Transfiguration....
There's a story of a man who attended a function trying to meet a very famous celebrity. He dressed up in his best suit hoping to be noticed. However when the celebrity turned up he didn't move towards any of the people dressed up for the visit but instead he went to a really badly dressed beggar at the back. He spoke to the beggar for a little while and then moved on.
The celebrity was appearing at another function the following day and the man who wanted to meet him thought perhaps that if he dressed up as a beggar, he too would be noticed. Sure enough when the celebrity came in he walked straight towards the man and whispered quietly, 'I thought I told you yesterday that you didn't belong in here dressed like that, so get out !'
The man had tried to transform himself to be noticed but the transformation didn't lead him to where he wanted to be...
There's also a story of a time when a Pope was visiting a hospital. On one of the wards where people were seriously ill and confined to bed one of the doctors waiting got a little bit bored so decided to lie down on an empty bed. As the Pope walked in the man jumped up and all the reporters accompanying the Pope were amazed at the healing powers and the transformation that the Pope had brought...
Some transformations are not real....
And some are not important, but one transformation that is essential is getting closer to God, gaining our own mountain top experience...
This morning we heard the account from Mark's gospel of the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9) and when people hear that word transfiguration one of the words that come to mind may very well be transformation... On that mountain top we are told that Peter, James and John were there with Jesus and before them his clothes became dazzling white and then appeared Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus...
Today it is Mount Tabor that is known as the Mount of Transfiguration. Actually that's a bit of a transformation as it seems more likely to have been Mount Hermon - however Mount Hermon is difficult to get to and as pilgrimages to the Holy Land grew more popular, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem decided, and this was in AD348, that it actually was Mt Tabor and not Mt Hermon that was the site - Who said commercialism was something of the 20th and 21st centuries ??
But actually to worry about the place where this occurred anyway is to completely miss the point.
When we worry about the places where events took place or even what the scene must have looked like we too can miss the point and in all of our gospel readings we sometimes can all too easily take it all in and just think Jesus was special so these stories are what we'd expect, when actually we should be continually renewed and inspired by the awesomeness of God - and his power and that he loves each one of us....
And for Peter, James and John, what they saw was more than a transformation - they were given an incredible opportunity to witness Jesus with Moses and Elijah on this mountain top - Peter's thought was that they could set up home there and preserve this scene forever, but he was missing the point...
The transfiguration was an important event for them - they were incredibly blessed to be part of it, but it was an event for a time and a place not an event they could hold on to... they would learn from the experience, later they would see it in the light of other events that would happen and we too can see it in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the knowledge of his presence and love for us.
And I think the first lesson we get from this event was that we too can enjoy mountain top experiences. Some years ago I was fortunate enough to spend a night up on Mount Tabor and whether it was the site of the transfiguration or not it is an incredible place of beauty and peace. It is one of those places where you can go and just seem unexplainably closer to God...
Celtic spirituality describes these places as 'Thin places' - places where the distance to God seems much shorter... And I think we all enjoy times like that in our lives. It may be when visiting some place that means a huge amount to us, or a place of incredible beauty, but it may equally be in the times of our lives when things just seem to make sense ! Times when we feel at peace with ourselves, with others and most importantly with God...
I think we all need mountain top experiences and places - but we don't live on the mountain top forever. The reality of the world around us and our own lives often means we struggle for peace or space and sometimes God can seem hard to find even when we know he's there !
All of us need to make times though for God - times of renewal and refreshment, times of peace, times of relaxation and reflection.... It is at these times that we will often gain the strength for the times we spend in the valleys of life...
And that I'm sure is where God wants us to be - when Jesus came to earth he spent some important times of quiet and prayer, but he also spent lots of time meeting people, not just friends, but sometimes enemies, and often people he didn't know. This week the Archbishop of Canterbury quoted the title of a new book written by someone which is the 'plural of disciple is church'...
We are all called to be disciples, ambassadors for Jesus, living in and caring for a world and people who are sometimes hostile and sometimes apathetic about, and sometimes desperate for, a message of hope, of care, of compassion, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of love...
