Transforming Glory

 

A Sermon preached on Last Epiphany: 2 March at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Exodus 34:29-35, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-43a

I know I’m probably dating myself with this example, but there’s a wonderful scene in Mel Brook’s “History of the World Part I” where he, playing Moses, comes down from the side of the mountain carrying three big stone tablets and announces theatrically: “Behold I bring you the 15 Commandments!” And then one of the tablets slips out of his hand, falls on the ground and shatters, at which point, and after a quick doubletake, he then says: “Behold I bring you the 10 Commandments!”

I’m not going to speculate about what the other five Commandments might have been. Interestingly, the story we heard this morning from Genesis is actually about a set of replacements for the for the two stone tablets with the 10 Commandments. When Moses had originally brought them from down the mountain (Exodus 32) he had discovered the Israelites busy worshipping the golden calf and out of anger, “he hurled the tablets down and shattered them in pieces at the foot of the mountain.” (Exodus 32:19) But God is a God of second – and more – chances and so, with some argumentative help from Moses, he gets to go up the mountain again with two new tablets where God declares “The Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

Now the reason we have this reading today is of course because of the physical transformation that has happened to Moses that Christians consider to pre-figure or model Jesus’ transfiguration. Being in the physical presence of God, for 40 days, has physically changed Moses so that the skin of his face shines as he reflects God’s glory. This becomes a symbol of his authority. Whenever he tells the Israelites what God has commanded, “the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining.” (Exodus 34:35) In this way, Moses is set apart as the sole revealer of God’s will for his time and as someone who is unique in terms of his intimacy with God.

In the Transfiguration scene in Luke’s Gospel something similar happens, Jesus’ appearance is also changed and his clothes become dazzling white. In my imagination I just see him as a figure of light. Moses – personifying the Law – and Elijah – standing for the prophets – also appear as the first sign of Jesus’ authority. We are reminded of what Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” The cloud, recalling both the cloud that enveloped Mount Sinai while Moses spoke with God and the cloud that leads the Israelites through the wilderness, is a sign of God’s presence. Finally, Jesus’ role as the new revealer of God’s will and as someone truly unique in terms of his intimacy with God is confirmed the words  spoken from the cloud: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35) But Jesus is so much more than Moses’ successor. His transformation comes from within, it is the divine nature shining through.

Knowing the story of Moses, I wonder if Peter is hoping for some kind of personal transformation too: Does he think that the longer he can spend on the mountain, the more likely this transformation will happen to him? Is that why he wants to build the three dwellings? Or is it just that he wants to prolong this special moment – and perhaps, this event follows the first passion prediction, keep Jesus away from a certain death in Jerusalem? It is in any case a misunderstanding. Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem and – through his death and resurrection – into his lasting glory cannot be stopped. The purpose of the Transfiguration is to strengthen and empower Jesus for the difficult path ahead, to reassure the disciples and to give them a framework of interpretation and understanding for what will initially look like a defeat. It is only in light of the resurrection, and looking back to the Transfiguration, that they fully understand Jesus' majesty and glory, and that the path to victory often leads through suffering and setbacks. Celebration awaits in the future but now is a time for response and action.

Peter is not entirely wrong of course. The Transfiguration does also point to the possibility of our own transformation - a gradual process, and one that will last all our lives. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that we are transformed when we look on the glory of the Lord revealed in Jesus: “All of us are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

How can we be transformed even if there is no convenient mountain handy and no Jesus to take us up with him? There are many different ways of experiencing the presence of God. Praying, which is the reason they all went up the mountain in the first place, is certainly one very good way, whether we pray on our own or collectively at church. We can also experience God’s presence at church: in the Word and in the Sacrament. But not just there. Peter, John and James, and Jesus, cannot stay on the mountain, just as we can’t stay in church. They had to come down to complete Jesus’ mission, just as we have to come out and back into the world. The more we open ourselves to God and to God’s son, the more we should be open to the needs of the world that it is our calling and mission to serve.

All three accounts of the Transfiguration, in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, are followed by the story of the boy who is possessed by a demon and suffers from fits, who needs healing and release that the disciples cannot yet provide. One of the renaissance artist Raphael's most famous paintings, The Transfiguration, has both scenes: The Transfiguration at the top and  the healing of a possessed boy in the lower part of the painting. 

 

The mountaintop experience is followed by an everyday failure to trust. The Transfiguration called the disciples to listen to Jesus, have they not listened enough? Their failure to heal the boy indicates their failure to fully accept the task and the power they have been given. In the version of this story in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus explicitly says that they could not heal because they still have too little faith in themselves.

The voice from the cloud says, “listen to him,” do what Jesus says and go where Jesus sends us. In the Anglican Communion, today, the last Sunday in Epiphany is also designated as World Mission Sunday (confusingly, the RC version is in October!). Some years ago, the Anglican Communion defined what we call the 5 Marks of Mission as a holistic definition of mission, of what Jesus sends us out to do. They are:

1. TELL: To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
2. TEACH: To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3.  TEND: To respond to human need by loving service
4. TRANSFORM:  To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
5. TREASURE: To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth

This mission, that is God’s mission, is in itself transformational. We are being transformed into the image of Jesus not for our own benefit, but to act on his behalf, to become bearers of God’s glory and love and mercy in the world. Step by step we can transform the world. And at the same time as it is God’s presence that transforms us, where are we more likely to encounter the presence of God than in service and where are we more likely to experience Christ than in those we serve?  Amen.

