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Mark 9; 2-9. 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 6

Sermon preached at Winchester Cathedral

The Very Revd Catherine Ogle

When I was little I was given a microscope as a gift, and was able to see the world in a whole new way.  I discovered the wonders of soil.  The ground beneath our feet is fascinating, with all sorts of organic material, dead and decaying or curiously alive, and vast numbers of tiny particles of rock and minerals.  Under a microscope you can see a rainbow of beautiful coloured particles, some of them glinting and glistening.

My child’s microscope showed me more of the reality of how the world is, but how I don’t normally see it.  Like drawing back a veil, revealing a fuller reality.

When the three disciples, Peter, James and John, went with Jesus to the top of the mountain they experienced an overwhelming and glorious revelation of the reality of Jesus, how things always really are, but they couldn’t normally see them.  For a moment, a veil was drawn back, and that fuller and deeper reality was revealed.  This is how it always is, but you can’t ordinarily see it.

What happened on the mountain is known as the Transfiguration.  Jesus is revealed in a new and glorious, dazzling light. He is with Moses and Elijah, ancient leaders from the past, and the disciples hear the voice of God the Father, with echoes of Jesus’s baptism, the voice says, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!

They see clearly for a while, what’s always true that their friend Jesus is God’s Son. God is with them, in the flesh[1].

It’s difficult for the disciples to continually ‘see’ this glory as Jesus lives with them humbly, but it is there as he heals and cares for people, as he washes their feet, as he suffers and dies.  We too are invited to see the glory of God’s love shown in lives of loving service.  What might be thought to conceal glory actually reveals glory. But so often, our eyes are blind and our minds are veiled.

During the past year of pandemic, it seems to me that some veils have been lifted and the reality of our lives has been revealed.  The reality of how we are connected to nature and the impact that our lifestyles have on creation, on the land and the sea.  And the reality of how we are connected with one another, veils have been lifted, and we know in a new way that we rely on one another for health care, food deliveries, schooling and education, we rely on one another to take care and live within restrictions so as not spread the virus. These human realities are clearer.

And the pandemic has revealed more clearly the sad reality of prejudice and inequality.  I’ve been reading essays by James Baldwin, who grew up in poverty in Harlem, NY, in the 1940s and who became a writer and commentator and advisor to President Kennedy on civil rights.  James Baldwin talks about realising, as a child, that when white people looked at him they couldn’t really see him, not really see HIM because their sight was veiled by prejudice and what they had been taught.  But a teacher, a white woman, did see him and his potential, and was able to give him support and opportunities that changed his life[2].  Perhaps, for whatever reason, you feel that people can’t see you.

The veils of prejudice between us are complex and multi-layered, they come from upbringing and culture and prevent us from really seeing one another, as unique, beautiful human beings wonderfully made by God.  It’s only when our veils of prejudice are drawn back, that can we begin to see one another truly, as God sees us.

At the Transfiguration the disciples saw Jesus, transfigured and dazzling, with Moses and Elijah, the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.  If only they had eyes to see, and ears to hear, this same glory was there all the time in Jesus, in his healing and truthfulness, in his compassion and challenge, and most difficult of all, in his cross and resurrection.  Jim Cotter describes Jesus on the cross as ‘radiant in the splendour of the wounds of love’.

This week we begin the season of Lent and are invited to lower our defences and be open to God in a new way.  To see and to hear anew.  On Ash Wednesday, traditionally we use ash to mark the sign of the cross on our foreheads, the ash represents the dirt of the ground and reminds us that we are part of creation.  We are flesh and we are finite, and yet, as seen by God we are beautifully and wonderfully made and of infinite potential.

This Lent, rest is the knowledge that God sees you, loves you and offers you

new eyes and ears and ways of seeing and hearing,

a new heart for loving, a new spirit for serving,

and new insights for living with yourself, connected with the whole world.

May God bless us all with a greater, deeper vision of his truth and glory.

[1]   See ‘A Nazareth Manifesto’, Sam Wells, Wiley Blackwell, 2015, p141 -144 on presence and mystery

[2] From reading James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1958, Penguin Modern Classics and various interviews and events available on YouTube