11.00am, Sung Eucharist

6 August 2023

It has been suggested that in cinema-going terms, you can divide the clergy into two camps: those who have rushed out to see Oppenheimer, as compared with those who have gone for Barbie.   These films, one a comic feminist send up of the Barbie doll phenomenon, in which Barbie suffers an existential crisis, the other a complex dramatization of the development of the atomic bomb led by the American scientist Robert J Oppenheimer, were released on the same date two weeks ago: a coincidence referred to online as ‘Barbenheimer’.

I’m not that keen on dividing people into camps, and I’m sure I’m not the only member of the clergy, or general public, who would like to see both – but I confess I’ve gone for Oppenheimer first, seeing it last Thursday.  In so doing, I was taking this sermon into account, and a coincidence of a rather different kind: that the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima took place on the 6th of August, the date in the Christian calendar of the feast of the Transfiguration which we are marking today.

In the film, we don’t Hiroshima being bombed; the closest we get is a terrifying depiction of a test explosion in the New Mexico desert; the first ever sighting of the notorious mushroom cloud that signifies the use of a nuclear weapon.  In a remarkable collect for the Transfiguration published in 1988, Janet Morley drew on this imagery, and this coming together of liturgy and history:

Christ, our only true light,

before whose bright cloud your friends fell to the ground:

we bow before your cross

that we may refuse to be prostrated

before the false brightness of any other light,

looking to your power alone for hope of resurrection from the dead. Amen.  

Oppenheimer himself had deep qualms about the weapon he had played a key role in developing.  He was the kind of scientist who was open to the insights of spirituality and literature, naming the test site ‘Trinity’ after a poem by John Donne.  He famously quoted from the Hindu scriptures – which he could read in Sanskit – to express his own and his colleagues reaction to what they’d achieved, ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’

The film is a brilliant case-study in what human ingenuity and cleverness can lead to, when for all kinds of plausible reasons they are used in creating weapon capable, yes, of destroying the world.  Oppenheimer will have made many of its viewers think not only about the ongoing nuclear threat, but also other ways in which human influence might end life on this planet, particularly through climate change. 

And what of the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord, which we celebrate today?   Here Jesus takes three of his disciples up on a mountain to pray.  And while Jesus prays, the appearance of his face changes, and his clothes become dazzling white.  It is a moment of grace and glory and beauty, in which, as the poet Malcolm Guite puts it, ‘The love that dances at the heart of things Shone out upon us from a human face.’   Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet are somehow present – as Jesus is revealed as he really is.   

Those recalling the destruction of Hiroshima on this day in 1945 and the vast number of nuclear weapons stockpiled across the world today, or contemporary realities such what is now being called ‘climate boiling’, or indeed violence in Ukraine or Yemen, could be forgiven for wondering what this light filled vision on a mountain top could have to do with the darkness of destruction down on the plain.  When the second letter of Peter refers to the transfiguration, however, it speaks of it as ‘a lamp shining in a dark place.’  After all, Jesus does not stay on the mountain, but immediately descends into the maelstrom of demanding crowds and fierce opposition that will eventually lead to his own experience of darkness and death.   The Transfiguration is not disconnected from human destructiveness, but part of God’s response and God’s healing.

The presence of Moses and Elijah shows that Jesus stands in the Hebrew tradition of the patriarchs and prophets; and they speak of his ‘departure’, which in Greek is ‘exodos’. Jesus is to fulfil that exodus tradition and by fulfilling it transform it. His ‘exodus’ is to Jerusalem, to suffer, to be mocked, derided, repudiated and then crucified. And yet on the mountain top the divine voice also commands its hearers to ‘listen to him’.  However paradoxical it may seem, Jesus’s exodus, his death march to Jerusalem, is also the journey to the place of resurrection.  If Jesus is to lead his people home, and to a better future, he must become the crucified one before he can be the resurrected one.  

The great and marvelously named theologian Han Urs von Balthasar speaks of the Christian vocation as follows: ‘Our thought and love should penetrate the flesh of things like X-rays and bring to light the divine bones in them.’   It’s a similar sentiment to that expressed in the ending of Malcolm Guite’s Transfiguration sonnet: ‘Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar, Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.’

This is what the feast of the Transfiguration is about: Our thought and love like X-rays, seeing the divine bones within; a glimpse of how things really are.  Seeing that in a world in which human beings are shaped by market forces, or cultural norms, or the oppression of others, or our own tendencies to self-destruction, there is a deeper reality the world does not recognize.  At root, we are children of God, created in God’s image, and our true fulfilment lies in becoming more like Jesus Christ; in being transformed, being transfigured.   Our cleverness and ingenuity are given and best used in the service of creativity and compassion.  And for followers of Jesus in every age, the Transfiguration offers a foretaste of God’s ultimate purposes, a welcome assurance that affliction, injustice, and death will not have the last word.    

Christian disciples are called to repent of our inability to see clearly, and ask God to reshape and remake our vision,  so that our thought and love might glimpse the divinity at the heart of our day to day lives, and the people we meet.  What we happen to think and feel about situations and other people is not the be all and end all.  Beyond and beneath our limited perceptions are ‘the divine bones within’; yes, even in situations as appalling as the use of the atomic bombs on first Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, even in context of current conflicts, even as the disturbing consequences of climate change become more and more apparent.

Many today, when they consider the scales of problems we face, feel a sense of despair; that there is no way we can prevail, or avoid the inevitable consequences of nuclear proliferation or climate disaster.   The future is not fixed; it is not given to any human being to know what is going to happen, and yet many people seem absolutely certain about their own defeatism.   This is the opposite of our Christian vocation, sustained by the faith, hope and love found in Jesus Christ, and the transformation of life to be found in him.

Hope is the opposite of defeatism and despair.   The American writer Rebecca Solnit argues that hope is not so much about happiness or confidence, as ‘a commitment to search for possibilities.’   If we feel despairing, that needs to be taken seriously, but it only really tells us about ourselves, not what is actually going to happen.   History is full of people who continued to struggle in difficult, seemingly impossible circumstances, and many of them lived to see those circumstances change for the better.  Think of the impossible story of the church, for a start, with a small number of terrified disciples in despair at the death of their leader, and what happened next.

As followers of Christ, we are called to listen to him and be more like him, to combat defeatism in others and ourselves, and to be so transformed as to be ‘a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts.’  

Let us pray:  

Christ, our only true light,

before whose bright cloud your friends fell to the ground:

we bow before your cross

that we may refuse to be prostrated

before the false brightness of any other light,

looking to your power alone

for hope of resurrection from the dead. Amen.