Fr Aidan's sermon 07-03-2004

It was this time in the evening, dusk, and Jesus took to the sea with Peter, John and James and they went up the mountain to the place of prayer and while they were there this extraordinary thing happened. He was transfigured and then it explains a bit what that means. Brilliant, his clothes were brilliant as lightning, every aspect of his face changed and the two men talking to him, Moses and Elijah, they were in glory too. And they were talking together and what they were talking about was his passing, his Exodus is the word that's used. His Exodus, his journey, recalls the passing through the sea, the sea of reeds on the way to the Promised Land speaking of Moses and Elijah about the Exodus that was to be accomplished in Jerusalem. And the disciple's stay awake, stunned, bemused not understanding of what was happening.

In the first reading we've got an extraordinary scene too, Abraham and the Covenant which God made with him making a sacrifice; three year old heifer, three year old goat, three year old ram, turtle dove and young pigeon he slays them, slaughters them cuts them in half and took half on one side and half on the other. Birds of prey come down the evil he drives off the birds of prey and Abraham falls into a deep sleep and he sees the terror just like the Apostles are. They are full of fear on the mountain and there is passing them a furnace that went between the two halves the Exodus the passing of God to sign the Covenant going between the idea was that the person who walked between the dead animals would say this will happen to me if I break my word. If I break this contract, this Covenant that was the passing for Abraham.

We see that on the cross when Jesus' passing was accomplished in Jerusalem. He too was between the evil ones, two thieves one on either side of him he was there as the whole weight of evil of the world loaded on to him rejected, crucified outside the city that he loved, rejected, despised, tortured by the people for whom he was dying. And so his moment of accomplishing the Exodus was that of evil and terror and horror that Abraham had at his Covenant. That is why we still read the Old Testament, that it why it is so important to us, it is the continuum. We cannot really understand the Old Testament fully without Christ. So when speaking to them of his Exodus then a voice comes through heaven, a cloud overshadows them and a voice comes from heaven and the voice says "This is my son, the chosen one, listen to him". So the disciples are told, are ordered to listen to him. Why? Because they haven't listened to him, they refused to listen to him. Just before this he has said that I am going on a journey I am going on my Exodus to Jerusalem where I will be captured tortured put to death and rise again on the same day. Peter says no this mustn't happen to you Lord get behind me Satan you're speaking not God's words but man. So again they couldn't listen to him, they couldn't understand. So in the prayer of his transfigured form they see him as he's to be after the resurrection. They see his body transfigured and the next time they see his body transfigured it will be in Jerusalem in the upper room after the resurrection, and that revolt of Peter against what is happening to Jesus is typical Peter and because Peter loves his master so much.

But it is also a cry to the human race that this must not happen to the one I love. It so often is this cry which is in our hearts when someone dies whom we love. So what this transfiguration feast is about in the 2nd Sunday of Lent, what are we asked to think about you and I. What we are invited to think about is our deaths and you husbands are invited to think about the deaths of your wives and you wives are invited to think about the deaths of your husbands and of close members of the family because we are followers of Christ. In Lent we are reminded that at the start of Lent and all the time our spirits rebel against confronting our deaths and it is the only thing in our lives of which we are absolutely certain and it is the only thing that is absolutely certain, that the ones we love they too are going to die and not only that our being revolts against them dying but we revolt against our own dying because death is foreign to us. We were born with a hunger for immortality, to live forever we are an extraordinary mixture of mortal and immortal, of the finite and infinite and our yearnings are for the infinite and its never-ending and then death comes and obliterates all those hopes and crushes, makes a farce of human existence and it is something that is right to rebel against. It's a natural thing to rebel against death, our death and the death of our loved ones. And so what on earth is our Lord saying to us in the middle of Lent he reminds us that we are a people of the resurrection. That just as he had to make his Exodus, his journey and accomplish it in Jerusalem. He was preparing Peter, John and the rest of the disciples for that and he speaks of this in the rest of the Gospel. In doing so he is ready to prepare us for our death and it may be between husband and wife. The greatest act of love they can have is to prepare each other for dying because what has transformed and transfigured the followers of Christ is that in the midst of that death and when we are revolting and rebelling against this kind of thing happening, Christ is there, Christ is closer to us at that moment than at any other moment of our lives. It is there that he puts his arms around us and carries us through the journey of death to the glory of the Resurrection and that really is what holiness is about.

If Lent is a time for looking at ourselves and looking at what we were meant to be, then this transfiguration story is really the one that we should be turning to because holiness consists not only of not rebelling and revolting against the thought of death but actually doing what our Lord did, which is to embrace it with love and with joy because we are confident in the glory that waits beyond the grave and that's holiness. If we achieve that then we are Saints.

So this gospel, this story and the Abraham account given to us and described really by that verse from the Corinthians, for us our homeland is in heaven and from heaven comes a Saviour that we are waiting for and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into a copy of his glorious body.

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