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02.03.02 Steve 'Realer' reality - a reflection on Transfiguration. Mark 9: 2-9

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I’ve always liked the story of the Transfiguration because it makes me wonder about ‘reality’. This is a philosophical matter - and I have to admit to not being very good at Philosophy as a student - it was a lesser requirement of a theological degree. Never could quite grasp which bar of soap we were dealing with. Clearly, what we have here is a story about something supernatural - other wordly. We might want to characterise it as ‘unreal’ - as opposed to real stuff, like the disciples, and the mountain.

In a way, the ‘easy’ part of this story is to appreciate the theological significance of it. St Mark has it here as an important part of his gospel - it is loaded with meaning. It is, as we have seen many times, Old Testament typeology - the applying of the attributes, qualities and meanings of one story, to the present story.

This account has a number of points in common with the story of Moses at Sinai (Exod. 24, 34). In the Exodus account, Moses was accompanied by three men (Exod. 24:9; Mark 9:2); a cloud covered the mountain for six days, and God spoke from the cloud (Exod. 24:16; Mark 9:2, 7); Moses saw, at least in part, God's glory (Exod. 33:17-23; Mark 9:3); the skin of Moses' face shone dazzling bright (Exod. 34:30; Mark 9:3); the people of Israel were afraid (Exod. 34:30); and on coming down from the mountain, Moses encountered faithless "disciples" (32:7-8; Mark 9:14-29).

Throughout the scriptures, a cloud symbolizes the presence of God, beginning with the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites through the wilderness by day (Exod. 13:21). The examples of God's presence in clouds are too numerous to list. On the Mount of Transfiguration, the cloud episkiazousa -- overwhelms them. This is the same verb that is used to describe the power of the Most High overshadowing Mary (Luke 1:35), which results in her conceiving the child who will be Son of God/Son of Man.

Jesus' clothing becomes dazzling white, like the snow-white clothing of the Ancient of days in Daniel 7:9. In that account, "behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (7:13-14). Mark also uses the phrase, Son of Man, in his account of the transfiguration (9:9).

The story of the transfiguration is located almost exactly at the mid-point of this Gospel, and is the climax of its turning point, which began with Peter's confession (8:29). Until now, Jesus has been teaching and healing. Now he will begin his journey to Jerusalem, where he will die. Peter has just made his ‘confession’ of Jesus as God’s Messiah - and now as Jesus stands on the cusp of his journey to the City - the transfiguration is a divine affirmation of this. A great audio-visual presentation, calling on the great names and events and pictures of the Hebrew scriptures, to confirm Jesus - this is my Son.

The theological significance of the story is clear - it’s the easy bit. Perhaps the harder question is - in what way is the story ‘real’ for us? How ‘real’ an experience was this for this inner circle of Jesus’s friends, and how does it inform our faith, as we stand on the cusp of journeying again in our hearts and minds with Jesus, through this holy season of Lent?

Christians (amongst others) are people who interpret the world and so live their lives, based upon more than the limitations of what we might call present reality. Our shared conviction is that the present realities of flesh and blood, of relationships, of man-made/natural material/fibres, of scientific knowledge, of knowledge, of nobel prize-winning genius, of exploitation, of abuse, of war, of preparation for war, of natural disaster, of routine and exciting work, of routine domestic duties - all that makes up our present reality - - - that all of this is but a shadow of the ‘realer’ reality of God and God's realm.

We hold this conviction because the ‘Christ event’‘, as theologians sometimes call it, and all we know of the wider history of people’s encounters with God, has convinced us of God’s revealing of herself/himself.

But equally importantly, we hold this conviction because like Peter and James and John, we sometimes have ‘mountaintop experiences’ that allow us a glimpse of a realer reality, that show us just how limited our present reality is. It’s interesting that the typeology has survived into our current turn of phrase for an incomparable experience - a mountaintop experience. Times when, for a moment we know that we have stepped onto the intersection between time and eternity - when we know that we are standing in both places at once. We’ve all had ‘top of the world’ experiences - for me it would be things like - birth of a child - getting a job - literally being at the top of a mountain. I think we value artists, writers, musicians, sculptors, poets, dancers, filmmakers - because they have the capacity to liberate us from the confines of our present realities (and I’m not thinking here of simple escapism).

Richard Holloway, from his sermon at my service of Ordination......

"The difficulty is that things are not what they say they are. The word water is not itself drinkable. Words point to things, but they can never be the things they point to. This may seem to obvious to waste time on, but it is a truth too often ignored in religious circles. All theology is a doomed but necessary attempt to express the inexpressible. God is the elusive mystery we try to capture and convey in language, but how can that ever be done? If the word water is not itself drinkable, how can the words we use to express the mystery of God be themselves absolute? They are metaphors, analogies, figures of speech, yet religious people have slaughtered and condemned each other over these experimental uncertainties. Our glory and agony as humans is that we long to find words that will no longer be words, mere signifiers, but the very experience they are trying to signify; and our tragedy is that we never succeed.

But there is something which comes close to it. There is a human experience that sometimes captures the mystery of the other that haunts us, becomes co-equal with it, almost becomes it. Music is normally held to be the experience that does this best. It is what George Steiner called "the perfect tautology or equivalence of form and content". It evidences itself, is itself the experience we experience and not just a sign or symbol for something else. And all great art does this. It breaks through the frustration of language and unites us with that which language only usually signifies. I say ‘only usually’, because there is a language that, like music and art is also capable of this same perfect tautology, this mysterious equivalence between the longing and the thing longed for. I am, of course talking about poetry. Art, music and poetry are all priestly in their ministry because they unite us with transcendence, place us in its midst, rather than talk about it, talk unceasingly and ineffectively about it, which is what the Church usually does."

I’m almost assured of an experience of perfect tautology tomorrow night at the Usher Hall at the Jackson Browne gig! You will have your equivalents.

The ‘realer’ world is often glimpsed by us at moments when we access our unconscious thinking, - when we experience the entirely human capacity to function beyond the confines of our conscious world. Dreams, imagination, psychodynamics, healing, meditation, prayer, colour, symbol, singing with one voice, bread and wine. An unlimited panoply of experience to inform our living and serving in the present reality, in ways that are more consistent with the ’realer’ world.

‘Listen to him’, says the voice from the cloud. We are about to journey in heart and mind, with Jesus to Jerusalem. On Wednesday to begin Lent, our Ash Wednesday service will include a Labyrinth walk - a time to listen for Christ, to reach out for the ‘realer’ world, that might inform our Christian living this Lent.
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