Somnambulism in the City

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul’s Church Swanscombe on 18th February 2006, based on Exodus xxxiv.29-end, II Corinthians iii.12-iv:2 and St Luke ix:28-43.

Al reaches for the snooze button again
as, for the second time,
the alarm stridently cuts through
a lovely dream about Keira Knightly.

He switches the light on,
wincing as the neon bulb dazzles him,
hurting his eyes.

Slowly he rouses himself,
trying to focus on the day ahead of him.

Eventually,
he summons up all his strength
to poke a warm toe out into the cold room.

Yawning and scratching his head,
he stumbles through to the bathroom,
walking straight past God’s holy angel standing
by the doorway.


Al gets dressed,
and wanders downstairs
for his bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

He switches on the Radio,
and the sound of Chris Moyles
playing “Hotel California”
drowns out the Eternal song o
f the two seraphim in the kitchen
singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”


After cleaning his teeth and brushing his hair,
Al grabs his briefcase from by the door
and gets into his car.

As he drives to work,
he passes three angels
playing lute, trumpet and shawm,
a crowd of martyrs praising God,
Moses and Elijah calling out to the world,
and Our Lady in a shop window
pointing towards
the Divine person of Christ
in the world.

[PAUSE]

Al’s working day is uneventful.

He photocopies papers
unaware of a couple of cherubim
sitting on the copy tray.

He grabs a cup from the water-cooler
on which St Simon Stylites
stands motionless.

He sends countless emails to his colleagues,
missing the email sent to him
by St Isidore of Seville,
patron saint of the Internet.

On his way home from work,
the Glory of God shines all around Al,
radiant and pure light from an Eternal source.

He dines,
watches a bit of telly
and goes to bed unaware of the multitude
of the heavenly host moving around him.


All of these things have happened in plain sight.

One woman saw the angel
hovering above Al’s car as he drove by.

But Al has not seen them.

As far as he is concerned,
all he sees is the greyness of the pavement,
the fumes coming
from the exhaust of the car in front,
the irritated look on the face of his boss
when Al tells him that
the figures will be late
this month.

None of these wonders
have been hidden from Al,
but he does not see them.


You see, when the alarm clock rang,
Al did not wake up.

[PAUSE]

Oh yes,
he got out of bed all right,
and he was conscious
when he drove to work.

He was certainly conscious
of the idiot who cut him up
at the Walthamstow roundabout.

He was conscious of
the choice words and phrases
that he used to describe that idiot.

He’s conscious of the staple
that he nearly put through his thumb at work.

But Al isn’t conscious
of the angel standing
next to the homeless woman
to whom he throws a £2 coin.


Al is a somnambulist, a sleep-walker.

He wanders through his day
oblivious to the truth of the world around him,
concentrating on his life and how it works.

For Al, every day is much the same,
the alarm goes off every morning;
he has Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for breakfast;
his daughter always manages
to beat him to the bathroom
when he’s desperate;
Wednesday night is always casserole night.

That’s his life.

When the alarm rings and the lamp comes on,
Al shuts his eyes again
because he is dazzled by the light.

[PAUSE]

It’s easy to shut our eyes when they are dazzled.

It’s a reflex.

Indeed it hurts if we try to look at something
which is too powerful.

When we sleep,
we become used to the darkness
which hides our world.

In the dark,
we see only the shadows of the way things are,
and we make up our own ideas
of what the truth is.

But if we try to open our eyes to the light,
it hurts
so we shut them again.

How can we get used to the light
if we keep shutting our eyes to it?

How can we see the Truth
if our eyes are closed?

[PAUSE]

Peter, James and John
get to see Jesus as God on the mountainside
because they’ve been having their eyes opened,
little by little,
through devoting themselves to the Lord.

Day by day,
they sit with Him,
eat breakfast with Him,
walk with Him,
go out onto the lake with Him,
study the Scriptures with Him.

Jesus is there with them
in the intimacy
and day-by-day routine of their lives
and they are part of the intimacy
and day-by-day routine of His life.

Yet all the while, the Lord has been preparing them
for a deeper intimacy,
the intimacy of His Godhead which bursts into their hum-drum reality
quietly
on a mountainside in a blaze of Titanic Glory.


Yet, the Transfiguration is an intimate event.

It’s an event as deeply personal
as going to sleep with your spouse next to you,
yet it comes only as a result of getting used to Christ in your life,
of opening our eyes
to the brilliance of God who wants
to show Himself to us as He really is.

It is only by opening the eyes slowly to Christ that we see the wonders of God around us in a world that is darkened by much sadness,
selfishness and sin.


The season of Lent gives us
the opportunity for us to see
how much of our lives we spend asleep
to God’s Presence.

We could spend Lent
just giving something up
sweets,
chocolate,
television,
coffee
like we always do,
but what’s the point if,
at the end of it,
we are just as unaware of God in our lives
as we were
when we started?

How do you propose to seek
the light of God this Lent?