Transfigured? Go figure - AI's got nothing on this!

Rev Dr Nikolai Blaskow

1. On this Transfiguration Sunday – we have a curious mix of readings and stories:

• Jacob confronted with the spectre of an imagined annihilation at the hands of his brother Esau, wrestles with a man/angel through the night, only to emerge the next day with a limp but a new name, transformed from the liar and deceiver that he was – to become a new man, prince with God, reconciled healed of his past lost in the embrace and tears of an Esau who forgives him his past
• Then we have Jesus’ withdrawal into the desert to pray after he receives news of his cousin John the Baptist’s beheading, where when the crowds desperate for certainty search and find Jesus in his solitude and grief – thus creating a food emergency – to which Jesus even in his grief responds graciously, generously, by taking the loaves and fishes of a little boy’s lunch, allowing compassion to create a feast where there was a famine
• Add to that the Transfiguration story when Jesus and Peter James and John on another wilderness mountain see a cosmic Jesus, alive but soon to die, shining like the sun, joined by Moses and Elijah, the living dead, who represent the Law and the Prophets, who break in from the PAST into the PRESENT, as if time had no meaning, because they have come to strengthen, and encourage this Son of God as he faces his mortality and his journey from this life to the next, all of which declares in that moment the dividing line between the PRESENT and the FUTURE is merely a figment of our imagination
• And then, today, on this 6^th day of August Hiroshima Day with its haunting reminders of the shadows of leaves and people caught as negatives on pavements and streets – yet we hear the peace bell chime
• And finally today the sobering fact that the whole planet is at risk through climate change, and that staring us in the face, is a potential nuclear holocaust and a GAI, sophisticated AI post human future which threatens to displace our humanity…

Goodness me, we seem to be left with a jumble of disconnected pieces that makes no sense. But maybe they do.

2. I suggest that the way forward for us this morning, is to first be guided by an attitude of quietness, advocated by this beautiful prayer from the contemplative monk William Brodrick: 

We have to be candles,
burning between
hope and despair,
faith and doubt,
life and death,
all the opposites.
That is the disquieting place
where people must always find us.

And if our life means anything,
if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and
does some good,
it is that somehow,
by being here,
at peace,
we help the world cope
with what it cannot understand.

3. To be then, at peace, occupying this unlikely space of disquiet that these stories evoke for us – we nevertheless draw encouragement and strength from the fact that – what seems to be an impenetrable wall of “impossibles” dissolves before our very eyes into something remarkably and unexpectedly real and beautiful and
4. Even AI, and GAI (Superior Intelligence) need not demoralise us. Ilya Delio, a Franciscan nun who describes herself as a Christian Cyborg, offers these reflections:

• When I try to show [students] … that technology is not simply a “tool” for human use but an extension of what we are; once I make this point, I have their attention.
• Max Plank: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. The primacy of consciousness fits nicely, Delio remarks, with Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God: God is that which no greater can be thought. There is not God without consciousness; it is impossible to conceive of God apart from consciousness. God is ultimate consciousness [we would say the great I AM], and God as we have seen in the 1^st Temple reveals an I AM who delights in the material world, which is more like Spirit and organism than the discarded model of Newtonian mechanics
• If Planck is correct and matter begins with consciousness, then matter “matters” to God… new levels of consciousness give way to new forms of life and new understandings of God.
• Truth means that the transparency of what is seen and what is believed is the same reality without contradiction or confusion. Without modern science, modern faith floats on a sea of abstractions.
• The church is unlikely to survive indefinitely in its present form into the future – the church must either reorganise along the lines of evolution or resign itself to becoming a minor sect.

5. And as for a nuclear holocaust, Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer while not pulling any punches, offers the hope that ultimately it is our integrity, our authenticity, our humility our belief in “something more” which will despite all the machinations of human frailty, deception and self-deception, finally triumph.
6. Nietzsche’s reflections express it well:

“It is strange, then, that in the face of their inevitable mutual defeat – the inseparable and ultimate defeat of understanding, which life will never allow to tame and for which life will always remain insurmountably alien; and the inevitable defeat of action which will never succeed in ordering the world which would pacify the longing for order, for structure, for stability inscribed in every action – it is strange that tasting the bitterness of this defeat on their lips [Life and Zarathustra] “we looked at each other and gazed on the green meadow over which the cool evening was running just then and we wept together. But then [exactly then] life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever was.”  

This “bringer of glad tidings” died as he had taught – not to “redeem men” but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to mankind: his behavior before the judges… before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn – his behavior on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step to ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. And he begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible but to resist not even the evil one – to love him.

Der Antichrist, 35. November 26, 1888, Nietzsche writes to Paul Deussen,

“Meine Umwerthung aller Werthe mit dem Hauptitel ‘DerAntichrist’ ist fertig.”

“My Revaluation of Values under the main title ‘The Antichrist’ is finished.” (KSB 8, 492). 

Communion

after Communion Jaqueline du Pré - = the irrepressible indomitable spirit of humanity, guided/collaborated with the divine.

Genesis 32.22-31

Jacob Wrestles at Peniel 

22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then the man^b said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,^c for you have striven with God and with humans,^d and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,^e saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 

Matthew 14.13-21

The Death of John the Baptist 

^14.1 At that time Herod the ruler heard reports about Jesus; ²and he said to his servants, ‘This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ ³For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, ⁴because John had been telling him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her.’ ⁵Though Herod wanted to put him to death, he feared the crowd, because they regarded him as a prophet. ⁶But when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and she pleased Herod ⁷so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask. ⁸Prompted by her mother, she said, ‘Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.’ ⁹The king was grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he commanded it to be given; ¹⁰he sent and had John beheaded in the prison. ¹¹The head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, who brought it to her mother. ¹²His disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went and told Jesus. 

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 

17 They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.