The
Pilgrimage of Prayer – Luke’s Transfiguration
Story
Texts: Exodus
34.29-35;
2 Corinthians 3.12–4.2; Luke 9.28-36
This
Wednesday the church enters the season of Lent.
The Ash Wednesday rite sets the tone for the season by calling
the
church to a time of prayer and reflection, inviting all who will to go
on
pilgrimage with Jesus to Jerusalem, the place of his suffering, his
death and, ultimately,
his resurrection. The point of the
pilgrimage is revealed in the passage immediately prior to the one we
read from
Luke this morning: that in walking with
Jesus to his death, we might experience our own
death—the death
of our most alienated selves—and be raised glorious new selves with
Christ,
selves able to experience the joy and peace of God’s freedom. So today, immediately before the pilgrimage
begins in earnest, we read a story from Luke’s gospel which may be
taken as a
key statement about the meaning of everything that will unfold from
here on in,
both for Jesus and for pilgrims like us.
It is the story of Jesus’ transfiguration before Peter, James
and
John. It is a story that, if read
carefully and with discernment, is able to shed a great deal of light
on what
the Christian pilgrimage is all about.
The
first
lesson to be learnt from this story is in its first line: ‘Jesus took
with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.’ Here we learn that pilgrimage is about
going where Jesus goes, and doing what Jesus does.
Simple to say, but not so simple to do, hey?
A number of hurdles stand in the way. The
first is the fact that some of us may
not, in fact, want to go with Jesus. The
text says that Jesus took the disciples with him, which implies that
they were
going and doing, not according to their own wills and desires, but
according to
Jesus’ will and desire. It
may be some of us, even amongst those
gathered here today, are not so keen to do that. Some
of us may have other plans—to make
enough money to purchase a comfortable lifestyle, for example, or to
secure the
respect and admiration of family or society.
If these are your plans then, of course, going on pilgrimage
with Jesus
is not going to be an attractive option.
For Jesus would ask that you put such plans aside in favour of
his own
plan. Jesus would ask that you be able
to say, ‘not my will but yours.’
This
is
the good news, though: if you risk this way, you’ll find yourself in a
better place than if you stick to your own plans. Because
our own plans tend to make us
miserable, do they not? Isn’t it true
that, even for those of us who actually get what we want (not that many
of us
do), we often do so only to discover that what we want is not what we
need? That is the difference between God
and ourselves you see. We are into smoke
and mirrors, deceiving ourselves into thinking that what we want is
what we
need; but God is into truth, cutting through the advertising to what we
really
do need. Being our maker, God has the
inside running on these things, strangely enough! So
listen to what Jesus says, all you people
who know what you want, or think you do.
‘Those who want to save their lives will lose it, but those who
forfeit
their lives for my sake, will gain it.’ (Lk 9.24).
The promise of Jesus is this: “if
you go where I go, and do what I do, even
unto death, you will find what you are looking for; unlike you, I
actually know
what that is!”
Which
brings
me to a second hurdle that often stops us from following Jesus. The fact that it is very difficult to go
where Jesus goes and do what Jesus does if you know very little about
what kind
of person Jesus is, and therefore the kinds of things Jesus is likely
to
do. You may have seen the
bumper-sticker, or read the paper-back emblazoned with the question
“What would
Jesus do?” It’s a great question to ask
yourself, but only if you happen to know a fair bit about Jesus already. Now, unfortunately for some, knowledge of
Jesus can’t be downloaded into your brain from the Net.
Nor can it be necessarily absorbed from
books, in that slower, more old-fashioned, process called reading. Don’t get me wrong, the main source of our
knowledge about Jesus is, in fact, a book, a book called the New
Testament. And one can never pretend to
be a follower of Jesus unless one is listening to the words of the New
Testament on a very regular basis. But
there is more to knowledge of Jesus than reading about him. There is also that personal communion with a
living Jesus that is called, very simply in the Christian tradition,
prayer. Which brings me to the cusp of a
second lesson from Luke.
