Sermon for the Feast of the Transfiguration

1 Somewhere in the Summa Theologiae, St Thomas Aquinas' 13th Century summation of Theological knowledge, Thomas writes that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is a mystery that surpasses the powers of human intellect.

The women disciples and the Apostles encounter sufficient of resurrection to know that something profound happened, and that there is a depth to what they encountered which confronts and surpasses their powers to know. Not of course that the first witnesses were philosophers of rank who used this kind of formal language! In a deceptively simple statement, Thomas attributes the 'mystery' to the fact that the resurrection began in the realm of the dead (whence Jesus had been), and ends in the realm of heaven (where he ended) - about which both realms to a large extent we know nothing! . As if we saw an object flash past and said ' I saw it pass but from whence and to where I know not - or as of a human life whose origins and destiny are obscured. The resurrection is framed by realities that surpass our native powers.

2 Peter and James and John also get the surface phenomena and glitter at the transfiguration. As if this were a prime source for a Course on The Sociology of Religious Experience - (the elective on visionary experiences), the text refers to changed facial appearance, dazzling whiteness of clothing, and glory, doxa, the light of heaven in which stand Moses and Elijah; the greatest of the lawmakers and the prophets who live to God in His eternal present.

For us who have not encountered such literal realities as this, we are invited to use our imaginations to reconstruct the power and the splendour and compulsion of this sacred scene.

It would be as if the ordinary realities that we encounter became charged with light and energy and clarity, and we knew both who we were as a loved child of God and that the world in which we live is in fact a redeemed creation that serves the purposes of a divine mind that is benevolent and caring. Such an event would indeed be a transfiguration, metamorphosis or change of form.

3 The Gospel text puts Jesus the teacher and healer in a new light. It shows that whatever he encounters, says, or happens to him in the human frame, there is a dimension to his existence in which he stands in the presence of God and in the company of his greatest emissaries and in fact surpasses them in dignity and purpose. The Apostles hear the Divine Voice say This one is my Son Listen to Him

4 It is very difficult in our culture to 'Listen to Him'. It could be said that the Bible as the text deposit of what he said has been so put through an intellectual shredding machine that Jesus himself has been pushed over the horizon of relevance.

As an educational idea, the concept of listening to him and having a working program based on the Lord's teachings is not easy to grasp in our culture.

Furthermore, there is somethng tired, tedious and worn in our culture, as if it has almost missed the opportunity to embody a culture of the true Son of God. Thus Daniel's vision of the true human being who stands before God and creates a truly human order remains a fragile hope, rather than an event of our culture that happened definitively with the coming of Jesus. Recall how a few verses earlier in Daniel, in his dream or vision, he saw a succession of strange beast creatures who ruled the nations, and who crushed and destroyed the human form. He then saw a son of man, a human being who would establish a just and human realm forever before God.

For us, that realm has been inaugurated in Jesus, but in every age the history of the nations makes us wonder about the extent to which we have not 'listened to Him'.

The remembrance of 50 years since the use of atomic weapons, and the persistent prevalence of wars and rumours of wars and the despoiling of the human realm, must make us wonder and should energise us to find the true glory of the hidden God.

- Ivan Head, Warden of St. Paul's College in the University of Sydney