Sonia Falaschi-Ray
2 Kings: 1- 12; 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 6; Mark 9: 2 – 9

Mark 9:2-9  Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.  And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.  Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.  Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

 
To understand the context of the event described here, which is known as the transfiguration, it helps to go back a week in Jesus’ life.  He and his disciples were then in the region of Caesarea Philippi in the very north of Israel and Jesus asked them “Who do people say I am?  They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.””   And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood hasn’t revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”  From that time on, Jesus began to tell his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.  And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”  But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you don’t have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”
So within almost the same breath Peter declares Jesus as Messiah and demonstrates that he hasn’t understood the nature of his Messiahship.  One minute Jesus is stating that on rocky Peter, he will build his church, and the next minute he’s calling him Satan!  The promise of good and evil all wrapped up in one man, how like the rest of us.  Jesus sobered them up even further by saying “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, daily take up their cross and follow me.”  I was reminded of that a few months ago when I was moaning to friend about the difficulties I had juggling running a four-church interregnum, getting my mother-in-law into care and running two households, a professorial husband and a dog.  She reminded me that Jesus didn’t say “if you want to be my disciple I’ll guarantee you’ll live happily ever after”.  No, what he said was you must deny yourself and daily take up your cross and follow me.  That told me! 

So, six days after that little spat with Peter, Jesus took Peter, James and John up a mountain which is currently thought to be Mount Hermon, part of what is now the Golan heights.  Both Moses and Elijah met God on mountains; Moses on Mount Sinai where he received the Law and the prophet Elijah who met God through the still small voice on Mount Horeb.  And while Jesus was praying he was transfigured before them.  His face shone like the sun and his clothes became bright as a flash of lightening.  This reminds us of the book of Daniel, “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,….I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.  …To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.”  This leads on to the vision given to John the Divine in Revelation, “Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, … I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire.”   Daniel’s vision prefigured Jesus’ transfiguration, so the minds of the disciples should have been prepared correctly to interpret what was going on.  Though, as we see, they didn’t quite get the hang of it.  Jesus, shining like the sun, is prefiguring how he will be when fully glorified.  It is just that his path to glory is through suffering and death.  Our path, as we follow him, may also be fraught with difficulties while, as Paul puts it, “We, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.   Our transfiguration.  As we allow the Holy Spirit to operate in our lives we will continue our transformation of increasingly resembling Jesus.

The story continues, “Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendour, conversing with Jesus.  They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem.”  As I’m sure you know, Moses represents the Law, and Elijah the Prophets, these are the major parts of the Jewish scriptures.  Jesus emphasized that we must love God with all we have, and love our neighbour as ourselves.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  Now he had come to effect salvation and he gave his disciples a new commandment, that they should love one another so that the world would know that they were his disciples.  This was the how the Church, the body of Christ, us, would demonstrate God’s new covenant with his people; that we would love one another.  Easier said than done.  In fact it can’t be done without the help of the Holy Spirit.

At the time, “Peter and his companions were very sleepy, rather like at Gethsemane – human frailty can so easily stand between believers and what God has in mind for them.  – but when they became fully awake, they saw Jesus, shining, and conversing with Moses and Elijah.  Peter sees here the whole drama of the history of salvation from the exodus to the final glorification of Jesus, whom he has recognized as the Christ.  He’d prefer to keep this scenario intact rather than return to Jesus’ disturbing prospect of a blood-stained pathway to glory.  And impetuous, flaky Peter whose foot-in-mouth character comes over so strongly in the Gospels starts gabbling, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters–one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”  I always find Peter so encouraging.  He is such a flawed individual.  Peter, bursting with passion, whose heart is so obviously in the right place, but he often only opens his mouth in order to change feet.  And then, in the High Priest’s courtyard, he denied knowing Jesus and was devastated by his own cowardice.  God chose this highly unreliable chap to create his church; which, with the help of the Holy Spirit, he did.  It shows that God can use us to further his purposes if only we will let him; however ineffectual and inadequate we may feel.  Actually, feeling inadequate often helps, as Paul pointed out, it is in our weakness God’s power can be demonstrated.  

Back up the mountain, Peter was struggling to grasp the enormity of what he was seeing and trying to fit it into his mental framework.  He may have been remembering God’s promise for the Israelites given to Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.”   In suggesting he build shelters, conceivably Peter was alluding to an expectation of the end-time fulfilment of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles or Booths.  There again….

