This week I have received several appeals. The first came in the diocesan mailing asking that this Sunday we pray for Christians in Pakistan facing persecution. The letter talks about assault at the hands of extremists and terrorists being commonplace, it even mentions decapitations. It also talks about the laws of Pakistan being misused to make life difficult and we have an Anglican bishop from Pakistan on asylum in Leeds because the authorities took exception to his missionary work there - too many people were voluntarily converting to Christianity and he had to get out following death threats. The letter ends with a request that we pray for “Pakistan’s security, stability, peace and progress which demands faith, unity and discipline”. There is a whole sermon in that alone.

The second appeal came in an email from the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. He was talking about the nightmare that is the current situation in the Lebanon. The background and machinations of these troubles are very entrenched and go back over a century. Outside interference has not helped. Much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict just baffles me, rather like Northern Ireland sectarianism does. Atrocities are being committed by Israel and they are themselves under fire from rockets which didn’t appear overnight so must have been got in stock. It’s a mess and there is no easy solution.

A general principle in conflict resolution is looking for the common ground that all can sign up to and build on. When one side doesn’t believe the other should exist and the other side seems to be pursuing a longstanding policy of ethnic division and destruction there is a major shift required before common ground can be found!

Add to this Iraq, which according to a leaked email to the Prime Minister from a diplomat is about to melt down, and there are some very intractable and violent problems around. But there is nothing new there. What is different is the technology of violence which has the capacity to create destruction on a scale that previous generations would not have known. That said the period of the crusades gives us stories of rivers of blood following massacres and this image echoes a number of passages in the Bible.

This backdrop can make us wonder just what relevance our gospel reading has today (Luke 9:28b-36). What use is a transfiguration on a hillside to those facing slaughter or 100 years of conflict and violence? You can almost hear them say “hope you had a good time up there, but something a little more practical would be appreciated right now”! It does seem a little self indulgent.

It is precisely in the gloom and mire that visions of glory take on their significance and bite. Those suffering know that what they face is not right and there is a longing for a brighter day, a better way of living. That better way of living needs a vision to shape it and define it. On another hillside, Jesus gave the beatitudes >SMALL>(Matthew 5:1-12), the sayings that begin “Blessed are those who”. This is often paralleled with Moses coming down the mountain giving The Law at Sinai and the Ten Commandments as the central tenets of that. The new law tells us we are in the right place when we embrace meekness, hunger and thirst for what is right, when we embody mercy, purity and peacemaking. It also tells us that being persecuted in the cause of right is a doorway to the kingdom of heaven. It sets a vision of how to be and live, it challenges us with a new way. Suffering for what is right is itself a confrontation of the evil with a different way of being, so at least you are in the right place. A cease fire, though, would be a start.

When we want to know by what authority this teaching is given, which is a question that was levelled at Jesus from time to time by those puzzling over who he was, the Transfiguration gives us the glimpse. Our first reading (Daniel 7L9-10, 13-14) gave us the image of the ultimate authority. The Transfiguration makes a link with that and identifies this with Jesus. Put in secular terms, living in harmony with Jesus’ teaching is to live in harmony with the foundation of the universe. It is the way of life and peace. Living against it leads to all sorts of destruction and horror and the only way to unpick the messes we face is to tackle the root causes where meekness, justice, honouring and peace are not being lived.

Peter shows how much he hasn’t grasped this when he offers to make monuments to the event, to just mark it on the spot. The point is not to build a memorial in stone, a booth or a tent, but to live it. Living a vision of a better way cannot be predicated on the destruction of another. It must honour all and look for ways to co-exist.

This is the central problem in many of the major conflicts that are being faced. The extremists do not want to co-exist and there can be no solution if there is not the political will. Co-existence cannot be imposed. It also has to face the deep seated history which includes centuries of anti-Semitism and persecution, and the creation of the state of Israel itself which displaced and disenfranchised the Palestinian majority. It is a problem that has been compounded by outside political meddling for home agendas.

How this is all unpicked I can’t see. It will probably take decades because factions have to realise that it is in their interests to eschew violence and embrace peaceful co-existence. That takes time as some dare to risk overcoming the fears that divide and keep us locked into hostilities. It takes time as hands reach across the barriers and find that friends can be made of foes. It takes all that is involved in the building of trust and cooperation. It also takes some brave rejecting of the extremists who whip up hysteria and fury.

Behind it all and underpinning it there needs to be a vision of how it can be better. This is what we see at the Transfiguration. Not because God says ‘Hey look at me’ in some kind of egotistical way - that is not what the Transfiguration is. The Transfiguration gives the authority for Jesus’ teaching and says “This is my beloved Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35) When we do that those wonderful qualities of mercy, peacemaking, meekness and a deep honouring of all get their chance to flourish.

© Ian Black 2006

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