Transcendence & Transfiguration (Sunday before Lent)

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

It’s been quite a good week in the press for Christians with home goals by Richard Dawkins’s Foundation for Science and Reason; and the National Secular Society. Somewhat unusually it’s Christians 2; Lions nil.

As we look out at all the terrible abuses of human rights around the world, it seems absurd that the National Secular Society would claim that their human rights were being infringed by prayers at the beginning of a Bideford Council meeting. Goodness! The millions of us who had our human rights infringed by countless school assemblies!

Fortunately, the Government thought this was absurd as well.

Richard Dawkins would do well to take heed to the words of Elizabeth I who famously said when asked to go down the continental, Reformation route of closely defining what makes a Christian: “I have no desire to make windows into men's souls.”

It is not for the Monarch, nor the Archbishop nor Richard Dawkins to proclaim who is and isn’t a Christian.

And our beloved Queen Elizabeth II had generally good press coverage for her appearance before a multi-faith audience at Lambeth Palace last week.

She suggested that “the concept of our established Church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated.”

She reminded us that the Church is “woven into the fabric of this country” and has helped to build a better society; and added that it has a duty to protect the freedom of those of all faiths and none in the country.

It seems that the National Secular Society and Richard Dawkins and his new rationalists are treading the well-worn path of ‘nothing buttery'.

The cosmos and you and I are ‘nothing but’ what can be measured, quantified, rationalised and explained.

It is this ultimately simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ - human life is ‘nothing but’ this or that - which says, that because there is no scientific evidence for much of what we believe as Christians, then it’s all make-believe.

There is in all of this militant atheism (and most atheists are not militant) an implicit denial of the ‘mystery of being’ and the longing for some greater purpose which is obstinately present in the vast majority of humans who have inhabited this planet.

And there are Sacred Spaces, of which this church is one, where, these general feelings of awe and transcendence, of longing and loving, and occasionally what Rudolph Otto called the ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’ - the fearful and fascinating mystery at the centre of life and existence -

– there are places and occasions where these feelings find particular focus in the life, death and, we believe, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus in the presence of his disciples is such an occasion of deep mystery and transcendence. It’s recorded in the three synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke.

(And just take note that Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, in case you meet any of Richard Dawkins’s pollsters on your way home – because apparently you’re not a Christian if you don’t know that.)

It’s hard to know exactly what happened on this mountain. It was a liminal, mystical experience which left the disciples almost dazed.

And as they reflected on it after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, they realised what they had seen.

• They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.
• They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.
• They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.
• And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

This is what St Paul was hinting at in today’s epistle when he writes that God “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4.6)

Luke’s account puts in a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.

I’ve preached before on the Hebrew word for ‘glory’, ‘kabod’. It’s the word for weight, heaviness, gravitas.

Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory. That joke is never going to make its way into a Christmas Cracker is it?

This also gave rise to another Hebrew word that has come into the English language: ichabod - the glory has departed.

There is something of ichabod about our current western society.

There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight.
Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe something, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)

This was actually the point that Richard Dawkins was trying to make – our faith can sometimes be quite shallow and ill-informed.

But that is because we are all deficient disciples and often not very spiritually perceptive. However, that is quite different from saying we are actually ‘closet atheists’ who won’t own up to it.

Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory – a theme of John’s Gospel. That’s why we read this Gospel passage always on the last Sunday before Lent.

We celebrate this Mass to the glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope which is ours.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Or in the words of St Irenaeus: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation. Like Elijah’s warning to Elisha in the Old Testament lesson, if we do not see the glory and mystery of God, in that case in Elijah’s translation to heaven, then we will miss God’s blessing. Our lives will be diminished.

Part of the reason for the disciplines of Lent is to keep ourselves spiritually awake and alert – clear-sighted.

And here at the mass, as Christ is present in another Transfiguration, not with Moses and Elijah, but with bread and wine; here is weight and depth in our so light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God and see him who loved us and gave himself for us.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

Transfiguration

Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

It was a residential Board of Trustees meeting in midsummer, and my first mistake was to suggest that we held the after lunch session out on the lawn.

My second mistake was deciding not just to sit on the grass, but to lie down on the grass. And the third was when I thought ‘I’ll just close my eyes, but I’ll still be able to concentrate’.

I might just have got away with this had I not: one – been Chairman of the Board; and two - started snoring.

We’ve all had those situations where we are desperately struggling to stay awake – I’ve been with some of you at Glyndebourne after the dinner interval!

