Friday 24 February 2023

What good does forgiveness do?

 A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
26 February 2023

This sculpture is made from decommissioned weapons 
from the civil war in Mozambique 
as part of the Christian Aid 'Swords to Ploughshares' project.

Matthew 18:21-35
 
Imagine two children sat in the back of the car, setting off on a long journey.
            The chances are that it won’t be long before the chanting begins of
                        ‘are we nearly there yet, are we nearly there yet?’.
 
But it probably also won’t be long
            before this refrain is replaced by more anguished cries:
 
‘MUM, she’s over my side’
            leading inevitably to ‘DAD, he’s hit me’,
                        in turn eliciting ‘but she started it’
                                    followed by ‘but he was asking for it’.
 
And so on until journey’s end,
            or until a frustrated parent intervenes
                        to try and bring some peace back to the car,
            by reminding the children
                        that, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’
 
This scenario could easily be a parable for the world we find ourselves in,
            as this week we mark the one-year anniversary
            of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
 
Our screens have been full of coverage
            of the horrific taking place on the edge of Europe
as, once again, death and destruction, and fear and tragedy
            are played out in widescreen in our living rooms.
 
None of us who have witnessed these scenes
            can remain unmoved by them
and the emotions they stir within us
            are deep, profoundly upsetting,
            and for some intensely personal.
 
Of course, the offensive in Ukraine
            is not the first time punches have been exchanged,
            and neither will it be the last.
 
From the great war to the cold war,
            from Palestine to Afghanistan,
                        from Iran to Iraq,
            from crusade to jihad,
                        from London to Madrid,
            from Bali to Sharm el Sheikh,
the cycle of punch and counter-punch
            has defined the relationship between East and West
            for over a thousand years.
 
 
 
Those of us who live in the Western world,
            and who enjoy and laud all the many benefits
                        and freedoms which it grants to us,
            cannot escape the troubling fact
                        that our so-called ‘free world’
                        is also locked into a destructive cycle
                                    of violence and counter-violence.
 
Whether in defence of honour, or territory,
            or wealth, or freedom,
or whether in search of justice or retribution,
            we all find ourselves complicit, willingly or unwillingly,
            in the spiralling world of retribution, violence and unforgiveness.
 
The question before us,  
            is what on earth are we to do?
 
Indeed, we might ask,
            what on earth can be done?
Who on earth has the power to intervene, to bring peace,
            to a world which seems hell-bent on fighting its way to journey’s end?
 
The situation was not so different in the first century.
 
The Jewish nation had been trading punches for centuries.
            From Assyria to Babylonia, from Greece to Rome,
                        from the Seleucids to the Maccabees.
 
Conquest, violence, terrorism and revolution
            had become an inescapable part of what it meant to be Jewish.
 
Then, as now, the world was inextricably wedded
            to the myth of violence and counter-violence.
 
And it was to people all-too-familiar with the vicious cycles of retribution
            that Jesus told a parable,
                        not about two children fighting in the back of a long car journey,
                        but about two servants and a king.
 
His parable provides a perfect example
            of the destructive nature of the cycles of retaliation and unforgiveness.
 
Let’s spend a moment with the first servant in the story:
            he is both a debtor and a creditor.
 
He is owed money by someone who is below him in the social hierarchy,
            but he also himself owes money to someone else
                        much higher up the ladder than he is.
 
He’s a middle man, and he’s in all sorts of financial trouble.
            He owes an unpayable debt to his king,
                        far more than he’s ever likely to earn in his lifetime;
            but he’s also owed a much smaller debt by another.
 
He is, by the laws of debt and justice,
            entirely within his rights to demand repayment
                        from the one who owes money to him.
 
He’s entirely within his rights to extract his just dues,
            and if he chooses to do so by exercising violence
                        against the second servant
            he is, by the law of his day, entitled to do so.
 
