I've seen the light!

 

Sunday 14^th February – Sunday before Lent

2 Kings 2: 1-12. The “double portion” of Elijah’s Spirit asked for by Elisha isn’t a selfish request. A double portion usually in Hebrew means the two thirds of the estate inherited by the elder son so Elisha is actually asking to be Elijah’s heir or successor. The only two people in the Bible not to die are Enoch (Gen. 5.24) and Elijah, which obviously fed the belief that Elijah would return to make a straight path for the messiah.

2 Corinthians 4: 3-6. Light is a natural symbol of revelation but for many people they can’t see that light and the truth remains veiled. Before we get too judgemental here we need to remember that Paul himself knew enough about Jesus to attack his followers originally. He too was veiled, and it took a massive mysterious vision to shake him out of his original assessment and cause the scales to fall from his eyes.

Mark 9: 2-9. The transfiguration of Jesus is an event without parallel in the gospels and reveals to James and John that Jesus is not one of three people – Moses and Elijah being the other two, but he is above them and exceeds them in every way. In this revelation of God, the Father speaks out of the cloud (denoting the divine presence) and repeats the words heard at his baptism “This is my son, the beloved” and adds “Listen to him!”. Faith in Jesus exceeds all other kinds of faith.

 

 That people don’t respond positively to the gospel in our time is hardly new, although it’s tempting to think that.

Jesus after all, the personification of the gosepl was crucified by his opponents and all the saints and apostles encountered major opposition usually resulting in their torture and death as well.

Indeed, perhaps our greatest evangelist, St. Paul started out as a persecutor of the followers of the good news.

To Saul, using the idiom he himself uses in his letter to the Corinthians, the gospel was veiled from his eyes, until he was jolted out of that state by the spiritual equivalent of a massive kick up the backside – his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.

To say that all those who don’t see the gospel as “good news” have their eyes veiled from seeing the truth is a more poetic way of expressing it.

What is needed is light. The thicker the veil, the brighter the light has to be to penetrate and get through the veil.

Peter, James and John were having trouble appreciating just who Jesus was and what he represents and the transfiguration of Jesus where his clothes became dazzling white, Moses and Elijah appeared and the voice of God boomed out proclaiming Jesus as his beloved Son was supposed to be that literal dazzling shining light to bring them to their senses.

But even this display didn’t work initially – with them offering to build three dwellings for them. Only in hindsight did this vision of the uncreated light of God shining through Jesus have the desired effect.

Peter had already made his confession “You are the Christ” in the last chapter but what this revelation meant had yet to really sink in.

What all this tells me is that getting people to accept the possibility of God, then accepting that he is present and was specially present in Jesus, that he is love and wills are health and happiness is a hard job at every step in the process. And that even mature followers of Jesus always have much more to learn, which usually comes in step changes.

So the whole church is a learning and developing school of thinking, prayer and contemplation that has to start from scratch in each generation.

My message today then is simply to be kind to yourselves.

We spend far too much time fretting and becoming angst ridden at the state of the church, our personal faith, the ambivalence of most of the population to the gospel, and while this anxiety is natural it is also counterproductive.

We only have direct control over what we ourselves do and believe, so we need to discipline ourselves and as long as we are attending communal worship, praying, reading the Bible and other spiritual works, and trying to act out the gospel principles that is all we can do.

Otherwise, we can become trapped by our own fears and pre-occupations. To shake us out of that that state we need to do what Jesus did often. Retreat to a quiet place and for prayer and contemplation.

Contemplation is seeing through God’s eyes and knowing the oneness of all creation, seeing love light and God’s hand in and through all things. What is required for contemplation is stillness, calm, quiet and communion with God.

To go forward Jesus first took a step back. The church would do well to follow our Lord as he asked us to.

Instead of jumping on every trendy bandwagon, or making political gestures, we need to retreat and gel together in a calm unified whole, centred on the gospel of healing, peace and truth. And rest there a while.

Spiritually refreshed and in God’s renewed strength we can move forward, knowing full well that the road is long, difficult and stony but being fazed by that. Not being surprised by people not understanding or even deriding us. Jesus went before us and we are in communion with him who experienced all this before us.

That sense of peace and joy that pervades both good and bad times is the ultimate mark of a Christian that we can all aspire to but it doesn’t happen by chance. It takes, time, discipline, stillness and contemplation.