Sunday next before Lent Mark 9:2-9 2 Kings 2:1-12

Before the invention of the microscope, we would never be able to see or identify anything beyond what seemed to be just a fleck of dust or that which was too small to even notice. Yet once we were able to see what was before impossible to make out with the human eye, we began to understand more about our world. And before the invention of the telescope, we would not have been able to notice the immense ‘scope’, literally, of the universe. Through the telescope, we began to see more of what was beyond our world, into the huge expanse of the sky. Be it big or be it small, we need help – with the correct instrument – to really see. When Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain, and he was transfigured before them, it was as if another dimension was literally unveiled in front of their eyes. With Elijah and Moses appearing to them and talking with Jesus, it was no wonder that Peter started to babble something about making shelters for them all, turning the event into a religious festival perhaps, like the Festival of Booths (Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot), which commemorates the 40 years that the Jewish people spent in the desert after the Exodus. The mountain setting of the event reminds us of Moses on Mount Sinai, when he received the Ten Commandments. And the appearance of both Moses and Elijah links the experience to the prophetic and restoration actions of deliverance in the history of the people. The vision that the disciples are seeing may well have been terrifying, and the transfiguration of Jesus, with dazzlingly white clothes, puts it all in another dimension indeed.

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, there is the phrase: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, [Horatio] than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ It is suggesting that human knowledge is limited, and we cannot really deny that. As it is sometimes said, the more we know, the more we realise what we don’t know, or that we don’t know everything. It is wise to understand our limitations and to accept that we are learners. So maybe we should take a step back and look at what has happened until this moment on the mountain. Why, for instance, did Jesus take the three there? What is recorded in previous chapters, is the journey, in the figurative sense, into the Kingdom of God. Jesus has been leading the disciples up a high mountain, so to speak, to get a new view of God’s Kingdom. All the while, he has been unveiling the mystery of that new place, hitherto hidden from view, through his profound teaching and extraordinary actions. This is a process, in which the disciples’ eyes are gradually being opened to a new truth and a new reality about the Messiah and that is truly astounding! One thing is sure: he is not as anybody had ever expected! Now, by literally taking the three disciples up a mountain for another vision of the new Kingdom, Jesus is taking them deeper into this truth. This is a new dimension of the world and God’s purpose for it.

For us, in a so-called ‘enlightened’ age, in which so much emphasis is on the visual and physical, it may be more difficult to grasp this reality. Perhaps our culture is not helpful to really ‘look and see’. But, whenever we do get a chance to catch a glimpse of the new dimension of God’s Kingdom, it is like looking through a microscope or a telescope and discovering something we have never seen before; the experience can be life-changing. So that, when the ‘veil’ of our limited perception is lifted, we can see the new dimension of God’s truth, which is dazzlingly bright, and hear God’s voice, saying, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ May we be open to that new, life-changing experience and rejoice! Amen.