Exodus 24.12-18, Matthew 17.1-9
The Sunday next before Lent, 19 February 2023
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
Here is the weather forecast for Lent. There will be heavy cloud in high places.
The mountains will be shrouded in cumulonimbus.
A Weather Advice Notice is in place for Lent. We advise you to take yourself up the mountain; be surrounded by the cloud. For the cloud up there is the Cloud of God.
The Cloud of God: it has floated tenaciously through history: gathering darkly over the ark as Noah and his sons completed their work, and the earth prepared to drown; then after the flood, hanging lightly over the earth as the shining backdrop to the rainbow of God’s promise. [2]
The Cloud of God is itself a cloud of promise, as when Elijah, from Mount Carmel, saw it rising softly from the sea, as a sign that God was bringing to an end the famine in the land. [3]
It’s a cloud which heralded liberation to God’s people, when it led them on their exodus from Egypt; [8] which provided for them when it rained down bread to feed them in the desert. [4] It’s a cloud of encounter: for when it covered Mount Sinai, where Moses went up to receive the commandments, in the cloud he and the people met with God. [5]
The cloud of God, you’ll notice from today’s two readings, is a cloud of light. Moses saw it as ‘the glory of the Lord’ burning like a fire on the top of the mountain; when Peter and James and John watched Jesus being transfigured the cloud surrounding them shone brightly.
The Cloud of God is a cloud of light. And that is why it is good for us to take ourselves up the mountain; to be surrounded by the Cloud of God. Particularly if we are living under a cloud, weighed down by the troubles of life; particularly if we are low on faith, particularly if we are lacking in hope, if we are all out of love and at the point of giving up on the world the way it is today. If we are living under dark clouds like these, then it is good to go up to the cloud of God, searching for the light.
The Cloud of God shines bright and clear. And that is why it is good for us to seek it out, particularly if we are looking for direction and we sense that our judgment is being clouded by the ambitions and desires of life for comfort and security, clouded by family pressure, peer pressure, or the longing to be liked. If deep down we’re feeling that we’ve not chosen the best way for ourselves and those who travel with us, if we’re at a loss to know which way next to turn, then let us take ourselves up the mountain; to the Cloud of God which shines bright on our search for wisdom, and gleams clearly as we look for direction.
An unknown medieval mystic wrote a book which is today a Penguin Classic, called The Cloud of Unknowing. He warns us that if you go up the mountain into the Cloud of God, things may not be at all clear at first. ‘For the first time you [lift your heart to God with stirrings of love]’, he wrote, ‘you will find only a darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing’.
The mystic tells us that it may take us time to become accustomed to being in the Cloud of God. It may take perseverance in prayer and contemplation before God’s light comes through. As he says, ‘prepare to remain in this darkness as long as you can, always begging for him you love; for if you are ever to feel or see him… it must always be in this cloud and this darkness.’ [6]
This is about the practice of prayer. Prayer is the work we are called back to each Lent, called to take time to to seek God out; to spend time in contemplation, waiting on God again. This is the lengthy, patient process we are called to embrace through these forty days. In hope that we will find God there, in our place of prayer, and that in so doing we may also recover, and rediscover, ourselves.
As we become attuned to listening in prayer we may even hear God’s voice, as Jesus did at his baptism, when from the cloud surrounding him, the Spirit descended like a dove and the voice of God said, ‘This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.’ [7] And again at his Transfiguration, on that mountaintop not far from Sinai, when, swallowed up in that bright cloud, Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, John and James all heard God’s voice saying ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ [8]
God may speak directly to you if your ears are open; or it may simply be that in prayer, in moments of quiet encounter and gentle presence, in the glory of the brightness of the Cloud, that you find God lights up your heart and reopens your eyes to the goodness in life, to your place and your purpose in it.
The practice of prayer is the work we are called to each Lent. Take yourself up the mountain to be surrounded by the cloud. For the cloud up there is the Cloud of God.
Notes
[1] This is a rewrite of The Transfiguration: taking notice of clouds, preached in Somerset in 2026, itself a rewrite of The Transfiguration (Hiroshima Day) preached at Holy Trinity, Wavertree, 2000.
[2] Genesis 6-9.
[3] I Kings 18.
[4] Exodus 13.21.
[5] Exodus 16.
[6] Exodus 24:16.
[7] A. Spearing, translator, The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works. p. 22
[8] Matthew 3.13-17.
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