Rev Andrew Gamman 2 March 2025
Readings Exodus 24.12-18 & Luke 9.28-43
When I was 11 years old I took my first aeroplane flight. I was travelling as an unaccompanied minor to visit a friend in Fiji. The trip required an overnight stay in Nadi and a second flight the next day to Suva. The thing that truly amazed me was seeing clouds from above. On take off, viewing them from below, they looked dark and foreboding, but through the other side, looking down on them, they were bright, white and staggeringly beautiful. When I returned home, I remember describing the top view of the clouds with great excitement to my family.
About five years later a young Canadian singer-songwriter was in an aeroplane and was also inspired by the sight of clouds. She wrote about it in her song “Both sides now”. There was the beautiful view from above with “ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere”.
But the second verse takes us to the view from below: “But now they only block the sun, they rain and they snow on everyone.”
The view from both sides of a cloud resonates with us, not just because of the beauty of nature described, but because of the symbolism it encompasses. Isn’t life like that? And isn’t there something hazy and unknown about it all?
Our gospel reading today takes us to the transfiguration of Jesus. It shows the two sides of the glory of Christ. And in each of these strange accounts in the synoptic gospels the story is all tied up with clouds. Jesus had taken Peter and James and John up on a high mountain. While they were there Jesus’ appearance was changed so that he shone with the brightness of the sun.
Then Elijah and Moses appeared and started talking with Jesus. All of this terrified the disciples.
Then, according to Mark’s account, a “shadow of a cloud passed over and covered them”. Luke, who has more to say about the cloud, tells us that they entered the cloud. From the cloud came the voice of God, “This is my Son, and I love him. Listen to what he says!”
Then, suddenly, everything was back to normal! The cloud had gone. Elijah and Moses had gone.
There was no more voice from God. Jesus looked ordinary again, and he told them not speak of the incident until after he had died and had risen.
What are we to make of this cloud that “covered them”?
The imagery of clouds is used throughout scripture to represent the presence of God. We look to God, but we see clouds. They represent the misty veil between the human and the divine; between the earthly and the heavenly. The cloud of God’s presence is a place of inspiration and of transformation. As we come close to God, things change. We change. Clouds are always in motion, moving, re-forming – as is our journey of faith which is only static if we are no longer on the journey.
Our passage from Luke evokes the image of Moses ascending Mt Sinai to receive the law. There the cloud had covered the mountain. On the seventh day the Lord told Moses to come into the cloud (Exodus 24.15-18). The cloud is the divine presence. In Exodus, the journey of God’s people though the wilderness was led by a cloud filled with the glory of the Lord. When the cloud moved, the people would move (Exodus 40.34-37). Mark tells us that our great hope, as God’s people, is for the return of the Lord with the clouds (Mark 14.62) and Paul adds that we will be gathered into the clouds together with him (1 Thessalonians 4.17). We’re not talking here of the cartoon pictures with harp-holding souls sitting among the fluffy whites. Instead, it’s a picture of the immanence of the divine presence.
This is the presence that we desire. It is wonderful, and it fills our imagination… but we can’t quite see it. It is interesting that Peter’s first reaction to the wonder of the mountain-top experience was to make shelters so they could stay in that moment.
But Jesus led them down from the mountain.
For in the meantime, we have the view from below.
We can’t stay on the mountain-top. We all have experiences that are wonderful – when we know God’s blessing and things are going well. But we can never stay in that place where we feel engulfed in the cloud of God’s presence. Our experiences of blessing and our knowledge that God is with us are to be taken down the mountain and into our relationships with others where we find human need. And that is just what happened our gospel story. Even though the gospel writers like to re-arrange events in their own unique order, all three of the synoptic gospels follow the story of the Transfiguration with that of the desperate man pleading for help with his severely afflicted son. (So well pointed out in the art of Raphael).
There is a point to this juxtaposition. We are to take strength from the times of knowing God and his blessing, for these situations enable us to carry on in times of difficulty and need; times when we can’t understand what is happening to us or why. This is our present reality.
There’s a stark contrast between the glory of the glowing Christ of the transfiguration, and the content of the conversation Jesus had with Moses and Elijah. According to Luke’s account, they “talked about all that Jesus' death in Jerusalem would mean” (Luke 9.31 CEV). At the crucifixion the gospel writers tell us it became dark in the middle of the day. Everything seemed dark. The view from above had gone. Now the clouds simply blocked the sun.
While the prophet tells us that clouds above offer us protection (Isaiah 25.5), here, where we live looking from below, there is so much we don’t see. There is so much that we don’t know.
But we have had a glimpse of the glory of the Lord, and we know we can trust in him.
As the Season of Lent begins this week, let us seek to see enough of God’s presence so that, in the meantime, we can be sustained in our faith to live here below in the shadow of a cloud. Jesus needed the encounter with his Father on the mountain-top to get the strength and determination to walk the path set for him through the valley of the shadow. He had intentionally gone to the mountain to pray. If this was necessary for Jesus, how much more so is it imperative that we also seek the presence of God to receive the strength to endure the valleys that we will inevitably pass through?
This up-coming Season of Lent let us determine that we will intentionally put ourselves in God’s way; make time to pray; meditate on God’s Word and renew our relationship with the Living God – and so be equipped to face the ups and downs that lie ahead.
Image: Raphael – The Transfiguration
댓글