St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church, Chicago

Archbishop of Canterbury

Eileen and I are so pleased to be back in Chicago, one of our most favourite cities, and in this lovely church of St Chrysostom's. We are grateful to the Rev Amy Richter for her welcome on behalf of the Rector, Fr. Raymond Webster.

It is especially good and appropriate that the President of this Eucharist is the diocesan bishop Bill Persell.

I have to admit that I never find it easy to preach about the Transfiguration of Christ. Not for any theological reason but because another Anniversary makes this a sad day. You will know what I mean - a mere 55 years ago on August 6th 1945 the war came to a terrible end when an atom bomb took the heart out of Hiroshima. Eyewitnesses speak of the blinding light and the terrible heat. Two days later another atom bomb destroyed Nagasaki. In total, several hundreds of thousands of people perished in those two bombings. The effect was to bring to an end the second world war and no doubt saved the lives of many, many thousands.

We recall going to Nagasaki ten years ago and seeing the outline of a man's body on a wall. When the bomb exploded, the man who had been standing a little distance away from the epicentre of the explosion, was immediately vaporised leaving just the vivid outline sharply and terribly defined on the wall. The present Anglican bishop of Nagasaki, Joseph, was just a small boy at the time and by chance was visiting his uncle a mile or so away. They were having breakfast outside the house overlooking the beautiful harbour, filled to capacity with Japanese warships. His uncle asked him to take the rubbish down to the garbage site fifty yards away down the hillside. The bomb fell when he was at the tip. He was flung to the ground and lay there for a long time, stunned and overcome by the noise, the wind, the smoke. Then came a terrible silence. He plucked up courage to return to the house. It was destroyed and of his uncle there was not a trace. But Joseph in a private conversation with me used a phrase which brings together the transfiguration of our Lord and that dreadful event on Transfiguration Sunday in Nagasaki in 1945. He said that some Nagasaki Christians used to speak of the terrible 'glory' of the bomb - because of the light that was brighter than the sun.

We will misunderstand the Transfiguration if we think it is primarily about Jesus. It is not; it is primarily about Peter, James and John. Just a few passages before Jesus had manifested himself to them in a different way. He had asked them: 'Who do you say that I am?' Peter had replied: 'You are the Christ, the son of God'. We call that event at Caesaria Philippi the the Great Confession. Peter had nailed his colours to the mast - he had now become an enlisted man in the army of Jesus.

And now, on a different mount, Jesus is transfigured before his disciples. The revelation confirms that he is saviour and lord. The light that blinds is also the light that reveals.

You may have noticed from your own walk with God that, whenever one takes a fresh step forward in the Christian life, something new is discovered of God and his love for us. I recall reading some years ago that when Paul Claudel, that brilliant French writer and playwright, found the meaning of Christianity for himself, it is said that he clung to a massive pillar in Notre Dame Cathedral and exclaimed: 'Oh God, you have become for me a person!'

Moments like that are moments of transfiguration. Perhaps, just as real if not as life shattering, you can think of moments when for you the glory of God has come through the blacks and greys of life - the birth of your child, that sunset during that special holiday, that special service...

There is, then, something very authentic and natural about Peter's reaction. He and his comrades did not want to leave the mountain. They wanted to immortalise the moment; frame it; protect it; savour it - and keep it to themselves. 'Lord, let us make three booths'...

That's the problem with all great experiences - if kept to ourselves they freeze experience rather than liberate it. So William Blake put it so well when he wrote:

'The cistern contains; the fountain overflows
Expect poison from the standing water.'

Unfortunately, the church is full of cisterns! People who have been blessed by God - they too have experienced great moments of blessing: moments of conversion when, say, as a teenager; and, perhaps, great sacramental moments of grace in confirmation and those summer camps... and then, the slog of the middle years... The water settles and those wonderful experiences are not put to use. And, possibly, those experiences become anti-experiences which ward off new ideas or thwarts new possibilities.

No doubt all communities can echo the sentiment of the English churchwarden who in the doggerel said:

My ancestors have been churchmen for a thousand years or so
And to every new proposal we have firmly answered
'NO!'

Perhaps you know of church people like that!

How do we, then, today maintain the freshness of discipleship in following our Lord?

The answer I will give is 'expect moments of grace'. In other words, expect moments of transfiguration when Christ will be transfigured for you. The moment could be a simple communion service like the one we are participating in today.

So, Matthew Arnold, that rather miserable writer and poet of Victorian England rather uncharacteristically wrote a splendid account of the preacher of Shoreditch whose faith was kept alive through the simple experience of the Eucharist:

'Twas August and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited-
I met a preacher there I knew and said,
'Ill and overworked, how fare you on this scene?'
'Bravely' said he. 'For I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living Bread,'

From a very different theological stable the Cornish evangelist Billy Bray put it more humorously:

'Precious loaf this! The patriarchs and prophets ate of this loaf and never found a bit of crust about it! Apostles and martyrs ate of this loaf, too, for many years, and never found a bit of mould in it! And, bless the Lord, poor Billy Bray can eat it without teeth and grow fat on it!'

So it is, and God's invitation to you and me is take this as a blessing to your heart and soul - never weary of receiving his grace through this sacrament of his grace.

But, you will recall I said 'Expect moments of grace' - and grace is always available: new every morning! Grace to those of us who are ordained and those of us not ordained - grace which encourages us to go on hoping, trusting, believing and expecting.

I was amused once when a lady, obviously very concerned about my work load said, without thinking: 'Yours must be such a soul destroying job!' I blinked and replied that as Archbishop of Canterbury I sincerely trust that it is not a 'soul destroying job - for the sake of others if not myself!'

But a little later I began to see that there was a glimmer of truth in what she said. Any work for God can become 'soul destroying' if we lose our vision, lose our appetite for the work and when the work becomes a drudgery. Then, you see, the fountain becomes a cistern: 'Expect poison from the standing water'.

This, of course, is a problem for us all, lay as well as ordained. For us all being practising Christians in our busy and competitive world is a taxing business - in all kinds of subtle ways the joy of the Christian life may be robbed by the burden of earning one's living, raising children and keeping the family going. To say nothing, of course, of the responsibility of maintaining the freshness of Church life. May we find what the pianist Donald Swann said of grace in his years as an internationally known musician and one who was a dedicated Christian. He said 'the grace of God is, in my mind, shaped like a key that comes from time to time and unlocks the heavy doors'. And such grace allows us moments of transfiguration.

But let me add a PS. I referred to Joseph, bishop of Nagasaki. I asked him one day 'Joseph, why, is it, that having endured such a terrible experience you did not reject God but you carried on as a Christian and even went on to become ordained?'

His reply moved me greatly: 'It made me a man of peace. I blamed no one for that bomb. It made me realise that war was a terrible thing and that Christ offered a better way.'

And, of course - he does. He does.