Reflection at York Minster
Sunday 14th February 2010
Reflection delivered by the College Principal and ordinands Dorothy Stewart and Nick Nawrockyi, at York Minster, Sunday 14 February 2010.
Text: Luke 9: 28-36
Voice 1
Moses – leader of an enslaved nation, fearless fighter against tyranny, led God’s people through a wilderness towards freedom. Moses, who on a mountaintop met with God and received God’s Law.
Isn’t that a strange thing? Moses finds his people in slavery, in a life full of "do"s and "don’t"s. He promises them freedom. And then he offers them a law – another set of rules, "do"s and "don’t"s.
So Moses’ life seems self-contradictory. Can the freedom fighter and the law-giver be the same person? For us it seems a strange notion. But for Moses the law offered a new sort of freedom – freedom to live an amazing sort of life. The law that Moses gave was God’s law, and so it offered God’s people the freedom to live as God wants them to.
- Moses freed God's people from the tyranny of Pharaoh so that they could be free to live as God wanted them to.
- Moses gave them God's law so that they could know what God wanted for them.
Voice 2
In Jesus’ day, the Jewish people awaited the return of a prophet like Moses. Or was it a prophet like Elijah? It hardly seems to matter, there were so many parallels between Moses’ ministry and Elijah’s. Elijah, like Moses, bold prophet, fearless challenger of unfaithful authority, challenged idols (those things which usurp the place of God in our lives), and called sinners to repentance and to lead a new life.
Elijah believed that the lives of his fellow Israelites were self-contradictory. They continued to worship the God of Israel. But they also worshipped the idol Baal. So on Mount Carmel, Elijah asked the people, "How long will you go on limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him". Then on the mountaintop, Elijah called the people of Israel to single-hearted worship of God, demonstrating the power of God by calling down fire from heaven.
Together Moses and Elijah represent the whole history of prophecy among the people of Israel.
Voice 3
"As Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightening. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendour, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem."
What could Moses and Elijah be doing on a mountaintop with Jesus? The easiest way to answer that question is to look and see what they were doing with Jesus on the mountaintop.
Firstly, Moses and Elijah were reflecting Jesus’ glory. As they stood close to him, their clothes reflected his glory. In fact, without knowing it, they had been standing near him throughout their ministries on earth. They had foreshadowed him. He was now fulfilling the promise of their ministries, doing in full what they had done in part.
- As Moses had set God's people from slavery to Pharaoh, now Jesus set God's people free from slavery to sin.
- As Moses had revealed God's Law on tablets of stone, now Jesus revealed the perfection of the Law in his own life.
- As Elijah called people to repentence, now Jesus gave people power to live a new life, single-hearted and centred on God.
Secondly, Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus about his departure, his death, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. For this is how Jesus would fulfil the promise of their ministries.
- For it was on the cross that Jesus set us free from slavery to sin.
- It was on the cross that Jesus revealed the perfection of faith, hope and love.
- It was on the cross that Jesus gave us power to serve God with singleness of heart.
The glory the disciples saw that day, the glory shining in the face of Jesus, the glory reflected on the clothes and in the lives of Moses and Elijah, was the glory of the cross of Jesus.