Readings, Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 and Mark 9:2-10
Image, Maquette for tapestry 'Death and transfiguration,’ John Coburn (1986) We have reached the end of Epiphany. Ash Wednesday is days away and with it Lent, the season of preparation for Easter. Through the season of Epiphany the glory of Christ is slowly revealed. The Wise Men arrive before the Christ child with gifts and praise. At the temple Simeon and Anna recognise him as the messiah. At his baptism a heavenly voice proclaims his belovedness. The first disciples witness signs of his power. And now, atop the mountain, the heavenly voice returns, Moses and Elijah surround Christ, transfigured in dazzling light. We enter Lent having seen Christ’s glory revealed and proclaimed by Gentiles in their pilgrimage, Israelites in their hope, demons in their anguish, and the heavens in their majesty. The hope of Advent and the joy of Christmas are vindicated in Epiphany – we were right to wait, right to rejoice, for Jesus Christ is the glorified one of God. And yet we move into Lent, where Christ is revealed to also be the man of sorrows, crowned with thorns. Opposition increases, contest heightens, confusion abounds, tragedy looms. Right back at the beginning of Epiphany, Simeon warned Mary that Jesus was destined for the falling and rising of many of Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, and that this would mean a sword will pierce [her] own soul too. And now, as Jesus is enshrined in light atop the mountain and yet chooses to step back down to the woes, worries, and violence of the world he came to save that sword draws ever closer to its target. For the story of Christ is never one thing… or perhaps, it is, but that one thing is the story of glory amidst and through crisis. For the glory of Christ’s birth is followed by the massacre of the innocents. The glory of Christ’s baptism is accompanied by John’s arrest and execution. The glory of Christ’s miracles is accompanied by antagonism. The glory of Christ’s teaching is met with confusion and rejection. The glory of the Last Supper is punctuated by betrayal. The glory of Palm Sunday is followed by the trauma of Good Friday. This is not a fault in the plan of the incarnation, nor an unforeseen side-effect of the mission of Emmanuel. This is what it means for God to take seriously the world as it is and yet choose to be with and for us. This is the holy one coming to dwell in a fractured world and choosing not to enforce glory and submission on the creature, but to invite us into fellowship through the proclamation of good news and the ministry of mercy. Glory revealed amidst crisis is good news, because we know all too well the world is neither all one thing or another. Crisis and pain abound, but they are not all there is. Glory and joy break through, but they are not perpetual. Christ walked among us in a world of mountains and plains, and he abides with us today as we traverse our own peaks and valleys. It is for this reason we have the commands; a vision of the world as God wills it. The beautiful passage we heard read from Leviticus is the heart of the book, the heart of the ethical code of the Torah. It crescendos with the (equal) greatest commandment: love your neighbour as yourself. But this command doesn’t come out of nowhere; love takes a concrete and communal form, a structured, societal form. It is not simply a matter of affection, but action, not simply kindness, but justice. Because how else will we, as a community, buffer ourselves against the harsh winds of the world’s crises? How else will we organise ourselves to protect and dignify those most likely to feel its harsh effects? Ill-weather falls on all people but it does not affect everyone equally. The poor, the labourer, the refugee, the alien, the blind, the deaf, the widow, the orphan, are all adversely affected by the universal crises of life, not to mention the additional specific and particular crises an unequal society places upon them. And thus what it means to live for the glory of God is to head back down the mountain, back to our neighbours (particularly those most vulnerable and forgotten) and place ourselves amidst the crises of the world offering compassion and advocating a more just order. The culmination of the season of Epiphany is not to build tents on the mountaintop. Rather it is to draw strength from the power and wonder of Christ’s glory, take up our cross, and return to the world. After all, Christ is already there, his presence hidden amongst those most adversely affected by the world’s crises. Present with those who await most acutely communities that take seriously the ethical responsibility we owe to the least and last. We who behold the glory of Christ and hope in his resurrection, cannot simply live as if this glory didn’t stake a claim on every corner of our lives. For just as Christ didn’t not regard the glory of equality with God as something to be exploited, nor the mountaintop somewhere to retreat; so too we who have received a spirit of adoption, do not exploit that glory or shelter on mountaintops. Rather, in humility and purpose, we step humbly into the world, ordering our lives after God’s commands so that we might be ready to love our neighbours as ourselves. In the spirit of Epiphany, we stand alongside one another in the crises of the world, constructing shelters and addressing their sources, so that further glory might yet be revealed.
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