Thinking allowed

The Transfiguration: 6 August 2023

on Monday, 7 August 2023 at 12.00 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Daniel 7.9,10,13,14; Psalm 97; 2 Peter 1.16–19; Luke 9.28–36

I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a film-buff and I don’t often go to the cinema,
per­haps only once, maybe twice, a year, if that.

But I went to the cinema last weekend.

So, there are two big films on right now,
one that I’ll just gloss over as mostly pink
and anoth­er that I can say is some­what grey.

Now I expect my three-year old granddaughter
would love to watch the pink one,
but it was the some­what-grey film that Kar­en and I went to see.

It’s a story – a true story – set dur­ing the Second World War,
with a bunch of sci­ent­ists racing to work out how to build a new weapon.
And not just any new weapon, but a new kind of weapon,
a weapon that will unleash untold power.

And just as they’re about to explode the very first test at Los Alamos
– a moment of high drama –
the hero, Robert Oppen­heimer, remem­bers an earli­er conversation
(in the film it’s) with a chap called Albert Einstein,
a con­ver­sa­tion about an import­ant question –
what’s the worst that might hap­pen in the test?

Well, comes the reply, it could set off a chain reaction,
a chain reac­tion that might ignite the whole atmosphere,
a chain reac­tion that might con­sume and des­troy all the earth.

They don’t think that’s very likely, but it is possible.

(And I think you’ll agree that is rather a big down­side to any decision.)

So of course they pro­ceed with the test.

There’s a small start­ing explosion,
and then a great shin­ing, blind­ing, white light
and then a massive fireball
as the chain reac­tion in a small lump of urani­um causes an explo­sion of unpar­alleled ferocity
and then
a great boom­ing sound, the shock­wave of the explosion.

The test is a suc­cess. Oh, and the earth isn’t des­troyed either.

And so – a few weeks later – on the 6th of August, 1945,
their new bomb is dropped on the Japan­ese city of Hiro-shima.
And just a few days later anoth­er atom­ic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.

As many as 200,000 people –
men, women, children,
mostly civilians –
were killed,
and many more suffered lifelong injury from radi­ation sickness.
Japan sur­rendered, bring­ing the Second World War to an end.

Light and sound – sig­ni­fy­ing death and destruc­tion and con­flict on an unpre­ced­en­ted scale.

It’s a true story, and today, today is the 6th of August,
today is the 78th anniversary of that first atom­ic bomb at Hiro-shima.
It’s a day when the world remem­bers those killed,
those injured,
[[those whose lives were affected,
the destruc­tion wrought ]]
by those two life-des­troy­ing atom­ic bombs.

And
when we all hope and pray that it won’t hap­pen again.

 

But the 6th of August is also a day that the Church has cel­eb­rated as a holy day
for hun­dreds and hun­dreds of years.

We heard the story in our gos­pel read­ing from Luke this morning.

Jesus and some of his dis­ciples climb up a hill,
and there the dis­ciples see Jesus trans­figured –
shin­ing white with bril­liant dazzling light,
and they hear a great boom­ing voice.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

Now, I’m not going to try and explain what happened,
or try to second-guess what the dis­ciples “really” saw and heard.
But the effects of this light and this sound
are very dif­fer­ent from the destruc­tion caused by the light and sound at Hiro-shima.

This light and this sound have a mean­ing totally dif­fer­ent from that of the atom­ic bomb.

And as a res­ult, the dis­ciples under­stand that Jesus’s mes­sage comes from God.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

Rather than death and destruc­tion and conflict,
this bright light signifies
life and heal­ing and peace.

That’s the life-giv­ing mes­sage that Jesus brings,
the life-giv­ing mes­sage that Jesus brings from God.

That God wants us to have life in all its fulness,
to live in love, and to care for one another
in the good times, yes –
and, even more so, when the going gets tough.

God wants us
– as Jesus says else­where in the gospels –
to feed the hungry,
to shel­ter the home­less and the refugee,
to care for the sick and the needy,
to lift up the oppressed,
to for­give and be recon­ciled with those who have wronged us.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

It’s the mes­sage that God, in Jesus,
saves us from the chain reaction
of hate and wrong-doing and death,
the chain reac­tion that leads to ever more hate and wrong-doing and death.
God in Jesus offers us an alternative,
an altern­at­ive chain reac­tion of hope and caring and forgiveness.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

It’s not an easy way out, though.

Caring and recon­cili­ation can be costly too,
as we see up there, above me,
with Jesus put to death on the Cross.

Because not every­one appre­ci­ates caring,
not every­one appre­ci­ates it when people stand up for others,
not every­one appre­ci­ates it when people look for reconciliation.

But Jesus’s mes­sage is that this way is God’s way.

And in the Trans­fig­ur­a­tion, in Luke’s story that we heard earlier,
[[and also Peter in his let­ter that we heard too,]]
the dis­ciples real­ize that Jesus’s mes­sage is God’s message.

“This is my Son, listen to him.”

And they do their best,
after Jesus’s death and resurrection,
to pass his story on to their successors,
and – and here’s the import­ant bit –
not just to tell the story,
but to live as the com­munity of people
who try to do those things.

 

And it’s into this com­munity that we have come today
to see C_ baptized.
This is the com­munity of people – here in this church in St Ives –
who are the fol­low­ers of Jesus,
the successors,
(many hun­dreds of years later, with oth­ers here and around the world)
the suc­cessors of Jesus’s own disciples –
a life-giv­ing, life-enhan­cing chain reaction.

Now, of course, we’re human, and we get things wrong.
We aren’t perfect
and we don’t always agree
and we don’t always look after one anoth­er as we should.

But we are that community,
that is what the Church is,
that is what the Church tries to be;
and we are com­mit­ted to jour­ney­ing together
and try­ing to under­stand and to live as that community,
the com­munity of Jesus’s followers.

And so – today – we wel­come C_ into this community.

Now, it’s a two-way thing, C_.

For your part,
you will affirm the import­ance to you of Jesus and his message,
and the import­ance in your life of the divine, of God,
and the import­ance in your life of this com­munity of faith and pray­er and worship.

And we, the mem­bers of that community,
we will affirm our sup­port for you as you make this step.
We will jour­ney together:
we will learn from you
as you learn from us.
We will do things together
to share the good news that Jesus shared with his disciples,
and to care for those among us and around us who are in need.

And we will do it all with God’s help.

We’ll have fun together
and sad times together.
If we are hon­est, we know that some­times we might even get cross with each other.
But we know that that’s because we each care,
and that, in Jesus, through Jesus,
there is always for­give­ness and reconciliation.

And if that sounds a bit like a family,
well, that’s because the Chris­ti­an com­munity, the Chris­ti­an Church,
is like a family.

It doesn’t replace the fam­ily that we live with.
But it is a new fam­ily, God’s family,
that we each become part of at our baptism.

And it is into God’s fam­ily, C_, God’s life-enhan­cing family,
that we are now going to wel­come you.

Amen.

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