October 27th

Exodus 39:1-40:38, Mark 9:2-32, Psalm 26:1-12

I always wonder why Daz haven’t tried to do an advert based on the transfiguration (“whiter than white”) but thankfully they haven’t yet. This is one of those events in the Bible that I love. Jesus meeting with the great names of the faith, a sign of his divine nature, this blessing from God “this is my son, listen to him”, the disciples left in no doubt, the bright shining nature of Jesus, showing his purity but also again that he is God in human form. Films today show us so many CGI effects, with super heroes bursting out of their skin. You can almost imagine that this human body can’t quite contain all the nature of God and so it just has to have a bursting out moment just to relieve the pressure for a bit. And then the statement that Elijah has already come back (John the Baptist although he is not named). There is so much just in one short passage.

Then there is quite an interesting scenario with the disciples and the dad. Everyone can see who Jesus is, he may still have that post transfiguration glow, but the dad of the boy still says “If you can”. Surely you would look at Jesus and know that he can – he can do all things. But it just highlights how sometimes we can all have those moments of doubt, even when we are faced by the all powerful God, it is human nature to doubt occasionally.

And then the disciples get some teaching. It is almost as if Jesus has to take them away to teach them about prayer and healing after they failed to heal the boy. Jesus says that prayer is the key. When we are faced with issues of healing all that we can ever do is pray and give it over to God. 

On another tack, we sometimes think that our worship is far removed from Old Testament worship, especially when some services have a worship band and data projector. But there are close links between the two. Like why do we have a table and put bread and wine on it? In some churches the table is still called the altar and there are direct links back to these passages. In our church our theology has worked through a few things and we no longer call it an altar, we put the focus elsewhere. But the links are still there. These verses have brought us to the end of Exodus but the story continues tomorrow in Leviticus.

As we carry on the journey into another book, there may be doubts, but they are just normal. The key, as with all things, is prayer.