Heaven in Lidl Car Park: Sermon Preached on 15th February 2026 (Sunday Before Lent)

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Peter’s, Poulshot

2 Peter 1.16–21 ; Matthew 17.1–9

“And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun.”

Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Lidl in Devizes transfigured? We don’t expect to see transfiguration when we’re running out to buy a packet of biscuits and a cheap bottle of wine… but it happens.

We all know what it is to drive down a familiar road, somewhere that’s a bit run-of-the-mill and isn’t exactly known for being pretty, and find that your eyes are suddenly open to a beauty that you hadn’t noticed before. Often it might be the way the Sun lights a long-familiar scene, especially in the golden hours around sunrise and sunset; or it might be the sudden appearance of a red kite or a lost pair of deer; or it might be the trees in autumn, and at this time of year it is often, of course, the flowers.

Well, Lidl looks very different in twilight, especially on one of those rare evenings when the clouds are lit crimson from below. When the conditions are like that, sometimes you find that for a minute or two, the strip lights in the store shine through the window with just the perfect cast to complement the clouds. I remember one night in particular, about three or four years ago, when I was doing my shopping just a little bit later in the year than this, and this wonderful sight was accompanied by a hint of springtime blossom on the breeze, and a blackbird was singing for the last time in the day before it went to sleep—and just for a brief moment, you could sense Heaven breaking into the car park of Lidl in Devizes.

In just the right circumstances, even the most banal of things can experience a transfiguration, reminding us that the whole of creation is supercharged with awe and wonder.

*  *  *

I always feel a bit sorry for Peter in this story, in which he misunderstands exactly what is going on—as Peter so often does in Matthew’s Gospel. Having gone up a mountain with Jesus, and with James and John, Peter sees Christ’s whole form turned into a sort of brilliant white, and the presence of Moses and Elijah, ancient Jewish heroes who had been dead for hundreds of years. Even though his head must have been spinning from what he was seeing, Peter offers to make some “tabernacles” as the King James Version puts it, but the word could just as easily mean temporary huts.

Peter desperately wants to be of help to Jesus. But this moment of transfiguration seems to have lasted for only the briefest of spans. By the time he can even finish his offer, a mysterious disembodied voice from the heavens speaks just one sentence, telling them Jesus is God’s son. Then the whole mystical experience is over almost as soon as it began.

Hard as it is to fault Peter’s desire to help, Peter would have been far better just trying to absorb a priceless, God-given, experience rather than trying to build cabins for visions.

I think there are huge lessons for the Church when we reflect on the Transfiguration in that way. The Church wants to present itself as the solution to the world’s problems, when it can’t even sort its own problems out. The world is already full of organisations out to solve problems, which sometimes even solve some, and some of these organisations are Christian and some aren’t. Christians have no monopoly on doing good in the world. Nobody ever said we would—certainly Jesus Christ didn’t.

The one thing we do have a monopoly on is the good news that Christ has risen from the dead and that, if we faithfully follow Him, we will do likewise. In seeking to make this world a better place, we should never lose sight of the world to come.

And that good news is shot through this story when we examine it in detail. One thing to note is the point in Matthew’s Gospel in which it takes place. Matthew’s Gospel is divided into five distinct sequences of action separated by five long sections where Jesus teaches his followers directly, known as discourses. After these are finished, the culmination of the Gospel in Holy Week in Jerusalem takes place.

Our reading comes in the final section of action before Jerusalem. This is one of the last experiences Jesus has with His closest friends before everything falls apart in the holy city. It also comes, we are told directly, six days after Peter became the first person to work out Jesus is the Messiah. The appearance of Moses and Elijah on the mountain before God’s voice is heard from above indicates just how great a figure Jesus is, greater even than these great Jewish heroes.

And here’s what’s really significant—this proclamation of Jesus’ greatness and closeness to God, this confirmation that He is indeed the Messiah, comes just before He goes to the Cross. Christ’s true and ultimate Transfiguration will take place on the Cross, when what seems to be the brutal public execution of a sad and probably mad provincial street preacher is actually the means of God’s triumph. For through dying, Christ destroyed the power of death over the human race. The Transfiguration on the mountaintop happens just before Christ’s defeat is transfigured as His victory.

That’s why we have this Gospel reading on the Sunday before Lent, to prepare us for our own road to the Cross. For our lives involve bearing many crosses—and somehow, much as we hate them, they are the means of bringing us to Heaven, the means by which our frail bodies and fallible minds will be transfigured into the beings we were truly made to be.

*  *  *

As you all know – or as you will all know after I tell you – the Gospels, like the whole of the New Testament, were written in Greek. And the word translated into English as “transfigured” in our Gospel reading today is also one that is familiar to us in its original Greek: metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is a common enough process in nature, one most of us have been familiar with since our primary school years when the teacher kept frogspawn in a fish-tank and we all watched it slowly turn into tadpoles and then into frogs. We accept the idea that natural creatures have entirely different forms at different points in their lives. How strange to think that it could not be the same with us, or that the metamorphosis might be limited to the four dimensions of space-time that we can perceive with our five senses, when we know there is far more to reality than that.

Our culture demands that we blind ourselves to the clues from nature that lead us toward our own true nature—at least if we want to be considered sensible and rational and not some sort of religious nut. But if we keep our eyes open, these signs are so ubiquitous we can even see them in the car park at Lidl. And perhaps, those brief moments when Heaven touches the earth should teach us to stop trying to make cabins for visions and instead to make space to gasp in wonder at the awe-filled journey that our life truly is.

And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.

Thanks for the great image to Derek Σωκράτης Finch—have a look at more of his work via this link. The photo was licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0.