Sunday before Lent 2022

Exodus 34.29-end, Luke 9.28-43a

At the back of Seal Church is what I think is one of our most stunning stained-glass windows. It features the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, which happens to be the story we heard in our Gospel reading today. In the middle of the picture, we see Jesus flanked by Moses on his right and Elijah on his left – Old Testament figures who were associated with the coming of the Messiah. Beneath them we see Jesus’ three closest disciples, John, Peter and James, in that order, left to right, kneeling on the ground in amazement at the sight of Jesus, who is shining with glory. Around Jesus there’s what looks like a sea of red, look more closely and you can see that the red glow is actually a sea of angel faces.

It’s as if a window has opened up into the heavenly realm and they are all peering through at us. 

Jesus is transfigured, transformed, but the disciples are transfixed, stunned into silence and stillness, lost for words. But not for long. 

Peter is characteristically impetuous.  “ Want me to build some huts for you, Lord?” he pipes up, “ Honest, it would be no trouble…”  He wants, quite literally, to “enshrine” this moment, to build shrines for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Then, I suppose, they will be where he wants them to be, where he, and everyone else, can easily find them. It’s an impulse we can probably all understand, that desire to cling to what we might think of as our “glory days” – moments which glow in our memories, moments when we felt happiest, most successful. 

But of course, that can’t be, not for us, and not for Peter either. There’s nothing wrong with treasuring and pondering the past, but we can’t live there, and if we try to we will find we aren’t living fully in the present or open to the new possibilities of the future. 

We can’t hold back time, and neither can Peter. The cloud comes down, and Moses and Elijah disappear with it, as they were always going to do. There isn’t any way that he could have preserved this moment, and if he had been paying attention to what Moses, Elijah and Jesus were talking about, he might have realised that wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing anyway.   

We aren’t told exactly what Jesus, Moses and Elijah said to each other, but we are told that they were “speaking of Jesus’ departure”. This is story with movement at its heart – a departure, a journey. The departure in question is Jesus’ death. This story comes at a pivotal moment in the Gospel. Soon after this, Jesus sets out towards Jerusalem for the final time. Just before it and just after it, Jesus warns his disciples that he will be crucified, and promises that he will rise from death. That’s why this story is always set for the Sunday before Lent, the preparation for Holy Week and Easter.   

But the word that’s used for “departure” is a very significant one It’s the only time in the New Testament that it’s used, but it’s a word we are probably quite familiar with from the Old Testament. It’s the word “exodos”. It’s actually just a normal Greek word which means “way out” – odos means way or path, ex means out. You’ll find it in Greece in airports, train stations and shops– you leave through the doors marked “exodos.” But we’re more likely to associate it with the second book of the Bible, the book which tells the story of Moses confronting Pharaoh persuading him to let the enslaved Israelites go, the event that we know as The Exodus – same word in a slightly Latinised form. So in the Gospel story, Moses, who led that exodus and knew how difficult that journey could be, talks to Jesus, who is going to undergo a painful exodus of his own. Once we realise that, all sorts of other parallels suggest themselves. Moses’ exodus liberated people from slavery; Jesus’ exodus, his death and resurrection, will liberate those who follow him, helping them find new life, new possibilities, new communities. Those who followed Moses found themselves in the Promised Land; those who follow Jesus will find themselves in the kingdom of God. And just as Moses’ shone with glory in God’s presence – we heard about it in our Old Testament Reading, so this mountainside is flooded with divine light too, dazzling the astonished disciples.

It’s not surprising that Peter wants to hang onto the moment, but in doing so, he misses the point that it is just a moment – to be remembered and pondered, but not to be pinned down, fossilised, preserved in aspic, even it if could be. We aren’t called to a moment, but to a journey through many different landscapes and experiences, so we can discover God at work in all of them. If we can only find God in the beautiful times, in the drama of the mountaintop, we’ll spend most of our life missing him, because most of us don’t live on mountaintops. 

It's no accident that this mysterious story is followed by another which may seem far less attractive, and which we would probably struggle to turn into a stained-glass window. A desperate father has come looking for Jesus help. He wants Jesus to heal his son, who has what we would now call epilepsy. But Jesus isn’t there and the disciples haven’t been able to help. The story doesn’t say why, but I wonder whether they were even meant to have been suggesting they could. When Moses went up the mountain to meet with God, the rest of the people of Israel were told to wait. They were impatient, convinced they’d been deserted, and promptly made a golden calf and bowed down to worship it – it felt better to be doing something, even if was the wrong thing. Perhaps the implication here is that the disciples have been trying to set themselves up as healers in their own strength, taking authority which they hadn’t been given and weren’t ready for, seeking their own glory and then panicking when it didn’t work. 

Whatever the problem, though, it is no problem for Jesus. He simply takes the child, heals him and restores him to his father. Everyone is astounded at the “greatness of God” we are told, amazed at all Jesus was doing. Peter, James and John saw the glory of God on the mountaintop, but here, perhaps is a greater glory, health and hope restored, a child able to live in safety, a father delivered from fear. 

This story goes with the one before it, because it reminds us that God is just as much present when the skies are not aglow with glory, when the angels aren’t singing, when all that can be heard are the anguished cries of a sick child and a worried father. God is just as much present in the day-to-day grind of life, when the rubber hits the road and we just have to get on with the journey. God is just as much present in failure as in success. In the story of Christ, we see that God is just as much present on the cross as he is on the mountain top. 

It's easy to feel close to heaven on a mountain top, amidst beauty and grandeur. But if we learn to look for God also in the slog and the pain and the boredom of everyday life we discover that heaven is all around us, because heaven is wherever God is. The exodus, the journey, we are called to make doesn’t take us away from the reality of our lives but deeper into them, to find God at work.

It’s hard to hold onto hope sometimes. We look at the situation in Ukraine, at what seems like round after round of bloodshed in human history, needless, pointless suffering, and we ask, “where is God in all this?” There are no easy answers, but if God can be found on a cross, then he can also be found on a battlefield, or in a basement air-raid shelter, or in a refugee camp. God is either everywhere, or nowhere.  If we don’t believe that, there is no point to our faith at all. 

Sometimes we might find God on a mountaintop, in glory, in moments of radiant peace and beauty. Those moments are precious, to be enjoyed, treasured and pondered, moments which inspire and strengthen us; but this story encourages us to trust that God is at work, wherever our journey takes us, today, tomorrow and for all our future.

Amen