And so that is a message of the transfiguration, that we need mountain top experiences but we also need to be grounded in prayer and action for a world that needs to know Jesus...
Another message is that there is also a need to be awestruck as we think about Jesus - to think of the incredible things he did and not just take them for granted because we've heard of them all before... This is a man who turned water into wine, who healed people, who encouraged people, who befriended friendless people, who prayed for those who wanted to kill him, who challenged injustice, who accepted torture and humiliation and death as a sign of his love for us all, and who then conquered death once and for all....
Let's never sit back and just hear the accounts of Jesus' life on Earth without giving thanks for his incredible deeds and words and without recognising the incredible truth that he loves us - every one of us...
And as we think of how awesome he is let's also be prepared to learn more about Him and His love and vision and plan for us... A man once asked another, 'What do you believe about God?' The man replied, 'I believe what my church believes'. 'Well what does you church believe ?' said the man. 'My church believes what I believe'. 'Well what do you and your church believe?' said the questioner who was getting a little frustrated and the other man replied, 'We believe the same thing'.
God wants us to know more about him because he wants us to enjoy a full relationship with him and the more we know him, the more that relationship will exist... Who, when they love someone is happy to sit back and just accept the person - we want to know more about them. We want to enjoy that relationship as fully as we can... God wants us to know more of Him because his will for us is good. He wants the best for us and he wants to show us more of how we can enjoy that best !
And so the transfiguration is for us today as well. It is an encouragement to seek the mountain top experiences, it is to get closer to God, it is to recognise the awesome power of Jesus, and it is to know that all he did on earth he did for us, and he did it out of love for us...
And the final point is our response. Like Peter, James and John we are challenged to respond by offering our lives to be transformed by God's incredible power... We're challenged as we grow closer to him to enjoy the fullness of a relationship with him and we're challenged to go down from the mountain top to the valley and face our own problems, whatever they may be, with confidence, and inspire others to look to the one who loves them and who wants to transform them too...
To finish with some words of Paul from our reading (2 Cor.4:3-6) but this time taken from the Message Bible, 'remember our message is not about ourselves; we're proclaiming Jesus... All we are his messengers.... It started when Jesus said, "Light up the darkness" and our lives filled with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ...' Amen
The celebrity was appearing at another function the following day and the man who wanted to meet him thought perhaps that if he dressed up as a beggar, he too would be noticed. Sure enough when the celebrity came in he walked straight towards the man and whispered quietly, 'I thought I told you yesterday that you didn't belong in here dressed like that, so get out !'
The man had tried to transform himself to be noticed but the transformation didn't lead him to where he wanted to be...
There's also a story of a time when a Pope was visiting a hospital. On one of the wards where people were seriously ill and confined to bed one of the doctors waiting got a little bit bored so decided to lie down on an empty bed. As the Pope walked in the man jumped up and all the reporters accompanying the Pope were amazed at the healing powers and the transformation that the Pope had brought...
Some transformations are not real....
And some are not important, but one transformation that is essential is getting closer to God, gaining our own mountain top experience...
This morning we heard the account from Mark's gospel of the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9) and when people hear that word transfiguration one of the words that come to mind may very well be transformation... On that mountain top we are told that Peter, James and John were there with Jesus and before them his clothes became dazzling white and then appeared Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus...
Today it is Mount Tabor that is known as the Mount of Transfiguration. Actually that's a bit of a transformation as it seems more likely to have been Mount Hermon - however Mount Hermon is difficult to get to and as pilgrimages to the Holy Land grew more popular, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem decided, and this was in AD348, that it actually was Mt Tabor and not Mt Hermon that was the site - Who said commercialism was something of the 20th and 21st centuries ??
But actually to worry about the place where this occurred anyway is to completely miss the point.
When we worry about the places where events took place or even what the scene must have looked like we too can miss the point and in all of our gospel readings we sometimes can all too easily take it all in and just think Jesus was special so these stories are what we'd expect, when actually we should be continually renewed and inspired by the awesomeness of God - and his power and that he loves each one of us....
