Transfiguration: A Different Angle
I just want to start with a puzzle. At this point would everyone unmute. It is one of those number sequences.
Take a look at it and I’ll start the clock. See if anyone gets it before the clock stops – just shout out if you get it. I didn’t get it when I first saw it! You solve it not by complex mathematical calculation. You solve it by looking at it from a different angle – once you do that you get the sequence.
Our lesson was Mark’s account of the Transfiguration – that otherworldly account of the experience of the disciples seeing Jesus’ appearance changed on the mountaintop. What exactly are we to make of all this? What exactly are we talking about? As our puppet display showed, big words can sometimes confuse rather explain.
I look at it this way. Up to now the disciples had been following Jesus as a teacher, a man who had a way of connecting with people. In the Transfiguration, in whatever it was that they experienced that day, they sense God telling them to look at Jesus differently, from a different angle. ‘This is my beloved Son, listen to him.’
Jesus is not just one more engaging teacher among others, he is God’s beloved Son. We are not just to admire who he is and what he says, we are to listen. The characters in the puppet show spoke of authority. What he says, what he teaches he says with authority. We are not just to listen to what he says, we are to do what he says. We are to let his teaching actually change the way we act, the way we think, the way we live.
That means looking at Jesus from a different angle will mean that we start looking at other things from a different angle. We start looking at ourselves from a different angle. The Bible talks of us being made in the image of God but that image being blurred by our selfishness, our indifference (what people call sin). In Jesus we see what man, what you and I, what being made in God’s image is meant be. Not only shows us but in his life, in his death and resurrection enables us to be.
That changes the way we look at other people. Jesus, in one of his parables, the parable of the sheep and the goats, talks of people who look after the lonely, the poor, the sick, the prisoners and says ‘as much look after the lonely, the poor, the sick, the prisoners and says ‘as you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’
I started with this puzzle. Once you look at it from a different angle it all becomes clear. In the Transfiguration, the disciples were taught to look at Jesus from a different angle. He was not just their teacher, he was their Lord – and they would follow him and bear witness to him to the very end of their lives.
Prayer of St Ignatius
Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest; To give, and not to count the cost, to fight, and not to heed the wounds, to toil, and not to seek for rest, to labour, and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will.