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View from the Vicarage

My dear friends

A neglected August festival

As Christians we live with two calendars. The secular calendar is marked by the passage of the days and months. The ecclesiastical calendar leads us through seasons - Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Trinity - which are themselves punctuated and enlivened by festivals - the feasts of saints, like Peter and Mary Magdalene, and other holy days. August is something of a holiday month as far as great festivals are concerned, but one day, 6 August, which often passes without notice, is of great significance in the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. This is the feast of the Transfiguration. Mark, our earliest gospel [c65AD], records that ‘Jesus took with him Peter, James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.’ [Mark 9.2-4] The account concludes with the divine voice from heaven in which God declares Jesus to be his beloved Son.

 

A window into the Transfiguration

Forty years ago this summer, in June 1970, I visited the community at Taizé for the first time, and was privileged to stay with the brothers in their guest house. Whilst I was there, I bought my first icon, illustrated on this page. The original was painted by Frère Eric and, like all icons, is a window into a divine event, in this case the Transfiguration. The icon is in a contemporary style, but the painter has followed, as all icon painters do, the orthodox tradition. The radiant figure of Jesus is flanked by Elijah, with the raven at his feet, and Moses, holding the tablets of the commandments. The angel, with his hand pointing towards Jesus is the visual depiction of the divine voice, whilst three chosen disciples, Peter, James and John, strike poses of wonder and amazement. I have often used this icon as a window into God as I have tried to still my mind in prayer.

A date to remember

But 6 August, as well as being the Feast of the Transfiguration, is also the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. One hundred and fifty thousand people died that day and in the months which followed and nearly as many after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 7 August. A week later, the Japanese surrendered and the Second World War came to an end. The disfiguration of so many human lives and of the cities in which they lived continues to challenge us and is especially poignant alongside our celebration of transfiguration. Mark makes this event in the life of Jesus the turning point in his gospel. As soon as Jesus and his disciples come down from the mountain, they encounter a boy who is tormented by a demon, which throws him into convulsions. We might describe his condition in different medical terms, but that boy stands for all that can batter and disrupt a human life. And from this moment on, Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem where he will face his arrest and trial, and be crucified. In the life of Jesus, transfiguration leads directly to disfiguration; divine love meets evil head-on. Celebrating this feast is a summons to all Christians to stand with Jesus at the point at which God’s love and evil meet, to give ourselves, in so far as we are able, to be the agents of healing in human relationships, in the experiences of brokenness and deprivation in society around us and in the endless search for justice and freedom from fear and darkness in the world at large. 

Revd Canon Dr Christopher Dent

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