Transfiguration & the mystery of Easter

 Matthew 17: 1-9

In the first part of the service I am telling the Godly Play story "The Mystery of Easter" - this short sermon then follows on, after the Gospel reading.

If you want to hear the story, it is Here 

Reflection 

This has been a good week to think about transformation – things changing – the way sadness and celebration can belong together.

 

The weather has given us days when we have glimpsed the daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses in a little sunshine and started to dare that Spring might be just around the corner – and then we’ve suffered days when the cold wind and driving rain have sent us scurrying back indoors.

 

The news has stories that can leave us feeling appalled and depressed – and yet even in the darkest times there are stories of amazing heroism or stunning compassion.

 

The mystery of Easter  - that purple and white jigsaw puzzle - reminds us of the reality of sadness but also the truth of celebration. And this week we saw both sadness and celebration at Colin Thomas’s funeral.

 

All these different ways of seeing things can help us understand our world more fully.

 

The poet William Blake began one of his poems with the lines

To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

 

Blake understood that to appreciate the large and wonderful ideas and truths of this world, we human beings need something smaller, more easily grasped, as a starting point.

 

So, when we try to think about Lent & the mystery of Easter, we might start with a jigsaw.

In those simple purple and white pieces we see how sadness and celebration belong together, and that although, on their own, some things don’t make sense, we might piece things together to see a meaningful pattern.

When thinking about who Jesus truly is, we need a smaller story to help us understand.

 

And so today we have listened to Matthew’s account of the strange change that Peter, James and John see in Jesus, up a high mountain.

 

Just for a moment – just for a glimpse – they see their friend and teacher Jesus filled with light and grace and all the glory of heaven. They see Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus Christ, the son of God. And then he changes back to normal, and they are left wondering what it all means.

 

But they never see Jesus in quite the same way again. And after the suffering and sadness of crucifixion is replaced by first the bewilderment and then the joy of resurrection, they remember and tell the story of this moment up the mountain when they saw Jesus in his glory.

 

We have been let into the secret today – told the story of that moment of reality – the humanity and the deity of Jesus in one glimpse.

 

And as we carry that glimpse of the truth of Jesus’ identity into our Lent and then Easter, we can bear the sadness and start to understand how the sadness and celebration are connected.

 

The things that we might do this Lent can all help us to see God’s son, Jesus and God’s world in a new way.

 

If we give something up – no chocolate, no sugar in our tea, even no alcohol -  it helps us appreciate the richness of the life God has given us.

If we decide to read our Bibles more – we are opening ourselves up to seeing our world through the moving of God’s Spirit on earth.

If we pray more – we are inviting the risen Jesus to be more present with us in our everyday life.

 

May this Lent be for each of us a time to see God – as creator, as Christ, and as comforter – and to have our lives changed by what we see.

So as we travel towards Easter, we might be ready to enter the mystery of God’s love in Christ dying for us, living again, and ever present – in the sadness and celebration that together make real joy.

Amen.

 

 



 

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