From original blessing to transfiguration - the light spreads.

Genesis 12:1-4 & Matthew 17:1-9

“Bless you 9 times” my Irish uncle used to say when I was a child after I sneezed. It was a meaningless expression of well-wishing that was uttered automatically. Nothing could be more different than the blessing of Abraham. 

Last week our vicar, Sue, spoke of “original blessing” - the story of our God, our world and humanity. Genesis 1-11 can be seen as primeval history. In the stories, which follow creation and original blessing, we find things going horribly wrong - repeatedly. Humanity persists in making disastrous choices. What was true then is true now. We read it in our morning newspapers we see it on the TV news. Today as we contemplate a potential pandemic of Coronavirus we see people hoarding and profiteering. We have corrupted all of God's good gifts -- the gift of family and love, the good gifts of beauty and work, the gift of community among neighbours and nations, and the gift of fellowship with God.

In these early chapters of Genesis, humanity persists in making destructive choices and each time there are consequences but they are always tempered by the mercy and grace of God. 

This culminates in the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11, where it looks like we are all doomed forever to have no love or peace or sense of community among neighbours and nations. But - Where is the story of God’s grace to follow this time around? What happens after Babel?

In Genesis 1 when God blessed humanity, God says “Be fruitful and multiply”. Our story today really starts with Genesis 11:30 - “now Sarai was barren; she had no child”.  In that society where fertility and posterity were everything, this was a sign of hopelessness. It seemed that everything had come to an end. 

Confused and scattered, completely demoralised - this is the hopeless point to which humanity’s wrong choices, our wrong choices, sin always brings us. It destroys our sense of community. As the writer of Genesis saw it, that's what God's creation had come to - confused and scattered over the face of the earth.

Now what? There seems to be silence this time. We go on with a new family story after Babel but God is not mentioned. Will God leave them forever? Here, in the middle of chapter 11, there is only the silence of God. We hear no word of forgiveness, no word of mercy and no word of divine love.

From Eden, we have come to this place. People are scattered, restless and confused. There are migrations and wanderings. They appear to be alone. We’ve been watching a drama, there’s been plenty of action, conflict and resolution but now the light fades and all we see are a few confused nomads milling around in the dark. 

This family (and with it the whole family of Gen. 1–11) has played out its future and has nowhere else to go. Barrenness is a metaphor for hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future. There is no human power to invent a future. “now Sarai was barren; she had no child” 

Onto the dark stage, off in the corner, a small spotlight appears; because in the world of faith, barrenness is not only the condition of humanity, it is the arena of God’s life-giving action. If it was my job or yours to begin a new history we would surely have chosen a more hopeful context. But no, as we see so often in scripture, God surprises us - God speaks a powerful word into a situation of barrenness, irreparable hopelessness. Into this situation, God speaks a word of blessing. Abram and Sarai are not portrayed as special and worthy in some way for God to speak - it seems God chose them almost because of their very hopelessness in that bronze-age society - an elderly couple with no hope of having children, the end of their line. 

God calls them to leave - to move away from the only family they’ve ever known, surely the only family they’ll ever know - this is surely counter-intuitive!. Creation started off with a world of chaos and darkness and this new creation starts with a couple who have lost all hope. This new start, this new creation, is all about blessing - the word blessing is repeated 4 times in the first 3 verses. Immediately we see that this blessing is not for a worthy couple, not even a “pity blessing” for a hopeless couple - this blessing has a purpose, a mission. This blessing is given to Abram & Sarai to be shared and passed on - this calling of God is not just to receive a blessing but to BE a blessing. The scope is vast - all the world is to be blessed via Abram. 

Blessing in scripture is not well-wishing the way we use the word. Pronouncements of blessing in scripture were powerful and effective. They were actions rather than simply speeches, with the power to change situations and to alter circumstances. The effects of blessing included fertility, prosperity, security. These are what Abram was promised - security of place, descendants and a great name. The nation of Israel today identifies as children of Abraham, Jesus is identified as a descendant of Abraham and we Christians name Abraham our father in the faith. The blessing of Abraham has indeed impacted all the world in concrete ways, in ways Abram could not possibly have imagined. That faint spotlight in the corner of the stage grew brighter and brighter and larger and larger until the eventually light will fill the entire stage. The light of blessing, the light of love, the light of God. 

In our gospel reading today three disciples had another kind of blessing - it was one of those liminal experiences on the threshold of heaven and earth - a further revelation of the nature of Jesus, a mystical experience we can barely begin to comprehend. And Peter, dear impulsive Peter - he wants to stay there - grab the blessing and keep hold of it, confine the light of God in a building - but his babbling was interrupted and the experience ended. Jesus even instructed them not to share it until the time was right. Clearly, this blessing wasn’t just for them to experience and hold on to and just as clearly Peter and the others did later share what happened. Was it memories like this helped Peter in the dark times, when he sang hymns in prison, when he faced his own mortality did this experience help inspire him and fill him with hope? The story of the Transfiguration has inspired painters and poets and mystified theologians for 2 thousand years. It was a blessing for Peter and the others to share with the world not hoard for themselves.

We have a liminal experience each Sunday with the Eucharist - in fact one could call it a liminal rite.  Liminal rites have been described as having a 3-fold structure with pre-liminal rituals (for us - the gathering, the ministry of the word, prayers and exchanging the peace), then the liminal rite itself (the Eucharist we share together with the real presence of Christ) and this is followed by post-liminal rituals. The final part of the post-liminal rite each Sunday is a compulsory part of a valid Eucharist here in NZ - it is the dismissal - when I say “Go now to love and serve the Lord. Go in peace” and you respond “Amen. We go in the name of Christ”. It is a reminder to us all that this blessing we receive from God today (the real presence of Christ) is not just for us - it’s not because we are worthy or even because we are desperately needy - the blessing we receive, the blessing of God’s own presence, like the blessing Abram received, is not FOR us - it is FOR the world - it is so we can go out and share God’s love and God’s presence in the world. In concrete and effective ways. As it says in first Peter, we are a royal priesthood and a priest mediates God’s presence to the people. Like Abram, our father in the faith, we too are called to be a blessing; priests, all of us, in this world that needs God’s grace, God’s generosity, God’s justice, and God’s beauty. This lent - let us seek to know how each of us individually (and all of us as a community of faith) can be a blessing to the community and world in which we live. Amen.

For further meditation on the transfiguration see Malcolm Guite's sonnet