The Transfiguration depicted in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopianó, in the hills above Hersonissos in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on image for full-screen viewing)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Tenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity X). The Church Calendar today celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August 2024).
Today also marks the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Later this evening, Charlotte and I hope to attend the annual Hiroshima Day commemorations at the Japanese Peace Pagoda beside Willen Lake in Milton Keynes, a ceremony we have been attending for the past three years.
The Anglican Pacifist Fellowship and Christian CND are marking Hiroshima Day with an online vigil at 8 pm this evening.
I visited Hiroshima when I was a student in Japan in 1979, and for over 40 years I took part in Irish CND’s Hiroshima Day commemorations in Merrion Park, Dublin. During the day, I shall be remembering the many victims of the Hiroshima and the survivors. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
The Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopianó in the mountains above Hersonissos in Crete was established in 2002, completed in 2008 and dedicated in 2014 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Luke 9: 28-36 (NRSVA):
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
Earlier this year, in the weeks immediately before the Greek celebrations of Easter, I was back in Crete, and visited the village of Piskopianó in the hillside above Hersonissos, which I have known for about 30 years, since the mid-1990s.
The new village church in Piskopianó has been renamed the Church of the Transfiguration was built in 2002-2008 and was dedicated in 2014. A fresco of the Transfiguration in the church shows, on the left, Christ leading the three disciples, Peter, James and John, up the mountain; in the centre, these three disciples are stumbling and falling as they witness and experience the Transfiguration; and then, to the right, Christ is leading these three back down the side of the mountain.
In other words, we are invited to see the Transfiguration not as a static moment but as a dynamic event. It is a living event in which we are invited to move from all in the past that weighs us down, to experience the full life that Christ offers us today, and to bring this into how we live our lives as Disciples in the future, a future that begins here and now.
The Transfiguration is both an event and a process. The original Greek word for Transfiguration in the Gospels is μεταμόρφωσις (
metamorphosis), which means ‘to progress from one state of being to another.’ Consider the
metamorphosis of the chrysalis into the butterfly. Saint Paul uses the same word (μεταμόρφωσις) when he describes how the Christian is to be transfigured, transformed, into the image of Christ (II Corinthians 3: 18).
This
metamorphosis invites us into the event of becoming what we have been created to be. This is what Orthodox writers call deification. Transfiguration is a profound change, by God, in Christ, through the Spirit. And so, the Transfiguration reveals to us our ultimate destiny as Christians, the ultimate destiny of all people and all creation – to be transformed and glorified by the majestic splendour of God himself.
The Transfiguration points to Christ’s great and glorious Second Coming and the fulfilment of the Kingdom of God, when all of creation shall be transfigured and filled with light.
According to Saint Gregory Palamas, the light of the Transfiguration ‘is not something that comes to be and then vanishes.’ It not only prefigures the eternal blessedness that all Christians look forward to, but also the Kingdom of God already revealed, realised and come.
The Transfiguration is described in the three Synoptic Gospels (see Matthew 17: 1-9; Mark 9: 2-8; Luke 9: 28-36), and all three accounts are very similar in wording.
The Transfiguration is an encounter with God as the Trinity; it is a reminder with the presence of Moses and Elijah that Christ is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets; it is a meeting of past, present and future; and it is a reminder of how frail is our humanity in the responses of the three Disciples present, Peter, James and John.
The Transfiguration is a reminder that God has created us in God’s image and likeness, that in Christ’s Incarnation, God took on our image and likeness, and that now we are called once again to take on the image and likeness of God.
In a lecture in Cambridge many years ago [2011], I heard the late Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware], who was the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian in England, speak of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. It reminds us of our beginning, but also reminds us of the possibilities and the potentials of what it is to become like God once again.
But is the response of the disciples to the Transfiguration one that we should imitate or emulate?
As they hear the voice of God, they fall down in terror, they are overcome by fear, they are made speechless.
They are immobilised and when they think of acting, look at what they want to do: they want to put up three booths, or tents, or dwelling places, in which they can keep Jesus and Moses and Elijah. It is as if, frightened of the new, they want to fall back on the old certainties.
It is as if they want to contain God, to capture God, to keep God in a place where they can be assured of the old certainties, to turn God into a god that they can contain, capture and control. They want to put God in a box, to keep God in a box.
