Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Sunday next before Lent 2026

Moses and Jesus share many things in common. Beginning from the beginning: They are both saved from a massacre of infants at their birth. They both pass through water at the beginning of their ministry. They both fast for forty days and forty nights. They both provide the people with bread in barren places. They both were aided by 12 leaders (tribal leaders for Moses, apostles for Jesus) and seventy men. And yes, they both go up mountains where great revelations are made. I could go on… At this point, I’m sure some of my colleagues are getting twitchy: Moses and Jesus do share things in common, but it’s where those deeds and experiences differ that tell us something about each person; Who they truly are, and what they are there to do.

Today’s readings draw on that parallel between Moses and Jesus very explicitly. Every year, on the last Sunday before Lent, we hear the story of the Transfiguration, and, in two out of the three years of the Cycle of readings, it is paired with different portions of this episode in the life of Moses. It is no accident that we hear this revelation of Jesus’ identity just before we enter the forty days of Lent, where we prepare for the events of the Lord’s passion and resurrection. This Epiphany, this unveiling of Jesus’ glory as the Son of God, is supposed to stay with us as we walk the path to Calvary, where Jesus’ glory is revealed in a different way upon the cross and in the garden upon Easter morn. All of that happens in the light that shines from Jesus’ face. The differences between Jesus and Moses make that very clear.

Moses was called up to the summit alone. His assistant, Joshua, accompanies him to the foot, but it is Moses alone who can stand in the presence of God and hear his voice. In contrast, Jesus brings his disciples with him. Ordinary, flawed people (and Jesus picked the most ordinary, flawed people to be his apostles) could be witnesses to this display of divinity, and could directly hear God’s voice declaring that Jesus is his Son. Moses mediated the word of God to the people, but Jesus, true God and true man, brings people with him into the presence of God as our mediator and redeemer. As the Letter to the Hebrews puts it: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son”

Next, Moses never actually sees God face-to-face. He hears his voice. There is an extraordinary passage in Exodus where Moses asks to see God’s glory, but God says that it would be too much for him. Instead, he will pass by him and cover him with his hand that he might live, and Moses is only allowed to see his back; he cannot see God face-to-face. Jesus himself makes this clear in the Gospel of John: “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.” At the Transfiguration, the disciples are brought to glimpse the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  It’s a similar point to before, but it says more about Jesus: About who Jesus is revealed to be at the Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah aren’t transfigured; it is only Jesus who is revealed in his glory: Emmanuel, God with us.

And then there is St Peter’s strange outburst in response to his experience. ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ Now, the first time that Moses goes up the mountain, before everyone gets the wrong idea and makes a Golden Calf, the very first thing the Lord instructs him is how to make the tabernacle within which God will dwell among the people. The instructions for its making and consecration go on for five chapters of Exodus! And a crucial part of these instructions is the fact that the holy of holies is hidden behind a veil from the people. Only the priests might go there, and there is a whole chapter of instruction on how they do that. It is perhaps this holy of holies which Peter was recalling when he blurted out his desire to make three tabernacles: A desire to do as Moses did and make three holy places to, as it were, capture the presence. But we are told over and over again throughout the Gospels that Jesus himself is the tabernacle. The glorious opening of John’s Gospel makes it clear: “And the word became flesh and lived among us.” The Greek word “lived” here literally means “tabernacled.” There is no need for a tabernacle with its separating veil whilst Jesus is there, because he is the presence of God among us. And, indeed, it is while Peter is still speaking that the voice of God thunders out, proclaiming Jesus as his son. It’s again about presence: Not locked away and inaccessible, but actually here in the person of Christ.

And finally, there is what happens when Jesus and his disciples come down the mountain again. We don’t hear the end of the story in this Eucharist, but after his experience with God on the mountain, Moses’s face shines, and the people cannot look upon him because they are afraid, so he veils himself. Puts a barrier between the God-experience and the people. But the first thing Jesus does when Peter, James and John’s awesome experience is over, is to come and touch his disciples and say, “Do not be afraid.” And then he comes down the mountain with them. There is no veil there.

We are here, in the presence of God in his word and at his altar, but we too must descend the mountain, Unafraid, confident that God descends with us, but having not yet reached that time where we will dwell in unapproachable light. Moses spent forty days and forty nights on the mountaintop with God, and we are about to enter the forty days of Lent: a time of prayer and fasting, tinged with the purple of penitence. Moses descended profoundly changed, and with the new law that would shape the people, because forty days in the Bible is never just a period of static waiting. It rained for forty days whilst Noah was in the Ark (I make no comment about the current state of the weather!) after which God made a covenant with him with the rainbow as its sign. Elijah spent forty days in the wilderness before encountering God in the silence. Jesus himself was tested for forty days in the wilderness at the beginning of his public ministry. As we enter this season of Lent, following him who descends from the mountain to be God with us, we do so in the expectation of something new: The glory of God nailed to a cross, the veil in the temple torn in two, ourselves changed in our encounter with the risen Christ, who is God with us.

Amen.