But, and here’s the catch,
            he is also in a position where the king has every entitlement
                        to do exactly the same to him,
            but more so, because the debt he owes the king
                        is so much higher than the debt he is owed.
 
Think about it for a moment:
If Jesus’ had simply told a story
            about a servant who was owed some money,
            and who then took his payment by force,
the chances are that we would say – well, fair enough.
 
Some might speculate that he was a bit harsh,
            throwing the man into debtors prison,
but some might also reflect that the man clearly had it coming
            and that he shouldn’t have got into debts he couldn’t repay.
 
The real power of the parable
            comes from the fact that the servant’s actions
                        are contrasted with the treatment he himself received
                                    at the hands of the king.
 
In the light of the forgiveness he received for his own unpayable debt,
            his imprisonment of his debtor
            suddenly appears both hypocritical and shocking.
 
He is, it turns out, a man who is happy to receive forgiveness,
            but is unwilling to offer it.
 
Of course, the twist at the end of the story
            is that his decision to withhold forgiveness comes back to bite him,
            and he ends up tortured for his lack of forgiveness.
 
In the gospels, and particularly in Matthew’s gospel,
            where this story of Jesus is recorded,
the language of debt and the language of sin
            are presented as two ways of talking about the same thing.
 
Sins are not personal moral failures in Matthew’s gospel,
            rather they are debts, or obligations, that cry out for repayment.
 
So if I were to say to someone that they had sinned against me,
            I would be saying that they owed me,
            and that they must therefore be made to pay.
 
We still use the language of sin and debt in a similar way today:
 
Imagine the gangster whose honour has been slighted,
            leaning forwards in a sinister manner
                        and pronouncing in a deep voice:
                        ‘you’re gonna pay for that’.
 
So much of the violence we encounter in our world,
            both at an interpersonal and international level,
is about making the other person ‘pay’
            for some actual or perceived sin or injustice.
 
From terrorist bomb, to punishment beating, to tactical invasion
            - violence and ‘repayment for sins’ are intertwined.
 
We even meet this language of sin and debt in the Lord’s prayer.
 
The version most people know best says,
            ‘forgive us our trespasses,
            as we forgive those who trespass against us’;
or if we’re using the more modern version,
            ‘forgive us our sins,
            as we forgive those who sin against us’.
 
But if we turn to the version of the prayer recorded in Matthew’s gospel,
            we meet not the language of sin and trespass, but the language of debt.
 
Matthew 6.12 reads, ‘forgive us our debts,
            as we also have forgiven our debtors.’
 
And in Luke’s gospel,
            the only other place the Lord’s prayer appears in the Bible,
the language of sin and the language of debt are intermingled:
            Luke 11.4 ‘forgive us our sins,
                        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.’
 
We might say, therefore, that sins committed against God
            are debts to God that cry out for repayment.
 
And that any forgiveness we receive for these debts owed to God
            is inextricably linked to the offering of forgiveness
                        to those who in turn owe debts to us.
 
This is the point of the parable told by Jesus:
            The servant has not learned the lesson
                        that if his own debts have been forgiven,
                        he must also forgive those who owe him a debt.
 
He has forgotten the debt he owed to the king,
            and has become fixated with justifying the debt owed to him.
 
Or, to put it another way, he has forgotten that he is himself a sinner,
            and has become fixated with the fact that he has been sinned against.
 
In this servant’s action,
            we see clearly the violent and destructive outcome of non-forgiveness.
 
The consequence of his actions to extract of his just reward
            is that he himself ends up a tortured soul,
                        unable to pay his own debts,
                        unable to justify his own sinfulness,
            even though forgiveness has been offered to him.
 
We live in a world that is so often dedicated to the extraction of just dues:
            You hurt me, I’ll hurt you.!
            You bomb my city, I’ll bomb yours!
 
These cycles of violence and counter violence are so ingrained within us,
            and appear so seductively just and righteous.
 
Like children in the back of the car we cry:
            ‘she’s over my side’, and ‘he hit me’ and ‘she started it’.
 
