Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Sunday next before Lent 2025

We have just heard two stories; there were two different stories in the gospel this morning. Jesus went up the mountain and his appearance changed, and then, on the next day, Jesus healed a boy that the disciples could not heal. One story on top of a mountain ablaze in glory, one at its foot, tight with suffering and difficulty. 

Jesus did this and then he did that. On the page and in our heads, it is the one, then it is the other. I belong to a generation that first learned history from Ladybird Books. All battles and bravery—Richard the Lionheart, Robert the Bruce, Henry V. The path to Westminster Abbey was being laid before I knew it. I was also learning to think of this, then that. A picture a little text and you turn the page. Here is Henry V being brave at Harfleur and here is being braver still at Agincourt. Henry V did this and then he did that. Only much later did I add detail and texture and begin to tell the story whole. There was a victory. But all too soon Henry was taken ill; sickness and death, the loss of all that was gained. All that was gained was lost. The Ladybird story was not untrue, but those little books did not dwell on the terrible massacre of prisoners. Triumph, not blood, mud, and dysentery. I learned a story about Agincourt, but not the story. I did not have the story whole. 

John Press wrote a poem after a night at the opera—after Le Nozze di Figaro. It nails the way we opt for the single moment over the aftermath. I have quoted it before, 

It did not last. Before the year was out,
…The countess had a child by Cherubino,
Susanna was untrue to Figaro,

But for a moment, till the music faded,
They were all ravished by a glimpse of heaven,
Where everything is known and yet forgiven,
And all that is not music is pure silence.

As a boy, I liked heraldic Henry winning uncomplicated battles. Most of us prefer the edited version, we would perhaps rather stay with Jesus on the mountain top… but the story always hurries on.

So, it is interesting to know that in the Vatican Museum there is a picture of the Transfiguration by Raphael. In 1518 he painted Christ, brilliant in white. With him are Moses and Elijah and, below, three disciples flattened by glory. We are left in no doubt that we are looking into heaven. The two prophets with Christ are the two prophets who, we are told, ascended bodily into heaven. Raphael has us looking at God. You may have noticed our other readings today were much concerned with veils. Here is Raphael transgressive, showing us what we should not be able to see.

The transfiguration: Christ ablaze in glory. For Luke mountains are places of prayer and here prayer turns to vision, an open heaven. This vision though is not just a thing seen. It is heard. Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah talk to Jesus, they

were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9: 31)

Jesus is transfigured and Moses and Elijah discuss departure. I believe magicians trick us by using misdirection. They have us looking the wrong way. And here is Luke, suggesting that the fabulous blaze of light on the mountain could be misdirection. We could be looking at the wrong thing. This story is really about departure. In fact, the word used is exodus. Exodus, the journey that Jesus must make. We see heaven opened and we stop and stare, but Luke wants us thinking about what is to come, a journey to Jerusalem, a cross, a death. Exodus, not just the way of the cross—as if that were not enough—but the old exodus story, the one about deliverance from slavery, Passover, Promised Land. There is no lingering on the mountain because past and future gather here and there is a long story to be told.

And Raphael knows it. In his picture, if you look carefully, you can see a city on a distant hill. It is Jerusalem where exodus will be completed. The picture is not a single incident, not just a sudden flash of light. This picture is what was and what it is to come. This story is exodus and then argument and finally healing, as Christ does what the disciples could not do. For gospel writer and painter this is not a moment, it is a whole story. It is Raphael though, who does what text and even our minds cannot do. It is Raphael who gives us this and that. We are little Ladybird books, this then that, incident by incident. This story though is whole.

So, the eye can travel down the mountain, below the blazing figure into the midst of a different, darker, more difficult scene. Luke has described a family and a boy suffering from convulsions, a tense encounter with human relationship, human expectation and human frustration that defeated the disciples who had not gone up the mountain. In Raphael’s painting it is wonderfully done. A dreadful division, a dark space separates disciples from family and onlookers. Ministry and care and community have all broken down into hideous recrimination. It is all pointing hands, shaking heads, anger, bemusement. One man is struggling with the liturgy of exorcism, he was clearly trained at my theological college and he has got the book out.

It is into this awkward scene that the Son of God will step when he descends, trading glory for a very human problem. Here is the beginning of the exodus he must complete. It will lead, ultimately, to a very human death. The whole story, the top of the mountain and the bottom and a distant city. If we need reminding what it is to be human and divine, what it is to be Jesus of Nazareth, Son of the Living God, here it is in all its tough complexity.

Did you notice how the reading ended? A final half verse:

…and all were astounded at the greatness of God. (Luke 9: 43)

Astounded. Of course they were, stunned by glory! That though, leaves us up the mountain. We are in danger of missing the point. Luke actually goes on to tell us that Jesus tells the disciples about exodus—about Jerusalem and the cross—and then the disciples are not astounded, they are silent.

…they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. (Luke 9: 36)

Jesus speaks of exodus and Jerusalem, of the past and the future, he tells them the whole story and there is silence. The top of the mountain and the bottom, glory and difficulty, the light and the dark, the distant view, the up-close struggle. Too much to comprehend. This isn’t just a story, a turning of pages. This is a vocation; it is a life to be lived.

Why do the disciples keep silent after they have seen this? Because there is nothing to say until you know the whole story, nothing to say until you have lived it, made it yours. Seeing the Transfiguration, you have seen nothing. You have to see the cross to know what glory really looks like. You know nothing and have nothing to say until you have also been to Golgotha and watched Christ die. We have not seen Christ, we do not know him, even if we have glimpsed the glory on the mountain. We have not seen and we do not know unless we have made the journey. We have not seen, not known, unless we have gazed at the cross, stared at agony, division and despair and still believed that here is God.

We are not living in a Ladybird world of this then that. We are summoned to be human, summoned to life and even death—to all of it, yesterday and today and to know that always, and everywhere we can still say that we see God. God is the Lord of all our days, past, present, and future. All moods are his, success and failure, living and dying. We must live it all, offer it all, pray it all. The top of the mountain and the bottom. If we do not live it whole, we do not live at all.