“While Peter was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and they were afraid.  A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”  As I’m sure you know, Cloud often symbolizes the presence of God, it enveloped Moses at Sinai, and the Israelites were led through the desert by a pillar of cloud.  God’s words from this cloud echo those at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”, the difference being this time they are for the disciples’ benefit, rather than just for Jesus’.
Jesus’ face shining like the sun, his heavenly companions discussing with him that his route to glory would be though suffering and death, an enveloping cloud.  We do have a modern, though maybe not God-given parallel.  Traditionally the church celebrates the transfiguration not in February, but on 6th August.  On 6th August 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  Enrico Fermi was one of the developers of the bomb and he described the test explosion.  “My first impression of the explosion was the very intense flash of light, and a sensation of heat on the parts of my body that were exposed.  Although I did not look directly towards the object, I had the impression that suddenly the countryside became brighter than in full daylight.  I subsequently looked in the direction of the explosion through the dark glass and could see something that looked like a conglomeration of flames that promptly started rising.  After a few seconds the rising flames lost their brightness and appeared as a huge pillar of smoke with an expanded head like a gigantic mushroom that rose rapidly beyond the clouds probably to a height of 30,000 feet.”
A light brighter than full daylight, a pillar of cloud a harbinger of suffering and death.  We can do that too.  Like Peter, what we are and what we do can be complex and may result in both good and evil.  For some, the development of nuclear weapons has been seen as a disaster and, if anything, the threat to the world from their use now is greater than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.  In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the evil effects were clear, a huge loss of life and property and, for many, lasting illness.  However, they are considered to have halted the war in the Pacific, possibly saving more lives than would have been lost had the Japanese continued to fight island by island, atoll by atoll. 
Three years ago, Mount Hermon and the Golan heights were again in the news, as Israel fought to destroy the military capability of Iranian supported Hezbollah.  Iran is currently attempting to build nuclear weapons and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel should be “wiped out from the map” insisting that a new series of attacks will destroy the Jewish state, and he has lashed out at Muslim countries and leaders which acknowledge Israel.  
So where are we now and what can we do?  Jesus’ transfiguration revealed his future, heavenly appearance.  The time we are in now, the time between the resurrection and Jesus’ final return reveals glimpses of heaven.  Those who experience the light of Christ in their lives may have an inkling of what is in store for those who will spend an eternity with God.  But we are in this in-between time which Paul describes thus, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”   The powers of evil, although they have been defeated, still hold sway within our world.  So what can we do?  Well we can pray.  We can attempt, by how we live our lives, to show a reflection of Jesus.  We can attempt to work for understanding, peace and reconciliation between people.  This can happen at a local level, between neighbours, even up to influencing Government policy, perhaps by lobbying our MPs or by joining organizations which are working for peace and for those helping people affected by conflict and disasters.  This is the mystery of our faith; Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  Let us try and help make the world more ready for his coming.

Proverbs 8.1, 22-31; Colossians 1.15-20; John 1.1-14

The book of Proverbs is one from which we have very few lectionary readings, so this morning as well as thinking a little bit about our Old Testament reading, I thought we should look together at what this book is, what it contains and so on.

The Book of Proverbs is part of what is known as the Wisdom literature. It is hard to define what exactly is meant by the wisdom literature. In some ways it easier to say what it is not than to say what it is. Wisdom in the Old Testament is not the Law – Torah – or the histories or the prophets. It covers Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.

Though it is hard to define exactly what wisdom literature is, we can pick out some things that are characteristic of this type of writing.
The book A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament by Birch, Breuggemann, Fretheim and Petersen highlights  five distinctive features.

First, wisdom literature is based upon lived experience – everyday life. Its themes are often based on the mundane – money, work, friendship, speech, how to conduct oneself and so on. To be wise is to conduct oneself rightly in these matters, according to what fits in with God’s ways. There is advice about not being led astray by the effects of wine, about how to discipline children, about how to run the affairs of one’s home.

Second, wisdom literature focuses on ethics – the significance of making right decisions. Life is a balance of making choices; choices have consequences, and no one can escape from the decisions to be made or from their outcomes. The choices presented include things such as greed, honesty, riches and how one uses one’s wealth, laziness, injustice and righteousness.
Third, the wisdom literature is put in the form of speech. We can see this clearly both in Proverbs and in the book of Job. This form helps to communicate the message of the literature. Proverbs is generally thought to have originated from educational circles – so rhetorical strategies are used with playful language and metaphor. It demands a reflective response.

Fourth, wisdom literature is an intellectual enterprise. It’s about trying to work out what reality is, observing and recording how life works in a pre-scientific age. It articulates patterns of behaviour that have been observed, which can then lead to predictions about social interaction, providing a body of counsel to guide and help in decision-making.

And, last but by no means least, wisdom literature is theological. It witnesses to God and God’s ways. It asks and answers questions about God.
Behind all the wisdom literature is an assumption, sometimes explicit, sometimes inherent, that the world order is created, governed and sustained by God, and that to follow the paths of wisdom and to seek wisdom is to follow the paths of God and to seek God.

Another Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad in his Wisdom in Israel describes the wisdom literature as seeking “an understanding of reality through contemplation”.

