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Experiences of the Divine

Reflection by Frances Flatman on the Readings for next Sunday :-


Foreigners driving on Greek or Cypriot motorways experience quite a shock on exiting these roads by being confronted by the word EXODUS! For Christians, it can never have just a routine meaning, but is filled with the story of the making of the Jewish people and their faith in God. Lent calls us to enter into this story of our Christian origins, and focus on where we are going and what this journey we are all making is leading us towards. For Jews, as we see in our First Reading (Genesis 15:5-12.17-18) and ultimately taken up in the Exodus story with Moses, it is about materialism, possession of land, which as we know has sadly brought with it a history of endless slaughter and conflict, as those who believe Israel is their God-given inheritance battle it out with others, settlers there from even more ancient times.


When Luke writes of ‘experiences of the divine’, as we see in both his Gospel (9:28-36) and in Acts, these events are never simply ‘one-offs’ but rather drawn out events as the situation develops, and those experiencing it are drawn into the situation and given ample space to ‘grow’ within it. Luke does this quite deliberately, because his audience, Theophilus and others, would already have been familiar with carefully managed meetings with the divine in their pagan lives. All over the Mediterranean great shrines to Apollo, significantly related to healing, in Asia at Claros, and Didyma near Ephesus, or Kurion on Cyprus, or Delphi and others, people went on pilgrimage and slept in great dormitories, ‘dream-chambers’ during which they ‘met’ god at a safe distance, carefully shepherded by the priests and staff. For hundreds of thousands, these visits would be recalled for the rest of their lives, they were life-changing visits. We take up the Transfiguration similarly, following on accounts of Jesus’ parables and healing miracles and ending with the feeding of the 5,000. Clearly expectation of the Messiah was running high. At this point Jesus delivers the first of his three predictions of his Passion (9:22) in which he tells his followers that he will be killed by the Jewish leadership and raised on the third day. After this we get the Transfiguration. In some ways, it begins traditionally, with Jesus praying Moses-like up a mountain, and we recall how Moses’ face changed when he met God, as we find Jesus’ face and clothing changes – dazzling! He meets with Moses, giver of the law, and Elijah, the representative of the prophets – ‘in glory’- yet we note they speak to him of his death, Exodus in Greek, in Jerusalem. This is a truly terrifying vision for Peter, James and John, for Jesus’ ‘glory’ is to be found in his death and not in worldly success or power. We see that the disciples are in that curious state between sleep and waking, so safe from the event, but having to face its implications. For Luke, writing for converts from paganism in the aftermath of the appalling failure of the Jewish Revolt with a ruined nation and the temple destroyed, this spelt out in unmistakable terms the rejection of the entire Jewish system of religion. In the end there is only Jesus (v32) and the disciples see ‘his glory’. Peter of course gets it entirely wrong, blathering on about three ‘tents’ for all those in the original vision, but then their experience of the divine takes a further turn as the cloud covers them all and they hear the divine voice which is emphatic on the exclusivism of Jesus alone, with its command that the disciples LISTEN to him. Jesus is God’s way for humanity, there is to be no other.


We find this reiterated in Philippians, (3:17-4:1) Early in his ministry, Paul visited the Macedonian cities of Philippi and Thessalonica, and we know that Jews there and their fellows dogged his ministry insisting that the ‘Christians’, a group within Judaism at that time, (the letter is c 50CE) must follow the Jewish customs of the law and circumcision. Paul stood resolutely against these demands and their special food laws, here as he remarks, treated as god. He insists that our faith is rooted entirely in Jesus who ‘Will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body.’ Christianity is not about materialism, but our relationship in and with God the Son, and the new life that we all enter into with him. Becoming stuck in materialism, be it food laws or land ownership, can become an obsession and a perversion; and Paul had broken forever with that religious belief and calls us all to do so as well. Our journey to God then must always be entirely rooted in Jesus, in his earthly life and the divinity he offers, getting stuck in possession with things is a challenge we have to leave behind. Lent can be a beginning of that life’s work.


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