Sunday next before Lent | Sermon by Canon Jo Spreadbury | (Sunday after news of the invasion of Ukraine) | Luke 9.28-36: Gospel of the Transfiguration

Yesterday I was walking down Commercial Road to go to the bank. Outside Waterstones was a group from the Stop the War coalition. A speaker with a microphone tried to gather signatures against imperialism – whether, as he insisted, from Russia or from NATO. For him they were the same. Just behind them was a stall announcing Allah as the only God and offering a selection of Muslim literature. And a little further down the street there was a group of black Christians praying together. As I passed the leader was giving thanks that they had all known the Lord’s presence in their lives.

It made me aware of how diverse we are, of how porous are the social and geographical and cultural boundaries between us. And yet those boundaries are there to protect as well as divide us. They mark our differences, our histories and our identities. To cross some of them we need passports and visas. To cross others we need beliefs and empathy. While yet others, as we have seen in the last few days, are crossed only with violence and terror.

This Sunday brings us to the brink of Lent and our readings remind us of another boundary; the boundary between earth and heaven, of the eternal life of God and of our brief mortal lives.

Moses goes up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God and returns shining because he has been in the presence of divine light. The top of Mount Sinai appears, if you look from below, to reach to the sky and the sky in the Sinai is nearly always blue - so it was natural enough for those who wrote the scriptures to imagine God in terms of light and radiance, with a sapphire throne, ‘like the very heaven for clearness’. And to think of Moses simply catching some of that light in his face and having to mask himself in a veil so that he wouldn’t irradiate people as he came down the mountain.

And then today’s Gospel reading, the Transfiguration: Jesus and his closest disciples going up a mountain to pray. And Jesus appears radiant, dazzling white, as Moses and Elijah appear to him - representatives of the twin pillars of Israel’s faith, the Law and the Prophets.

But then the vision changes and a cloud overshadows them, and the disciples are terrified. As we would be. Between God and humanity there is a huge gap, a vast gulf, a distance: a no man’s land which appears to us as light or as darkness, radiance or cloud.

We are linked to heaven, although we don’t often see it or know it. But sometimes the boundaries between earth and heaven become thin, and we are confronted with light and darkness; the light of God and the darkness of our ignorance of him. It is a paradox that cloud and light both reveal and obscure God from our eyes.

As the poet Henry Vaughan wrote, ‘There is in God, some say, a deep and dazzling darkness’. Or as the hymn puts it, ‘Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee’

It is a repeated theme of scripture that what happens on earth mirrors what happens in heaven. Here, in our untransfigured world, the breaching of boundaries can be a sign either of closeness and intimacy, or of violence and disorder.

Most of us remember when the Berlin Wall came down and suddenly a divided Germany was reunited with itself. There was joy, separated families restored, a new beginning. And in our lives too, we can think of reunions, reconciliations, restorations when we have seen the light of heaven - even if only for a moment - in one another’s faces.

Yet in Ukraine this week we have seen the reverse of heaven. A hellish invasion, where there has been light - but the violent light of explosions and fire; and there has been darkness - the darkness of tanks rolling in, missiles firing down, homes collapsing in ruins. There has been nothing good in this, nothing to rejoice in, nothing to admire, except the heroism of those in both Russia and Ukraine who resist what is being done in their name and done to them.

As we wait and pray on the brink of Lent what does this this say to us? First, I think, it reminds us that earthly life is tough and unfair. Peace and prosperity are not guaranteed. Health and happiness are not guaranteed. History is scarred by war, by destruction, rivalry and greed. Lent if it does anything for us, should encourage us to recognise that the seeds of both evil and good are in our hearts. The evil from grows sin and selfishness, from nagging envy, the instinct to retaliate, and the furious anger that can overtake us especially when we may feel helpless. Lent is a wake-up call to reality. Recognise your own destructive power, your capacity for harm.

But if Lent shows us the seeds of evil in ourselves it also brings us closer to God The light of God reveals us to ourselves and God looks on us with both truth and mercy. We are simultaneously judged and forgiven. No wonder Peter - the disciple who can always be relied on to blurt out exactly what he feels - is baffled by the vision of Christ on the mountain, is he asleep or awake, is he dazzled by light or blinded by darkness. Should we stay or should we go, and let’s build a tabernacle..!

And then the voice comes from the cloud, the voice that Jesus heard at his baptism: “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him.”

Some Bible scholars suggest that the Transfiguration began as a story associated with Easter which was then inserted earlier in the gospels to assure us that the story of Jesus does not end in tragedy; the glory is visible before the passion takes place. Luke’s version of the Transfiguration looks towards the passion – to the ‘exodus’, the departure, that Jesus will accomplish in Jerusalem.

I think we should hold in our hearts today those who are facing an undesired exodus, a confrontation with suffering they did not expect and do not deserve: the people of Ukraine; all who are facing evil, war, disaster, death: let Christ’s light shine through. And with them all who are tempted, discouraged, weakened through sickness and failure. The body of the transfigured Christ is the body that will be nailed to the cross; we get a foresight now, but we will see him as he is in the resurrection. In the end evil is defeated, but the battle is long and hard, and is fought most bitterly in the human heart.

Jesus and the disciples come down the mountain to confront the suffering, anger and violence of the world. Yet: “Do not be afraid”, Jesus still says to us, and to the end of time, “I have overcome the world.”