In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We have just heard St. Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John are led by Jesus up to the top of the mountain, where they behold His glory unveiled, if only for a moment, and they are utterly and completely overcome.
This event, the Transfiguration, has captured the hearts and minds of Christians from the earliest days. The artistic among us will enjoy knowing that only our Lord’s Nativity and the Annunciation have more often been portrayed in art than the Transfiguration. Archeologists tell us that from the very beginning of Christian art, when many early Christians prepared for the burial of a loved one by drawing or carving stories from our Lord’s life on the sarcophagus, the Transfiguration is recognizably the event most frequently depicted.
Our sisters and brothers in the Eastern Orthodox Communion of Churches celebrate the Transfiguration as a principal feast – right up there with Christmas and Easter. In our own branch of the Church Catholic, we now read the account of the Transfiguration at least twice; today, the last Sunday before Lent, and on the 6th of August, when we read St. Luke’s slightly longer and more detailed version.
And, of course, I don’t have to remind you that here at Redeemer the Transfiguration plays a prominent — and even daily– role in our life and worship. Look no further than to your left into the Chapel of none other than the Transfiguration and you’ll see a stunning painting and reredos, both depicting the event we have just heard proclaimed in our midst.
But all of what I’m sharing so far simply sets the stage for what’s really at the heart of the Transfiguration.
A sudden voice from a blinding cloud proclaims: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.” And then we get to the heart of the matter — Three little words: “Listen. To. Him.”
Now, as one who has been accused numerous times of not listening – particularly if it involves grocery lists, errands or when and where to pick up the kids – I’m keen on cultivating what some call the art of listening. And whether you’re a good listener or not, you have to admit that listening – truly receiving what is being said or offered – isn’t as easy as it seems.
There is a fairly well known story about Franklin Roosevelt, whose biographers all agree, hated formal receiving lines. He was known to complain to his aids that no one actually ever listened to him when they shook his hand. So, one day President Roosevelt decided to prove his point by changing what he said to each guest. Just as he shook their hand, he leaned in and said, “I murdered my grandmother this morning.” Astonishingly, Roosevelt later said, no one ever noticed because, as he said all along, they weren’t listening.
Thus, it’s one thing to hear the words “Listen to Him”, by which I mean, it’s easy to hear the sounds and syllables. But, beloved, it’s an entirely different matter to actually and intentionally listen to Jesus.
So let the preacher ask: what does it mean – “Listen to Him?” I mean what’s your gut reaction when you hear this sudden exclamation coming from the blinding cloud – “Listen to Him?”
Truth be told, I highly doubt we’d react any differently than did Peter and John and James, all of whom St. Matthew tells us were overcome – not with joy, but with crippling fear!
And don’t try diminish their fear, saying they were afraid because of the extraordinary context – the special effects of blinding light, glory revealed, etc. – because until the voice said “listen to him”, they were ready to stay up there and build tents to savor the experience.
But immediately after God said, “Listen to Him,” they were terrified. And truth be told, so are we. And we’re afraid because the thought of being told to listen reminds us – just as it did Peter, John and James – that perhaps, just maybe we’re not in fact listening and haven’t been listening for some time, if ever at all. And that scares us immeasurably because we, like them, fancy ourselves followers of Jesus.
Pause
But, brothers and sisters, we don’t have to be afraid! God isn’t trying to scold us or scare us with a stern rebuke. This isn’t some kind of last chance to “listen up” before he really lets us have it!
The voice we are to hear is an invitation…an invitation addressed to all followers of Jesus, inviting us into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, without which there is only darkness and deafening despair. This isn’t self-help we’re being offered here. This is beyond help! This then, is an extended hand, an opportunity to let the soothing sounds of love, forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ drown out any other competing noise.
I love how St. Benedict says it. “When God speaks, “he says,” it’s always an invitation to listen — not in the usual way — but with the ear of our heart. Austin Farrer, my favorite preacher, who was the Dean of Keeble College, Oxford, once said, “It’s all too easy to think of God as somehow towering over us, someone fearful whose voice is to be dreaded.” But God is not literally towering over us”, he said, “So perhaps, then, it is best to think of God beneath us, under-girding, blessing and sustaining us, as the one upon whom we rely to draw our very next breath just as one draws daily water from a well.
Don’t be afraid to listen to Jesus! Do you hear him?
In three days time, we will begin a 40 day journey of listening known to us as Lent. As we come nearer and nearer to Good Friday and the Empty Tomb of Easter, we have an invitation before us to listen to Jesus with the ear of our hearts and discover anew His love for us so that come Eastertide we, too, may be transfigured and transformed into something that radiates the glory of the Living God.
So, as we join our Saviour and set our faces to Jerusalem and to the Cross of our redemption, let anyone with ears listen to Jesus, and let us all give glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or even imagine. Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.
Sermon preached by the Rev’d Charleston David Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Last Sunday after the Epiphany
2 March 2014