Transfiguration 2023

SERMON BY THE VICAR

FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION 2023

Readings: 2 Peter 1:16-19, Luke 9:28-36                                           

The Transfiguration.  Metamorphosis.  Change of Shape. This is the major Feast we celebrate today.  It's also August, traditionally known as the silly season in British news. So you may have followed the story from a Chinese Zoo in which it is alleged that a supposed sun bear in the zoo is in fact a human in a bear costume. The story continues elsewhere in which the human bear swings from a tree but falls off the tree into the lion's den.  The lion makes a huge roar and rushes towards the bear, and the bear is heard to say to the lion" Shush- or we'll both lose our jobs."

This Feast of the Transfiguration takes us to the heart of who Jesus Chris Christ is, and at the same time reveals our own shape and destiny.  It is the opposite of those distorting mirrors in fairgrounds which make us look tall and skinny or short and fat.  It shows us who we really are, though our shape is constantly changing.  In this short reflection, I have two emphases but I need to use the Greek word to access them.  It is metamorphosis,  which gives me the two themes I'd like to follow - meta, or the social and societal implications of Transfiguration, and Phusis, or the personal implications for our faith.

First Meta μετά and the social and societal implications of Transfiguration. Meta is a word which dominates the world of cyberspace and the internet.  Meta is of course the huge global company which owns millions of social media slaves around the world, giving us the metaverse and other forms of alternative reality, including Chatbot GPT and other forms of AI.  But at the same time, conversely, a meta narrative is the huge hole in contemporary liberal democracies, because there isn't one.  A meta narrative is that which gives meaning and order to existence. The meta narrative which gives me personally a reason to get out of bed in the morning, in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, is the meta narrative of the Pantocrator - Jesus Christ as creator of the world, who holds all in his hands. We know from history that societies without a meta narrative - an overarching theme which gives meaning and order- collapse, sometimes suddenly, or  sometimes not with a bang but a whimper. It is largely for this reason that we see societies such as our own disintegrating and dissolving.  Pope Francis speaking to World Youth Day in Lisbon this week, said as much.  Addressing the question of the dominance of social media and its possession of our minds and lives, especially in younger people, he said " It is a vain, superfluous thing that leaves us empty inside."  In the world of Tiktok, Snapchat, and other forms of social media, the Pope went on to say that the human person ( especially a young and impressionable one) is reduced to an algorithm to be sold things to and this then creates an insatiable addiction to have the latest brand names , because without these trainers or this T-shirt, I am not the full human person I could be. Pope Francis said, " God is not Google.  He is not a search engine- but he is prompting our response of a healthy restlessness, in which we are encouraged to seek the truth."

Now Phusis. φύσις.  This little world split the known world apart in the year 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. Contemporary historians such as Peter Frankopan point out that when the church split apart in the year 451 in trying to use Greek philiosphy to define how Jesus Christ is both truly divine and truly human, the eastern churches ( which were not using Greek at all) were forced to move further east, developing the silk routes to China and taking the Christian Gospel to the Chinese Empire as early as the seventh century. So what was at stake which caused such a seismic shift?  It was exactly the same question as the most dominating question globally in the twenty first century, and it's this. " What is the human person?"  What makes you or me fully human - and by implication everybody else?  This becomes more and more complex as a question.  We see this in the strike of actors in Hollywood right now - what would prevent major media companies from simply taking my image and making it an avatar?  Who owns and controls the avatar? How do you know now that the thing in this pulpit is not an avatar or a ghost of a homo sapiens vicar who once stood here?  The present conflict in views of sexuality and gender ( culture wars) between some western societies and other societies which do not want western " values" imposed on them are, at bottom, inspired by this same question " What is the human person?" The answer for Christians is clear - it is imitatio Christi - the imitation or following of Christ. This is of course the title of the great spiritual classic of the fifteenth century in the western church, but in this case I am turning again to the east for an illustration. From the second millennium onwards, the western church (in both art and theology) developed the idea that to follow Christ was to walk in the Via Crucis - the way of the cross.  And the highest ideal of theology, art and Christian piety was Christ crucified for you and for me. Taking this to its extreme conclusion in the west, the marks of the stigmata ( wounds of crucifixion) could therefore mystically appear in the bodies of believers, such as St Francis of Assisi or Padre Pio. But in the eastern church, a different emphasis in following Christ points us to the Transfiguration.  No instances of the stigmata have been recorded in the eastern church because of this different emphasis. But what identifies this eastern spirituality is the believer being flooded with the uncreated light of the Transfiguration.  This light, shining as we heard the Gospel for today, is that which will flood the life of the believer and change him or her from glory to glory as the baptismal life is lived. Some cancer patients while undergoing chemotherapy have used this image in the imagination to convert the toxin of the chemotherapy drugs into the whole body being infused by uncreated light, and thus transfigured. Every living thing is constantly changing shape, and it is the light of the Transfiguration, in the case of the Christian believer, which leads us to share this divine glory.  As Irenaeus put it in the second century " The Glory of God is a live human being and a truly human life is the vision of God."

So let this great Feast of the Transfiguration encourage us socially and individually.  I am also mindful of the fact that in terms of human potential for both light and darkness, good and evil, today is Hiroshima Day. The new film Oppenheimer powerfully reminds us of the human capacity to develop the opposite of uncreated light but the fire of death. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the main creator of the bomb famously said when he saw the explosion,  “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita ' Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"The myth of continuous human progress and development was categorically destroyed at that moment, which we still live with now in the various nuclear threats and counter threats being hurled across our world by political leaders right now. So let this great Feat of the Uncreated Light of the Transfiguration, Metamorphosis, change our shape as individuals, as a church, and as a society.  Let our whole beings be flooded with light.  As the Gospel set for today puts it as a requirement for all Christian believers - for you and for me, " This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!"