Given at Christ Church, Bulkington
Reading—Mark 9. 2-8
Awe in the everyday. ‘I Touched Infinity’, Potterne Hill, 27 July 2024, © Gerry Lynch.
A perfect sunset, a chord by Fauré, the giggle of a baby, the stars on a dark night – all of those can give us the most extraordinary sensation, for which we use the word awe. We become aware that we have encountered something that is more glorious than the language we have to describe it – much greater in scale and complexity, much greater in beauty and moral grandeur. We sense that we are part of something far bigger than ourselves. Wonder mixes with fear. We are lifted up out of the drudgery of our routine lives. Yet we also realise how small we are; if we are lucky, our ego deflates a bit.
Awe is more than just a feeling. It seems to remind us of facts of life that we often forget. The universe is indeed vast; each one of us is small and lives for the briefest of spans; yet we are distantly related to all life on Earth; the complex elements that make up our bodies were forged in the furnaces of long-dead stars. Everything does indeed connect.
Much of contemporary life seems as if it were designed to minimise the number of times we experience that sense of awe, and from thinking too deeply about it when it does happen. The constant buzzes and beeps, the 24-hour TV schedule, and the infinite scrolling websites aim to keep us chained to our screens so we never notice what is beyond.
To notice the truth of our lives, we need to escape their humdrum.
Like many things, technology has amplified a problem that long predates our times. People of all sorts of cultures and religions have always gone to remote places away from the everyday world to experience wonder and, perhaps, the touch of God.
That’s why Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, by themselves. There they experienced an extraordinary vision of Moses and Elijah appearing to Jesus. Moses was the lawgiver; Elijah a prophet. Both Moses and Elijah had their defining encounter with God on a mountain. Together they represent the inheritance of Israel and point to Jesus as its fulfilment.
At the time, though, Peter, James, and John were absolutely clueless; they later recalled babbling some nonsense about building huts for visions. Then God the Father Himself seemed to appear and acknowledge Jesus as His son. Then the vision was over—but they still remembered it decades later, when the Gospels were being written.
The same story is in three Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke. What we heard tonight was the briefest version, from Mark. Luke, almost certainly the last of the three to be written adds a detail – that Elijah and Moses talked to Jesus about what He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem: a departure, or ‘exodus’.
Whether or not Luke records the detail exactly as it happened, it can’t be a coincidence in those three Gospels the journey to Jerusalem starts not long after they came down from the mountain. This moment of awe sets the scene for Holy Week, acting as a reminder that there is a greater, transcendent, reality even when all hope seems lost, and offering a glimpse of the new reality that will emerge on Easter Day.
Awe reminds us that our existence is much more than its mundane reality. The awe we sometimes feel in our own lives is an intimation, a little glimpse, of the glory that awaits us for eternity, if we put our faith in Jesus Christ and His promises.
Amen.
