Transfiguration Sunday
Who needs a tent anyway?
This morning’s story comes to you fresh from Chelmsford Cathedral in the year 2013. Jeanine and I are on a parish exchange and I am undeservedly privileged to attend the diocesan Synod.
There are literally several hundred of us, in a gorgeously appointed cathedral singing as though our lives depended on it. The organ is doing thrilling, inspiring and exquisite things and while the exact details of the Synod are lost to me now, this experience of worship is as moving and real as it was then. Perhaps it is more so now as somehow the years have not diminished the intensity of the memory but rather sweetened and intensified it. And there are times here in 2025 when… if I close my eyes … I am there. The music is ringing in my ears and the people I was with are just as close as you are now.
A miracle perhaps, but when we are with God, we are in the dimension of all eternity and any place, any time is accessible as it is enjoyable and relivable.
Now you could very easily question like this. Well, Fr. David, clearly Chelmsford was all sweetness and light and rainbows, unicorns, lightning and electric, but what did it actually achieve? A cure for cancer, world peace?
In my Chelmsford transfiguration and the disciples' transfiguration, nothing much seems to be accomplished. No one is fed, no-one is taught, no one is healed, no one is raised from the dead. No nasty spirits are cast out. So what was the point?
My thinking is this. That the aim of the miracle is to point beyond itself. The trek up the mountain and the trek down the mountain are just as important as what happens on the mountain, with all its high jinks of cloud, tents, voices and dazzling white clothes. The whinge, the sighing, the monotony, the dullness and the ‘Are we there yet?’ together with the trek going down are integral and indispensable parts of the miracle. If you like, the two slices of ordinary plain white bread are just as important as the honey leg ham and thinly cut tomatoes in the middle. You need all three components to make it a real sandwich, a real miracle.
Now there are two important things that happen after the mountain top experience.
First, there would inevitably have been some retelling and reliving of the transfiguration experience. There would have been conversations which began with…
“Do you remember the time when we trudged all the way up that wretched mountain and…”
Something quite spectacular happens when a common memory is shared. It is re-lived and in the process of it being evoked, it becomes just as fresh and enjoyable and as lovely as when it first happened.
The word “remembrance” that The Master uses at the Last Supper is actually much more than a historical recollection of events. It actually means to enter into the experience and live it afresh and and live it again.
We sort of sense this sometimes when we gather at the altar and we know that we are not alone, but are in act with angels and archangels, Peter, James and John, Moses and Elijah, even those who were at Chelmsford Cathedral in 2013. We are with our brothers and sisters who are yet to be born and all those who have gone before us.. All time and space. No thing and no one is off limits in that dimension of the divine.
Secondly, Luke tells what happens the very next day they come down from the mountain and it's not attractive.
Jesus and the three musketeers are immediately confronted by a great crowd. No easing gently back into it.
In the midst of the crowd a surly gentleman yells out that his son is possessed by a ferocious demon. The inference is ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ Further the complainant goes on to point out that the disciples have had a crack at exorcism and failed so it's all their fault. And even more than that, ‘If you’d only taught them properly in exorcism 101 in the first place, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Jesus is enthusiastically irritated by all this and makes his feelings known. ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?’ And then swiftly goes on to foretell his own suffering and death.
So the point is that the bump back down to earth can be pretty jolly brutal and bruising. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is and we ought not to be surprised that after our own little transfigurations when we are tender and vulnerable, we find ourselves a little battered and damaged.
But remember… the message of the miracle is that it points beyond itself to those moments when we have come down from the mountain with a plop and a cumbersome kerthunk. Perhaps when we collectively share our memories of the times when we were bruised and when we wept, we will open our eyes and find just him who was with us on the mount. He who wept with us and was bruised out of love for us. It was always Him, no matter where we are or where we were. Chelmsford cathedral, our altar today and the place where we learnt with great joy, that actually, we never needed a tent anyway.