“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty,” writes the letter attributed to Peter (2 Peter 1:16).
Myself, I enjoy a cleverly-devised myth, one that illustrates truth as through a poem, constructing a work of art that speaks to the soul without claiming accuracy or articulation, but empathy and experience. Story tells truth without objective data. It relies on the innermost secrets of the human soul to recognize it.
Such, over the centuries, has been our experience of the gospel. Translated and retranslated through language and art, music and light, liturgy and drama, even bread and wine: whatever comes to hand, mouth, and heart to convey the truth of that Majestic Glory, that Jesus is the Son of God, that God loves us enough to stand with us in the cloud, on the mountaintop, in the valleys of shadows, shining like the sun.
But Peter was there. He needed no one to describe to him the chill of the cloud, the sudden warmth that broke through, the terror of the thunderous voice, the familiar comfort of figures he knew without ever having seen them before, they were so sound a part of his faith, his formation, his family: Moses and Elijah. Peter saw it all, he knew that what he saw and heard and felt was real, as real as life in the valley; and he was dazzled and dazed into silence by its glory. “They kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”
This time last month, I was at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, a wonderfully and marvellously devised dome in the heart of the city, full of colour and light, stories told in paint and stone and glass, and the music, of course, soaring at eventide. I went for Evensong, and I went back in the morning to join the throng of tourists, a few school groups, people from every language and nation gathered with their cameras – with our cameras – and our cacophony. I climbed the several hundred stairs to the galleries high up on the dome. I found the effigy of John Donne, that constructor of clever conceits and poetry, who knew for himself the transformative power of the glory of God. I lit candles for some of you, for all of you, for us.
Then, as I was crossing the transept for one more look up into the dome from the centre, a woman in a black cassock stepped unobtrusively up to a lectern and began to speak gently but clearly into the mass of sightseers. She took a just a minute or two to introduce a prayer for all those in need of healing, and I thought of our candles; then she led the Lord’s Prayer, and I couldn’t tell you what proportion of the visitors joined in, but I was fixed as if by lightning to my spot on that tiled floor until the final Amen.
They do it every hour, stripping away the veil of the tourist trap and reminding those with the will to hear why it is that the cathedral stands, and sings, and prays. They do not dwell on it; there are no booths built for Moses and Elijah. The moment passes like a cloud across the sun. But it is unmistakable.
I’m not sure how else to describe it to you, except that in that moment the grand cathedral had put on the garment of prayer; and the glory of the world and its myths and its memories of war and its forgetfulness of mercy – all of this had been transfigured by the quiet voice that insisted that we listen, for a moment, to the Word of God, and the prayer that Jesus himself has taught us, to a God who listens to us.
After Moses went up the mountain in those earlier days, even the reflected glory of the experience was enough to light him up so that people were afraid to come near him. He had to put on a veil, tone it down, in order that his experience of the living God might be acceptable to the general population.
So it goes. We tame our religious experience with cleverly designed veils and shadows, artifice and myths, even the music and art that we lean into as through a window disguises as much as describes that Majestic Glory that shines like nothing on earth.
We are afraid to tell the truth, as eyewitnesses, of what it is really like to encounter God, in case it makes people back away. Peter even says, I am only saying this now because I am about to die.
But what if we were to be honest about what brings us here, week by week, hands open and hearts guarded, eyes glistening with unshed words, unmet hopes, unveiled desire? What if we were to tell the true story of how we met God, in all of that terrible glory, on the mountaintop or at our lowest ebb, and heard the voice of truth say, “Here is my Son, beloved so that you might know yourself beloved. Listen to him!” What if we were to share that light with the world, a world awash with cleverly devised myths and arguments?
When I first met Jesus, listening with the curiosity of a child, I heard him proclaim that the kingdom of God was at hand. I heard him heal the sick, comfort the demon-assaulted, undo grief, reconcile life and death, mortality and eternity within his own body. That gospel was, for me, life saving. It still is. I enjoy a cleverly devised myth as much as the next person; but what sustains me is this: that I know that God is with us, that God loves us more than we love life itself; that when the world is too loud, or stuns us into silence, Christ is still speaking in that still, small voice, the language of mercy. Listen to him.
over the water 
