Sermon: A milestone

Today's New Testament reading begins with a glorious scene of Epiphany and ends with the cross. That represents where we are. Hiking along the liturgical road we pause for a moment with our backpacks to take breath beside a milestone. An arrow in the stone points back along the way we have come, and beneath the arrow it simply says ‘Emmanuel - God with us'. Another arrow points ahead to the road we have not yet travelled, and there, etched beside it, simply, ‘the cross'.

Most of us have travelled this route before. This milestone is a familiar resting place. We have stood here many times, gazing on ahead where the road bends out of sight. We know what is to come. In imagination we can smell the crowded city, hear the cries, feel the excitement and the fear, anticipate the sorrow and the catharsis. We make the pilgrimage again, hoping once again to connect, to come alive, to find again that resolution.

If we were bringing a friend with us, who had not travelled this way before, what would we be saying as we take a breather beside this stone? Are we hurrying on to joy or sorrow? Shall we warn of a harder walk from this point on? Is this where we leave joy behind, the sunny fields where shepherds sang with angels, where God is with us and all will be right with the world?  Farewell optimism: dark clouds ahead? If we really were to invite friends to walk this way with us for the first time, we might experience it freshly. But it's like this with well-loved walks, however much you want your friends to enter into it, they will love it their own way - or not. All you can do is to say, ‘Come with me'.

"Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them." They were all new to this. Transfiguration looks right back along Epiphany road. There is the glorious light of heaven in Jesus, the cloud, the sign of the divine presence, and the voice from heaven naming Jesus as Son, as at his baptism. Moses and Elijah appear who were believed to have been taken up to heaven alive, and were expected to return before the Messiah. The thin membrane between heaven and earth parts for a moment. This is a glimpse of the glory that is to be revealed. It is not just in the past, a fading memory of a dream we once had. It holds out to us the final destination. This is why we are travelling this route, from glory to glory. Fix it in your mind at this milestone, for you will need it in the dark times, in the confusing city, on the road to Emmaus, fishing futilely with the other disciples, despairing at dawn.

Jack Nicholls, the Bishop of Sheffield, a wonderful speaker who was part of our last Diocesan Conference, has passed on to the wider church the advice he received from a Spiritual Director. "There are three things you need to remember, Jack, the glory of God, the pain of the world and the renewal/repentence of the church."  The transfiguration certainly holds before us the glory of God.

But today's gospel reading also feeds us the other two whilst we rest beside this milestone; because as soon as Jesus and the disciples come down the mountain from the eternal glory of the divine presence, what greets them but an anguished man entirely wrapped up in his own hell, and that of his son. "Lord, have mercy on my son."  What was it the last father said? "This is my Son, whom I love" - the words from heaven are still ringing in the disciples' ears, and here they come back again from this father, cruelly altered yet still the same, like the idée fixe from a Berlioz symphony. The words and feelings of the two fathers interlock and reverberate. The glory of God meets the pain of the world. "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him."  And with that desolate comment we are introduced through the failure of the disciples to the need for the repentance of the Church, for renewal in the church. Jesus answers, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me." When the glory of God meets the pain of the world there is divine pain and sorrow too. But there is compassion and, of course, the healing of heaven to give. And after the boy is cured, Jesus returns to the renewal of the church: "Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there', and it will move." Like Jesus, the church is caught, stretched, between the glory of God and the pain of the world. Being stretched between these two is what the cross is about. Holding on to both is hard and we know we are not very good at it, though it is our vocation.

During last week Bishop Tom led one of his clergy teaching and learning days, which are always a great privilege. He was describing how all the way through the Old Testament and into the New, the people of God have always been part of the problem as well as part of the solution. It is not that we are totally useless. We have been called to follow Jesus, led up the mountain to experience the glory, sent out into the towns and villages "to be as Christ to them". We are intended to be part of the way in which God heals the pain of the world. He does not intend to do it without us. But look at the disciples in this passage. Like us, they are very slow on the uptake. Peter's response to the glory is to suggest a building project: but there's no need for a Temple: Jesus is here. The response is half-right. Equally, when they hear the voice from the cloud they fall down in fear. A proper Old Testament response, but they have to get used to this glory and live with it, if they are to bring it to the pain of the world. "Jesus came and touched them, saying "Get up and do not be afraid". As they come down the mountain Jesus tells them not to tell anyone about this until he has been raised from the dead, but they appear not to hear the stunning comment about death: they get into the complexities of eschatological fulfilment "Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" It is only after the healing, when he has shaken his head in sorrow over their lack of faith that he says again, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised." And they were greatly distressed," it says. At last they hear about the death - but they miss the resurrection. No wonder the voice from heaven which said "this is my beloved Son" added, "listen to him!" The repentence and renewal of the church begins with close attentiveness to Jesus. We have such capacity for attentiveness, but it is perpetually distracted.

So here we stand, at our milestone. There is no going back towards the familiar safety of Emmanuel, simply God with us. On we go towards the cross. But the little piece of Kendal mint-cake we have taken from our rucksacks to give us energy for the road ahead is that happy, double-edged thought that we are both part of the problem and part of the solution, and God's people have always been so. When we think we are the solution, we shall be reminded that we're also part of the problem: when we are most aware of being the problem, we shall take courage that God constantly calls us to be also part of the solution. You can't be one without the other. What a happy, realistic, human-shaped thought. We journey along this road out of our own need to be healed and renewed. We are pilgrims in search of grace. But we are not here for our own need alone: we are, strangely, also part of God's solution. Being stretched between the glory of God and the pain of the world this is no easy road to tread, but it is the road of hope and healing, both for us as pilgrims and disciples, and also for those we invite to come on the walk with us. As we walk we encounter the pain of the world which cries out for healing and, by the glory of God, we are also part of that renewal.