First preached
as a sermon at the Cathedral Eucharist, Guildford Cathedral, on the Feast of
the Transfiguration of the Lord, Sunday 6th August 2017
Daniel 7.9-19, 13-14; 2 Peter 1.16-19; Luke
9.28b-36
‘You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp
shining in a dark place,
until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your
hearts’ (2 Peter 1.19b)
In nomine Patris…
Prior to his
death recently, my spiritual director and confessor, Bishop Geoffrey Rowell was
sitting for a portrait. This is because as a former University chaplain many of
his former students and friends clubbed together and prevailed upon him to have
this done.
Not long before
his death I was with him, as he sat in his favourite chair, and we talked. We
talked about mortality - he was dying, but at the time I didn’t know how
imminent it was – and we talked about light.
Bishop Geoffrey
described the method of the portrait painter, who whilst not a man of faith,
was intrigued by light and what light exposes and what it conceals. We talked
about one of the major theological influences in Geoffrey’s life, Archbishop
Michael Ramsey, who wrote a good deal about light, glory and transfiguration.
For his funeral
a prayer card had been produced on one side an icon and on the other the finished
portrait that had been completed just in time. It was extremely moving for me
to see.
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| Bishop Geoffrey Rowell by Alexander Debenham, 2017 |
The portrait,
which appeared in many of his obituaries, shows Geoffrey in his episcopal robes
sitting in that favourite chair. The portrait shows a curious mixture of the
domestic – his favourite chair – and the ecclesiastical - his white and gold cope
and stole.
Geoffrey’s
gaze looks out beyond the viewer of the picture, as if he is looking towards something
beyond this world even, to something deeply captivating. This isn’t the look of
someone who is not paying attention to the person in front of him (a besetting
sin of many Bishops) rather it is a portrait of a man looking into the uncreated
light of God: he can see, to use the title of one of his books, The Vision
Glorious.
The Vision
Glorious is what lies beyond us, but also is close at hand: ‘you will do well’,
writes St Peter, ‘to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’.
Geoffrey’s
gaze is the gaze of the Christian (his mitre is visible but in the shadows of
the portrait). It is as if he is looking beyond to the vision of glory that, a vision
which we believe he sees now, in all its fullness; a vision glorious of what we
may all see in this earthbound life and existence of ours.
In the
portrait light gently washes across Geoffrey’s face, as if spilling out from
the glory he beholds, something like the look on Moses’ face after he had
beheld God’s glory in the Tent of meeting described in Exodus.
The light of
Jesus Christ is not reflected light,
but is light seeping out from his divinity: ‘I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life’
(John 8.12). The Christian bathes in that light.
On a rather
more prosaic level, I spent some time last week working with the lighting consultants
for the cathedral and discussing what lighting is needed when and where with
our new lighting system.
We covered
the sort of issues Bishop Geoffrey had touched with his portrait painter: the
way light can be used to draw out certain features; how light and shadow as
both necessary in order to give tone and texture to a portrait or a building. We
talked about how over lighting deprives a portrait or a building of its character
and the nuances of the subject: light is not well used when it bleaches out the
subtle details of the subject. Light can be used to pick out and enhance
features.
The Transfiguration
of the Lord bathes Jesus in light. But this is not a lighting scheme for a
building or to pick out the delicacies of a human subject.
 |
| The Transfiguration by Alexander Ainetdinov |
Rather it is
a declaration of divinity. This divinity shines out through humanity, the human
Jesus Christ, who is divine, at one with the Father.
The Letter
of James tells us, ‘all gifts come from the Father of lights, with whom there
is no variation or shadow due to change’ (James 1.17). The light that is seen
emanating from Christ is the uncreated light of God. Gregory of Nazianzus teaches
that if we imagine the sun to be bright, and it is – don’t look at it – then the
uncreated light of God is beyond brightness.
The call of
a Christian is to be attentive to the resplendent light of Christ as to a lamp
shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our
hearts. Christianity is in many ways a religion of light, light refracted into
a dark world, but a light upon which God declares, ‘Let there be light!’
Baptism is
the moment when we see the Light of Christ first rises our hearts: it connects
us with the creative purposes of God,’ ‘let there be light in this child of
mine’. Our own baptism, when we are washed clean in water, connects us to the
Baptism of the Lord and to his Transfiguration: ‘this is my Son, with whom I am
well pleased; listen to him!’
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| Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father |
Baptism
begins the life of paying attention to Christ: it is about bathing in the glory
that comes from him; about gazing upon his Divine Face which illumines our
faces; it is about being open to the search light of his wisdom and truth; knowing
him as the Beloved Son of the Father; it is about being lit up for life.
As St John
puts it in his gospel, ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life
was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
did not overcome it’ (John 1.4, 5). This is Jesus; this is Transfiguration.
The
Eucharist draws us into the darkness and shadows of being human and shines the
light of Christ into our lives; it takes us to the darkness, ‘in the same night
that he was betrayed’ and to the lynching of the cross, when, in the middle of
the day, darkness fell over the whole land (Matthew 27.45) and it takes to the
glory and splendour of Resurrection.
What this
means for us day by day is that we open our eyes to Christ in the world and see
what God is up to, the life in which we participate and seek to shine out too: as
we’re commissioned at baptism, ‘shine as lights in the world to the glory of
God the Father’.
‘You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp
shining in a dark place,
until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your
hearts’ (2 Peter 1.19b)