All too often there is seemingly no way out
            of this spiral of punch and counter punch,
            which can only ever end in mutually destructive results.
 
And yet Jesus points us to the intervention of the loving parent.
 
Our own desire for justice and retribution,
            however righteous it may be,
needs to be set against the forgiveness offered to us
            by the one to whom we ourselves owe an unpayable debt.
 
When others sin against us, either individually or nationally,
            as they do, sometimes in terrible ways,
we need to measure our response
            by the response of the loving God
            to those who have sinned against him
 
Before we jump on our high horse and start to demand justice
            from those who have sinned against us,
we need to recognize that there may be others
            who might well be entitled to do the same from us.
 
I’m not just thinking here about the international response
            to terrorist actions or aggressive invasions,
I’m also thinking that each of us, as individuals,
            will have incurred debts from others,
each of us has, in different ways, sinned against others,
            just as others have sinned against us.
 
So when we pray, ‘forgive us our debts, as we forgive the debts of others’
            or ‘forgive us our trespasses
            as we forgive those who trespass against us’,
we are praying that a new way of being human,
            and new way of relating to others,
                        will come into being in our midst
                        and by our actions.
 
In this place we speak of the forgiveness offered to us by God,
            and we say that we are those who are forgiven.
 
So in the wake of those moments
            when others do to us a great wrong,
rather than automatically biting back, punching back,
            might we not instead be those who will seek an alternative response?
 
Might we not be those whose lives will bring into being
            the new way of relating to others that Jesus talked about:
            a way of relating built on forgiveness, rather than retribution?
 
So what is the just and righteous response at such times?
            What is to be said today, one year after Russia invaded Ukraine?
 
Is it to ask ‘how can we stop this terrible thing that is happening?’
             - possibly.
 
Is it to ask ‘who is responsible, and how can they be brought to justice’
             - possibly.
 
Is it to assert that ‘we must ensure that the aggressors are defeated
            in such a way that they will never attempt to do the same again,
            either in Ukraine or elsewhere?’
             - possibly this too is a just response.
 
But will these responses truly break
            the cycle of violence and counter violence?
I very much doubt it.
 
Difficult though this is,
            especially when someone has intentionally committed a great evil,
to see that atrocity as the latest in a long cycle
            of violence and oppression,
            imprisonment and subjugation,
            repression and retaliation,
is I think to learn to see it as it truly is.
 
When we retaliate in the name of righteousness and justice,
            when we meet violence with escalating violence,
                        when we demand our pound of flesh from the other
                        in return for wrongs committed against us,
            we are committing ourselves to a spiral of retribution
                        that can only end in torture and terror.
 
Is there another way?
            Yes.
 
It’s called forgiveness.
 
The title of this sermon is a question:
            ‘What good does forgiveness do?’
And here we have the answer:
            It breaks the cycle of violence.
 
I’m aware that using the language of forgiveness
            when we are engaged in armed conflict
in defence of an ally and against an aggressor,
            is a deeply uncomfortable thing to do.
 
But, at the risk of offloading the blame here,
            I think Jesus knew what he was doing when he did the same.
 
Christian living after the pattern of Christ
            should be a continual dispensing of mercy and forgiveness,
            mirroring God’s own character and treatment of his people.
 
If we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth, as it already is in heaven,
            then we have to start living
            as the people of the coming kingdom.
 
And this means living as people of forgiveness,
            forgiving the debts of others as we ourselves have been forgiven.
 
Society will often view such behaviour as weakness,
            and even in our churches,
                        forgiveness and mercy are all too often lacking
                        in our dealings with one another.
 
But as Mahatma Ghandi reportedly said,
            ‘Only the strong can forgive.’
 
The cost of forgiveness should never be trivialised,
            and when we offer someone forgiveness for their debt of sin towards us,
            we will always count the cost of this action in our own selves.
 