And for Peter, James and John, what they saw was more than a transformation - they were given an incredible opportunity to witness Jesus with Moses and Elijah on this mountain top - Peter's thought was that they could set up home there and preserve this scene forever, but he was missing the point...
The transfiguration was an important event for them - they were incredibly blessed to be part of it, but it was an event for a time and a place not an event they could hold on to... they would learn from the experience, later they would see it in the light of other events that would happen and we too can see it in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the knowledge of his presence and love for us.
And I think the first lesson we get from this event was that we too can enjoy mountain top experiences. Some years ago I was fortunate enough to spend a night up on Mount Tabor and whether it was the site of the transfiguration or not it is an incredible place of beauty and peace. It is one of those places where you can go and just seem unexplainably closer to God...
Celtic spirituality describes these places as 'Thin places' - places where the distance to God seems much shorter... And I think we all enjoy times like that in our lives. It may be when visiting some place that means a huge amount to us, or a place of incredible beauty, but it may equally be in the times of our lives when things just seem to make sense ! Times when we feel at peace with ourselves, with others and most importantly with God...
I think we all need mountain top experiences and places - but we don't live on the mountain top forever. The reality of the world around us and our own lives often means we struggle for peace or space and sometimes God can seem hard to find even when we know he's there !
All of us need to make times though for God - times of renewal and refreshment, times of peace, times of relaxation and reflection.... It is at these times that we will often gain the strength for the times we spend in the valleys of life...
And that I'm sure is where God wants us to be - when Jesus came to earth he spent some important times of quiet and prayer, but he also spent lots of time meeting people, not just friends, but sometimes enemies, and often people he didn't know. This week the Archbishop of Canterbury quoted the title of a new book written by someone which is the 'plural of disciple is church'...
We are all called to be disciples, ambassadors for Jesus, living in and caring for a world and people who are sometimes hostile and sometimes apathetic about, and sometimes desperate for, a message of hope, of care, of compassion, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of love...
And so that is a message of the transfiguration, that we need mountain top experiences but we also need to be grounded in prayer and action for a world that needs to know Jesus...
Another message is that there is also a need to be awestruck as we think about Jesus - to think of the incredible things he did and not just take them for granted because we've heard of them all before... This is a man who turned water into wine, who healed people, who encouraged people, who befriended friendless people, who prayed for those who wanted to kill him, who challenged injustice, who accepted torture and humiliation and death as a sign of his love for us all, and who then conquered death once and for all....
Let's never sit back and just hear the accounts of Jesus' life on Earth without giving thanks for his incredible deeds and words and without recognising the incredible truth that he loves us - every one of us...
And as we think of how awesome he is let's also be prepared to learn more about Him and His love and vision and plan for us... A man once asked another, 'What do you believe about God?' The man replied, 'I believe what my church believes'. 'Well what does you church believe ?' said the man. 'My church believes what I believe'. 'Well what do you and your church believe?' said the questioner who was getting a little frustrated and the other man replied, 'We believe the same thing'.
God wants us to know more about him because he wants us to enjoy a full relationship with him and the more we know him, the more that relationship will exist... Who, when they love someone is happy to sit back and just accept the person - we want to know more about them. We want to enjoy that relationship as fully as we can... God wants us to know more of Him because his will for us is good. He wants the best for us and he wants to show us more of how we can enjoy that best !
And so the transfiguration is for us today as well. It is an encouragement to seek the mountain top experiences, it is to get closer to God, it is to recognise the awesome power of Jesus, and it is to know that all he did on earth he did for us, and he did it out of love for us...
And the final point is our response. Like Peter, James and John we are challenged to respond by offering our lives to be transformed by God's incredible power... We're challenged as we grow closer to him to enjoy the fullness of a relationship with him and we're challenged to go down from the mountain top to the valley and face our own problems, whatever they may be, with confidence, and inspire others to look to the one who loves them and who wants to transform them too...
To finish with some words of Paul from our reading (2 Cor.4:3-6) but this time taken from the Message Bible, 'remember our message is not about ourselves; we're proclaiming Jesus... All we are his messengers.... It started when Jesus said, "Light up the darkness" and our lives filled with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ...' Amen
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