Just over a hundred years ago, many elite Christian professors and intellectuals came up with the idea that the supernatural elements of Christianity were unpalatable to modern tastes and so they decided to get rid of them. The most famous name here is that of Rudolf Bultmann who is associated with the project of ‘demythologising’ Scripture.

This project and others like it has massively affected the Church all throughout the Western World. The issues have changed a bit: nowadays the issues are largely around contemporary standards of sexual morality and marriage, but the logic is still exactly the same: let’s change to make ourselves acceptable and attractive.

How’s that going? I could spend all evening going through statistics which demonstrate emphatically that this approach produces exactly the opposite of the intended effect. But let me give you just one: did you know that there are more Anglican Christians in Nigeria than there are in the whole of England and the United States combined? In fact, it’s not even close: the US has 1.6 million, England has around .7 million. The Nigerian Church has 18 million…Anglican Christians in a country of 190 million people – just under 1 in ten people. In our country the equivalent would be something like 7 million Anglican Christians.

What are they doing that is different to us? Simply put, they are not employing this kind of logic.

Let’s apply it to the specific issue of the supernatural: some of you might have heard of the writer Michael Heiser. Don’t worry if not but he wrote a book called The Invisible Realm. Heiser was an expert on the Old Testament and his thesis in that book was that modern, Western people are so conditioned by a scientific, Enlightenment worldview that we often miss the supernatural elements of Scripture, even when we think we’re not. There are many passages in Scripture, Heiser said, that comes across to us as just too weird and so we skip over them.

One of those passages is Genesis 6. Perhaps you know it: the bit where the ‘sons of God’ mate with the ‘daughters of Eve’ and produce a race of gigantic offspring known as the ‘Nephilim’. How many of you know that story? There’s not enough time to go into it now but essentially Heiser argues (and I agree with him) that the sons of God in this passage are not referring to humans but to angelic beings who engage in rebellion against God by mating with human women. The women then produce this gigantic race of half-angelic, half-human beings called the Nephilim who show up all the way the through the historical narrative of the Old Testament causing all sorts of problems. Goliath is but one example.

It's fascinating stuff but there’s a direct relevance to our text tonight. A little before the Transfiguration, in Luke 9:18-20, Peter makes his famous confession in response to Jesus’ asking the question, “Who do you say that I am?”: “The Christ of God,” Peter says. Heiser makes the claim (and he is by no means alone) that both this confession of Peter’s and the Transfiguration itself take place in the same location, upon the same mountain, Mount Hermon.

Cut a long story short and essentially Mount Hermon is the place where, according to Jewish literature such as 1 Enoch, the sons of God descended to earth and launched their rebellion against Yahweh. In the ancient world, Mount Hermon became a site of cultic devotion with dozens of temples which would have been used for Canaanite and Phoenician worship. In Old Testament times, Mount Hermon was considered to be the gates of hell and the gateway to the realm of the dead.

This is the place that Jesus chooses to reveal both his identity to Peter and his glory to the three. Why? Heiser says, it was a provocation to the powers of darkness. This moment, specifically the moment of Transfiguration, marks a turning point in all of the Gospels. Jesus’ identity has been revealed, not just to his disciples, but to Satan and the demonic powers themselves. And from this moment on Jesus is put on the pathway towards the cross.

This is why the Transfiguration is so important. Heiser tells us that the “message” of the Transfiguration is simply this: ‘I’m putting the hostile powers of the unseen world on notice. I’ve come to earth to take back what is mine. The kingdom of God is at hand.’

He chooses the most provocative place possible to say this: the Gates of Hell, specifically so that the hostile powers will attack him and kill him at the cross. Why? I’ll quote Heiser again:

‘Jesus has baited them into action, and act they will. He has given them the rope, and they will eagerly hang themselves with it. Jesus will go to Jerusalem to drink from the cup that the Father has planned for him. But the instrument of death will be the catalyst that launches the kingdom of God in its full force.’

Michael Heiser, ‘The Unseen Realm’

Why am I telling you this?

To answer that question, let me tell you about Rocky III. If you know the Rocky films, you’ll know that the first two are about Rocky coming up against Apollo Creed and eventually defeating him. Rocky becomes rich and famous and starts living the high life, still boxing but knocking out chumps who are hand-picked for him. In the third film, Rocky is challenged by a scary looking man called Clubber Lang. Rocky goes to his old coach, Mickey, and asks Mickey to train him. Mickey says no. Rocky asks why and Mickey says, “You can’t beat him.” Rocky objects to this and he asks again why not. Mickey says, “Ya got civilised.”

Now, that, in my view, is exactly what has happened to Christianity in the Western World: we got civilised. We cared too much – far too much – about what the culture thinks of us. We have compromised one thing after another in a bid to be relevant and only seen Christianity shrink to the miniscule force it has become in our day. We have abandoned the supernatural elements of the faith and replaced them with a vague sense that we have a friend in the sky who wants to make us feel better about ourselves.

The Transfiguration – and particularly Heiser’s reading of it – reminds us of something of the truth: we have supernatural enemies and we need a supernatural saviour. And not only us, but the whole world too.

This is succinctly summarised in one of the most controversial verses in all of Scripture, Romans 5:12: ‘Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…’ It’s an incomplete sentence when put like that but here’s the point: through Adam’s sin, death entered into the world. The way that the Apostle Paul talks about these two things – sin and death – is like they have a kind of existence all of their own: they are dark powers that rule over our world and dominate our lives. We labour under these powers, knowing that we are guilty before a holy God and knowing that we will one day succumb to the power of death whilst we labour under effects on this earth. This is the covering that is cast over all mankind (Isaiah 25:7).

This is the supernatural predicament we find ourselves in, and part of the message of the Transfiguration is that Christ has come and he has put those dark powers on notice.

It’s interesting to note the subject matter of Christ’s conversation with Moses and Elijah: they are said to talk about Christ’s departure, which is literally his ‘exodus’, ‘which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Luke 9:30). They are talking here ultimately about the cross.

The disciples don’t understand any of this, of course, so later on in the story when a cloud overshadows them they are terrified. Why? Because they would have known from the scene at Mount Sinai that the cloud is a sign of the presence of God. And what happens when you are overshadowed by the presence of God? You die. Quite simple. Sinful man cannot come into contact with a holy God and live. So they thought they were doomed.

But they don’t die. Why not? The same reason we are now able to come into God’s presence without making sacrifice. The same reason the veil of the Temple was rent in two from top to bottom. The same reason the Apostle Paul says that we have been granted ‘access by faith into the grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God’ (Romans 5:2). That reason is what Christ and Moses and Elijah spoke of: Christ’s exodus, out of the world and out of this life through the cross. His blood which, being shed, atoned for the sins of all mankind. His glorious resurrection, for which the Transfiguration acts as a precursor.

Friends, we have supernatural problems: the twin enemies of sin and death. Christ, through his ‘accomplishment at Jerusalem’ has destroyed them both.

And so now, instead of death, a voice comes out of that cloud, which is not just for them, but for us also: “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!”

A little earlier in the story, we are told: ‘Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory’ (Luke 9:32).

Friends, it’s time to shake off the dullness of our slumber. It’s time to cast respectability to the wind. It’s time to evoke the full-fat message of the cross and the resurrection in response to the powers of darkness. And it’s time to look the glory of Christ full-on in the face and to be changed into his image, from one degree of glory to another.

Amen.