Sermon for the Sunday Next Before Lent - The Transfiguration of Christ: transfiguration ahead for us all

We recall the transfiguration of Jesus as we stand on the threshold of Lent. In the transfiguration, the glory of Christ is made visible, and in Christ we see our own destiny. We glimpse the glory that awaits each one of us; the glory of God that waits to be revealed in us. We are given this reminder, this refresher course, as it were, to strengthen our resolve as we embark on Lent: that we are created in God’s image, and we will be transformed into God’s image more and more, from one degree of glory to another. As we journey on in faith, as we journey through Lent to the Cross and to Easter glory, we journey deeper and deeper into God’s love.

This glimpse of transfiguration is both a challenge and a reassurance. It is a glimpse of something that lies beyond, that calls from a different reality, from a bigger dimension.

It is a reminder that you are destined for glory – you are made in God’s image - and the path of faith is simply about restoring and renewing that image in you. This earthly existence is shaping you to bear the full weight of glory which the transfiguration of Jesus hints at.

Moses, as the reading from Exodus told us, came down from the mountain after forty days and forty nights. He was transformed by the experience, transfigured by the presence of God. The people saw something in him that was different, lit up from inside, as it were: ‘the skin of his face shining.’ We have the forty days of Lent ahead of us, the starting on Wednesday. I wonder how much these coming forty days might transform us?

Part of the purpose of Lent is to get us used to what it would be like to be in the presence of God  - what it will be like to be in the presence of God; to help us – mortal though we be – to bear the weight of immortal glory.

And one of the ways that Lent does this, paradoxically, is to remind us right at the start of our mortality. Ash Wednesday by its very name reminds us that ‘we are dust and unto dust shall we return.’

So Lent helps us remember that we need to rely on what is eternal instead of temporal, to depend on what lasts beyond this life and will sustain us evermore.  

To go without something we enjoy in Lent is not to be killjoy, but it helps us realise us just how much external things pattern and shape our lives. We rely so much on creature comforts: so Lent paradoxically can renew our joy and our appreciation of things we may otherwise take for granted.

Through the course of Lent we anticipate the joy of Easter to come, both the immediate Easter when we return, thankfully, to our earthly sources of enjoyment, as well as the eternal Easter when we will experience once and for all the everlasting joy of which pleasures in this life are such a pale imitation.

In the Gospel reading, Moses and Elijah are seen talking with Jesus about, as the King James Version puts it, ‘the decease which he should accomplish in Jerusalem’. Our modern version translates this as ‘The Exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem’. It is an interesting insight, that in the face of his Crucifixion to come, Jesus himself has the company and encouragement of Moses and Elijah in glory, in this moment of transfiguration to help and support him face his passion.  

For many of us, we need encouragement from others to help us face the future when we know difficult times lie ahead. Lent can seem a scary and risky prospect for some, a struggle to admit our self-preoccupation, to look more honestly at our besetting sins, to recognise that even Christ couldn’t avoid the prospect of suffering and death – and nor can we.

In the end we are mortal creatures and will have to be prepared to give up everything. Giving things up for Lent, letting go of things that are pleasant and pleasurable – even trivial things perhaps – can help shape us and strengthen us to face the big letting go-s of illness or accident, loss of independence or the increasing limitations of age.

‘Offer it up’ was a wonderful phrase that used to be used to sum up how to deal with disappointment and difficulty. You don’t hear it very often today, but the wisdom is still very real: offer it up, let go of it, give it into God’s hands to deal with. Lent helps in deliberate ways to be able to do this, so that we can do it also when the unexpected happens: if you can learn to let go and let God, then the future will seem less uncertain, less unpredictable.

The transfiguration of Jesus gave the disciples a glimpse of glory then, to prepare them for the journey to Holy Week where the glory of Jesus was finally revealed on the cross. We are given a glimpse of glory to remind us what lies ahead for us beyond Lent, beyond the cross: the glory of life in all its fulness, when at the last our dying has been done so well that we live in Christ for ever.