And, so often, instead of wanting to be in the image and likeness of God, people want God to be in our image and likeness, doing our bidding rather than listening to what God wants of us.
Seeking to capture God, to make God a captive and to control God, are strong religious instincts throughout history. In the 20th century, Hitler used the German Churches to control the people of Germany. In more recent years, the simple faith of many American people has been hijacked to support extreme politics in a land that once prided itself on the separation of state and religion.
This is what Professor Rachel S Mikva of Chicago Theological Seminary describes as ‘dangerous religious ideas’ (
Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Penguin, 2020).
In an ‘Opinion’ column for
USA Today in the wake of Donald Trump’s attempt to storm the Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021, she argued that ‘Religion is a dangerous business.’ In the response to the of the insurrection and violence in Washington, she tried to go beyond the revulsion all of us must feel when white Christian nationalism turns violent, and she drew attention to the ‘substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way.’
The Christian right is ‘distorting the very meaning of religious freedom,’ she wrote. There is the obvious danger we have all seen on news channels in the past month or two, with extremists who call themselves Christians ‘ready to bring on the apocalypse.’
But she warns of ‘a more resilient threat’ posed by people who claim the mantle of being Christians and who are ‘embedded throughout the governing institutions in the US – courts, military, legislatures, agencies and the police.’ In her words, they pose a real threat ‘to religious pluralism in the United States.’
She argued cogently for the need for ‘consciousness of the vital self-critical dimensions of faith,’ and said: ‘Whatever one’s spiritual life stance, we are choosing in every moment whether its power will be wielded for harm or for blessing.’
Power for harm; or power for blessing.
Do we want to keep God in a box as a power for harm; or do we really want to see God being God, and empowering us to be a power for blessing in the world?
I see this as the first great challenge posed by the Transfiguration.
And the second is like it: to see humanity as Christ in the Transfiguration would see us and would have us see each other.
Do I, so often, put people in a box in a way that denies they are made in the image and likeness of God? That they are called to become, once again, like God in Christ … what the Orthodox call ‘deification’ …?
Every time I dismiss someone because of their social background, where they were born, their gender, sexuality, ethnicity or parentage, I am making these differences more important than the way God sees them: made in God’s image and likeness, and holding, embodying the light of God in Christ.
Because those characteristics, those traits, are not self-chosen; they come at birth, we do not ask for them, you might say they are God-given. For, indeed, God sees us in God’s own image and likeness, God sees in each one of us the potential to reflect the light of Christ in the Transfiguration.
Let’s not box God in, hidden away under a booth or in a tent. Let God be God, and let’s stop trying to control him by using him to our political and social advantage.
Let’s stop categorising people so we marginalise them instead of seeing them in God’s image and likeness.
For, when we love God and love others, we see the light of God in them and, hopefully, they see the light of God in us.
When she was the guest chaplain in the House of Representatives in 1995, Rabbi Rachel Mikva included these thoughts in her prayers:
However passionately we may cling to our vision of truth,
we must never fail to recognise your image, God,
reflected in the face of the other …
Ultimately, we stand before you,
naked of power or possessions,
seeking only to understand your will
and do it with a whole heart …
God, we pray that our words and our deeds
may be for Your sake,
bringing healing to our world
and wholeness to all those whose lives we touch.
Amen. אָמֵן׃
Peter, John and James … a detail in the icon of the Transfiguration in the iconostasis in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 6 August 2024, The Transfiguration):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Understanding each other by walking together’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from the Right Revd Eduardo Coelho Grillo, Anglican Bishop of Rio de Janeiro.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 6 August 2024, The Transfiguration) invites us to pray:
Lord, whose Son Jesus Christ was wonderfully transfigured. Give us strength so to hear his voice and bear our cross that in the world to come we may see him as he is; who is alive and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
An icon of the Transfiguration in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopianó (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Collect:
Father in heaven,
whose Son Jesus Christ was wonderfully transfigured
before chosen witnesses upon the holy mountain,
and spoke of the exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem:
give us strength so to hear his voice and bear our cross
that in the world to come we may see him as he is;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Holy God,
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ:
may we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The chapel on the highest peak on Mount Athos, at 2,033 metres, is dedicated to the Transfiguration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford; click on images for full-screen view)
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
http://nrsvbibles.org
The Monastery of Great Meteoro, the largest of the monasteries at Meteora, is dedicated to the Transfiguration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
