Sermon on the The Transfiguration of Our Lord - Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters

Which leads us to a second issue. We're called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ allowing

the Holy Spirit to use us in his mission to the world to lead as many people as we

can to the true knowledge of and relationship with God the Holy Trinity. But if we've constructed

our subjective view of God built as much on our own prejudices as on the true nature of God,

then we can't do this. The church can't proclaim God because it can't decide who or what God is.

If the church doesn't know who God is then it can't know what the gospel is either and so it

can't proclaim it. The gospel I proclaim is that God the Holy Spirit would draw everyone to

himself exactly as they are, that he would have them love themselves as they are, that he would

lead them as disciples of Jesus Christ to the truest version of themselves. All of this is made

possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That is in my view

a pretty good description of the kingdom of God. But there are plenty of people across the church

throughout the world who would disagree, who would actively reject certain people based on their

race or their gender or their sexuality. And yet each of us would say that we were proclaiming

the true God. So whose gospel is right? Yet Father Samuel, hear you cry, what about the Bible?

Surely at least if we stick to the scriptures then we can't go too far on. Well again yes and no.

The Bible is a very complex library of 66 books written across thousands of years by very different

authors with very different worldviews. It's the unveiling story of the people of God coming to

know and understand who God is. And as such we can get lost down the rabbit trail of creating God

in our own image by picking and choosing the parts of scripture which agree with our prejudices.

The slavery abolitionist movement in the UK used scripture to ground their arguments. They fought

for something truly just, truly godly. But many slave owners also used the scriptures to justify

their slave holdings. They used scripture to justify the evil ways in which they acted. So what

are we to do then? Well very simply we must set aside who we want God to be and ask God to reveal

to us who he is and what he wants us to do and we must do it anew every morning. Today we celebrate

the feast of the Transfiguration in which Jesus, St Peter, St James and St John ascended a mountain

to pray and Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. They beheld his divine glory revealed.

They knew Jesus veiled in flesh but upon the mountain they beheld his God head and then worshiped

him not as a normal prophet but as God. And as I was reading this apparent again this week I began

to ask myself who was the Transfiguration for? Well you've got to look at the people who were there

to answer that question. Firstly there was Moses and Elijah but it couldn't have been for them. They

were representatives of the Old Testament law and prophets and though in heaven they spoke to

Jesus on the top of the mountain about his forthcoming death and resurrection but they didn't know

they didn't need the Transfiguration to know who Jesus was. So the Transfiguration didn't mean much

to Moses or Elijah that there was Jesus of course but again Jesus didn't need the Transfiguration

to know he was the Son of God and whilst it was probably encouraging to hear his father's voice

say this is my son the beloved listen to him he knew what was coming in his passion he knew

who he was and what he was about to do and so finally of course there was Peter James and John

the Transfiguration was for them why because they didn't understand who Jesus was or what he'd come

to do. Throughout the Gospels there's an undertone of misunderstanding amongst the disciples.

They repeatedly fell out about who the greatest amongst them was. They repeatedly jockeed for position

and influence and they did so because they didn't understand what the Kingdom of God was which they

were actively proclaiming. For to the disciples the Kingdom of God was a human kingdom. We only

have to look at the way that they acted during the triumphal procession into Jerusalem to see that.

The disciples recreated a triumphal procession of Caesar into a city in the empire or a general

returning after a successful military campaign. They proclaimed Jesus as the Son of David one of

the few times that that title is used for Jesus. They proclaimed him as the Son of the Great King

who was promised that his ancestors would sit on the throne of Israel forever. As Jesus entered

Jerusalem to suffer and die his disciples prepared an entrance for him which was closer to the

coming of a conquering army. Jesus subverted this feeling by riding a donkey rather than a horse

showing that he was coming in peace but peace was not what most of the disciples wanted.

The disciples had created Jesus in their own image an Israelite messiah who would create a human

kingdom which would displace the Romans and then give them places of honor. But on the mount of

Transfiguration Jesus was shown to be much more than the man that they understood. He wasn't another

David. He wasn't a prophet. He was the Son of Man, the Son of God, the one of Daniel's great vision.

The Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity created God. That was truly Jesus.

St Peter, St James and St John had known a very human Jesus who they thought wanted human things

just like they did. But on the mount they saw that Jesus was more than fully human. He was fully human

and fully God. And they couldn't even begin to comprehend the goodness and the mercy of the

kingdom of God that he had come to create. It would take the rest of their lives for St Peter,

St James and St John to comprehend what they saw. They made mistakes along the way. They got it wrong.

But clearly this vision of the Transfiguration was so transformative that they kept returning to it.

A vision of who Jesus truly was and is. Not the small person that they wanted him to be.

And so years later St Peter wrote in his second letter,

We had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father

when that voice conveyed to him from the majestic glory. This is my son, my beloved, with whom I am

well pleased. We ourselves heard this voice while we were with him on the Holy Mountain. You do well

to be attentive to this as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star

rises in your hearts. Of all of the events of the gospel, St Peter advised being attentive to the

Transfiguration until the morning star, that is Jesus himself rises in your hearts. In other words,

Jesus advised being attentive to the Transfiguration above all else until we truly understand who

Jesus is and our hearts really belong to him. And this attentiveness means setting aside our own

prejudices, our own goals, our own priorities and asking Jesus to show himself to us that we might

understand who he is afresh each day. Of course, in being part of the Holy Spirit's mission to the

world, we must rely on the scriptures. We must rely on the teaching of the church. We must know the

nature of God. We must still be ourselves. We can bring all of those things to our mission.

But our starting point must not be our prejudices and our desires. We must start each day by laying

aside who we want God to be and ask Jesus to show us who he actually is. The Transfiguration teaches

us the humility that our goal is to serve Jesus Christ as he is, not as we would design him to

be. As so let us pray. Almighty God, give us the grace to lay aside our own prejudices and

priorities, to know you as you are. Show us afresh each day your true self, that we might proclaim

that truth to our world by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.