ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

The Sunday Next Before Lent, 2007 - High Mass
Fr Alan Moses

If you look at the panel of Old Testament figures on the north wall which have recently been "transfigured" so that we might better see their true glory, you will notice that Moses has two projections from the top of his head. These represent the glory of which today's passage from Exodus speaks. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the Hebrew word "kabod" became a word which could mean either "glory" - or "horn" and when St. Jerome translated this into Latin for the Vulgate, it came out as the latter. Thus they entered Christian iconography in the West. As a result Michelangelo did his great statue of Moses for the tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome with similar projections.

The Church listens to the story of the Transfiguration as it stands at the brink of Lent, the season in which we prepare to celebrate Christ's passion, death and resurrection. In the Gospels, the Transfiguration occurs immediately after Jesus' first prediction of his coming suffering and death. It is a pivotal moment. The disciples have recognised that Jesus is the Messiah. When Jesus and his disciples descend from the mountain, he will set his face to go to Jerusalem, to carry out the work of our salvation.

At this significant moment, the inner group of disciples - those who would also be with him the Garden of Gethsemane - are taken by Jesus up the mountain to pray. The effect of his communion with God in prayer is that physical, visible transformation which we call the Transfiguration - "the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white."

The disciples are given a glimpse of the glory of the real nature of Christ, his divine state, to prepare them for what was to come.

"Glory" is an elusive term but we find it everywhere in the language of Israel and of the Church as they seek to express the presence of God in the world. In secular usage, we talk of military or sporting glory. We speak of "the glory that was Rome" - and we mean its power and splendour expressed in outward show. I once came across a book called "The Anatomy of Glory" - it was about Napoleon's Grand Army.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word "kabod" which means glory, began as meaning weight, substance. It could mean your possessions; your status in society. As it was applied to God, to the presence and nature of God, that weight and substance came to be redefined; to draw its meaning from God's attitude toward his people Israel; his nature and being , his holiness and his loving-kindness; as well as his might and power.

When Moses encounters God on Mount Sinai and is given the tablets of the Law which will govern God's relationship with his people and school them in that covenant, he appearance is transformed without him realising it - and the people cannot look on him as they would fear to look on God. Human beings could not see God's glory and live - or in the case of Moses were allowed only to see God's back. The distance between God's being and that of humans was so great that one could not survive the encounter with the other. So, we are told that he covered his face with a veil.

Jesus appears on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and with Elijah; great figures who represent the Old Covenant, God's dealings with his people through Law and Prophets, but who are also forerunners of the Messiah.

Luke tells us that Jesus spoke to them of "his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem". The word we translate "departure" also means "exodus" - so it is filled with meaning of salvation and redemption - it suggests that Jesus has come to achieve a work of rescue; to save his people.

The Gospel accounts leave us in no doubt that the Transfiguration was for the sake of the disciples present. To them the true dignity of their Lord, hitherto concealed, was revealed by means of what they saw and heard.

What they see is the true glory of Christ, his divine nature, as it was from the beginning and as it will be in the end of all things. The voice addressed to the disciples echoes from the cloud which is a sign of the divine presence. "This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him."

Echoing Psalm 2.7, the voice declares that Jesus is the beloved - that is the only Son of God - the Messiah. Here is divine confirmation of Peter's confession of faith.

The second part of the divine utterance declares indirectly that Jesus is the prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18.15: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet."

Jesus is the one whose words are to be listened to and obeyed. What we see in the Gospels, in the life and death of Jesus, is the radical transformation of human ideas of glory; of our understanding of divine glory. The fact that Jesus will take the part of a slave and die a death which seems stripped of all human dignity; that he will not take path of an earthly king as was generally expected, does not alter the fact that he is the Messianic Son of God, the great prophet, the Son of Man endowed with heavenly glory.
We see "the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ."

When we come to Good Friday, the Church reads the Passion of St. John, from the gospel of glory which begins with "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, the glory as of the only son of the father, son, full of grace and truth"; the Gospel which not only assigns the glory of God to Jesus also locates the glory of Jesus in the cross. It is in the shame and shattering of crucifixion for others, that Jesus' sovereign splendour is manifest.

We have been taken apart this morning by Jesus to pray, to listen to the word of God, to encounter his presence, to receive in the Sacrament the pledges of his risen life which is ours to share.

Neither preacher nor people may emerge from this place, from this encounter, with face and garments shining, but there is a deeper sense in which these repeated encounters are meant to transform us. . They are certainly meant, as the Collect says, to strengthen us for the tasks which lie before us, the work entrusted to us by God, to help us on "from glory to glory". Let us pray that the veil may be taken away from our faces so that we might see God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and that it might be revealed in and through us; that, as we will pray at the end of Mass,

"we who are partakers at his table may reflect his life in word and deed, that all the world may know his power to change and save."