Sunday Next Before Lent Year A 2023

19.02.23

Exodus 24.12-end

2 Peter 1.16-end

Matthew 17.1-9

As if the world were not complicated enough at the moment, I settled down last week-end to watch the film Everything everywhere all at once. If you haven’t seen it, it’s on in Gunwharf this evening – but I would recommend several deep breaths and a lot of coffee before attempting it. The plot centres on a Chinese-American woman, Evelyn, who is facing a number of pressures to do with her family and her business. Suddenly, as she is in the middle of a nerve-wracking appointment about her unpaid tax bill, a sequence of events begins which results in her being pulled into multiple different universes, each one created by a separate possible life-choice. Different versions of Evelyn and her family members exist in the parallel universes; there are explorations of roads not taken, and of what might have happened had alternative choices been made. The plot grows ever more complex, with Evelyn being persuaded that, in universes which appear to make no sense, nihilism and violence are the answers.

The absurdism of the film shines a searching light on some of our contemporary preoccupations, but most strikingly, Evelyn’s experiences through all these parallel universes seem to be necessary in order for her, ultimately, to return to her ordinary life, to face up to all its problems, and to recognise that, even when we’re surrounded by chaos, love is the key to our existence. Evelyn has to acknowledge the messiness of her situation, and hold on to hope in the midst of it – and that is what makes reconciliation possible for her. As the critic Charles Bramesco puts it, the film’s conclusion is that ‘…there’s nothing worse than submitting to…nihilism…Our lone hope of recourse is to embrace all the love and beauty surrounding us, if only we’re present enough to see it’.

I wonder if the film’s huge popularity and Oscar nomination success is in part due to the fact that this is an extraordinary, multi-dimensional take on themes which are universal.

‘The task of prophetic ministry’, says the theologian Walter Brueggemann in his book The Prophetic Imagination, ‘is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the culture around us.’ In other words, if people can catch a glimpse of an alternative reality, this will have a bearing on how they live now. Moses, says Brueggemann, is a paradigm of this sort of prophet. He criticises and dismantles the old ways of being, and is enabled to bring about a new type of community, with new laws and patterns of order.

Looking at Moses’ life and calling through the lens of Everything Everywhere, you might discern multiple parallel realities going on. As he ascends the mountain, he has an overwhelming experience of God, whose glory is ‘like a devouring fire’. As he spends forty days on the summit, in the cloud, he inhabits a realm whose dimensions he cannot properly communicate to those experiencing their different realities below. He can’t fully bring one reality into another – that is not his task to do. But instead, this parallel time forms him for his calling of nurturing, nourishing, and evoking an alternative consciousness in the people.

Even as he is surrounded by the glory of God, Moses is actually given very practical instructions for building the tabernacle of the Lord, for vesting and consecrating priests, and for speaking to and ordering the Israelites, before he is given the two tablets of the covenant. And then, just as Evelyn has to behold with fresh eyes the reality of her everyday existence, Moses comes back down the mountain to find the people running amok. It has been vital for him to be in the clouds, and now, he must hold on to the insights he gleaned in them, as his feet descend to the ground below.

This holding on to the reality beyond, is something which, says Brueggemann, needs to be addressed ‘in season and out of season’ – in other words, not with reference to specific issues, but as a way of being. Our constant battle, he says, is with our tendency to ‘domesticate’ the alternative reality so that it loses its impact on us and becomes tame. It is a struggle for the Israelites, and it is a struggle for us, but we need to keep hold of the wisdom of the mountain top as we face the issues that our days hold for us now. It’s only by recognising the gap between the two, and paying attention to the truths of the parallel existence, that we can burn with that longing and desire to change which is the start of our repentance and renewal, day by day.

So prophetic ministry, offered by one who has experienced the fire of the glory of God, teaches us this longing – a yearning for a better world, for the breaking-in of a parallel existence – and stirs us to work to bring it about. Moses’ part in the salvation history of the God’s people is vital.

Such is the centrality of Moses, that his recollection is crucial to gospel accounts of the Transfiguration of Jesus. Adding to the alternative realities in the Exodus narrative itself, Matthew draws parallel after parallel, linking the two. There is cloud; there are terrified onlookers; Jesus’s face shines, as Moses’ face does after encountering the Lord.

But the parallelism doesn’t stop there. Because Jesus does not just offer prophetic ministry, teaching about the gap between mountain top glory and foothill reality. He doesn’t only talk about the gap, he embodies it. And this embodiment gives rise to image after image, showing us how, viscerally and painfully, by water and blood and sweat, he draws those parallels together in himself, and brings about the transformation for which we hunger.

The Transfiguration shows us this by pulling us into a multitude of dimensions. Just before Jesus ascends the mountain with Peter, James and John, he has been talking to the disciples about his coming again in glory – and here, that glory is prefigured. At the same time, the words from the cloud – ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased’ – echo the words heard at his baptism, and both in turn are reminiscent of the description of the servant who will bring forth justice in Isaiah 42: ‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights…’

The glory is there. But there, too, is the suffering which Jesus knows awaits him. Now, he is lifted up and exalted on a mountain top. In time to come, he will be lifted up and humiliated on a cross. Now, Jesus’s clothes dazzle. Then, they will be stripped from him. Now, his companions see that he is accompanied by Moses and Elijah. Then, he will have a criminal on each side. Now, all is light. Then all will be darkness. Holding the Transfiguration alongside the crucifixion, noticing all the similarities and staring across the great chasm of difference, reminds me of one of those Andy Warhol screen prints, where the picture is the same, but the colours change and turn it into something completely other. But all that is other is taken up in Jesus. Here, in light, is the darkness of sin. Here, in glory, is the despair of the lost. Here, in life, is the emptiness of death. Here, in flesh, are the kingdoms of the world and the Kingdom of heaven. He is the meeting place of all realities – and in him, our longing for what is beyond us finds solace.

As all the parallels and all the gaps meet in Jesus, the Transfiguration helps us to see that he is everything everywhere all at once. As one commentator puts it [Dale C. Allison Jr.] ‘As God’s Son, Jesus participates in the whole gamut of human possibilities’. And it is through this participation, as he is lifted up beyond death, that the one who is transfigured transforms the world.

So what of us? Thanks to Jesus, we have no need to charge around the multiverse in order to recognise the importance of love in our current lives. Unlike a science fiction adventure, our exploration is limitless, because through his body and blood, we receive the One in whom the Kingdom of Heaven has permanently broken through to our universe. And as we are nourished, he calls us to remember where we are now. ‘Get up and do not be afraid,’ he says to his companions, before they descend the mountain and go back to the crowds.

In the same way as Moses comes down with practicalities and is confronted by a host of knotty issues, so all of us must live out our faith in microcosms of sin, of perdition, of death. There’s no escaping it. But there is no escaping, either, the reality that through our longing for the Kingdom, that longing which is met in Jesus, we can be those through whom shines light, and glory, and life. This is a reality which we must not seek to domesticate or tame. So as we stand on the brink of Lent, our resolve should be to do whatever is necessary during this season for us to be present to the love and beauty surrounding us in the mess of life. We are marked by this love: the love of the One who, from endless possibilities, chose this life, this world, this existence. So we are given the strength to get up, come down the mountain, engage with the wrangles, love fearlessly and limitlessly. Just as, for Evelyn, resolution is found in the uncomfortable here-and-now, so for us, salvation is here, touching us, in all the uncertainty of ordinary living, revisited each day with renewed faith and fresh eyes. As T.S. Eliot puts it [Little Gidding]:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Amen.