Please use your imaginations this week. Put yourself in Peter’s sandals.

You’ve been called away from a life of fishing by a man who has something about him. As you walk alongside this man extraordinary things happen day by day. You’ve been amazed, and sometimes terrified. He has walked on water and stilled a storm; healed people who were sick in body, mind or spirit; brought a girl back from the dead; given people sight and hearing who had none; and taught the crowds all kinds of things about God in parables, explaining them to you in private.

You’ve become close to Jesus in relationship, while being in awe of him. You believe him to be holy, the promised Messiah who would set the people free. As soon as you told him this though, he began to speak about his demise, how he would be tortured and killed. You are disturbed by this.

Six days later he calls you, James and John to go with him up a high mountain. You, James and John have become the inner circle of Jesus’s friends, the people he likes to have nearby at his quiet times when he sets himself apart to pray. He trusts you. He loves you. And you love and trust him.

You have now climbed the mountain with Jesus, and reached a place of peace where you might rest.

But this becomes a profound experience. You are given a momentous vision! Jesus’s face has been changed, and it’s glowing! His clothes are dazzling white! He’s talking to two people who you somehow know to be Moses and Elijah! The three of you are terrified!

Without thinking, not knowing what to say, the words come out of your mouth: “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three temporary dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Where did that come from?

Then a bright cloud appears and overshadows you! Then a voice comes from the cloud! “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

Can you feel the fear, the adrenalin that’s running through Peter’s veins? Can you sense the cloud around you, like one of the sea frets we get here in Sheringham? Can you imagine the awesome voice written on your very soul which tells you that this is God’s beloved Son: to listen to Him?

Suddenly everything’s back to normal, and you’re on your way back down the mountain. Wow! No two days are the same when you’re with Jesus!

Only later when mulling these things over do you see the symbolism of everything Jesus said and did, and

of this event. Everything is connected, right back to creation. On the sixth day, God created humankind.

Holy people in the scriptures went up mountains to draw near to God, including Moses and Elijah, two key figures embedded in your cultural heritage. They represent the law and the prophets, the foundation of the faith in God you’ve been brought up with.

Bright dazzling white clothes are connected with purity according to a Psalm (51:7) which says ,’Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.‘ And with God in a vision of Daniel (7:9) which says, ‘As I watched, 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.’

Elijah was said to have gone up to heaven in a chariot of fire and horses of fire in a whirlwind. A pillar of fire by night guided Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness, with a pillar of cloud by day. God came to Moses in a dense cloud to speak to him. God called to Moses out of the cloud. The people lived in temporary dwellings - tents or booths, on their way to the promised land.

Every year, 5 days after the day of atonement, there’s a week-long feast during which you live in tents or booths, remembering the time when God freed your people from slavery.

God created humans who are mortal. We live in the temporary dwellings of our bodies, but with the potential for eternal life. God has constantly been guiding us in the right direction. He used people who gave us the law and prophetic words to save us from ourselves, but it wasn’t enough. Now God is here himself in the form of Jesus to teach us, and to make the ultimate sacrifice to show us the way. Maybe we will listen at last, and follow.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever (Hebrews 13:8). I wonder whether we can make parallels between Peter’s experience and our lives here today?

As we change our way of life and walk along with Jesus day by day, we never know where we will be taken or what might happen. As we spend time with Jesus in prayer, read the scriptures and learn more, we draw ever closer to God, and become ever more ready to serve, knowing that it’s not about us. It’s about our focus on Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life.

Paul reminds us that the ways of the world blind the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the

image of God... For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

As we climb the heights of faith, we see the light of Christ shine more and more brightly. We ourselves are transformed.

As we come together to worship, after our confession and absolution, we remember the time when our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for us and freed us from the slavery of the deceptions of this world.

We celebrate with the feast of the Eucharist.

And we offer ourselves once again in service as we go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Amen. 


Julie Rubidge, Lay Minister