A sermon on Luke 9:28-43 & 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 by Nathan Nettleton

I used to be a SCUBA diver, and one of the simplest things I learned when I was a diver was that the things you can know about the ocean from the surface are only a fraction of what there is to know about the ocean. You could be a sailor and live your whole life at sea; you could know every coastline, island and current; but if you never stick your head below the surface with a face mask on, you know very little about the ocean. If you do stick your head down with a mask on, you’ll still know very little, but you will know a lot more about how much there is to know. There is an awful lot of reality down there that you simply can’t see without passing through the veil of the ocean surface.

In the reading we heard from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that discovering the glory of God is a lot like that. He says it is as though we had a veil or a scarf over our faces — as though someone had pulled the wool over our eyes — and we can read the Bible all we like without ever seeing what the words are trying to reveal to us. We can read the Bible from cover to cover and still be like a sailor trying to know the ocean from the surface. The reality is there, but we just can’t see it. There is a whole lot of reality that you simply can’t see without passing through the veil.

This veil can probably take numerous forms, but very often it is something that is constructed by our religious traditions themselves. We have heard things presented in one particular way for so long that it is unimaginable to us that there could be any other way to think about it, and so we simply read everything through that lens and don’t even notice the things underneath that don’t fit or that could potentially challenge that view. Bumping into that kind of veil is part of the backdrop to this transfiguration story we heard tonight. We saw a good example over the last couple of Sundays. For the Israelite people of Jesus’s day, it was pretty much taken for granted that they were God’s chosen people, and that that meant that everybody else was, if not God’s enemies, then at least considerably lower on the list of God’s interests and priorities. God favours us, and opposes our enemies. And if that is a bedrock assumption, then it is perfectly possible to read the whole of the Hebrew Bible and even a large chunk of the New Testament without noticing the dissenting voices. But Jesus was a dissenting voice, and as we heard over the last couple of weeks, people didn’t notice what he meant at first, because the veil was so thick, but when he pushed hard enough to break through the veil and let them hear his message that God’s love and care are for everyone, no exceptions, they were so shocked and incensed that they nearly killed him on the spot.

And then there is another good example in the story that comes immediately before this account of the transfiguration. Luke means us to see a connection between these stories too, because he introduces the transfiguration one by saying, “Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain.” So a reminder of “these sayings” forms the introduction to this story. So what were these sayings? They were the conversation where Jesus asked the disciples who people were saying he was, and who they thought he was, and Peter gives the answer, “You are the Messiah of God,” and then Jesus responds to this by talking about how he is going to be rejected by the religious leaders and be tortured and killed at their hands, and that anyone who wants to follow him must be similarly ready to be seen as losers and failures in this world. Luke doesn’t include the detail about Peter objecting and trying to persuade Jesus that he’s got it all wrong, but Matthew and Mark do, and they also link this directly to the following transfiguration story. But that detail only adds emphasis to what is apparent in all three versions. The disciples and everyone else thought that if God was going to send a Messiah, then that Messiah would be a powerful conquerer who would easily beat down any opposition, Jewish or Roman, and stand victorious over them all. A Messiah could never be seen to fail or lose or suffer disgrace or a dishonourable death. We had unquestioningly assumed that God is all powerful, and so it naturally followed that God’s messiah would crush God’s enemies. And there we have a thick veil that hangs over all our reading and interpreting of the Bible and the tradition, and for us, just like for Peter and the disciples and the people of their day, if we read Jesus through that veil, interpreting who he is and what he says only through the assumptions we have never had cause to question, then it is perfectly possible to go, “Jesus equals God’s messiah equals all conquering hero”.