And there will come a time, hopefully soon,
            when the West has a choice as to how it will respond to Putin’s aggression
            and the people of Russia who are caught up in it.
 
For some, in some situations,
            forgiveness of the debt of the other will be a step too far.
 
I have a friend who was abused as a child,
            and she tells of various well-meaning Christians
            who told her over the years that she must forgive her abuser.
 
Her reflection on this has been
            that the requirement on her to offer forgiveness
            has made worse the abuse of her past,
                        by placing her once again in a position of weakness,
                        with others demanding of her that which she doesn’t want to give.
 
However, she has also said that she can see forgiveness as a goal
            towards which it is worth aiming,
                        even if it forever remains out of reach in this lifetime.
 
Some people within this community
            will also find great difficulty and pain
            in all this talk of forgiveness.
 
There are those of us for whom the abuse and sin is too raw,
            who have to live with a range of feelings,
            from anger to injustice, from rage to profound grief.
 
We must never trivialise forgiveness,
            and we must never abusively ask of the other
            that which they are not able to give.
 
Forgiveness is not easy, it does not come lightly,
            it does not come easily,
and for some it remains out of reach.
 
But...
 
Jesus’ parable challenges us
            to never give up making forgiveness and reconciliation our goal.
 
There are many ways in which we can be active
            in forgiveness of sins and debts,
as through our actions and by our prayers
            we bear testimony to the in-breaking kingdom of peace.
 
So we might consider becoming active
            in supporting those who work for peace
            between those nations caught in vicious cycles of violence.
 
We might become involved in campaigning to end torture and oppression
            through the work of organisations like Amnesty International
            or Action by Christians Against Torture
 
We might build conversations and friendships
            with those from other faith communities,
                        both as a church and as individuals,
and by doing so we might play our part
            in bringing together diverse religious and cultural communities
            in relationship and shared understanding
even when so much that is going on in our world
            makes such relationships uncomfortable or problematic.
 
We might involve ourselves in campaigning
            for the forgiveness of debts owed to the West
            by countries that can never repay.
 
We might change our purchasing practices,
            subverting the global system of debt and oppression
                        by buying fairly trade products,
                        or investing in ethical funds.
 
We might choose to become involved in local initiatives
            aimed at alleviating the burden of personal financial debts
            through the offering of debt advice
                        or the establishment of a credit union
 
We might simply seek lift up those
            who have fallen on our doorstep
            in poverty and need.
 
Jesus’ parable about forgiveness
            speaks down the centuries
            to the world in which we find ourselves in today,
and it challenges us to be those who find ways of living forgiveness
            in a world which seems hell-bent on violence
 
Peter asked Jesus:
            How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?
And Jesus replied,
            Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times
 
Don’t count it, just do it,
            and heaven knows what good forgiveness will do.


Monday 13 February 2023

The Transfiguration of Humanity

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Sunday 19 February 2023

The Transfiguration by Raphael

Matthew 17.1-9  
Exodus 24.12-18  

Émile Coué, the French psychologist and pharmacist,
            popularised a famous mantra, and say it with me if you know it:

"Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
            Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better".

Coué encouraged his patients to repeat this to themselves twenty times a day,
            as part of his psychoanalytical technique called optimistic autosuggestion.

The idea was that positive reinforcement of optimistic belief
            could have genuine health benefits.

Strangely enough, at a medical level, he may well have been onto something;
            as the placebo effect is now well documented:
                        when people believe something to be helpful,
                        they will often show a measurable improvement.

I tend to think that something like this lies behind
            many of the stories of faith healing that get told,
                        both within and beyond Christianity;
            people believe that prayer for healing works,
                        and so, at least to some extent, it does.

I mean, I’ve never seen someone grow an arm back after being prayed for,
            but I can understand how people might show improvement
            in other, less tangible, ways after being prayed for.