Why baptism?

 

A Sermon preached on Epiphany I: 12 January at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 43:1-7, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

In the Western tradition, the first Sunday after the Epiphany is when we remember and celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. Eastern Christians already commemorate the baptism of Jesus on the Day of the Epiphany. As part of our service today, we will renew our Baptismal Covenant and, following the Eastern tradition, I will first bless and then sprinkle you with water!

Together with the Eucharist, Baptism is one of the only two sacraments shared across almost all Christian denominations, at least those denominations that have sacraments (or ordinances) at all. The Quakers and Salvation Army do not. Many mainline churches recognise each other’s baptism, as long as two conditions are fulfilled. The candidate has been baptized by water – either by immersion or by pouring water on his or her head. And the Trinitarian formula “I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” is used. For all churches, our common understanding is that Baptism is the initiation event incorporating people into the one Church of Jesus Christ.

We get this concept of baptism as membership from the Great Commission in Matthew (28:19) when Jesus commands the disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and from the Book of Acts (2:41) “So those who welcomed (Peter’s) message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.”

At the same time, we accept and tolerate that different churches have very different ideas about exactly how this incorporation happens: Some churches focus on the individual, mature confession of faith as constitutive, others on God’s action in the sacrament without any preconditions. And beyond and besides membership, there are other, additional meanings and implications of baptism that we do not all share, and that have changed over time!

It is a pity that we have not yet been able to agree on a similar common minimum understanding for Holy Communion, allowing us to at least extend a mutual invitation to the Eucharist to believers from all mainline denominations. As you know, and as I say at the beginning of the service, in our tradition the sole condition for participation is that you have been baptised.

Today’s readings show us that there were even different understandings and usages very early in the life and history of the church. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard how Peter and John had to correct or complete the baptism of some Samarians as “they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus,” and had not received the Holy Spirit. (Acts 8:16) Later in the Book of Acts, Paul encounters some disciples who had only been baptised ‘into John’s baptism’ and who had not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit (Acts 19:2-3) and on whom Paul then laid his hands. And in the Gospel passage we hear John himself explaining that he baptises (only) with water and that it is for repentance, but that “one who is more powerful than I is coming; … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke 3:16) Jesus’ baptism, John says, will be different, it will purify and renew.

We used to be very worried about the timing of Baptism. The 16^th century Book of Common Prayer states that “the Curates of every parish shall often admonish the People, that they defer not the Baptism of their Children longer than the first or second Sunday next after their Birth, or other Holy-day falling between.” And the whole concept of an “emergency baptism,” that can be administered by any baptised person, especially to infants who are in mortal danger, has its origin in the idea of baptism as a condition for salvation. Although, as for example the Church of England states, “Parents … should be assured that questions of ultimate salvation … for an infant who dies do not depend upon whether or not the child has been baptized.”

The other extreme was “death bed” baptisms. The most famous example was the Emperor Constantine who, it is claimed, was not baptised until just before he died as he believed that if he waited to get baptized on his death bed, he was in less danger of polluting his soul with sin and not getting to heaven! The phrase we heard in today’s Gospel, that “His (Jesus’) winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire," (3:17) does sound a lot like judgment. But as it describes what happens at the moment of Baptism, and not on the last day, it is in fact more about the transformation or regeneration that begins with our Baptism.

If we look at our own Baptismal Liturgy, we find all of these themes. The questions asked of the candidates or of the parents and godparents are all about repentance, literally turning from evil and to Christ. The Baptismal Covenant is our confession of faith and our promise to put that faith into action. The prayer of thanksgiving over the water focuses on the idea of rebirth: “Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit” and regeneration “Now sanctify this water, we pray you, by the power of your Holy Spirit, that those who here are cleansed from sin and born again may continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus.”[1] Baptism is a combination of God’s action and our action and response, of outward and visible signs, water, also chrism,  the covenant and prayers, and what we call and inward and spiritual grace that, quoting from our catechism, is “union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God's family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit.”[2]

Christ did not need to be born into God’s family, did not need forgiveness, did not really need the gift of the Holy Spirit that were his by his very being. So why was he baptised? The Evangelists were not entirely comfortable with him being baptised either. If you look carefully at Luke’s account you will see that he for example does not explicitly say that John baptised Jesus, because how can a greater person be baptised by a lesser one? And in his Gospel, John simply avoids mentioning Jesus’ baptism at all! In fact, Jesus’ baptism is a logical consequence of the Incarnation. It is a further sign that he became fully human, it is a further sign of his great humility and self-emptying, and in it he sets an example for us to follow. At the same time his baptism was also a moment when Jesus’ full divinity and authority as God’s Son was revealed. The heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit, representing divinity, descended upon him, and a voice came from heaven saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." (Luke 3:16) Jesus’ mission is to reconcile heaven and earth, God and humanity. His baptism, at the very beginning of his ministry, is a visible sign that he is the connection between heaven and earth.

Our baptism may be the moment when we become part of the Church, but it is not the moment we become part of God’s family. We already are by virtue of our creation in God’s image. Baptism is one step, the first step towards recognising and acknowledging that existing, intimate relationship with God. We are not beloved because we get baptised, but it is at our baptism that we hear and know and feel that message of love for sure. At baptism God says to each and every one of us: “You are my child and beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And then, with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, we spend the rest of our lives doing our very best to live into that message and promise of God’s love for us and for all of creation. Amen.

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[1] BCP, p. 306

[2] BCP, p. 858