Sermon preached on the feast of Transfiguration – 6th August 2023: DANIEL 7: 9-10,13-14, LUKE 9:28-36, ( 2 PETER 1: 36-39)

Deacon Chris Saccali, St Paul’s Athens

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts always be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and Redeemer AMEN

Samothraki was our holiday destination this year, oneiro zois, a dream of a lifetime for me as a classicist and biblical scholar. We went with koumbari, friends from UK, the wife also studied at Bristol university in the Classics department. I took with us Diane Farr Loius’ guidebook Travels in Northern Greece. She is well known to many of us as a travel and cookery writer and for her columns in the dear old Athens News.

She writes : Samothraki is almost all mountain, the pre Greek Samos means high, and the area Thraki Thrace; it is full of jagged volcanic black rock. Saos is the highest peak in the mountain range imaginatively called Fengari, moon. It is the highest peak in the Aegean.

Under this shadow is the sanctuary of the lesser Gods which we three visited on our first full day early in the morning before too much heat and visitors struck. There was an Orthodox church dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the entrance by the car park. We went inside. No reference to St Paul there although he was reputed to have landed from Troas near the Ancient site. There is a landing stage nearby but as my koumbaros, a modern Paul remarked, it was more concrete than ancient stones. My husband stays in the car or coffee shop on these expeditions to churches, ruins and monasteries. Despite the wildness of the terrain, Samothraki is a green island with lush vegetation and full of hydrangeas reminding me of childhood holidays with grandparents in the Isle of Wight.

It took several days and searching online with the aid of Google maps to find where a modern tribute to St Paul was built thanks to a Greek American donor from an Evangelical church. It is a well kept secret and people will put you off seeing it, telling you that you cannot visit. We were a pretty determined trio and the gate was open so we walked up to find a glittering mosaic in panels telling of Paul’s story in Acts and his vision to go across to Macedonia to spread the gospel there. There were many director chairs littered around and a lectern made of stone that reveals events are held there. I will post the photos with an article in the next Newsletter.

Paul must have encountered the Sanctuary and known about it when he put into port and then sailed away the following day. You will probably know the famous winged statue of Victory, niki ,Nike  the symbol atop the Rolls Royce which was excavated there in the sanctuary but which resides in the Louvre. A replica now has been erected outside the small museum but is the site and its location that is entrancing. My friends wandered all over but sometimes I prefer to sit in the shade and just imagine myself back there over 2,000 years ago.

I think today on the Feast of the Transfiguration it is good to reflect on the Mountain Top experience the three favoured disciples James and John and Peter witnessed and imnagine their and our response. I read from a reflection by Trevor Dennis:

Finding God at the top of the mountain

Is not so very surprising.

Mountains are bigger than we are;

they put things into perspective,

lift us above the humdrum,

remove us from what is routine.

Mountains are never trivial

they take our breath away.

People have said for millennia

their gods have lived on mountains.

they have talked much sense.

When mountains have not been available for holy eyes to look upon

then people have built them for themselves

great ziggurats puncturing their flat horizon to make sure their Gods are close,

but not too intimate.

Finding God on top of a mountain is not so very surprising.

Hadn’t Moses once met God on Sinai’s jagged rock?

Had not God called to him from a cloud bright with divinity?

Had not God talked to him face to face,

As one speaks to a friend,

Sharing his secrets with him,

Making him his confidant,

Causing his face to shine with such a light

that he dazzled them all.

And had not Elijah fled to that same mountain

run home for God’s mothering

against the deadly Jezebel?

Had not God spoken with him there

even though the carnival of fire, wind and earthquake

Was but an empty show?

Finding God on a mountain uis not so very surprising

Though once, they say, the devil took Jesus to the top of one

To show him all the kingdoms of the world,

To make their people look very small

And easy for his taking

But then the devil did never understand mountains

They never took HIS breath away.

 

What was surprising was the God we found up there.

The Transfiguration on Mt Tabor or the mountaintop – Samothraki – is a kind of pilgrimage which reshapes our lives. I hope we all have a chance to go on one this summer or travel there in our hearts and minds whether we are on vacation or staycation. We need transformative experiences as individuals and as a community. St Paul’s during vacancy must not stay still but intentionally seek to be a community of believers living as beloved Children of God, encouraging one another and working together for the Kingdom.

Today is also Hiroshima day which caused another kind of destructive cloud which cast a long reaching shadow of a different kind. We cannot celebrate that anniversary but it serves as a reminder of the temptations and evil that can prevail throughout history. Nothing, however, can quench the light of Christ not even his exodus to the world which this passage in Luke and the Collect point to.

We can be transformative in the way we speak and treat each other within the body of Christ and recall the Father’s words to his son recalling His baptism and ours but with a slightly different emphasis: ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen, listen to him.’  We shall be hearing more about the way we speak and listen to each other and to God in my next sermon in two weeks. AMEN