Interestingly, Coué’s ‘trick’, as he called it,
            was consistent with the idea of social Darwinism,
            as popularised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This is an extension of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection,
            where the biological concept of ‘the survival of the fittest’
            becomes a model for understanding the development of society
                        and the individual who lives within it.

Social Darwinism finds its origin with Thomas Huxley,
            or ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ as he was sometimes known,
who took Darwin’s theory of the origin of species,
            and made it into a kind of philosophical model
            to explain human society without the need for belief in God.

Huxley, the famous agnostic, almost single-handedly
            created the division between Christianity and evolution
                        that comes down to us today,
            with many Christians still believing
                        that it is incompatible with their faith
                        to accept an old-earth evolutionary understanding
                                    of the origin of humanity.

He was unwittingly aided and abetted in this by the then Bishop of Oxford,
            Samuel Wilberforce, whose famous jibe at Huxley,
                        as to whether Huxley was descended from an ape
                                    on his mother's side or his father's side,
                        did much to create the animosity between faith and science
                                    that we still live with today.

Huxley won that debate, replying to Wilberforce
            that he would rather be descended from an ape,
            than to be a man who misused his great talents to suppress debate.
I think, on this and on many other things, Huxley had a point!

I’m one of those who thinks that evolution by natural selection
            is a perfectly adequate model for explaining
                        the biological adaptation and speciation
                        that we can observe in the natural world.

I just don’t see any conflict between it and my faith in God
            or my understanding of the Bible.

But what I don’t like
            is the use of evolution metaphors for societal and spiritual development.
I simply don’t think it’s true
            that every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better.

Surely the first world war was ample proof
            of the human capacity to descend into hellish madness at the drop of a hat;
and the links between social Darwinism
            and the eugenics programmes of the Third Reich
            are terrifying and deeply chilling.

I have occasionally joked that I do wonder
            if the fact that I was born with no wisdom teeth
            might mean that I am part of the next evolution of humanity,
but it turns out that this is simply a recessive mutation
            that arose about 300,000 years ago.
Or possibly, as some have suggested, Liz!, it is simply indicative
            of the fact that I have no corresponding wisdom!

So, with all of this in mind, what on earth is going on at the Transfiguration?
            What strange new humanity is coming into being here?

Our story, told for us today by Matthew,
            and drawing on the similar story from Mark’s gospel (Mk 9.2-8),
describes Jesus and three of his disciples going up a mountain
            to have a very strange experience indeed.

Listen to Matthew’s words again:
            ‘And he was transfigured before them,
                        and his face shone like the sun,
                        and his clothes became dazzling white.’

As I said, what on earth is going on here?

There are a number of clues in the text to which we need to pay attention,
            if we’re to begin to get to grips
            with what Matthew is trying to do with this story.

The first thing to realise
            is that this description of Jesus is not unique in the Bible;
rather it is drawing on a long tradition, stretching back into ancient Judaism,
            of visions of God in human form,
            and of encounters between humans and the divine on mountain tops.

We heard earlier the story of Moses going up the mountain,
            to meet God and receive the tablets of stone
            with the ten commandments written on them.

If we had read on a bit further in the book of Exodus,
            we would have heard that,
            ‘when Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining…
            and Moses would put the veil on his face again,
            until he went in [back] to speak with him.’ (Exodus 34:30, 35).

It seems that, in some way, Moses’ encounter with God changed his appearance,
            it changed something about the nature of his being.
We might say that he was transfigured by his encounter.

But it’s not just Moses on the mountain that lies behind
            Matthew’s story of the transfiguration of Jesus.

In Daniel’s vision of heaven, he describes how,
            ‘thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne,
                        his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool;
                        his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire.’ (Daniel 7:9).

The use of the colour white here is very deliberate,
            and is often used in the Bible to indicate righteousness.

So for example the book of Acts
            tells the story of the ascension of Jesus in similar terms,
            with two angels in white robes standing beside the disciples:

‘when he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up,
            and a cloud took him out of their sight.
While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven,
            suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.’ (1:9-10).

