The readings are (to read them, go HERE):

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

When I sat down to prepare this sermon, I was going to skip the story about King David. It did not seem necessary to what I had in mind to preach. But then I thought, we’ve been reading about David for weeks now, in stories that tear at the heart and stick in the mind: stories about him being just a lad and killing Goliath, and the story about Uriah the Hittite, David’s warrior, whom David has killed so he can marry Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.

When that had happened, the prophet Nathan had said to David, “The sword shall never depart from your house.” And the story today is the proof of that prophecy. It is also a story that tears at the heart and sticks in the mind. It comes from years later. There had been an incident with one of David’s many sons, one named Absalom. I won’t go into the details, but it has ended up that Absalom and David have long been estranged, Absalom has tried to steal the kingdom from David, David has fled his home in Jerusalem, and now finally there has been a battle, and Absalom has been killed. When the news is brought to David, he mourns exceedingly and cries out for his son Absalom.

We don’t hear today what happens next, which is that the commander of the army, Joab, comes to David and scolds him. Joab points out that the whole army has gone to battle for David, and David should show some gratitude and backbone and show himself to his servants and his people and stop lamenting Absalom’s death.

So the question arises: Why do we read such stories? Are we supposed to behave like these people? I’ve been asked this several times in the past few Sundays as we have read these stories of David.

The answer is that these stories are not given to us as examples of how we are supposed to behave. Instead, they describe how people have behaved and their relationship with God in the midst of such events. What they really describe is the complexity of human life: that life is messy; it does not fit nice, neat categories; and it cannot be explained easily. Here is David lamenting the death of a son who has been an absolute thorn in his side, who has brought him all sorts of trouble. But we probably know about grief that it does not fit nice, neat categories, and often we grieve the most the relationships that have been the worst.

Into such complexity, into such messiness, steps the Christian faith. Not in David’s time, for he lived centuries before Christ. But into the complexity of our lives, Christ offers himself. For he said,

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

He offers, not to remove us from the complexity, but to help us live in the midst of it, and even more, to help us be transformed so that we rise above it. He offers to transform us and our lives.

A few days ago, on Friday, 6 August, was the Feast of the Transfiguration. This is one of the holiest days in the Christian year. It is the day on which we remember Jesus going up a mountain with his three closest disciples — Peter, John, and James — and being transfigured, transformed. Jesus’ clothes become dazzling white, and two ancestors in the faith, Moses and the prophet Elijah, stand talking with him, and at the end of it, the terrified disciples hear a voice say, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.”

And then Jesus and his three closest disciples go back down the mountain, and events soon afterward lead Jesus to Jerusalem and to his death.

But that is not the end of the story. Yes, Jesus is put to death, because events there also are complex, with tensions in the disciples between love and loyalty toward Jesus and fear for their own safety. And there is also human fickleness in the desires of the crowd, and Pilate the governor not having the guts to do the right thing and let Jesus go free.

And so Jesus is crucified, but three days later the tomb is empty, and Jesus appears to his disciples and eats and drinks with them. Such events are indeed complex — how to understand them? But no matter how hard the events may be to explain, the important thing is that after this the disciples find their lives transformed. The Holy Spirit — the power of God — comes upon them, and they go about speaking and acting in Jesus’ name, and people are healed, and people’s lives are renewed, cowards find courage, and all sorts of wondrous things happen.

All this does not happen through human effort, other than the effort and the willingness to place oneself in Jesus’ hands by turning one’s heart and soul to him and being willing to place our feet upon his path. So we hear all the advice that the Apostle Paul offers to the Ephesians, such as:

“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

And don’t we all know how tough that is? Have you ever gone to bed angry at someone you love?

But Paul continues on, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger…, be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another…”

Maybe we know how hard that is, too.

And there’s more: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”

Be imitators of God. Wow — what a tough command that is. In the midst of all the complexity of human life, in the midst of this pandemic with its lockdowns and uncertainty and threats of financial hardship and of death, in the midst of human relationships and making a living and making decisions and everything else: “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”

But the point in the Christian faith is that this is not a matter of behaviour, of acting right and being good. It is a matter of grace — of God working in our lives and transforming us. That would seem to make it harder. But not so: God does the work. It is true that we have to be willing to be transformed. We have to be willing to follow. We have to be willing to go up the mountain with Jesus — it can be a tough hike, with rocks and narrow pathways and cliffs and streams to cross. But the result is worth it: to see the possibility of transfiguration, of transformation, of light, to know ourselves in the presence of something holy and wondrous. The result is worth it: to never be hungry or thirsty in our soul again. The result is worth it: God transforms our lives and our souls so that evil talk no longer comes out of our mouths, and bitterness and wrath and malice do not even occur to us, and our lives are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit working in us and through us toward others. Yes, really. It is possible. It is true. It is real.

This week our parishes will start confirmation classes. We have somewhere between six and nine students. Confirmation is a religious ceremony in which young people — or adults, mind you — say that they want to believe, that they want to follow Christ, that they are willing to make that commitment for their lives. For any of us, it does not mean we will do this perfectly, but it means that we are willing to keep making that commitment, that we are willing, and want, to keep making room for Christ in our lives, that we are willing to be transformed and keep following that path up the mountain with him.

In our Prayer Book, there is a blessing that I often use at the end of services. It comes from special pieces in our Prayer Book for the Transfiguration. It says this:

“The God of all grace,
who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus,
establish, strengthen and settle you in the faith…”

So may God do so for each of us.