Transfiguration                                                          6 March 2011

Matthew 17. 1-6

John 5. 17-47

As today is transfiguration Sunday in the life of the church I wanted us to hear an account of this event from one of the Synoptic Gospels; Matthew Mark or Luke, although we are concentrating on John this year. So we have heard Matthew’s account of this. We mark this Sunday, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, as Transfiguration Sunday because it is from the transfiguration in Matthew, Mark and Luke that Jesus sets off on his way to Jerusalem. Just before this meeting with Moses and Elijah, symbolic figures of the law and the prophets, Peter has made his pivotal recognition of Jesus identity: you are the Messiah – the anointed one, the son of the living God. Jesus is recognised now for who he is. Thus starts the journey to the cross.

But John’s gospel has no transfiguration; no mountain-top revealing and recognition. We might well ask then, if this pivotal event is not included by John, did it really happen at all? I think it probably didn’t, but it is Mark’s way, as the first gospel writer, of granting divinely bestowed honour on Jesus. In the presence of the disciples and the towering figures, Moses and Elijah, God says: This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!

I have chosen for us to hear this particular passage from John today because it does, in what seems to be John’s way, do what the transfiguration passage in Matthew, Mark and Luke does. It shows Jesus; it reveals him and says that this one is bestowed with divine honour. And, in some sense, this moment, this confrontation with the religious authorities, also sets him on the path to crucifixion. It is from this point that the intention of the religious leaders is to kill Jesus; because he has made himself equal to God.

But I am in a pickle; because having set for us to read this quite long passage today I find that we have a passage that really is quite complicated., to say the least. This is one of a number of long monologues by Jesus in John’s gospel which seem to be in response to a particular situation for the reader’s. These monologues are difficult passages because they often go on and on, and around and around, and it feels like you are being sucked into a whirlpool. They contain lots of language which assumes a particular cosmology and it becomes difficult to actually grasp what Jesus is saying with this cosmology as the framework for what he is saying – and difficult to gean what might speak to us still in our own time.

By cosmology I mean the way the world is understood to be shaped and the way that God relates with that world. We post-scientific-age people understand the world quite differently to the people of Jesus’ time so it makes reading a passage like this quite difficult to chart our way through. John’s cosmology is that God is up there; we are down here; that Jesus has come from there to here; and Jesus later goes from here to there; it assumes history with a beginning and an end, and a judgment day at the end point.

For us in particular, as we read a monologue such as today’s, it’s easy to get tangled up in this cosmology and to read it through the lens of heavenism – pie, in the sky, when you die; as they say. Pie in the sky when you die is a cosmology – a way of understanding the purpose and end of the universe. Heavenism is also a cosomology which assumes that this is why Jesus came and died and rose again and was what he was on about. I don’t believe that Jesus was on about heavenism so I want us to set it aside as  we try to get to  grips with the passage.

So this monologue is in response to Jesus being charged with two things: firstly, healing on the Sabbath, and, secondly, making himself equal with God. This second charge is of course the more serious one and the one for which the religious authorities seek to kill him. The cross looms even this early in the gospel.

As Jesus tells his accusers: My Father is still working, and I also am working, he reminds them that the work of creation is not a finished project; that God is still involved in the work of creating and healing the world and that God doesn’t take a rest from upholding and inspiring the creation each Sabbath day.

It strikes me that these clerics thought that God’s creative work had finished and especially that God took a lie down each Sabbath and so they needed to be in charge in case anybody got out of hand. This sort of life-denying sabbatarianism is something which many of us were exposed to in Australia by over-zealous clerics in the past century and a half. It seems to comes from a theology that God has abandoned the creation to its own devices and so we [read men] need to in charge. The creation is abandoned by God – utterly disenchanted. It is a cosmology which we in our own time have inherited from the past few centuries; that the world is not charged with the grandeur of God. God has left the building and so someone needs to be in charge. It relegates us to inhabiting a world occupied by dead objects; objects for our exploitation – a view which it is now becoming clear is life denying and threatening to the very well-being of our whole planet.

But Jesus denies this way of understanding how God is related to the world: My Father is still working, and I also am working; he asserts that he is simply doing what he sees the father do; so Jesus’ working on the Sabbath is characterised by compassion and justice as each day of the week must be also. And in Jesus’ compassionate Sabbath-doing he sets a mark against which all other doing is measured or judged. The fear and threat of future judgement is done away with and one inhabits a world characterised by grace. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. Passed from the dead letter of the law to the freedom of the children of God. Those who hear and believe have received the light of life of this true Son of the Father already.

The receiving of eternal life in John is not some future expectation, but it is a present reality. The deceptive language which undergirds heavenism is that there will be a future period of time, after this time, when we inhabit heaven. This is a failure to properly understand the meaning of the word eternal. We have been led to believe that eternal life is the same thing as everlasting life. Eternal life is about a quality of life; life infused and inspired and enriched with the divine spirit; everlasting life is interminable tick-tock time. Ask a very old person whether they want a whole lot more of tick-tock time. You’ll probably get a very firm response: don’t be stupid, dear. But to dwell in the eternal now infused with a sense of the oneness of all things – as the father and the son are one – that is another matter. A way of being for which we all in our heart of hearts long. This is eternal life and it is for now, not some other time.

The second charge that the religious authorities make against Jesus is that he has made himself equal to God. In order that this could be a legitimate claim someone must have made testimony to this; Jesus claims it is God who has done this; who has conveyed divine honour on Jesus. This really is in some sense a legal argument.  As in a court of law it is necessary to have witnesses other than the accused to witness to their guilt or otherwise so in the attributing of honour in Jesus’ society it is necessary for another person to provide a character witness. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf.

God is the character witness to Jesus’ sonship. I think in this way this testimony in John, the proof of Jesus’ sonship displayed in the works that he is doing, is like the testimony that takes place in the transfiguration in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In both cases it is the father testifying to the sonship of Jesus. This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. The disciples being bowled over and their fear and awe is the acknowledgement that this Jesus and God are equal.

But this monologue has an underlying tone of bitterness about it because the community for which it was written are in deep conflict with authorities in the synagogue. The followers of Jesus  have been expelled over an argument to do with where does authority lie: in Jesus or in the tradition of the law and the prophets. This passge poses the question: where does life lie? In the letter of the law or in this one whom John tells us has brought the light of life into the world? This is the question of foundational importance: where does true life lie? Because this community are in extremis the gospel has a  tone which is deeply polemical at times. This language has been one of the scriptural sources which has lead to anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust last century. Fortunately the Pope has just this week had a book published a book which again puts John and other gospel writers’ language in perspective as well as naming anti-Semitism as an abomination.

This passage pints us ahead to what will take place in the ensuing chapters in the gospel. It prepares us to look for clues as to the nature of Jesus person and how he is related to God and how in him we see the true nature of God. By claiming equality with God we have a true testimony that this is what God is like – and of course the final proof is the glorification of the crucified Jesus in resurrection from the dead. This divine Son conveys the divine life to others. In the obedience to the divine will he becomes the one against whom the true measure of justice is made; he is the one who speaks life to the dead – and here John doesn’t just mean the physically dead – but those who need to be born again; he gives life to others because as we look to him we see that he has the life of God in himself – he is the resurrection and the life. And so this passage points us to late in the gospel when Lazarus is raised from the dead. And it is the raising of Lazarus which begins the confrontation with the religious authorities in earnest. And we will here this account next week as we begin our own journey through Lent to Easter.

So we continue to listen in order that we might hear and look in order that we might see where true life lies – and in hearing and seeing follow this one who has pitched tent among us – full of grace and truth.

Andrew Boyle