Paul says that we can’t do anything much about this by ourselves. He says it is only in Christ that the veil is removed. It is only when Jesus becomes the lens through which you read your religious traditions instead of the religious traditions being the lens through which you read Jesus. But for this to happen, you need to allow Jesus to intervene. You can’t penetrate the surface of reality simply by trying: you need Christ to remove the veil, to open your eyes, and to show you the depths of reality that are beyond the reach of ordinary eyesight. When that happens, he says, you will see things that will begin to transform you. They will impact on you so dramatically that they will begin to reshape who you are, making you more and more like Christ. This transformation will be so significant, it may even impact on the way you look. The transformation that is taking place in the core of your being can begin to show on your face. We sometimes talk of seeing someone’s face light up, and Paul describes it as being like an ongoing, progressive lighting up of the face.

In the gospel reading we heard a description of three of the disciples having an experience of the veil being pulled back so that they caught a glimpse of far more of reality than they were used to seeing. Most of the time they could see nothing more about Jesus than they could see about anyone else. He said and did some extraordinary things, but it was not obvious to everybody that he was anything more than another prophet or another outstanding spiritual teacher, and it was certainly not obvious that he was turning many of their religious assumptions on their head. In the story, Peter, James and John climb up a mountain with Jesus for a day’s prayer retreat. And while Jesus was praying, his face lit up and suddenly Peter, James and John were able to catch a glimpse of the depths of reality that lie beneath the surface.

They see that Jesus is full of the glory of heaven. They see that he is in communion — conversation even — with the great religious teachers and leaders of the past, like Moses and Elijah. The see that the presence of God, so often depicted throughout biblical history as an awesome cloud, enfolds this man and declares him to be the chosen Son of God, one to whom they should give their attention even more than they would to Moses or Elijah. None of this was not already true: they just couldn’t see it before. They were like sailors bobbing on the surface before. But suddenly they could see through the surface into the depths; suddenly the veil was pulled back and they could see a whole lot more reality than they’d ever seen before. And then just as they were looking for ways to build something or nail something down to somehow make this experience permanent, it was over. Everything looked normal again. Everything looked normal, but now they knew. Now they knew that there were depths of reality within normal that didn’t usually meet the eye.

Not only did everything look normal again, but Jesus led them straight back down the mountain to resume what they normally did. Their reconnection with normal life no doubt slapped them in the face, because the first thing they were confronted with was a spiritually tormented boy suffering from violent seizures; a horrendous situation of suffering into which they had already tried and failed to bring healing. Jesus successfully heals the boy, which may not have surprised the disciples as much as it astonished everyone else, because the disciples had seen him do such things before, but I’d reckon that Peter, James and John saw it in quite a different light to what they’d ever seen it before. They had glimpsed the depths of reality.

You and I won’t often have experiences like those three had on the mountain top; but then neither did they. But all of us who have offered ourselves to Christ are having the veil pulled back. We have various experiences — some big, most small — that enable us to see depths of reality that we had never previously seen. We can’t make them happen, but we can provide the circumstances that make us more likely to notice when they do. These three guys were on a prayer retreat, a time when they were disengaging for a short time from all the noise and activity and demands of normal life to open themselves to God. We can similarly take time for such retreats. We do it for a short time every time we come to worship. We even acknowledge as we do that we do so in the company of the likes of Moses and Elijah and all our mothers and fathers among the saints and the whole company of heaven. And we acknowledge as we hold up bread and break it that even in that loaf of bread there is a whole lot more reality than usually meets the eye. Maybe occasionally some of you have had the experience of the bread or an icon or a person lighting up as we worshipped and a whole lot more reality meeting your eye. Maybe it’s never been that tangible for you, but you can perhaps still notice that over a period of time, the veil has been pulled back and you’re seeing life through increasingly opened eyes.

Whether it happens for you here in worship, or away on retreat, or just spontaneously and completely out of the blue, the next step is always the same. Jesus leads you back down the mountain to reconnect with the activity and demands of normal life with all its pain and struggle. But normal life with all its pain and struggle will never look quite the same as it did before and you will re-enter the life of service and mission with a new vision of what its all about. Christ is pulling back the veil from our eyes, and every glimpse of the depths of reality — of the depths of God — every glimpse becomes a new piece in the vision that sustains us and transfigures us and makes us more and more into what we were created to be and are destined to be: the glorious body of Christ.