The famous Italian Stations of the Cross given by Mrs Franklin Delano in 1879 which rather dominate the nave highlight our Lord's Passion and Death and have provided a fitting focus for our Lenten devotions. Given that the church was dedicated under the name of Our Lord's Transfiguration (and it is worth noting it was the first church in the Anglican Communion to be so named) that incident in the life of Christ is also well represented over the high altar and in the fine window in St Joseph's Chapel. Also Mary the Mother of Jesus is well represented in window, mosaic and statue (some would say overrepresented) due in no small part to the second Rector's wife who died early in his ministry here was named Mary). Also this church with its long association with the theater has a number of windows and a host of memorials with theatrical rather than theological reference.

But what at first seemed to me to be lacking in the overall iconography of the church were representations of the Resurrection of Jesus. That is apart from the most obvious depiction of the Resurrection in the icon of the Resurrection given by Father Catir before he retired with its beautiful new lamp given by parishioners this Easter. We honor this icon throughout the Easter season by censing it at the beginning of the Solemn Mass. That icon shows Christ's Harrowing of Hell which in the Christian East signifies the “work” of the Resurrection: how Christ begins the Resurrection process by raising the righteous dead beginning with Adam and Eve.

But what else is there? As you know this church is full of nooks and crannies and an amazing collection of chapels. It takes time to explore them all and to get to know them. I say this because after four years here I am still discovering new things. The altar piece in the tiny Mary Chapel off the Holy Family Chapel shows a classic Western depiction of the Resurrection in Venetian mosaic with the Risen Christ coming out of the tomb holding a flag bearing the cross. So there are two different ways of illustrating the Resurrection. That was it I had thought. But recent exploration in preparation for a Lent Quiet Day I gave several weeks back including the more careful reading of the various parish guide books has led me to discover more. For instance the second clerestory window is listed as a “resurrection window” and sure enough when you strain your eyes a little you can see the figure of the risen Christ displaying the wounds in his hands as described in John's Gospel. “And he showed them (the disciples) the wounds in his hands and in his side.” This makes the clear statement that the Risen Christ is the same person as the Crucified Christ.

I had thought I had completed my researches into Resurrection iconography at Transfiguration but not so. Given the major work going on in and around this building for the past four years the Joseph of Arithamea Chapel and its surrounds have been less accessible. In exploring them since their liberation not only did I find anther window but a fresco, more mosaic and some ironwork also with Resurrection themes. The fresco on the ceiling of St Joseph's Chapel(in desperate need of restoration) shows the Empty Tomb one of the classic “proofs” of the Resurrection (so in today's Gospel the young man tells the women looking into the tomb “He has been raised; he is not here. Look here is the place where they laid him.”) The window is somewhat more eccentric and shows a sunrise, a moonrise and a magnificent peacock. That peacock along with one in mosaic on the floor of St Joseph's Chapel and another in the iron screen at the entrance to the same chapel (I challenge any children here to find them all after service and perhaps after the Easter Egg hunt) are ancient symbols of immortality and were adopted by the early Christians as a symbol of the Resurrection. I guess the sunrise and the moonrise with their relationship to rising light can be understood as a metaphor for Resurrection.

So to my surprise there are in fact six different ways of illustrating the Resurrection of Jesus which we celebrate today. That in itself should not surprise us for when you consider the Easter narratives in the four Gospels the Resurrection was experienced in many different ways. I have already mentioned the Empty Tomb tradition. Today's gospel tells of a bunch of terrified and fearful women receiving the message that Jesus has risen and being shown the empty tomb. In the other gospels there are a series of encounters whereby different people experience the risen Christ in differing ways. Think of the encounters with Mary Magdalen in the Garden; or of the disciples in the Upper Room; or of Thomas confronted by Christ's wounds; of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus; of the women near the Empty Tomb or of Peter by the Sea of Tiberius; or even of St Paul on the Road to Damascus. There is no one clear cut account of the Resurrection and indeed no account at all of how it happened. Only the evidence of the stone rolled away; the empty tomb and the grave cloths lying about.

Some find this vagueness and variety of description of the Resurrection to be troubling. But far from it I find it a relief. After all how do you experience and then describe something so beyond human imagination? Ultimately the evangelists say it was like this; it was like this; this is how so and so experienced it. But the outcome of all the witnesses, to all the accounts of the Resurrection is that incontrovertible fact that Jesus Christ who was Crucified was Raised by God on the Third Day and that he appeared to many whose lives were totally changed as a result and who gave witness to the fact. So it is that artists in attempting to illustrate the Resurrection have had to employ a variety of images and symbols and metaphors as evidenced by the iconography of this church.

Paul in Romans 6 uses yet another image to describe Resurrection and that is Christian Baptism: “Do you not know that all of you who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” It is this descending into the water, “drowning” with Christ as it were, and then being raised out the water, or “rescued” or “saved” that Paul has in mind in this passage. That is why baptism is so central to our Easter celebrations (and happily today we have an actual baptism, that of Eleanor Reiser) because it is Christian Baptism that enables us to enter into the whole Paschal or Easter mystery. By our baptism we too die to the old life, that life marked by evil, sin and death, and enter into the new life, a life marked by joy, hope, peace, and love that is the gift to us of the Risen Christ.