We would not have had this account of the Transfiguration of our Lord in the Gospels, if the disciples had succumbed to sleep.

And as they reflected on it after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, they realised what they had seen

· They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.

· They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.

· They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.

· And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

There’s a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.

The Hebrew word for ‘glory’, ‘kabod’, was the word for weight, heaviness, gravitas. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.

One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. So there was much Schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college.

He was good at Hebrew of course as well, so someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew: Ichabod - the glory has departed.

It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God – atheme running through all the readings and prayers today.

[In fact it’s a rather tragic story that the Jewish writer turns into another little joke at the end.

“And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.” (I Sam 4)

So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died!]

Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 25 years: postmodernity as we are coming to call this period of history.

There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)

Postmodernity describes, not so much a movement, as a mood in contemporary society. It is image with attitude; inner emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. Retail therapy doesn’t give meaning, but it makes me feel better!

The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex, alcohol and other drugs; and lots of idle humour. Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I stuck around. Try and think of an advert that doesn’t use humour.

And one of the characteristics of postmodernity, is that it denies transcendence. So there is little focus to all that spirituality around, and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’ - the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.

Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.

We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.

Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory. That’s why we read this Gospel passage always on the last Sunday before Lent.

We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.

It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation. Part of the reason for the disciplines of Lent is to keep ourselves spiritually awake and alert.

And here at the mass, as Christ is present in another Transfiguration, not with Moses and Elijah, but with bread and wine; here is weight and depth in an increasingly light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

Glory, Last before Lent

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” Heb 1.3

It’s a funny word ‘glory’. We use it a lot in church. Especially on this last Sunday before Lent. You’ll see it in the collect, the canticles, the anthem the hymns...

As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.

When I spoke at her funeral a few years ago, I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ The response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.

Isaac Newton, the great 17th century scientist and friend of Christopher Wren who designed this building, was fascinated by the word ‘glory’, especially in the stories about Moses. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.

The word for glory in Hebrew, ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the Bible.

He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge.

This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…

The Old Testament in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from the idea of ‘an eminent man’ who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas.

When the Old Testament was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, (the Septuagint) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant:

reputation (what others think of us) and;
opinion (what we ourselves think).

And this is obviously to do with fame, honour and praise.

There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale. In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire, or the burning bush of our Old Testament lesson - the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Or in the New Testament it is the rumbling, thunderous voice of God from heaven revealing Christ, the Light of the World – ‘the radiance of God’s glory’.

Years later, when Moses was doubting whether God had ever actually called him to service, we read these words in the book of Exodus:

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." (Ex 33.18-23)

Moses is told that God’s glory is unbearable, and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.

So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.

As Christians, we are summoned to follow Christ, the King of Glory, so that as we feed on him, we too begin to reflect the glory of God – as humans we are ‘crowned with glory and honour’. We become heavier, more substantial, more solid as people.

It is a great mystery of the Christian life, testified to by all the saints, that as we grow in faith, spiritual realities become, not more certain - we are often plagued by doubt - but somehow, more solid, almost tangible. As John Newton’s great hymn of glory ‘Glorious things’ puts it: “Solid joys and lasting treasures, none but Zion’s children know.”

In CS Lewis’s allegory about heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, and in the Narnia Stories - everything is more solid in heaven. The present life on earth becomes ‘thin’ and insubstantial, wraithlike in comparison. We live in the shadowlands.

Now our society talks much of ‘spirituality’ - the buzzword of school Ofsted inspections. It’s fashionable to be spiritual.

But there is little focus to that spirituality; and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’; the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.

Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.

We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.

Tesco ergo sum. I shop therefore I am.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of surface and image occasionally. A little of retail therapy is just the thing when we’re consumed by metaphysical angst. It’s amazing what a new mobile phone can do!

But if image is all there is, then we are empty, and simply manipulated by the fashions of the age.

Friedrich Nietzsche reflected on this in the 19th century. He wrote: “When there is the ‘death of God’ in a culture, it becomes increasingly hollowed out, ‘weightless’”.

I was watching a film the other night in which there was a character named Ichabod… - the glory has departed.

It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.

In fact it’s a rather tragic story which the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end.

"And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy." (I Sam 4)

So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, 'the glory has departed' - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died.

Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. Enjoy an occasional spiritual experience, but don’t get too involved.

It is a simple truth of the Christian faith that we must not neglect the spiritual because of the ever pressing needs of the secular.

To neglect nurturing our relationship with Christ is to increase our superficiality and weightlessness. It is an ultimate vanity that leaves us to consume our own images.