The
story
says that Peter, James and John went with Jesus for a specific purpose,
to pray. So, pilgrimage is about
being at prayer. Now, prayer is
not something we are able to do by ourselves, from our own resources as
it
were. Note the story’s emphasis on the
prayer of Jesus. Not once are the disciples themselves said to pray as
independent agents of decision. Rather,
they are caught up in the prayer of Jesus, as he asks his Father for
guidance
about the journey ahead. What the
disciples then see and hear is a consequence of their own
prayer,
certainly. Yet, that prayer is enabled
and made possible by participating in the more vital prayer of Jesus, a wider and deeper prayer that is
able to envelop and carry the disciples along, as it were, even to the
very
dwelling-place of God. The prayer of the
Christian, then, is not a reaching out to God from the depths of our
own, native,
apprehensions and resources but, rather, a participation in the
priestly
communion that Jesus already enjoys with his Father.
In him, and only in him, are we ever able to
speak with God face-to-face.
From
this,
a number of other things flow. First,
that Christian prayer should be modelled after the prayer of Jesus. Only by doing as Jesus does, do we learn
how
to pray as Christians rather than pagans.
Note that Jesus does not address the Father immediately and
directly,
but rather listens for the Father’s voice through a mediated
engagement with the historic figures of Moses and Elijah, who,
for Luke, represent the two most important strands of Jewish
tradition—law and
prophecy. Now, hear what Luke is telling
us here. If you want to pray after the
way of Jesus, he says, you must do as Jesus did. Instead
of addressing God directly, like
pagans do, because they imagine they already know what God will say,
sit down
and listen to what God has already spoken in the
stories and
traditions of the Jewish and Christian faiths.
Listen to the Scriptures, to the liturgy, and to the sayings of
the
saints and doctors of the church. For God
has spoken already, which means that we may never hope to discover a new word unless we seek it in the old
word. We shall discover how to question
God, in
other words, only by first allowing God to question us through the word
already
spoken to saints and apostles and prophets of old.
We shall find the answers to our questions by
communing with the answers others have found by praying as you are
praying.
So
let
me return to the point I made earlier, that the pilgrimage of prayer is
not
simply about learning about God from books.
It is rather about communing with God
through the face-to-face of human bodies, just as Jesus did with Moses
and
Elijah. For in approaching a text or a
liturgical symbol like the icon, we are really approaching not a mere
object,
but a living body or a community. We sit
down with that community’s struggle to live the faith in the midst of
the
trials of their place and time, so setting up an imaginative
conversation with
them, a conversation that is not so different to the conversation you
may have
with the brother or sister who sits next to you this morning. The conversation is about the way in which
God addresses the nitty-gritty details of our lives, the way in which
God
reaches out to show us how to live. By
staging that conversation, we learn (paradoxically) that God is not so
very
distant from us, that God is as alive and present in my own community
as he was
in theirs. By listening to their stories,
I
discover that God addresses me in and through the ordinary human faces
I
encounter today. So, finally, I
learn that a communion with the presence of God is nothing like the
pagans
imagine it to be, some kind of mystical encounter with a disembodied
spirit. No, communion with God is
exactly what Jesus is—the shining forth of a divine presence in,
through, and as
the lines of story and experience that mark a human face. For Jews and Christians the face-to-face with
God is at one and the same time a face-to-face with human beings—those
who have
gone before, as well as those who belong to my community right now.
And
so
we arrive at a third lesson about pilgrimage. You
will have noted that the disciples in the
story began their journey not as individuals, but as a company. Peter, James & John were regarded as the
three pillars of the earliest Christian church.
Luke uses them to represent the church as a whole.
Therefore, we undertake the Lenten
pilgrimage not only with Jesus, but with our brothers and sisters in
faith. Which is great, because
things can get pretty
scary along the way, and I don’t know about you, but when I get scared
I feel
kind’ve comforted that others are there with me, and may be just as
perplexed
as I am.
