We too are being transfigured

Lent Sunday 2C 13.3.22

                                                        [Port Fairy Folk Festival Mass] 

[Genesis 15:5-18, Philippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 9:28-36]

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything is in flux, all is changing. Was he right? Before you step into the river a second time, he said. it has radically changed. Heraclitus had a point. Not only does the water change constantly. a few billion years ago there were no rivers, and no planet earth!

Everything, including you and I, is very temporary. Some kinds of change we enjoy… like the music we have come to hear this weekend: a delightful sequence of changing notes and rhythms. Yet other change can be terrifying. In Queensland and Lismore these last weeks, the storms brought unprecedented change, and ruin for many homes and businesses. And then there is the war in Ukraine!

Deep down, we fear change: concerned about our future we need our superannuation and pension schemes. We fear sickness, growing old; death. Nostalgia is the pain and sadness we feel when we recall the past. The other day I picked up a funeral booklet: on the cover there was a picture of a handsome young man. He had died at 95, no longer fit or handsome. Other photos showed him as a baby; a toddler; young boy in football jersey; his wedding day; then with his adult children. Funerals are sad.

May I share with you a huge discovery about change that has come to me in these later years? I suppose this breakthrough had been hatching for years, like a slow egg; but it became much clearer during a serious illness. I saw more deeply the meaning of the ‘Good News’ that Jesus went about preaching, and sent others to preach. He said: ‘The Reign of God has arrived: repent and believe the Good News’. We have usually taken this word repent to mean ‘change your hearts from being bad. Stop sinning!’ But the Greek word is meta-noia: ‘see beyond; see the bigger picture’. Expand your horizon. This is the change that we constantly need to make. Sickness expanded my mind. I saw more than before that at every moment we live and move in the presence of God.

We are always in the presence of the mysterious Holy One who pulled Abraham away from his ancestral home. That ancient myth is a symbolic story about you and me: pulled from the security of our childhood – as I was pulled away from comfortable good health – towards the next stage of our growth. God made a permanent contract with Abraham. In that eerie ritual, animals were cut in half, and the two contracting parties passed between the bloody halves. ‘If we break the covenant, let us be slaughtered like these. After dark, a mysterious fire passed through. Abraham was terrified. God is a terrifying and fascinating mystery.

But we know that God came amongst us, as Jesus, saying: I will die for you! This is my blood, of the New Covenant. Where will it take us? Abraham was promised as many descendants as there are stars. We mightn’t want to be father or mother to a vast tribe, but the number can teach us. Even in the desert, Abraham couldn’t see more than 10,000 stars, but we now know that there are 200 billion stars in our local Milky Way galaxy. And there are a trillion galaxies. The One who made those knows us personally; is our friend; will love us always. This friendship changes us; transfigures us. And when we see that every person is a beloved child of God, we see them with deeper compassion.

This is the bigger picture. The Holy One promised Abraham a homeland. St Paul said: ‘Our homeland is in heaven’, because like all the ancients he thought God lived above the sky. What do you think eternity is like?Is it, as the Buddhists think, supreme consciousness? After death, are our minds somehow perfected? Or is it also our relationships? Will we be able to meet and share with our ancestors and all who have gone before? Could perfect human love be a foretaste? Being loved by the God who moves a trillion galaxies.

Christians believe in the ‘resurrection of the body’. ‘Christ will transfigure this body we have, to be like his’. Peter, James and John saw Jesus’ briefly transfigured, bright as lightning, while he was praying. They saw him speaking with Moses and Elijah, key prophets of God’s first covenant. Jesus is God’s ultimate spokesperson, for as we heard at his baptism, we hear again: This is my son: Listen to him! Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah about his Exodus, his final transformation through death and resurrection. And the biblical myth of Exodus is another symbol of our transformation-journey, towards our promised land: resurrection.

We get hints of resurrection in the Near Death Experience, a phenomenon that I have been studying for forty years now. They are reported by millions of people who were ‘clinically dead’ but were later revived. About thirty percent of them describe being out of their body, while perfectly conscious and peaceful. Some report seeing an amazing Light. Some of them speak with that light, and go into it. These These Near Death Experiences change people’s lives, but are beyond comprehension and can be described only in metaphors. Our faith tells us of this transcendent state. We do not need to spend our lives trying to cling to our ‘permanent’ suburban home, our achievements, our children’s successful careers; or our ‘secure’ retirement. These things are all good and worth striving for; but they are all temporary.

And look around! We are currently changing our planet so that today’s children will inherit a devastated world: our governments refuse to stop burning coal and gas, heating up our planet and making the sea level rise. New struggles for resources will produce millions more refugees. Nothing stands still. Not even the church, although many people are seduced by the fantasy that it is unchanging. They try to turn it into a timeless cult. But we must admit its enormous human mistakes. The wisdom of the Vatican Council tells us that we Christians share this changing planet with the rest of humanity. We are all part of God’s bigger picture, whose Infinite Love we trust to heal us all, eventually?

