This is self explanatory, it is the sermon I preached at my final service.
Retirement Sermon 4th August 2024
The church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration on Tuesday, a feast we anticipate here today. It is a fascinating and important gospel passage appearing in the three synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke.
All 3 gospel texts bring out the main and familiar details of the story. Jesus goes up a high mountain with Peter, James and John. Jesus garments become white and Elijah representing the Prophets and Moses representing the Law appear and talk with him; Jesus’ face glowed as white. There is here a clear parallel with Moses whose face glowed in Sinai, but no one was permitted to see.
We are now enabled to see face to face what was previously hidden. And as a little aside, you might recall that Moses didn’t enter the Promised Land here Moses appears in the Promised Land albeit as a vision. This morning’s passage is the Lucan version which adds elements not included in Mark and Matthew where the disciples are weighed down with sleep.
I think this is foreshadowing of the garden of Gethsemane. The disciples were filled with sleep there too. The parallels are there, Calvary is another Revelation not from the peak of a mountain but in apparent ignominy and failure on a cross. Yet faith holds and we proclaim not in spite of the cross but because of it. The Christian faith speaks to us not just in moments of triumph or glimpses of glory from the mountaintop, but when we are down, out and can scarcely perceive a mountain let alone climb it!
Peter identifies the moment of Transfiguration as a highlight, a mountain top experience. He then wants to freeze the moment right there, to build a tabernacle, to never descend back into the ordinariness of life again. It is as if he would like to have one of those TV pause buttons.
Of course, we cannot freeze time and for me this bible story is about being nourished by God’s presence while we are on the mountain so that we are sustained by these glimpses of glory when we are in a very different place. It is as much about coming down the mountain as it is going up.
It also struck me afresh that Jesus has also climbed with them; he doesn’t just appear in a moment of glory. Jesus is there at the bottom, top and on the way back down. I find this comforting.
Yes, God in Jesus reveals himself in great drama atop the mountain, but also in the beauty of the mundane experiences of ordinary life. This is wonderfully expressed by George Herbert.
/ A servant with this clause
makes drudgery divine;
who sweeps a room as for thy laws,
makes that and the action fine.
5/ This is the famous stone
that turneth all to gold;
for that which God doth touch and own
cannot for less be told.
The ordinary stuff of life can also be a window into the love and life of God.
When Jesus is transfigured, his face appears white, and Moses and Elijah appear alongside him, the disciples catch a glimpse of who Jesus really is; He is God’s beloved son. In that glimpse they caught a God’s eye view if I might put it that way.
This is the kind of moment that John Betjeman illustrates in his poem, “In a Bath Tea Shop”.
"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
Let us hold hands and look."
She such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop's inglenook.
Betjeman describes two rather ordinary young lovers sharing tea. Even if only for a few moments they are captivated by each other and see only the beauty of each other’s souls. A god’s eye view.
When our daughter Sarah was small like a lot of parents with a neuro diverse child, we faced a number of interesting experiences! Sarah’s special gift was not maths, music or art it was escapology; you wouldn’t believe some of the places we have retrieved her from, including the roof of the house we were living in at the time. She drove us absolutely ragged.
Yet when she eventually subsided, I looked at her fast asleep in bed that night she was beautiful, and those frustrated feelings I’d experienced a couple of hours earlier evaporated. She was transfigured, and I was changed and given the strength to get through. In that moment I could see her as God saw her, beautiful, beloved, transfigured and asleep!
When Peter wants to build those tabernacles, he quite naturally, quite humanly wants to make a permanent place of honour. What Peter, James and John come to realise is that God’s dwelling is not in the tabernacle but with us in the messiness of human life.
Mountain top moments lift us up, offer us a glimpse of God’s glory, broaden our vision and enable us to be more loving. They also sustain us when we find ourselves at the bottom of the mountain. Here is a good place to remember that it is acts of love and kindness which incarnate our faith and drown out the acts of thuggery and violence we have seen in some of our cities. It may not seem like it but it is these acts of love which will transfigure and transform.
It is very human to be like Peter and want to box special moments for ever, we simply can’t do that. Coming down that mountain is as important as going up. We have to let it go otherwise we will always be looking backwards and not forwards into a future where God will continue to reveal himself to us.
In a sermon on Transfiguration Katherine Smith reminds us that Peter, James and John don’t talk about their experience until after Jesus has risen from the dead. But we are Easter people, and we are called to tell the story of the transfiguration and resurrection of Jesus to our generation. This is the stuff of the church universal; she is messy, flawed and above all glorious because she is beloved of God.
We are called to continue our journey with Jesus, into a future that may also seem uncertain and scary. As I prepare to move on from the Dorchester Team I can identify very much with those feelings of uncertainty.
A few weeks ago, I wrote these words as a part of my retirement letter, I hope you will excuse me writing them again as a part of my closing words.
Ministry can be costly, but it is also a gift to be able to be there for people at the profound moments of their lives, to break and share bread and wine in the Eucharist and to pray in and for our communities and in return to be prayed for.
Please continue to pray for us as in time we move. I leave my time here with some scars and some wounds but also with much gratitude, because I haven’t carried them alone but alongside you and with you in love and prayer.
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