laudable Practice

At the Parish Eucharist on the Sunday before Lent, 11.2.24 Mark 9:2-9 “And he was transfigured before them.” It is at the centre-point in Mark’s Gospel.  The accounts of miracles and parables - revealing the Kingdom of God - have been the focus of Mark’s Gospel up to this point. Saint Peter, on behalf of the Twelve, has just confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. Mark is about to turn towards Jerusalem and the week of the Cross and the Resurrection. And it is at this pivotal point in his Gospel, that Mark brings us, following Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, up the mountain, to behold this mysterious event: “And he was transfigured before them”. The word Mark uses - now translated ‘transfigured’ - means transformed, mystically changed. The clothes of Jesus, we are told, “became dazzling white”, a description which speaks of a brilliant, light-filled glory. He adds, “such as no one on earth could bleach them”. He is reaching for words and phrases which will communicate ...

In a recent tweet , theologian John Milbank referred to John Colet (d.1519), the humanist scholar and Dean of St Paul's, saying "We need his spirit now. Christian Platonism. So crucial to Anglican tradition".  My response was to post a picture of Benjamin Whichcote, a reminder of how the Cambridge Platonists ensured that this tradition of thought continued in the reformed Church of England.  Milbank recognised this with his reply "the candle of the Lord", a reference to the characteristic motif of the Cambridge Platonists. It was rather appropriate that the exchange occurred just prior to the Transfiguration, a feast replete with Christian Platonist themes.  In his sermon 'Our Conversation is in Heaven' (1651), Whichcote unfolds our participation in the Transfiguration. Here in this world, there is the salvation of grace, which for the substance, is the same with the salvation of glory. Spiritual life is always before eternal life ... 'At the appear...