And Earlier in Matthew’s gospel itself, in chapter 13,
            we can read the promise that
            ‘the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.’ (13:43).

And Matthew’s version of the resurrection story
            is told in similarly dramatic and apocalyptic tones:
‘After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning,
            Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake;
            for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven,
            came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.’ (28:1-3).

And in the book of Revelation,
            we have several descriptions
                        both of the divine-human figure called the Son of Man,
                        and of those who follow him,
            all wearing white shining clothes which indicate their righteousness.

Just listen to these few sentences:

‘His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow;
            his eyes were like a flame of fire,
            … and his face was like the sun shining with full force.’ (1.14, 16)

‘If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes,
            and I will not blot your name out of the book of life. (3.5)

‘Around the throne are twenty-four thrones,
            and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders,
            dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads.’ (4.4)

‘After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count,
            from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
            standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white.’ (7.9)

‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal;
            they have washed their robes
            and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ (7.14)

‘And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure,
            were following him on white horses.’ (19.14).

My point here is that Matthew is not writing in a vacuum.

From Exodus, to Daniel,
            to the Jesus tradition, to the apocalyptic literature,
the story he gives us of the transfiguration of Jesus
            is part of a wider literary tradition of humanity transfigured
            through encounter with the divine.

Or, to put it another way, when people meet with God,
            something profound and tangible changes within them.

Now, don’t hear me wrong here;
            I don’t think that Jesus was, or even is,
            the next evolution of humanity.

His transfiguration is not some kind of fusion
            of the physical and the spiritual
                        resulting in an ability to exist on a higher plane
                        than the rest of us mere mortals.

Neither is it a mystical experience for us to seek to emulate
            in some quest for enlightenment or esoteric knowledge.
That way lies heresy, I’m afraid.

But nonetheless I do think that there is a new humanity
            coming into being in Christ,
and it is revealed at his transfiguration.

Paul, I think ,was onto this when he described Jesus as the new, or second, Adam.
            Listen to how he puts it in his letter to the Romans:

‘Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,
            and death came through sin,
            and so death spread to all because all have sinned …
much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace
            and the free gift of righteousness
            exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all,
            so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners,
            so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.’
            (Romans 5:12, 17-19).

Paul places Jesus in contrast with Adam,
            the symbolic first human from the book of Genesis.
Humanity came into being through Adam,
            and the new humanity comes into being through the new Adam,
                        the Son of Man, the Messiah who was transfigured
                                    in the presence of his disciples
                                    on the mountaintop in Matthew’s story.

But hear this, and hear it clearly:
            it is not about evolution, it’s about transfiguration.

The new humanity does not arise by natural forces,
            red in tooth and claw (as Tennyson put it),
            from the redundant carcass of the old humanity.
It does not out-compete its predecessor,
            nor does it vanquish it by might and right.

Rather, the new humanity arises by grace and through love.
            It emerges in the midst of our sinful fallen state
            as a gift from God that transfigures our lives and our world.

God, in Christ, is transfiguring humanity.

A new way of being human has come into being in Christ,
            and it has the capacity to utterly transform our way of being in the world.

The clues are all there for us in Matthew’s text,
            which as we have seen is rich with the resonance of ancient stories,
telling of God’s journey with humans
            from their very beginning
            to this crucial, decisive moment of transfiguration.

The mystical moment on the mountain occurs,
            we are told in the first verse of our story, on the ‘sixth day’.
The echo of the creation story from Genesis
            is too strong to ignore here.
According to the ancient myth,
            God created humanity on the sixth day,
            before resting on the seventh.
And in Matthew’s story,
            the new humanity is brought into being on the sixth day.

Then, the transfigured Jesus is seen talking with Moses and Elijah,
            whose symbolic presence speak of the law and prophets,
            fulfilled in the presence and person of the transfigured Son of Man.

