The Sunday next before Lent, 7 February 2016
Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde
Introduction: Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides, Now’, first two verses and chorus.
Of all the odd events in the gospels The Transfiguration of Jesus is one of the oddest of all.
We see it through the eyes of the disciples Peter, John and James, watching Jesus’s face changing, his clothes becoming dazzling white, his whole being shining brighter than the sun. We receive it through what those disciples thought they heard of Jesus’s conversation with Moses and Elijah beside him. But the testimony of Peter, John and James adds up to little more than astonishment and confusion.
Strange to say, but the clarity in the Transfiguration story comes in the cloud - the cloud which overshadowed them, frightening them. In their tiredness, confusion and fear Peter, John and James encountered something in the cloud - a voice. And the clarity in the Transfiguration story comes in what the voice in the cloud said to them.
So this is a sermon about taking notice of clouds. What’s in a cloud? Who’s in a cloud? What is the cloud saying to us?
Now Joni Mitchell sings about the beauty in clouds:
‘Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons ev’rywhere' - she’s looked at clouds that way.
But she also sings about the terror and misery in clouds:
‘But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on ev’ryone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in the way.’ [2]
Clouds can be beautiful or terrifying; they can bring peace and wonder or misery and destruction.
Now at times in our lives we may find ourselves living with our head in the clouds. Determined to embrace the beauty - by ignoring the hard reality of life. Christians do this by saying that everything will be all right one day in Heaven - which is fine as far as it goes, but scant comfort in the hard here-and-now, insufficient resource to deal with the complicated present.
And sometimes we find ourselves living under a cloud. When the hard realities of life weigh down on us so heavily that we lose faith, we lose hope, we give in. Christians are not immune to this by any means, indeed the clouds may weigh even heavier on those who feel the pressure of thinking that they ought to be feeling better about things than they do.
There are times when our judgment is clouded by the ambitions and desires of life which crowd in on us through family pressure, peer pressure, the longing to be liked, the yearning for comfort and security - and lacking clarity we take the easiest or most attractive route, even though we feel deep down, this is not the best way for us, or for those around us.
Where is the voice in these clouds? And what is it saying?
We might observe that our world, our society, is prone to living with its head in the clouds at times. As the frequency, intensity and duration of hurricane storm clouds continue to increase across the globe as an effect of our ever-warming oceans we continue in denial about the causes of global warming - two hundred years of industrialisation - convincing ourselves that we need do nothing as everything will be all right one day in Heaven. [3]
At the same time we understand, of course, that the judgments we make in society are clouded by the ambitions and desires of life, to be the wealthiest corporation, to be the most powerful nation, and the easiest or most attractive route towards such ends invariably tramples on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable ones. [4]
And so sometimes we find ourselves living under a cloud, as a people. In a world where 62 billionaires are as wealthy as half of the world’s population while refugee children wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean, we all know that something is badly wrong; and in turns saddened, angry and impotent our collective mental health increasingly suffers. [5]
But another kind of cloud has made its way quietly through history - I like to think of it as being ‘the cloud of God’.
Sometimes the cloud of God is a cloud of judgement, like:
- the cloud which gathered over the ark as Noah and his sons completed their work and the earth prepared to drown; [6]
- the cloud which Elijah saw from the top of Mount Carmel, rising from the sea, after his contest with the prophets of Baal, bringing to an end the famine in the land. [7]
And sometimes the cloud of God is a cloud of liberation and direction, like:
- the cloud which led God’s people on their exodus from Egypt; [8]
- the cloud which showed them the glory of God in the desert, raining down bread to feed them; [9]
- the cloud which covered Mount Sinai, the place where Moses and the people met with God; [10]
As God’s people were led by Moses out of slavery, through the wilderness, towards the promised land, God showed them that he was with them, God led them, through a cloud.
Was that the very same cloud which followed Jesus:
- at his baptism, from the cloud, the spirit descended on him like a dove and the voice of God said, ‘This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.’ [11]
- and again at his Transfiguration, on a mountaintop not far from Sinai, where Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, John and James were all swallowed up in a cloud - and they heard the voice of God, saying ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ [12]
This is a sermon about taking notice of clouds. What can we learn from the clouds in our lives, in our world? The voice in the cloud at the Transfiguration - what clarity can it bring us?
What sense can we make of it today? When we look to the skies do we seek to learn from the cloud of God? Is it too strange and supernatural, too far removed from any part of our experience, do the words that came from the cloud on the mount of Transfiguration have any impact on us now, the words: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’
Listen to him saying what? Well, just before Jesus led Peter, John and James up the mountain to pray, he had been trying to teach them about his forthcoming fate, and the salvation which would come through it for all who chose to walk his way.
‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised’, [he said]. [13]
And on the mountain, Jesus, Moses and Elijah were ‘speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ …. they were discussing his horrible death to come, and yet at the same time as his earthly fate was being sealed, on that mountaintop his heavenly glory was also being revealed: no wonder the disciples struggled to understand. His teaching was difficult.
‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me, [he said]. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.’ [14]
How could his suffering bring salvation? And how could wanting to lose one’s life help to save it?
Peter, John and James came down from that mountain still confused and questioning; it wasn’t until after the events which Jesus warned them about, had passed, that they began to get some clarity. It was only after the resurrection - possibly the ascension - that they really embraced the words which came from the clouds: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’
So today, that voice - what clarity can it bring us? Let us remember that we are still living under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that mushroom cloud which is an icon of our times.
As Parliament debates the £100 billion proposal to renew the Trident nuclear missile system [15], I am minded of the story of Takashi Nagai, a doctor seriously injured by the Nagasaki bomb but who in the aftermath, devoted himself to rescue work. He died from leukaemia in 1951. [16] But before that he dedicated himself to the work of healing and reconstruction in Japan because, remarkably, he came to regard that nuclear cloud as the cloud of God.
In his book The Bells of Nagasaki, an account of his experiences of living through the aftermath of that atomic cloud, Takashi Nagai expresses his feeling that God had somehow sent the nuclear cloud; as a judgment on war, and as an end to war. And he saw the suffering which the nuclear cloud caused as an invitation to share in the sufferings of Christ, because through Christ’s sufferings came resurrection. [17]
Of the difficult task of reconstructing post-war Japan, he wrote, ‘We will get inspiration from the example of one who sweated blood and carried his cross to Calvary. As his cross had value, ours has value too.’
Nagai recalled how, after virtually every other building had been destroyed on the day of the bomb, the Nagasaki cathedral bells kept ringing, and the burned-out cathedral was one of the first buildings to be reconstructed in the city. He saw this as a sign of resurrection, saying:
‘And so our story of the bomb is one of triumph. It is a story of resurrection in the very moment of crucifixion.It is a story of chiming bells that announce good news as they peal across the atomic waste.’
Nagai became a central figure in the spiritual and moral reconstruction of Japan. He was partly responsible for the deeply rooted idea that the Japanese, the first and only people to have suffered the atomic holocaust, have a vocation and mission to abolish war, especially nuclear war, from the face of the earth. [18]
Through one man and others with him, out of the horror of that bomb, came hope; out of that terrible cloud came a hint of God’s glory. It came because Nagai believed in what the voice of God had said so clearly on that mount of Transfiguration centuries earlier: that Jesus is God’s Son and should be listened to, the One He has Chosen to show us the way through life.
Though to walk that way will bring us a share in his sufferings, it will also bring us a share in his glory.
Notes
[1] This sermon is a fairly substantial rewrite of The Transfiguration (Hiroshima Day) preached at Holy Trinity, Wavertree, 6 August 2000.
[2] Joni Mitchell, Both Sides, Now, from the LP "Clouds", 1969.
[3] Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming, p.81
[4] See for instance, Owen Jones, The Establishment: And how they get away with it.
[5] Eoin Flaherty, Was there ever a time when so few people controlled so much wealth?, The Guardian, 29 January 2016 - thanks to Robert Gallagher for that link; World Health Organisation, ’the sheer lack of respect and understanding given to the disadvantaged in Britain is highly corrosive of wellbeing and all the more so because it is constant and overwhelming’ (Holmes, 2010), quoted in Psychology in the Real World: Toxic Mental Environments 2013.
[6] Genesis 6.
[7] I Kings 18.
[8] Exodus 13.21.
[9] Exodus 16.
[10] Exodus 24:16.
[11] Matthew 3.13-17.
[12] Luke 9.28-36.
[13] Luke 9.22.
[14] Luke 9:23-25.
[15] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: No to Trident. No apologies for my source here, or the bias it - rightly - suggests I have in this issue.
[16] Wikipedia: Takashi Nagai. See also Frank Weathers, The Conversion of Takashi Nagai, And His Vocation of Love, Patheos Blogs, 28 April 2013, and David Alton, Nagasaki, the atomic bomb and Takashi Nagai, 17 February 2011
[17] Takashi Nagai, Bells of Nagasaki.
[18] William Johnson, translator, Takashi Nagai, Bells of Nagasaki, p.xx.
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