Transfiguration

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Exodus 34:29-end; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

I bought a ceiling fan the other day.  Complete waste of money. He just stands there applauding and saying “Ooh, I love how smooth it is.”

What we have there is a transfiguration. You thought you knew what a ceiling fan was, And I surprised you. I didn’t add information, but changed the picture you had in your head. Changed the meaning. [At the 8am someone told me they were grateful I didn’t make a joke about the blind man, having been scarred by the Vicar of Dibley.]

In some cases it takes longer for people to get the joke. A priest called Copernicus famously worked out the earth was orbiting the sun in 1515. He didn’t publish till just before his death in 1543 expecting a hostile crowd.  It was a smart move.  The next guy who made that claim got burned at the stake. But switching from the earth to the sun as centre of the universe is a kind of transfiguration. Makes you see the world in a different light. Still, importantly, the sun though.

I’m a terrible packer. When we go on holiday I find it impossible to imagine being in a warm climate. I always pack too many socks. I really just need to close my eyes and remember that feeling when you step off a plane into humidity. But it usually takes a more immediate transfiguration – Like moving to a different continent – for me to remember what being warm is.

There’s a common misapprehension. That we’re like computers. We receive more information and we grow in knowledge and adapt. The truth is that knowledge and experience change us. It’s not more;  It’s different.

Receiving a bad diagnosis, Winning the lottery, A friend dying, Moving to the West Indies, Suffering from depression; Living through a pandemic Becoming a Christian, Discovering a war has broken out in a nearby country; Having a significant birthday; These don’t just add information; They change our frame of reference. They are a transfiguration.

The imagination is a cunning little vixen –  We think we can prepare. I can mentally picture what it would be like to be at war with Russia, to be terminally ill; To finally turn 30 years old; I can imagine adding this information to my current knowledge. The reality might be quite different.

In the last couple of years – like most of us – I’ve had to isolate three or four times. Even now – if someone said right you have to spend the next two weeks at home, I’d think – rationally – it would be fine.  I can work here.  I can look after children. I have a garden. But based on previous experience, I know now I don’t cope well. don’t remain calm. That part of me that is animal biology will be pacing the cage growling at passersby. This matters because we always assume we are straightforward rational creatures, gathering information and making objective decisions based on facts. We look on anti-vaxxers, fans of Michael Buble, or people who support absurd world leaders, as stupid, or ignorant, or brainwashed.

In the army I met a surprising number of flat earthers. It’s hard to believe that people would hold such views today but these were perfectly normal, functional people, employed by the British state, and with access to weapons.  It wasn’t religious or political. It was the internet. But speaking to some of these people it was really a part of a much wider and ingrained sense of distrust –  Of politicians, of scientists, of the wealthy and powerful.

And here’s the thing – you can’t convince such people by the detail, the science of why the world really is probably round. You have to change the worldview. You need to help them trust the reliability of all those sources of information that public life depends on; and are fact-checked and accountable. Do the Russians believe Putin? It’s not just the worldview that needs to change there.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, there were incredibly complicated mathematical models to explain the movements of the planets and sun, based on the earth being at the centre of the universe. It was naturally simpler to model it with the sun at the centre, but no one wanted to change the paradigm – The whole earth-centre of the universe thing was, I should say, Aristotle’s fault before it was the Church’s, and as I said Copernicus was a priest as well as an astronomer. An insider.

But the point is that for centuries astronomers were trying to fiddle different elliptical patterns of movements of the planets to make sense of the discrepancies. It needed a complete overhaul of system and a total new start to have a chance of getting something right.

Otherwise you end up in an argument with a man as to why the room isn’t getting cooler;  when he just wants to explain to you the beauty of Artex.

So St Paul in our second reading speaks of minds hardening, of a veil being over their sight; These are those who have been unable to receive the transfiguration. Who are still working on the old defunct system. And if you’ve spoken to Antivaxxers, or flat earthers or Jehovah’s witnesses, you’ll know how hard it is to change the system. Because it’s not one thing – it’s everything. And to change everything is undermining, frightening, overwhelming. It’s shifting your harbour – your trusted place – from one set of people, one radio station, newspaper to what?What can you trust? Because it’s exhausting going through the world not knowing who to believe.

The transfiguration that is today’s Gospel, tries to communicate what it means to let the Gospel change your world. It matters that it starts with prayer. They go up to the mountain to pray. Do we? If we’re facing something difficult? Struggling to understand what’s going on? Do we take the time to pray? Or just obsessively listen to the news. They went up on the mountain to pray. They took themselves away; They sought out God. They took the time to pray. Because if you want to think clearly, you’re going to need both time and space.

And then we have this moment – the shekinah (not to be confused with Shakira) – the glory of the Lord. An epiphany – and the disciples see Moses and Elijah. Moses – the bringer of the ten commandments – of the Law. And Elijah – the prophet par excellence. And now Jesus – shown by this transfiguration to be the true continuity with the law and the prophets.

It lasts just a moment. Peter wants to start building houses – as we all want to give permanence to the moments that change us; But in a second it has passed; And the disciples are left – with this experience that changes everything.

After this Jesus goes back to his teaching and healing and we hear how quickly the lack of faith and vision returns – the hearts harden, the veil descends on a perverse and faithless generation. This moment matters though because it’s here in this epiphany, this revelation, that the light slices through opening space for the new paradigm, the new system – that everything has changed

We only get the voice from the heavens at key moments in the Gospel – at Jesus’ baptism, here the transfiguration – we hear the same words from the centurion at the crucifixion – That Jesus is the Son of God. These are the moments that people witnessed and realised this is different – that everything has changed.

And like Copernicus, the new system is simpler. Because you’re not devising endless contortions to make the data fit – figuring weird patterns of orbit so that we can maintain ourselves as the central point of the universe. Jesus simplifies all the law and the prophets to love: Love your God. Love your neighbour. Anyone can grasp that. The new system is simple.

And perhaps we also need shaking out of our complacency, our easy systems of thinking. It’s so often only the worst aspects of life that make us think honestly. Mortality, war, tragedy, grief. We have moved on to the second horseman of the apocalypse – I think everyone is a little jittery. It’s a good time to consider if we’re really living out our beliefs.

And there’s also something in the wonder of birth and the everyday miracles of childhood development that can also retrain our lazy materialism. Children naturally make us see the world differently, and force us back on our priorities. And in baptism, in making and hearing those promises, there is that same sense of conversion, transformation, transfiguration.

So what will shift our paradigm of thinking? What will transfigure our hearts? What will help us understand, or empathise, or reach out, at least in prayer, to the Eastern borders of Europe? What will make us love God and our neighbours? We don’t need a ceiling fan of any kind. But maybe we do need to get out to the mountain, and find a fresh perspective on the world. Amen.