The glory of our music, our architecture, our liturgy, is all supposed to draw us into the weightier glory of God. The senses lend support to our mind, for Christ, the transcendent King of glory cannot be grasped by reason alone.

...so may this weight of glory make us people of substance, able to serve Christ the King of glory; able to offer solid joys to others as we proclaim that Jesus

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” Heb 1.3

Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration

Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

It’s a funny word ‘glory’. We use it a lot in church. Especially on this last Sunday before Lent. You’ll see it in the collect, the canticles, the anthem the hymns...

As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.

When I spoke at her funeral a few years ago, I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ The response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.

Isaac Newton, the great 17th century scientist and friend of Christopher Wren who designed this building, was fascinated by the word ‘glory’, especially in the stories about Moses. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.

The word for glory in Hebrew, ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the Bible.

He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge.

This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…

The Old Testament in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from the idea of ‘an eminent man’ who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas.

When the Old Testament was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, (the Septuagint) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant:

reputation (what others think of us) and;
opinion (what we ourselves think).

And this is obviously to do with fame, honour and praise.

There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale. In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire, or the burning bush of our Old Testament lesson - the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Or in the New Testament it is the rumbling, thunderous voice of God from heaven revealing Christ, the Light of the World – ‘the radiance of God’s glory’.

Years later, when Moses was doubting whether God had ever actually called him to service, we read these words in the book of Exodus:

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." (Ex 33.18-23)

Moses is told that God’s glory is unbearable, and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.

So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.

And this is seen in the Transfiguration
• They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.
• They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.
• They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.
• And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

And they saw all this because they stayed awake, despite the lateness, after a long day and a climb up the hill.

There’s a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.

We saw that the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ was the word for weight, heaviness. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.

One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. There was much schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college - I think substances were also involved.

Someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew: Ichabod - the glory has departed.

It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.

[In fact it’s a rather tragic story that the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end.
“And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.” (I Sam 4)

So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died.]

Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: postmodernity as we are coming to call this period of history.

There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)

Postmodernity describes, not so much a movement, as a mood in contemporary society. It is image with attitude; inner emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. Retail therapy doesn’t give meaning, but it makes me feel better!

The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex, alcohol and other drugs; and lots of idle humour. Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I stuck around. Try and think of an advert that doesn’t use humour.

And one of the characteristics of postmodernity, is that it denies transcendence. So there is little focus to all that spirituality around, and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’ - the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.

Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.

We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.
Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory.

We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.

It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation.

And here at the mass, as Christ is again transfigured in this bread and wine; here is weight and depth in an increasingly light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

Transfiguration

The Transfiguration

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

‘Weighed down with sleep...’ We all know that feeling: in front of the television late at night; frighteningly at the wheel of a car on a long journey; or with a dear friend who nevertheless bores for England. Had Peter, James & John succumbed to sleep, we would not be celebrating this great Feast of the Church tonight.

Although it has only been celebrated in the western church in recent centuries.

It was on this day in 1456 that the news that the Turks had been chased out of Belgrade, reached Rome. So the Borgia pope, Callistus III, in honour of the victory, declared that the church should observe August the 6th as the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord.

But what actually happened?

Well, as with many of the pivotal events in the life of Jesus, it is not clear exactly what happened. And even more of a mystery is why John’s Gospel, perhaps the one you would expect to make most of it, is the only one of the four not to mention it.

There have been attempts to ‘explain it away’. Bultman suggests it was a post resurrection appearance transferred back to this point in Christ’s ministry by the Gospel writers. How this ‘explains it away’ I’m not quite sure…

Then others have called on the vision hypothesis. The disciples were drowsy and stressed and misinterpreted a mystical experience of praying with Jesus. Professor Morna Hooker seems to favour this approach.

Or perhaps Mark made up the story as a vehicle for some special teaching that Jesus gave to the three: Peter, James and John. It was the best way of explaining things in a pictorial fashion?

Or maybe it was just a plain old Gospel miracle! I don’t have a problem with occasional miracles, although I can’t quite join my Pentecostal friends who think nothing of a hundred impossible things before breakfast.

So I assume it happened more or less as the three synoptic Gospel writers remember it. The veil between this world and the other became gossamer thin and the disciples were caught up in a nexus of spiritual realities and blurred frontiers.

They saw Moses and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law. They saw Elijah and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed. They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.

And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

And they saw all this because they stayed awake, despite the lateness, after a long day and a climb up the hill.

There is a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun.

Some of you will remember in another sermon how we saw that the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ was the word for weight, heaviness, gravitas. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.

