And so, we come to the last Sunday of the Season of Epiphany, during which we have considered the various ways in which Jesus is made manifest through the Scriptures as the Christ, the One sent from God to save us from our sins. In the verses preceding the gospel passage we read together this morning, Jesus has been at prayer with his disciples, who have recognized that he is indeed the Christ of God. Now, he is at prayer again, on a mountain top, and the select three who are with him see and hear the glory of God in and around him, surely confirming their earlier recognition.
And then, nothing much seems to change, except perhaps for the worse. At the beginning of this chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus gave his twelve closest disciples power and authority over demons and diseases, then sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God in word and deed. Now, having come down the mountain, Jesus finds that at least the remainder of the twelve seem to have forgotten how to do this, and he expresses his exasperation with his disciples before healing the desperate father’s stricken child.
In tension with his experience of the wonderful reality of the glory of God, Jesus must contend with the ongoing reality of our fallen condition, our stubborn reluctance to do what is necessary to allow the fullness of the kingdom of God to be established in our midst. Later in the chapter, Luke describes how John and James, two of those privileged to witness Jesus’ Transfiguration, demonstrate this tendency in us as they try to exclude from their company those who do not follow Jesus in ways that they approve of, and as they offer to destroy those who do not receive Jesus as they have. Jesus rebukes and corrects these prejudices in his disciples, as he repeats his teaching about the need to get ourselves and our pride out of the way if we are to make space for the kingdom of God in our midst.
Jesus also confirms his acceptance of the inevitability of the suffering and betrayal that await him, insisting that those who would follow him as his disciples must be prepared to take up their own cross daily in their turn, learning humility and forgiveness from him as a way of dying to their self-centredness and self-absorption. This notion of dailiness is echoed by the apostle Paul in his second letter to the difficult Corinthian church, as he describes how those who repeatedly turn to God through Jesus gradually experience more of the freedom of God’s Spirit at work within them, renewing them inwardly day by day even while they might outwardly appear to be failing.
I think this is an essential aspect of our hope as monastics in seeking to live in faithful response to our vocational calling. Day by day, we turn to God again through Jesus by his Spirit within us, praying that the life of Jesus will be made manifest even in our fallible human flesh, as we ask God to shine his light into the darkness of our hearts and make us transparent to that light, for the sake of those around us in need of God’s healing lovingkindness.
When Moses came down the mountain after spending a long time alone with God, he did not know that his face was shining, though those around him could see it. Dare we hope for something like that, as we seek with unveiled faces to behold the glory of God even as though reflected in a mirror? Dare we hope to be transformed unawares by degrees into the image of what we see in that reflection, through the various ways light comes to us, by the mercy and grace of the Lord, who is the Spirit?