We would see Jesus

The V. Sunday in Lent

From the beginnings of human history, it has seemed natural in many cultures to associate the divine with the heavens and high places (which is not to say that the mysteries of the earth and its depths have not also been given their due). The light, warmth, and rain necessary for life come from above; mountains bring us closer to the sky, sometimes penetrating the clouds and always giving us a different and broader perspective. Climbing a mountain can be a powerful form of pilgrimage, and mountains have always seen many shrines, retreats, and the like built on their slopes.

In the immediate precursor to our own religious tradition, both the gods whose traditional attributes were subsumed into those of yhwh were gods of the heights: ’Êl, the ancient high god, dwelt on a mountain in the midst of the sea, and Ba‘al, one of his sons, was among other things the sky- / weather- / fertility-god (the Psalms are full of this traditional imagery, reapplied to God (’Êl) / the Lord [yhwh] as understood by Israel). Thus it is no surprise that a number of mountains feature prominently in the sacred geography of Israel. It is at Horeb that Moses receives the revelation of the Divine Name, on Sinai that he meets the Lord again to receive the divine Instruction, on Zion that the Temple is eventually built, and where, in the prophetic vision, the restored and universal Israel will be established. Perhaps it is only on a high place that one can bear the weight of any morsel of God’s glory (which is no ethereal thing, but a substantial force that presses people to the ground [1K 8.11; cf. the ‘weight of glory’ in 2Co 4.17]) because gravity and atmospheric pressure are lessened at altitude. In any case, God, in this understanding, is ‘highly exalted’ (which simply means ‘lifted up’), and no one may look upon the Lord and live.

In a distinct echo of these theophanies, the Transfiguration of Our Lord takes place on a high mountain (traditionally Mt Tabor), complete with Moses, Elijah, glory and a cloud, and the divine voice (there is even a ‘weighing down’; sleep, here as in Gethsemane, and perhaps at other times [cf. Hymn 190.2: ‘raise your weary eyelids, Mary’], sometimes protects us from what we cannot bear but also sometimes hinders us from embracing our destiny). St Peter naturally wishes to stay upon the mountain to celebrate this new Festival of Booths – but Our Lord knows that he must descend, and indeed descend to the uttermost depths of suffering, death, and hell. In St Luke’s understanding, despite the theophanies of the Epiphany and Transfiguration, Christ had to suffer and then ‘enter into His glory’ [Lk 24.26].

For St John, however, Christ’s suffering is His glory (by this understanding, Thomas Kelly had it wrong in saying ‘The head that once was crowned with thorns / is crowned with glory now’ [Hymn 483]; the crown of thorns is the crown of glory). There is no Transfiguration in St John’s Gospel, for the fullness of God’s glory already dwelt in the Lógos from the beginning and dwelt among mortals in the Incarnation [Jn 1; cf. Cl 1.19, 2.9] – Christ bears the entire weight of God’s glory* – and if there is further ‘glorification’ to be had, it is to be accomplished precisely through Christ’s being ‘lifted up’ not on a mountain, but on the cross [Jn 3.14, 8.28, 12.32], which is His throne [Hymn 165/6]. In St John’s understanding, ‘every mountain and hill is brought low’; the ‘new Jerusalem’ comes down from heaven; one must look upon the Lord in order to live. The cross, then, is our ‘high place’; the Table is our Tabor; the human is our theophany; and we must be emptied of self to be filled with God’s glory.

If we, like the Greeks of Jn 12, ‘would see Jesus’, then we may well ‘lift our eyes to the hills’ [Ps 121.1, 123.1], but we need truly look no further than to lift up
· our hearts (Sursum corda) and soul [Ps 25.1, 86.4, 143.8],
· our hands [Ps 28.2, 63.4, 119.48, 134.2, 141.2; bcp 113;
   Hymn 416; that is, the traditional orans position],
· ‘the cup of salvation’ [Ps 116.11, by which we understand the chalice],
   and, in cooperation with and imitation of God and His Son,
· the lowly [1S 2.8/Lk 1.52, Ps 107.41, 113.6, 145.15, 146.7, 147.6]
   and sick [Mk 1.31, 9.27; Lk 10.34; Mk 2.3/Lk 5.18].

In Christ and with Christ, as we discern and welcome His appearing in the Church, in prayer, in the Sacraments, in our neighbors and in our hearts, in lowly flesh and blood and bread and wine, we are lifted up to the heavenly places, filled with the fullness of God [Ep 3.19; bcp 311], and able through Him to stand and bear its weight.

*  Perhaps in a way this is the same as bearing the weight of the world, or the burden of being Everyman. Cf. the saying famously attributed to St Irenaeus of Lyons: ‘the glory of God is man fully alive’. What Irenaeus wrote, or at least the extant Latin translation of the Greek original, is ‘Gloria Dei est vivens homo’ (The glory of God is [a / the] living human, or, [a / the] human, living); he went on to say ‘Vita hominis visio Dei’ (‘[The] life of the human being [is] [a / the] vision of God’ – though Latin word order is flexible, and one might as well translate ‘The vision of God is the life of a human being’). Christ is the (one truly, and in this world already fulfilled) ‘vivens homo’, and in him we see the ‘visio Dei’ that is our life – but we partake of and participate in that fulfillment and glory as we live in him and he in us, particularly in the Church and its Sacraments.