If we are to celebrate the Glory of God, then we must stay awake, or be vigilant. For it is too easy to be so weighed down with the sleep of this world that we miss the glory of the other.

It struck me as we read tonight’s OT passage from Exodus, that after Moses went up the mountain to be enveloped in the glory of the Lord, he waited 6 days for anything to happen. Most of us, I suspect, would have given the Lord an hour at most and then been off to the next engagement.

Celebrating the Glory of God takes time. I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: “But sometimes the Holy Ghost don’t get there till 12.30!”

Whether it be in Church or at Glyndebourne, in reading a book or watching a film, in a walk in the country, or looking at the stars - so many places where we can glimpse the glory of God who created all things for our enjoyment; if we will but stay awake spiritually and let the weight of God’s glory settle on us, then we begin to celebrate life in its fullness - and this is the glory of God.

The spiritual disciplines, and the daily offices are not there to stop us enjoying the world too much (although reading some of the Fathers you might suppose this); they are there to slow us down and help us to savour the world, the moments of each day.

What use are all our ‘havings’ if they are weightless - without glory. What use is a life packed full of experience if - ichabod - the glory has departed.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory.

We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.

It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation.

And here at this mass, as Christ is again transfigured in this bread and wine, let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

Christ the King 2001

Christ the King

“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
1 Timothy 1.17

Christ, the King of Glory.

It’s a funny word ‘glory’. As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.

When I spoke at her funeral a couple of years ago I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ the response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.

I started looking at the origins of the word ‘glory’ while studying Isaac Newton at university. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures. And he was fascinated with the stories of Moses and ‘glory’.

The word in Hebrew ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch.

He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge. This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…

The OT in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from an eminent man who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas. (Four years at St Mary’s and sadly I’m fast developing gravitas.)

When the OT was translated into Greek, (the Septuagint of the 2nd and 3rd century) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant reputation (what others think of us) and opinion (what we ourselves think). And this is tied up with fame, honour, praise.

There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale.

In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was Light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire - the Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Listen to these verses from Exodus:

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen." (Ex 33.18-23)

Moses is told it is unbearable and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.

So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence (as St Paul puts it) - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.

As Christians, we are summoned to follow Christ, the King of Glory, so that as we feed on him, we too begin to reflect the glory of God. We become heavier, more substantial, more solid.

It is a great mystery of the Christian life, testified to by all the saints, that as we grow in faith, spiritual realities become, not more certain, but more solid, almost tangible.

“Solid joys and lasting treasures, none but Zion’s children know.” John Newton (Glorious things...)

In CS Lewis’s allegory about heaven and hell, Pilgrim’s Regress, and in the Narnia Stories - everything is more solid in heaven. The present life on earth becomes ‘thin’ and insubstantial, wraithlike in comparison. We live in the shadowlands.

Our society talks much of ‘spirituality’ - the buzzword of school Ofsted inspections. But there is little focus to that spirituality; and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’; the transcendent God seen in Christ the King of Glory.

Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight. We are all surface and image.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of surface and image occasionally. I was shopping in Cambridge with my image advisor on Friday. He steered me away from some very sensible looking trainers (those are a kind of casual shoe) in Clarks and I now possess a pair of almost indistinguishable trainers from Raw at only twice the price.

But if image is all there is, then we are empty, and manipulated by the fashions of the age.

Nietzsche of all people recognised this: “When there is the ‘death of God’ in a culture, it becomes increasingly hollowed out, ‘weightless’”.

One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. There was much schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college - I think substances were also involved. Someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew:

Ichabod - the glory has departed.

It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.

In fact it’s a rather tragic little story which the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end. “And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. (I Sam 4)

So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - or, the heavy one has departed.

Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong.

It is a simple truth of the Christian faith that we must not neglect the spiritual because of the ever pressing needs of the secular.

To neglect nurturing our relationship with Christ is to increase our superficiality and weightlessness. It is an ultimate vanity.

In our tradition music and liturgy play a great part in nourishing our spiritual life. Christ, the transcendent King of glory cannot be grasped by reason alone.

The glory of our music, our architecture, our liturgy - these are all supposed to draw us into the weightier glory of God.

So on this Feast of Christ, the King of Glory, as he is exalted in the beauty of the music, as he is lifted up in the sacraments, as we contemplate Christ: crucified, risen, ascended and glorified...

...so may this weight of glory make us people of substance, able to serve Christ the King; able to offer solid joy to others.

“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
1 Timothy 1.17