One
way
to realise the communal dimension of the pilgrimage is to join a small
group in which you can explore the tradition with others, asking the
questions
that perplex you in a safe environment where no question is a dumb
question, together
looking to Jesus for strength and encouragement. Small
groups can be a place in which you share
your struggles and experience the support and solidarity of others who
struggle
as well. There are no experts in this form
of church, only some who have lived the pilgrimage a little longer or a
little
more intentionally. In small groups all
are learners, and there is only one teacher: Christ.
Another
way
to share the pilgrimage with others is through the face-to-face of
conversation with a spiritual guide or director. Lent
provides an opportunity to bite the
bullet, to stop drifting about like a rudderless ship, and seek God’s
guidance
for the way to profit for your soul.
Some of you are wondering, no doubt, about jobs and careers. Others are wondering about how you can best
contribute to the ministry of Christ’s church.
Some are perhaps struggling with relationship issues, you know,
should I
stay or should I go, should I let go or should I hold my ground. That kind of stuff. Lent
is an opportunity to take all that
seriously, and make some serious progress.
A spiritual guide can help you do that, if you will let them. They won’t have all the answers, but they can
help you listen to the One who does
have the answers. I know it’s a little
scary to bear your soul to another human being, especially someone who
works
for God. But bearing one’s soul to another
is really about becoming more honest with yourself, about facing the
truth and
letting God help you. Your spiritual
guide is there to help you to be honest with yourself.
But always with a view to helping you grow up
into the recognition that you are loved and treasured by God, no matter
what
kind of shape you are in. Being honest
is the beginning of a pilgrimage to healing or transfiguration. Which brings me to the final lesson I wanted
to speak about today.
When
the
disciples arrived with Jesus at the top of the mountain, they began to
pray
with him. In the middle of their prayer,
according to Luke, an amazing thing happened.
The appearance of Jesus face changed and his clothes became
bright as
lightening. He became like Moses when he
encountered God on
The
transfiguration is,
you see, primarily a testimony to the possibility of
transformation, a promise directed to any who
would accompany Jesus to Jerusalem, as we intend to do during the
season of Lent. In the reading from 2
Corinthians, Paul
assures his listeners that all who turn to face Jesus will witness a
divine
glory that can never, finally, be hidden.
Indeed, it is a glory that, like grace, spills out beyond the
boundaries
of its own containment, transforming and ‘glorifying’ those who so
contemplate
to the very core of their beings. For
the glory of Christ’s image is not simply an impression, like sunburn,
left on
our faces after a long exposure, but fading with time.
Rather, it is an image that spills out to takes
residence in our very souls and
spirits, radiating as if from the inside, changing us (as Paul says)
from
‘glory into glory’ so that our human selves are ever so slowly absorbed
into
the body and soul of Christ himself.
That,
my
friends, is the glorious promise of the Lenten pilgrimage: that mere
human
beings, tossed and broken like small vessels on an angry sea, might
nevertheless reach safe harbour. The
storm is the suffering and death of crucifixion, the loss of property
and status
and ego, the loss of our oh-so-human plans and desires.
But the safe harbour is Christ. By
preparing ourselves to die with him, we
are raised and transfigured, new people with a new vocation. In Christ, Paul tells us, we remain the human
vessels that we are, yet we bear now, not our own plans and purposes,
but God’s
unfathomable ambition to make the whole world new in justice and peace. In that
is our glory. In that is
the reason for our pilgrimage. So I
encourage you this morning with the
words of that ancient hymn from the book of Timothy (2.11-13): “if you die with him, you shall also live
with him; if you endure, you shall also reign with him; if we deny him,
he
shall also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he
cannot deny
himself.” Have a blessed pilgrimage, one
and all.
Glory
be to God—Father, Son & Holy Spirit—as in the beginning, so now,
and
forever. Amen.
Garry Deverell
Transfiguration Sunday, 2004