The Transfiguration

Preached in Fitzwilliam College Chapel, Cambridge - Feast of the Transfiguration 2009. 2 Corinthians 4 v3-6 and Mark 9 v2-9

(Picture Owen James Dobson, http://owenjamesdobson.wetpaint.com/)

Change, is a strange thing. Whether you fear it – the new, the different, the unexpected, or embrace it – dashing off into the next adventure, change affects us, the way we are seen, and the way we see the world.

Every birthday I can remember, I have been asked, ‘oh, you’re X age now, how does it feel?’ and the answer is always the same. I feel, the same. I haven’t changed. It’s mad. You’re only a day older; perhaps a mere twenty-four hours since last seeing that person, and they are expecting some sort of substantial change, perhaps a slightly gammy leg, or an increasing difficulty in remembering where I left my glasses, on account of the extra age.

You might think that over a longer time period it would be more understandable. I am forever meeting people who knew me as a child, be they former parishioners or colleagues of my mum or dad. ‘Oh look how you’ve changed’… comes the ubiquitous opening. No, I often feel like explaining… It’s still me… so I stick with the more standard, ‘well, it’s been 20 years. What did you expect? Last time you saw me I was being rushed to A&E with a pencil up my nose.’

While outwardly I may have changed, the world around me may see me differently in terms of being able to drink, marry, drive, I am not changed in myself. What it is, when coming of age or passing through a certain rite of passage, is a change in circumstance, a change in how I am perceived by the world.

Tennyson said about age, "I am every age I have ever been." He believed in ages as a cumulative thing. When you have a birthday you don't "turn" another age and become another person. Rather you add another year to the persona you already are. So everyone is always an eight year old, or a ten year old. Those ages are always alive inside you.

And don’t I know it. This is my 17^th year in full time education, and each one has begun the same way. The best of intentions… precisely arranged folders, neatly laid-out pencils and pens, a fully equipped stationary supply. The intention to go to every class. The intention to do well and succeed by merit rather than blind luck. The intention to pay attention. And do all these good intentions last? Well, not really. Because, no matter how much I want to think age has changed me, that somehow I am not a different person because I have begun GCSEs, AS Levels, A Levels, University, Ordination Training (delete as applicable), I AM who I AM, and while who I appear to be does change, that which makes me me, does not.

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them.

What are we to make of this? Talk of transfiguration, of metamorphosis, the kind of imagery reserved usually for the kind of change that occurs when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. How are we to understand this in terms of Jesus Christ – God incarnate, the unchanging God who was, and is, and is to come… the same God. How can God transfigure, metamorphose… change?

Back to that butterfly. What if, its metamorphosis, its change, is not a change of essence, of substance, but a lifting of that veil, that caterpillar body, that chrysalis, that has prevented us from seeing its true being all along? Because then, it is not changing, but revealing its true self to the world, and it is the world’s perception of it that changes.

His clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

Jesus’ chrysalis moment. Revelation… a lifting of the veil. Through this episode on a mountaintop, we come to see not what Jesus has become, what he has changed into, but what he always has been. A link is drawn to Moses – Jesus is to lead humanity to the promised land. A link is drawn to Elijah – Jesus is to keep humanity focussed on God, and not distracted by things on the peripheral. Links are drawn… but in the end…

This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to Him.

Jesus is God. He is human like any one of us, and yet he encapsulates all that has gone before. He fulfils the law and the prophets, commissioned by Moses and Elijah, and yet, in this wonderfully peaceful moment, up a mountain, away from the crowds, Mark tells us that there is more. Jesus is God, come in all his glory and wonder, to show us the way to eternal life.

The glorious grace of God is freely bestowed on us in the Beloved, and it is in reading and understanding passages such as that which tells of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop, that we can come to see that and appreciate what it means for us.

Because Jesus does not change. God does not change. But our understanding of both does. As we come to see in the Gospel writings that Jesus is much more than a pastor… much more than a Rabbi… much more than a prophet… we come closer to seeing that Jesus is that wonderful impossibility – fully God, and fully human.

And that is why, when the disciples looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. Because Jesus was… is… everyone that had been present. The veil was lifted, the scales fell from their eyes. And in reading and understanding this passage, we can come to the same dazzling realisation.