The Book of Proverbs itself is presented as manual of the teaching of life’s wisdom, particularly for young men. It has two main parts – the second longer section comprising lots of short, pithy proverbial sayings, and the first nine chapters which form an extended introduction to the second part of the book, and which celebrate wisdom.
Our passage from Proverbs today depicts Wisdom herself giving a speech. It is a hymn of self-praise.

The character of Wisdom is a very interesting one. If we look at the reading, we see Wisdom describe herself as “created”, “set up” and “brought forth”. But the meaning of these words is somewhat uncertain – the verb translated “created” could also mean conceived or possessed. The word used for “set up” can also be translated “woven” as in Psalm 139 where we have the image of God weaving together the child in the womb. What is certain, though the exact origin of Wisdom lacks clarity, is that she was before the world began.

And Wisdom is described alongside God at creation as the master-builder – taking a part in what was created.
Where have we heard this before? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

Who or what Wisdom is is hard to say, but it would appear that the lectionary compilers want us to place alongside the Gospel reading the passage from Proverbs. Are Word and Wisdom the same?

Certainly there are attributes that they share. Both were present at the creation of the world. Things came into being through them. John wishes us to see Jesus, the Messiah, as the Word – can we then also see Wisdom as an alternative personification of the Word? How are Wisdom and Christ connected?

All sorts of questions are raised. Not least questions of gender. Wisdom is depicted as female; Jesus, we know, was a man. What does this say about the godhead? Does it mean that Wisdom and the Christ cannot be the same? Or perhaps that understanding God needs to take account of male and female? Or perhaps God is beyond all gender limitations but that we humans because of our limited understanding have seen God in terms of our image – not God making us in his image, but us making God in ours?

These are big questions. For many people God’s maleness in Jesus is what matters rather than God’s human-ness. If only a man can represent Christ, then that to me implies that it is Christ’s maleness not his humanity that is important. And if it is Christ’s maleness that matters, where does that leave the female in the salvation story?
These are big questions and ones we should think about, because our understanding not just of church order and the place of women within it, but also our understanding of God and gender is rooted here.

Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. How do we know what God is like? We look at Christ? What did the writers of Proverbs see when they wished to reflect on the nature of God? How does the image of Wisdom relate to God?

We may never have thought about such questions before. We may think very well that we know what is right. But human wisdom is always about going deeper, about searching for the truth, about listening to God.

 
Listening to God means that sometimes we have to be open to changing our views and our behaviours. How should we be? What should we be like? Look at Jesus, read the wisdom of the Proverbs.

From chapter 3
“Happy are those who find wisdom and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold. She is more precious than jewels and nothing you desire can compare with her.”

Set that alongside this:
“Happy are those who find Christ and those who get understanding, for his ways are better than silver and his pathways better than gold. He is more precious than jewels and nothing you desire can compare with him.”

Wisdom is something that needs to be worked at. Its foundations are in following the ways of God. Job asked “Where is wisdom to be found?” His answer is a simple reply but also one that is utterly profound for as so often the simplest truths are also the most profound.

“Where is wisdom to be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living. God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. He established it and searched it out. And he said to humankind ‘Truly the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”

Isaiah 40.21-31; 1 Corinthians 9.16-23; Mark 1.29-39

In our Gospel reading, we hear how Jesus was inundated with people seeking healing. Once the sabbath had ended, and presumably the news had travelled that Jesus was in town and had made Simon’s mother-in-law better, people flocked to him, bringing with them the sick and those possessed by demons.

It probably seemed to be their only hope. Although there were physicians in those days, their knowledge and power was limited, and they were probably out of reach financially of the normal people. So many of them had to learn to live with whatever condition they had, often meaning that they became outcasts as well because of their perceived uncleanness.

It wasn’t surprising therefore that when they heard the healer was in their city that they all flocked to him. They knew that if anyone could help them, it would be Jesus. Healing was part of Jesus’s mission to reveal the signs of the kingdom of God on earth. Healing could not, and cannot, be detached from the good news of the gospel.

But today, most of us do not associate healing with the church. We might be aware of churches where claims are made of people throwing crutches away or being released from long-term pain, we might even have experience of healing through prayer ourselves, but for many, many Christians this has not been part of the experience.

And yet, God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God’s healing remains and is on offer to us. We have doctors and a modern medical service – and God works through that on many, many occasions.
In that sense we are far more fortunate than the people of Jesus’s time. But, because we have such good medical services, we often forget or give lower priority to the fact that God also heals through prayer.

I wonder whether we really believe in what we ask for when we pray for those who are sick. Are we bold enough to pray for their healing or do we have something different in our minds? Do we expect physical cures – or are we asking for more than that, or for something different?

