[Propertalk] Last Epiphany b 2018 - 1 of 3

[Robert P Morrison]

	After last week, I'm splitting this draft for Sunday into three parts
to see if it'll get through.

	Last week's second part never did make it! 8-(

	Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY   THE LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE
EPIPHANY b

	2 KINGS 2:1-12  11th FEBRUARY, 2018

	2 CORINTHIANS 4:3-6     PSALM 50:1-6

	MARK 9:2-9

	 Notice the illustration of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the
announcement page of this morning’s bulletin. 1 Giovanni Bellini
shows Jesus, with Moses and Elijah, and Peter, James and John, on a
grassy high place. Curiously enough, however, where Jesus is
transfigured in the imagination of the painter isn’t that far from a
village. A cowherd is taking an animal out to pasture – or possibly
home for milking, we can’t tell. But he’s quite oblivious to
what’s happening not that far away. Nor, for that matter, do those
around Jesus seem to be paying any attention to anyone but Him. Were I
there with Him, I’m pretty sure I’d be doing the same.

	 Now Bellini DOES show both artistic licence AND imagination in his
representation of what the Gospel describes, and yet you might say,
quite justifiably, that all that he was doing was tweaking the
perspective. I believe he was inspired to show Jesus and the cowherd
in this juxtaposition. It makes the point of Jesus’ connectedness to
the world.

	 What strikes me about this painting is that Jesus, in all His
majesty, could almost reach out to touch that cowherd, and the cow
too, for that matter.

	 I wonder why I haven’t seen any representation quite like this
before. I wonder why it hasn’t crossed my mind. Usually, our
thoughts go to Jesus in some incredibly remote area, as if, somehow,
He were untouchable, unreachable. But Bellini, in what I consider a
stroke of genius, presents us with the glorified Jesus on the doorstep
of the smell of a byre, of the muddy, hoof-trodden pathways of life.
After all, John, in the fourth Gospel, said, “We saw His Glory.”
Glory and common dirt are reunited once again, pointing us forward to
next Wednesday when we’ll hear the words, “Remember, O woman;
remember O man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return”,
with the extra words implied today, “before you too will come into
glory.”

	 I’m sure that Jesus needed reassurance that He was on the right
track towards the end of His shortened ministry. I’m sure Jesus was
fearful of what would happen in the days to come. I’m sure He knew
that this transfiguration was for His benefit as much as for
Peter’s, and James’, and John’s. Whether He was calm, as most
illustrators depict, or anguished as He stood surrounded by the Glory
of God, what happened that day was for Jesus, to assure Him that He
would be surrounded, covered in glory as He went to Jerusalem and His
eventual execution.

	 Yet that could have been told to Jesus by Himself, as had happened
so often when He went out by Himself in the very early hours of the
morning, before even the birds were up. Not this day, though. John,
James and Peter were there representing not just the other disciples;
not just the hundreds of people who’d been touched in one way or
another by what Jesus had said and done; John, James and Peter
represented us right here, and every single person who’ll come after
us, showing US the glory that is to come, to reassure US that, no
matter what pain, what loneliness, what discouragement, what abuse we
may be experiencing right now, nothing can take from us the Glory of
God.

	 So Bellini, guided by the Spirit, draws us to see just how close is
Jesus’ contact with the world, and how present is the Glory of God.
As the writer of the second letter to the Corinthian Christians put
it, in the midst of the pain, the persecution, the shaming that was
going on the life of early Christians – from among their own friends
as well as from unbelievers – in the midst of everything that hurts,
God’s Glory is not beyond our grasp. “If our Gospel is veiled, it
is veiled to those who are perishing.”  Somehow, they are SO
unenlightened. It’s not that they don’t understand – few, if
any, of us can say that we understand. But some people, even those
around us, cannot accept that God’s Son has come close to us and has
stayed close to us. There are those in the first century as well as
the twenty-first century who have erected walls to keep out from our
hearts, and minds, and lives the loving embrace of Jesus which calls
us to follow Him.

	 The first letter to the Corinthians could not be called a successful
document, at least it was far from wholly successful. “… if Paul
hoped to have no more trouble from the Corinthian church he was to be
grievously disappointed, though it is fair to remark that the cause of
the new troubles seems to have entered Corinth from without.” 2

	So it is, two thousand years on. I wonder what it is that makes us so
susceptible to doubt, and to those people or ideas that would prey on
us.

	There are many around us who are cynical about faith and have become
distrustful of the Church because they’ve been brought to think that
Jesus is, somehow, as far removed in both experience and concern about
everyday life as a Person could possibly be. Many have come to think
something along the lines of “pie in the sky when you die”.
They’ve become unable to think of Jesus with His hands dirty.
They’ve been pitied or ridiculed, possibly, for committing to a
belief system which others say is out of touch with reality. So this
celebration today, this Transfiguration of Jesus, serves to bring the
Glory of God into the lives of those who wear less than immaculate
clothes, or struggle to find enough food, or whose lives seem devoid
of things to bring them joy.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20180208/c6a72fd0/attachment.htm>