Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism Lent 2 2013

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 9:28-36

In a short while we shall celebrate the baptism of Anna, and rejoice with her, and her family and godparents, as she is made a member of Christ’s church and born again through water and the Holy Spirit.

When Anna’s parents and godparents have made their declarations on her behalf about faith in Christ, I shall make the sign of the cross on Anna’s forehead, with these words:

Christ claims you for his own. 

Receive the sign of his cross.

Do not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified.

This recalls the words which Jesus spoke just before the passage set for today’s gospel reading. Jesus has just predicted his death and resurrection, to the bewilderment of his disciples, and says to them:

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

It is after these words that Jesus takes his disciples up the mountain, and they see his glory, the light shining from him as he is transformed. They see the glory of the Father, the shekinah, the overshadowing cloud which had hovered over the Tabernacle in the days of Moses. And Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about his departure, the exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. In other words, his death.

This revealing of glory on the holy mountain is the beginning of a journey. But it is a journey of contradiction - it is the journey with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross. Beyond that, and only beyond that, lies the glory of the resurrection. As with Moses of old, this exodus is to accomplish the liberation of God’s people, liberation not from slavery in Egypt but from sin and death.

Even in this scene the death of Jesus is foreshadowed. On the night he is betrayed Jesus will take his disciples up another mountain, the Mount of Olives, to pray as he awaits his death. And there too the disciples will fall asleep, a sleep which is perhaps a symbol of their lack of spiritual perception. 

But the glory of Christ and the glory of the Father are revealed on the holy mountain today, before Jesus leads his disciples along the path of contradiction and suffering. 

In the Bible glory is about the reputation of God, about showing forth God’s nature. So the glory of Christ is a revelation of Divinity. It is not simply a dazzling vision, but something that will unfold its meaning through the path of suffering that Jesus is to take. God’s reputation, God’s glory, will be established in what is to follow, through darkness and the cross to the resurrection. 

That is the path of exodus, of liberation from sin and death. Humanity was created to share God’s life but through sin has turned away from God’s good purpose. Sin itself is a mystery, we do not know where it came from. We simply observe that humanity, from the dawn of consciousness, has preferred to be turned in on itself rather than being open to God. Humanity tends to prefer rivalry, violence, division, possessiveness, jealousy, lust - all those things that close us in on ourselves and shut us out from communion with God and one another. 

The way of the cross, which is the way by which we are liberated from all that, is simply this: God’s love entering into our unloveliness, to free us from ourselves and open us up once more to the love for which we were created. It is this which will re-establish God’s glory, God’s reputation, in his world. 

The great Christian thinker St Augustine of Hippo taught that evil was simply a deficiency, the taking away of good from what God has made. So sin and evil have the ugliness of something marred and damaged, whereas goodness is beautiful, and God is supremely beautiful. This concept of spiritual beauty is of great importance. It has nothing to do with the skin deep beauty of glossy magazines and advertisements. It is the profound beauty of the soul restored in the image of God, reflecting God’s glory. It is the beauty of holiness. It is the beauty of Christ transfigured on the holy mountain.

But in the world as it is, marred by sin and spiritual ugliness, the beauty of God is both revealed and hidden. The beauty of God attracts us to draw us along the way of contradiction, the path of liberation which leads through darkness to the cross and resurrection, to the true knowledge of God. In this week of his retirement some words of Pope Benedict seem particularly appropriate: “True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of beauty that wounds man: being touched by reality, by the personal presence of Christ himself.”

On the path of liberation the beauty of God is made known in the lives he is transforming, and particularly in the life of the Church, and wherever holiness and goodness appear as the true meaning of what it is to be human.

The beauty of the liturgy, of sacred art, architecture, music, helps to draw us into this inward encounter with the beauty of Christ, which, in life as it is, is always a path of contradiction, drawn by glory into darkness through to the resurrection. 

Every Sunday Mass is like the mountain of transfiguration, the beauty of God revealed in the liturgy, in the transformation of material things which are the outward signs of inward grace. But every Lord’s day is followed by the week of daily life, descending to the plain with its crosses and contradictions, when the glory of God sometimes breaks through and sometimes is hidden in darkness.

So too the pattern of our lives, from baptism to death and the resurrection into eternal life. Baptism itself is a sign of dying and rising with Christ, a sign of contradiction and of liberation. It is also a spiritual washing away of sin restoring the beauty which reflects the beauty of God. This is so for all, both adults and children, for Christ is redeeming the whole of humanity, in which all share one common human nature. Christ draws all to himself.

Saint Augustine, on his conversion to Christian faith in his adult life, wrote these words:

Late have I loved you, 

O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, 

late have I loved you!  

You were within me, but I was outside, 

and it was there that I searched for you.  

In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  

You were with me, but I was not with you.  

Created things kept me from you; 

yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.  

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  

You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  

You breathed your fragrance on me; 

I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  

I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  

You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

As we baptise Anna today let us pray that the beauty of God may shine on her, and on all of us, as he draws us to himself and transforms us by his holiness, now and for ever. Amen.