approach of Lloyd Geering, Ian Harris & co appealing. They make no sense without the supernatural realm. If Geering, Harris & Co are right, then these events and visions have no purpose, and two thousand years of Church teaching can be chucked out the window.

But there is more, as St Luke has reminded us today. Prayer itself is a nonsense if there is no other reality beyond the material world. For the teaching of the Church surely is that prayer is communication between the human and the divine, between the spiritual and the material, between time and eternity. St Luke says when Jesus prayed amazing things happened, really happened. Lloyd Geering and his followers would have to deny that. They can’t both be right.

My money’s on St Luke.