Clouds have captured the imagination of writers for centuries. The children’s writer, Roald Dahl begins his James and the Giant Peach with a young boy lying on the beach with his parents cloud busting. As they gaze at the clouds overhead they start seeing shapes in them and play a game describing what they see. Suddenly the imagination kicks in and a giant rhino swallows James’ parents whole and there begins a magical adventure via his cruel aunt and some talking bugs and grubs in his giant peach.

The song writer Joni Mitchell saw clouds in a different light in 1969 in her famous song. These clouds blocked the sun, they rained and snowed on everyone, so much she would have done but clouds got in her way. They were dark and stood as an image of not seeing clearly and being obstructed.

In the Bible clouds often stand as a sign of the mystery of God. At Mount Sinai, Moses enters the cloud when he enters the presence of God. This cloud is the cloud of glory; it is one of mystery and majesty. We don’t see clearly as if on a mountain walk when the low cloud makes it difficult to see.

Clouds feature quite heavily today. There was a cloud in our first reading (Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14) from the mystical book of Daniel. One like a human being comes with the cloud of heaven. To him is given dominion and glory and kingship and all peoples, nations and languages are to bow before him. There is mystery, for he comes in the cloud. There is majesty. There is visionary experience of being in the presence of God and the only response we can make to that is to bow in humble adoration and praise. The first Christians reading this passage saw a connection with Jesus and so this reading is taken to be an expression of the hope and instinctive sense that Jesus fulfils. They saw beyond the clouds that the same glory experienced in the past was at work in him.

Then our gospel reading (Luke 9:28-36) gave us another cloud. This time it is the cloud that envelopes them as Jesus is transfigured, as they are given a vision of who he is, as if they have peeped behind the veil into the holy of holies itself. The imagery is clear, they have entered the intimacy of the presence of God and they are silenced by it; even Peter is silenced by it!

We don’t understand everything. We think we do but the cloud stands as an image of the mystery at the heart of the universe, at the heart of creation. It is a mystery that takes us to face the glory of God and we are silenced by this, we bow in adoration and praise. It is a mystery that draws us into an encounter with holiness, which our calendar of saints and holy days helps us engage with and connect with.

There is another cloud today, and when we enter the mystery we have to confront this dark cloud too. Sixty years ago yesterday a very different, mushroomed shaped cloud was seen for the first time in conflict over Hiroshima in Japan and few days later at Nagasaki. The awesome power of creation and the application of science were put on full display. It has not happened since in conflict and we pray that it never will.

The historians are still debating whether dropping the atom bomb was really necessary to bring about the end of the war with Japan. Some say it was really about the US government displaying its superiority in power and force to the Russians, so that they could gain strategic advantage in the post war Japan and Far East of Asia. Some say that diplomatic routes were not advanced as far as they could have been. Others say that the Japanese would not have accepted these negotiations without the humiliating show of strength that the bomb brought and therefore fewer casualties were involved with one decisive act than would have been the case in a full scale invasion.

I recently conducted a funeral of a man who if the war had not ended when it did would have been sent to the Far East and his widow maintained that if that had happened she would have lost him then. Our July parish magazine carried similar comments from Ray Hardy and Stan Willison who were expecting to be sent to the Far East after VE Day and Tom Stennett was out there already. Their testimonies make this history real.

As we gaze on the clouds we have to confront the awesome ability of human beings to use the fruits of the same science for cancer treatment or destruction on an apocalyptic scale. We can generate electricity through nuclear fission or fusion - the energy is released by either dividing the atom (fission) or combining nuclei of different elements, fusing them together (fusion). The waste product is rather a problem and controversial.

When we are dealing with stable governments who make calculations about the repercussions of their actions, nuclear capability has probably kept the lid on some of the more wild excesses governments are capable of. When in the hands of suicide bombers and the extremists who don’t make those same calculations we enter a very frightening period. It is a Faustian pact that locks us into a dangerous game of brinkmanship with massive risks.

The forces that give us life - fusion is how the sun works - can also bring death and destruction. We have known this for a long time. The forces that created the North York Moors, the volcanic action that gives us the granite rocks, also cause massive destruction that destroys and ends life. When a volcano explodes it too produces a cloud; a cloud of ash and sulphurous fire. We face today with our clouds the mystery that is life and that is also death, the mystery that is a created order that sustains life and also ends it.

It remains a ‘cloud illusion’, as Joni Mitchell put it 36 years ago, and we really don’t know clouds at all. They remain a symbol of mystery and not seeing clearly. Behind them is the awesome power of the sun: nuclear physics that can sustain and end, that can be used to heal and to kill.

The clouds of the Transfiguration give us a peep into the mystery of everything. They also present us with a choice and it is an awesome choice. Will we choose the cloud of glory, of mystery and profound hope, or will we choose the cloud of death and destruction. We face that choice as much today as we have ever done in the past.

© Ian Black 2005

Home