Thy kingdom come! The three men on that mountain saw God’s Glory, which is our future. As we accept this, we too are transfigured, and at every moment can be deeply hopeful and profoundly joyous, whatever happens. But let’s not be like the ever-bumbling Peter, and try to make this moment permanent. This beautiful place is not our final destination.

* * * * *

Are we telling ourselves the truth?

I have been watching the movie On the Beach. It was made in Melbourne, way back in1959; based on Neville Shute’s novel about a nuclear war and the end of human life on the planet. Perhaps I unconsciously chose the movie because the current conflict in Ukraine is increasing the real risk that someone will fire a nuclear weapon by mistake or in anger. Each side has enough nuclear weapons to kill every person on the planet. We are M.A.D. to keep them.

I hope every movie that we watch, and every thing we read, is a part of our search for the truth. They say that truth is the first thing to be destroyed in a war. Many people are saying what a terrible monster Putin is; and we are right to despise all dictators and all bullying. It is good too, that we are resisting this invasion with nonviolent sanctions. But why are we not teaching in every school, that nonviolence has solved more problems, more successfully, than war. Look at Gandhi’s resistance that helped drive the British Empire out of India; the nonvioence that ended Apartheid in South Africa, and which dismantled the Soviet Union, and Denmark’s nonviolent resistance when Hitler invaded it.

Truth? Every war is a response to provocation. Do we ask why Putin is trying to take over Ukraine? Hasn’t NATO broken its promises not to expand to Russia’s borders? Russia is closely surrounded by US bases and nuclear missiles? How would USA, or Australia, feel, if there were missiles all around our borders?

It is monstrous terrorism to kill Ukranian mothers, babies and grandparents; but wasn’t it also monstrous terrorism to kill them in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, as Australian and USA troops have done in greater numbers, not long ago? Truth surely is war’s first casualty. Even in our smaller quarrels, when we are angry, don’t we twist many things that our opponent, ever our beloved spouse or friend, said or did in the past? And truth is twisted much worse when arms manufacturers are making billions of dollars by supplying weapons for a war. Those dollars are rolling in, today. How can we avoid being deceived by propaganda? How can we become more truthful, and avoid killing anyone?

The truth about ourselves? We are at the beginning of Lent, our forty-day season before Easter, when we take stock of our lives to prepare for the greatest Christian feast of Christ’s Resurrection. Can we learn from today’s readings about what happened to the people of ancient Israel, and to Jesus, to become more mature, truthful people? The mythical story of Exodus tells us how God helped the ancient Israelites to escape from slavery. Those freed slaves, broken people, would have needed a lot of healing and formation, so they went to Mount Horeb [or Sinai] to have an awesome experience of the God who had saved them. They were then made to wander through the desert for forty years of transition and healing, to prepare for mature life in their final homeland.

A similar thing happened to the young man Jesus of Nazareth. When he was baptised by John in the river Jordan, he got a glimpse of the Infinite, Transcendent Being who made the universe, and realised the profound truth that he was ‘God’s son’. Each one of us gets a chance to glimpse this truth. Not as intensely as Jesus did. But one glimpse is not enough. For Jesus, and for us, it takes time for that true vision take over our whole humanity. Jesus went straight into a forty-day desert retreat, to face all the temptations that we humans have to face. He was tempted to to turn stones into bread: to seek and satisfy himself with every pleasure: food and other comforts, including sex. He was tempted to jump off the temple: do wonderful, sensational things and become famous; to attract and enjoy the admiration of the crowds. He was tempted to seek power over others, to rule kingdoms. He was tempted in every way that we are, but resisted them all.

In these forty days of Lent we are invited to imitate Jesus’ forty-day desert retreat. God does not ‘save us” suddenly, like rescuing a person from floodwaters. Learning the truth about ourselves is a slow process, taking our whole lifetime. Being saved means growing to true maturity. In this Lent, can we do a bit more self-examining? Can we give a little more time to thank God, as the ancient Hebrews were told to do, who gradually frees us from whatever slavery we have suffered?

The truth is, we did not create ourselves or our world. Even our body and mind are gifts from that unknown source. We call it ‘God”, but who knows the full truth of what or who God is? This Lent can we say: ‘Whoever you are,, let me truly thank you, and: let me know you more truly’?

Can we look truthfully at any tendency we have to serve only our selves, our own comfort or pride? Can we look carefully at how we use power over other people, trying to control them? Perhaps we can say each day the lovely psalm 90(91) that followed our First Reading, which says beautifully how God protects us in every situation?

Can we resist any temptation to blame another person without listening deeply to their motives?– even Vladimir Putin? Can we admit the truth that we in Australia, and our allies, have sometimes done, and still do, terrible things to people, especially refugees fleeing from the horrible untruth of war? Isn’t Lent is a time for seeking the truth…and forgiving?

                                                                                      * * * * *