Often in our intercessions we pray for those who are sick in body, mind and spirit. It’s essential that we hold these three together. God’s healing is not just about physical healing, though that happens. God’s healing is about bringing a wholeness to us – a tri-partite wholeness of body, mind and spirit.

There’s that wonderful image in our reading from Isaiah of God, the one who never faints or grows weary, giving power to the faint and strength to the powerless. “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” What a wonderful promise for anyone who is feeling less than energised! The Creator God is also one who sustains creation.

We could make a list of what sick people need, and we would discover that it is far more than just a physical cure. I spent a few moments doing just that as I was preparing this sermon and in a very short time came up with this list – courage, comfort, strength, reassurance, love, respect, friendship, to be treated as whole people, to be listened to, people whom they can trust, understanding, hope, dignity.
Healing in God’s perspective is also different from ours – sometimes healing comes through death. Sometimes, the physical cure for which a person longs is not going to happen, but other healing can take place.

Jesus in many places in the Bible unites sickness and sin; and the healing that we need is also a healing from the sickness of sin. That is what is offered through Jesus in the crucifixion and resurrection.

In our halfway world, we have to accept that God’s kingdom is not yet fully here. In healing, we see glimpses of what life is like when it is completely under God’s rule, but until Christ comes again and creation is restored, they will only be glimpses.

Sometimes people pray for healing and don’t receive it in the way that they expect.
Joni Eareckson Tada was paralysed from the neck downwards in a diving accident in 1967. Many people prayed for her healing, as she did too. This is what she says: “A week went by, then another, then another. My body still hadn’t gotten the message that I was healed. Fingers and toes still didn’t respond to the mental command . . .

“You can imagine the questions that kept popping into my mind. Is there some sin in my life? Had we done things right? Did I have enough faith?

Later, she came to this conclusion: “God certainly can, and sometimes does, heal people in a miraculous way today. But the bible does not teach that he will always heal those who come to him in faith. He sovereignly reserves the right to heal or not heal as he sees fit.

“From time to time God, in his mercy, may grant us healing from disease as a gracious glimpse, a sneak preview of what is to come. It is my opinion that he sometimes does. But, in view of the fact that the kingdom has not yet come in its fullness, we are not to automatically expect it.”

What that quotation doesn’t spell out is that, although a physical cure has not come to Joni, she has experienced healing in many other areas of her life, and she has set up a foundation which brings hope and the Gospel to many other people, particularly those with disabilities.

I don’t believe God caused Joni’s injuries – I do believe that God has wholeheartedly used her, in the situation in which she is, to bring good out of a tragedy.

And that, too, is a healing. We need to move away from the idea that healing is only about a physical cure.
Wholeness is about much more than that. It’s about restoration, it’s about how we view ourselves, it’s about what values govern our life, it’s about our relationship with God.

What Christianity can give is hope. We tend to see life as something confined to our threescore years and ten or often today fourscore years and ten, but life is about so much more. Our view of life tends to stop at death – when someone dies, they are gone. But that attitude takes no account of God’s promises of eternal life.

All those whom Jesus healed will have later died a physical death – his healing only prolonged their life on earth. Even Lazarus who was raised to life again did not live here for ever.

Death is something; death is a fracturing of our relationships with people, even though it doesn’t stop us loving them. Death causes us grief and brokenness, and we can’t turn the clock back. Death in that sense is final.
But for those who believe, death is more than that. It is a parting from those whom we love, but it is a parting that does not leave us with a hope-less future. For, death can bring the ultimate healing – think of the passage in the Book of Revelation that is often read at funerals – death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more – in that place where God dwells with people.

But, healing is not only something that comes with death. Healing – in body, mind or spirit – can occur in life too. Sometimes we miss it because our eyes are looking for something else; perhaps we want a physical cure but miss the deep sense of inner peace that eventually infiltrates our soul. Perhaps we want healing and rescue from our fears or angers, and find it in forgiveness.

Healing is much more than physical cure. Healing reveals God’s power, and brings release from physical, spiritual and emotional sickness.
Healing is on offer to all of us. A person who is physically sick is usually aware of their ailment – often it’s hard to miss it. But God longs to heal other infirmities too – our selfishness, our broken hearts, our bitterness or anger, our hurts, those bad habits we all get into that cause other people to suffer, our fears and worries – because all of these make us less than whole.

As Joni discovered, God doesn’t always heal in the way we would like, but we can be bolder in allowing ourselves to turn to God for healing as well as to medical doctors, who, however hard they try, will never be able to cure all diseases, and certainly don’t have much effect on sin.

God’s healing is a gentle process usually. Yes, people do receive miraculous, amazing, spectacular healings, but thousands more know the gentle love of God to bind up the broken-hearted, to heal the sick and bring comfort to the grieving.

Jesus communicated God’s kingdom in his words and actions. When we are weak, the God is strong, and through God’s love, we can be strengthened.

The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will be exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.