I like it slow, a Transfiguration sermon

 

Transfiguration - A sermon preached at St Augustine’s

Victor Harbor 6 August 2023

 

Leonard Cohen sang, ‘I’m slowing down the tune’ adding ‘I want to get there last’ (Album: Popular Problems)

The singer songwriter who died in 2016 was an observant Jew all his life, yet stepped away from the fast lane living a Zen monastery on a mountain in California before returning to tour the world. His songs are threaded with Biblical imagery including references to Jesus and the Gospels.

Today our Gospel takes us into a Biblical landscape and into the heart of an experience of the presence of God in the Transfiguration Gospel.

When I prepare sermons, I practice ‘lectio’ an ancient way of ‘slowing down the tune.’  This is a slow and meditative reading of the text including reading it aloud as Scripture is written to be listened to and prayed through.

The image that came to me was of the three professional fishers climbing the mountain. I imagined their slow climb and saw them in my mind, looking back regretfully at the glittering lake in the distance. From the rocking planks of a fishing boat to sharp stones of the goat track, the arid windswept mountain their muscles aching, sweat dripping into their eyes. This I imagined. was a slow climb and it was made by James and John, known for their anger as the ‘sons of thunder’ and the impulsive Peter who six says earlier had recognised Jesus as the Messiah.

This small ‘church’ is being taken from the familiar to the unfamiliar and what they experience there on the mountain will only begin to add up after the shattering events of Pentecost, the resurrection, and the death of Jesus on the cross. Here there are three figures like the three crosses, the disciples watch and pray as they would do later in the garden of Gethsemane. Yet here there is no sense of the absence of God. At the cross some though Jesus was calling on Elijah, and Jesus himself felt his alienation and estrangement from his Father. Here the silence of absence is replaced by the voice. Peter on that exposed rocky mountain offers to make three shelters. I see this as an invitation to take this experience within the shelter of one’s life.

Later after a dialogue they will return to a scene of chaos and loss which Jesus brings healing and peace. This may only be cast out by fasting and prayer, forms of slowing, listening, the practice of attentiveness and seeking guidance.

In our prayer we are taken from the world of the familiar to the strange and that holds true if we pray alone or with others, we are never spiritually alone.  In worship we slow down to walk with Jesus. We are called to ‘be’ not to ‘do.’ When we slow down, we notice signs of grace and invitations to where we are called in faith to be.

In the letter of James, the brother of Jesus, we are instructed to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger (1:19) The Old Testament makes many references to a God who is slow to anger, compassionate, forgiving abounding in love (Numbers 14:18). Those who are people of the way respond and not react.  Disciples listen quickly and are not seized by a hurried emotional response.

James, John, and Peter were like many of us impatient, impulsive people in a hurry. I see myself in them being busy and always knowing the answer. Jesus in slowing down the tune made it possible for them to learn the rhythms of his Kingdom. I can learn this to in my own life by slowing down the tune. Like Peter, James and John I am called to serve a God slow to anger, full of compassion, forgiveness, love, and mercy, called into the grace of Beatitude not of battle.

Jesus’ commitment to contemplation, the slow unhurried practice of being in the Presence meant that he was able to respond quickly and appropriately when the need arose. Jesus saw deeply into the root of the problem bringing a healing word or action.

‘I’m slowing down the tune, I never liked it fast, you want to get there soon, I want to get there last’ wrote Leonard Cohen.

Let us slow the tune in our life with God, quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to react ready to respond as servants. Let us slowly climb trusting he is close by in the unfamiliar where we must trust and be led by the Holy Spirit.

After all we too want to get there last for, after all, Jesus promised, ‘the first will be last and the last will be first’ (Matthew 20:16)