SERMONS

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Jill Cheetham –12/2/10

Christ Church Luke 9: 28-36

Each of us can have something of the Transfiguration experience.  Perhaps some of us already have.

Peter, James and John had an experience like never before on the day Jesus took them up the mountain.  When Jesus was praying they saw his face change and his clothes became dazzling white and, as Luke says, ‘they saw his glory.’

Jesus’ transfiguration was not so much a transformation as a revelation.  Jesus did not become something different because something had been added from outside or his substance had been changed.  What Peter, James and John saw in him was the glory of God within Jesus, the light, that had been there all the time, and had always been there, had shone since the beginning of creation.   The veil, the distraction had been taken away and they saw Bruce Prewer calls ‘the God-light.’   The ‘God-light’ that was most fully revealed in the person of Jesus, yet because it is at the heart of creation, is present in all things.  It’s around us everyday.  Everything, everyone around us, each of us has something of that ‘God-light’ within.

How might we experience it?  Perhaps you have recognised it already. 

Today I would like to reflect for a while on one way of approaching life that honours the ‘God-light’ and may allow us to catch a glimpse of it.

That way is wonder. 

When I teach a session on Spirituality in Pastoral Pathways I name the ability to Wonder as an indicator of spiritual wellness.  In the short time available in the class I recommend to people that to learn about wonder they should go see…a three year old.  Children just naturally know how to wonder at life and find the excitement and enchantment in a ladybird or a leaf.  What happened to us?  We have been moulded by a logical, fill-in-the boxes, colour-inside-the-lines world.

Wonder as we are considering it today is not used in the sense of ‘The seven wonders of the world.’ It is rather the emotion or attitude in response to what we perceive that is unexpected, inexplicable, or unfamiliar and has elements of surprise, astonishment, or admiration.

Albert Einstein  said
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

I have been helped in my reflection by the book Lost in Wonder by English writer on Benedictine and Celtic spirituality, Esther de Waal.  On the first page she says she wrote the book
‘to awake us from drift and drowsiness into a fuller and deeper sense of attentiveness to the world around and to the presence of God in the world’
Does that sound like the Transfiguration experience to you?

Wonder begins with stopping, letting go of what we think is important in our frantic lives, being still and being attentive to the world around and within us.

Being attentive is more than seeing.  Each day many, many things pass through our field of vision which we may or may not see. Being attentive is seeing with our inner eyes in contemplation.  It’s seeing the various depths and dimensions of life and being open to see the ‘God-light’ within.  We look at our familiar world in a new way, and find the ‘God-light’ not out of this world, only on mountain tops but deep within the reality of this world, in our ordinary, everyday existence, in the things we don’t normally notice.

It’s not only seeing.  All of our senses can cause us to wonder: the fragrance of fresh mown grass, the taste of ripe mangoes, the sound of a babbling stream, the feel of ………(fill in your own favourite).

When we pay attention our feeling of wonder has elements of reverence, astonishment, amazement and delight.  I hope you can recognise them in the experiences you remembered earlier.  And when we wonder we resist the temptation to analyse, scrutinize, control or possess. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Holocaust survivor, leading Jewish theologian and philosopher, poet, mystic and social activist wrote

"The perception of the glory is a rare occurrence in our lives. We fail to wonder, we fail to respond to the presence. This is the tragedy of every man: 'to dim all wonder by indifference.' Life is routine, and routine is resistance to the wonder. 'Replete is the world with a spiritual radiance, the eye hides it all,' said the Baal Shem. 'Just as a small coin held over the face can block out the sight of a mountain, so can the vanities of living block out the sight of the infinite light.'"

He might also have mentioned rushing through life so fast we don’t ever stop to pay attention.

Around us each day there are lots of things we might see and pay attention to.  But some things seem to draw us to them.  Hedley Beare, good friend of this congregation wrote
‘For whenever an event, a situation, a person seizes our attention, then we first acknowledge that it is God-in-that-event, God-in-that-person, nodding to us and recruiting the Godwardness-in-me for a response.’

It is a reflection of God’s generosity God is reaching out to us at all times, in all places with invitations to life.

It’s not just in things we perceive the ‘God-light.’  There are a whole range of experiences we might consider.  We might just mention, today particularly, love.  Love in all its forms is an expression and experience of the ‘God-light.’  I saw it particularly recently in the love of a mother for her quite disabled adult son as she spoke to him, showed him affection and engaged him with her whole being with an overwhelming love even as he couldn’t speak or to my eyes show much response.  That love reveals the ‘God-light.’

While wonder doesn’t lead us to analyse, scrutinize, control or possess it can lead us further.

 

Psalm 8 v3-4 gives us some indication

3When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
      the moon and the stars you set in place—
 4 what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
      human beings that you should care for them?

Wonder leads us to go beyond ‘How wonderful’ to why is this all here?  What is my place in all of this?  These are essential spiritual questions of our existence.  We sense something of the greater reality beyond ourselves leading to reflection on how we live in relationship to the mystery of existence and everything we see.   Through the experience of wonder we recognise our connection in a new way.

As we pay attention and wonder we are changed.  Wonder encourages and sparks the ‘God-light’ in us.  Over time we are transfigured. The end result is that we become more fully whom God has created us to be.  As Irenaeus said ‘The glory of God is a person fully alive.’

In everything around us, in each experience God is revealing the ‘God-light’ to us.  We don’t have to try to make it happen. Our experience may or may not be like the disciples’ experience on the mountain top.  Our task is to pay attention to what is and wonder.  After all we were born with the capacity. We could all do it once when we were three years old.  Perhaps we’re all just out of practice. 

G K Chesterton wrote
"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder."       

Elizabeth Barrett Browning sums up for us

Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God; 
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, 
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, 
And daub their natural faces unaware.  

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

 

Meditation

 

"To look"

The doer looks with a focused gaze
upon a row of things once made,

or, if of the reformer's mind, reshapes the things
to fit the times.

But the watcher looks in another way
and sees the commonplace of day
a radiance on a wilted flower, a nest in a cathedral tower.

The watcher moves with a deliberate gait and knows the power of the wait
to lift the weariness of time
and show the world as a holy shrine.

 

By  Stephen Shick. Consider the lilies

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