Open to God, Open to All

St Michael & All Angels, London Fields

News, Events and Special Services

Hall Net Zero Project: 80% of St Michael’s carbon footprint is attributable to our well-used Community Hall.  In response to the Church of England General Synod’s 2020 resolution calling on Parishes to work towards net zero carbon emissions by 2030, we recently decided to replace the end-of-life gas boiler currently heating the hall spaces with a new electrically-powered air source heat pump and insulate the ceiling, windows and exterior wall and partition the stage to contain the area requiring heating, in association with repairs and improvements to the Hall roof.  We are delighted to have secured funding towards the cost of these works from the Archbishops’ Council’s NZC Boiler Replacement Hardship Grant Fund and from Benefact Trust and hope the work will begin soon.

Thursday lunchtimes 1pm to 2.30pm termtime, alternating fortnightly between our Social Group and our Bible Study Group. We meet in the Chapel to the left of the main Church entrance off Lansdowne Drive.  Free for all ages. Any questions ask Bec or the Licenced Lay Minister.

Interested in Christian meditation? The Meditatio Centre based at St Mark’s Church, Myddelton Square, EC1R 1XX has a full programme of events. See here for details.

Christians Against Poverty Money Courses: Simple, effective and free money management courses teaching budgeting skills to help people get more control of their finances. To find out where and when the next course near you is running, visit www.capmoney.org.uk.

Sermon on the Transfiguration 27.02.22

Maggie |Hamand LLM

This account describes an intense religious experience, a life-changing encounter, in which the disciples see Jesus in his glory, which is the glory of God. It is a deep and illuminating experience revealing Christ’s true identity. It shows the disciples – and us – how Jesus’s human life is infused with the divine – a reality that is shocking to conventional, limited views of God and humanity – and it also points to our own destiny with God.

This encounter also looks both backwards and forwards – back to the great prophets, Moses and Elijah, and forward to Christ’s resurrection and ascension. For me, it recalls the revelation of God to Moses in Exodus, in which he received the ten commandments, which also took place on a mountaintop. In this account, the mountain was covered by a storm and darkness and Moses ‘drew near to the darkness where God was.’ The story tells us that a pillar of cloud descended to Moses, and that God spoke to him out of that cloud. After this encounter we read that the skin of Moses’s face shone because he had been talking with God, and that he put a veil on his face. The image of this veil is striking, as if the experience was so strong that he had to protect other people from it. Moses has, after all, just been told by God that ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’

The implication is that before Jesus’s coming, no one could know God directly, or see God face to face. But at the transfiguration, when the voice from the cloud that descends declares that ‘This is my Son,’ it is as if Jesus becomes transparent, so that the overwhelming light of God shines through him. While God is still hidden, the face of Jesus is not. In Jesus, we are able to see the face of God, and the veil is cast away. Through Jesus, we can truly see God, see God at work in the world, know God in a more intimate way.

These two passages we have heard show a curious link between darkness and light. While the glory God shines forth from the faces of those who have spoken with him, in both cases, God speaks out of cloud and shadow. It’s striking to me that the transfiguration happens when Jesus and the disciples are at prayer. It is in prayer, after all, that we come closest to God. As we move into Lent, we are urged to spend more time praying. (This year, we will be running a series of Lent sessions on Thursday evenings, in co-operation with other local churches, where we will use Taize chants as a way to move us into the silence of true prayer where we hope to encounter God).

But we do not need to be in church, or on a mountainside, or with others, in order to pray – we can pray anywhere and everywhere, at every single moment of our lives. Prayer can consist not of words, but of an active, open presence to the world, of acts of love and kindness, which are in themselves a transfiguration. I like the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of transfiguration: a ‘complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state’. I wonder if any of us can remember having had a ‘transfiguration moment’? Perhaps we were tired or fed up or finding life difficult, and something happened that stopped us in our tracks, enabled us to perceive that God is in everything, and transformed our way of thinking and feeling. These transfiguration moments, which lift us out of ourselves and give us a glimpse of something ‘other’ – of the presence of God – are precious – and can so easily passed by unnoticed. Perhaps it is a beaming smile from a complete stranger in the street. Or it could be a small child skipping with abandon in the sunlight in the park. Perhaps it is a rainbow appearing after days of cloud and rain. More importantly it can be a moment of forgiveness, or a small act of kindness from a friend. It could be that moment after a bereavement when the pain suddenly eases and you realise you will survive the grief. Perhaps it is a moment when we realise that someone loves us. These experiences can transform and transfigure our day, even, sometimes, our lives.

Christ’s transfiguration shows us that all human lives can be transfigured – so that the light and love of God can shine through each one of us. Paul writes in the second letter to the Corinthians: ‘And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of God as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.’

Let us too pray to be transformed. We pray that we may shine in the world as the light of Christ, and, as we begin our Lent and Easter journey, follow him through death into glory, until death leads us all into that final transfiguration where we will meet with God face to face. Amen.