Sermon for the Sunday Next before Lent - Daniel Parkinson

We become what we behold. The readings appointed for today emphasise the importance of vision and the sense of sight in the spiritual life.

In the gospel reading, Peter, John, and James are given a privileged vision of Christ, as he is transfigured before their eyes on Mount Tabor, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes dazzling white.

In the first reading, St Paul casts his mind back to Exodus chapter thirty-four, when Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the covenant law on stone tablets, and his face shone because he had been speaking with God. The Church in Corinth, likewise, are encouraged to turn to the Lord, to behold his glory as though reflected in a mirror, so that they may be transformed, bit by bit, into the same image.

We become what we behold. That is the great truth of these passages of scripture. Whatever it is that commands our attention and vision, that’s the thing that is shaping us, and forming us in its own image. As Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, ‘The eye is the lamp of the body… if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.’ We become what we behold.

Perhaps this is why the compilers of the Church’s lectionary have appointed the narrative of Christ’s transfiguration as the gospel reading on the Sunday next before Lent. Just before we embark upon a pilgrimage of prayer, fasting, and self-discipline, we are given a vision of Jesus’s glorified humanity as the icon of what our spiritual lives are striving towards. This is the one in whose image we are being renewed. This is the vision to which we must give our attention, so that it might shape us and form us. Lent is about being transformed after the likeness of Jesus’s glorified humanity.

That’s all very well, but are we not acutely aware that the mountain-top encounters of people like Moses, Peter, John, and James, are not our common experience of God? So often, the reality of God in our lives can seem remote and distant. A bit like the reception of Magic FM in the Chilterns, as one Prime Minister once put it. The idea of a face-to-face encounter, then, might seem a bit fantastical. We should be so lucky!

But this is why I like the image that St Paul uses: we see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror. This image articulates the fact that our encounter with God is most often experienced at an oblique angle.

The contemporary mythologist and writer, Martin Shaw, describes the awareness of Christ as like the experience of walking through a forest, when out of the corner of our eye we see someone moving through the treeline on the edge of the forest. We do not see him directly, but we occasionally catch glimpses between the trees, glimpses which are just enough to keep us seeking.

Creation is the angled mirror through which we catch these oblique glimpses of God: the beauty and splendour of natural landscapes; the brilliance and wonder of music which genuinely moves the soul; the experience of being utterly defeated and disarmed by the love of another; the acts of courage, virtue, and compassion of others which bring forth a deep sense of recognition in us about the honour and value of life. In these and many other experiences, we glimpse the infinite source of love and generosity that lies behind all of reality, which brings all things into being from sheer nothingness simply as a gift.

But today’s readings also remind us of another important sense that is essential to the spiritual life. As the disciples behold the transfigured Jesus, a voice from heaven comes from the cloud of glory and says, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’

And as St Paul looks back to the common life of ancient Israel, he recalls their hardness of heart and mind, in words which echo Psalm 95, appointed every day at Mattins in the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts: as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness.’ And so, the question presented to us is, what are we listening to?

Creation is meant to be the angled mirror through which we can catch oblique glimpses of God. But we can be blind to the glory of Christ which it reflects if we are habitually listening to the interior voices that tell us that creation is merely the domain that we must conquer in order to secure what we want. The clamouring voices of desire and acquisitiveness, self-absorption and self-importance, can so dominate our minds, that we become incapable of seeing the world as God’s gift, and relate to it simply as something to be plundered and manipulated.

But Lent represents something of a potential mountain-top experience. A chance to ascend above this noise and clatter, a chance to silence and still the hustle and bustle of those interior voices.

By fasting and depriving ourselves of our familiar comforts, we can begin to re-orient our lives around the idea that we are not the centre of the story. We can start to gain a new perspective on the world – see the lay of the land differently – gain a perspective that is not conditioned by the illusion that our every whim and desire must be satisfied immediately. And as we bring the interior voices of desire and acquisitiveness to silence and stillness, our vision of the world is renewed. We begin to see things not insofar as they meet our needs, but as gifts and oblique mirrors reflecting the glory of God.

So, in these final days before Lent, let us consider what it is that is incessantly clamouring for our attention. What is the interior noise that stops us from seeing God in the world around us? And let us pray for grace, that we might be able to lay it down – even if only for a while – and clear some space, so that we may turn to the Lord, behold his glory, and be transformed into his likeness day by day.