The whole of human history is here in this story,
                        contained and completed in this moment,
            and the whole story of human attempts to encounter God
                        is reflected in the glory shining from the face of Jesus:
                                    from creation itself and the first Adam,
                                    to Elijah the prince of prophets,
                                    to Moses the giver of the Law.

It all comes down, for Matthew, to this one moment on the mountaintop
            with Jesus and his three disciples.
Like the narrowest point in the egg-timer of history
            the past funnels to the future through this one moment of transfiguration.

And so the new humanity is born.

The second Adam is transfigured from base human flesh,
            in the company of history, and baffled disciples.

And it’s not about genetics, it’s about inheritance; which is very different.
            It’s about covenant not country.

And any nation, tribe, or people
            who claim exclusive or privileged access
                        to the revelation of God in Christ
            are missing the point of the transfiguration.

From God Bless America,
            to God Save the King,
                        to One Nation under Allah,
God will not be so constrained.

Because God’s people are all people,
            they are humanity transfigured.
And all we need to do to see it, and to see our own place within it,
            is to open our eyes, look to the mountain,
            and see the moment of glory reflected in the face of Jesus.

Paul’s vision of Christ on the road to Damascus
            opened his eyes to the one who appeared to him as
            ‘a light from heaven, brighter than the sun,
            shining around [him] and [his] companions.’ (Acts 26.13)
And what Paul realised in this moment of his personal transfiguration,
            as his eyes were blinded to his old life, and opened to his new one,
what that God was not confined to one people,
            and that the call of God goes way beyond the ‘chosen nation’ of the Jews
            to encompass all the nations of the Gentiles as well.

And so Christianity as we know it was born,
            as Paul set off on his journeys to change the world.

And I think that brings us to today,
            to a gospel with no barriers, no exclusions,
            it brings us to the freely given love of God
                        extended to people of every nation,
                        from all tribes and peoples and languages,
                        of all genders, ethnicities, backgrounds, and sexualities.

This is the new humanity that comes into being in Christ.

We’re it! We are the new humanity,
            and we don’t worship a parochial God who exists to serve us and those like us;
            neither do we follow a partisan God
                        who is defined over and against the wisdom of science.

Honestly, I have had it with ‘little Christianity’:
            ‘Me and my Christian mates, we’re the only ones that are right,
            and the rest of the world is wrong and going to Hell’
Blow that for a game of soldiers!
            That’s not what it’s about.

God is so much bigger than that.
            In Christ, God is revealed as so much bigger than that.
The disciples didn’t really get it;
            they decided that they were going to try and build some little huts
            for Jesus, and Moses, and Elijah to live in.
The human response to this vision
            of the whole of history coming down to this one person,
            is ‘I know! Let’s build him a house so he can live with us, with his mates!’

We constantly take the big God, and we make him into the little God:
            our God, the God who goes with us, and stays with us,
            and dwells with us, and proves that we’re right and everybody else is wrong.

This is not what it’s about.
            It’s not about God of this nation, or that nation,
                        or this people, or that people,
                        or this denomination, or that denomination,
                        or this religion, or that religion.

This is not God over creation,
            it is God in creation, transforming it from within.

This is not a philosophy of gradual optimistic self improvement,
            we don’t become the new humanity
                        by just mutually encouraging ourselves,
                        by singing our happy mantra songs
                        (or whatever it is that we have a tendency to do
                                    in our various Christian traditions).

This is a gospel of the radical transformation of humanity
            without which there is no hope.

Because this is the transfiguration of humanity
            reflected in the glory of transfiguration of the Son of Man.

This is us, we are humanity transfigured.
            And so are they!
And our task is to proclaim the truth
            that there is a much bigger, wiser, more gracious,
            more loving God than any of us have ever grasped.

That it is our calling,
            and it is our only hope.
That is the gospel of Jesus Christ,
            and we should live it.
This is Christ transfigured for our sake,
            and for the sake of the world.