Exodus 24.12–18, Matthew 17.1–9
Sunday next before Lent, 15 February 2026
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
Sitting high in the south transept of Chartres Cathedral, south-east of Paris, is a rose window [click to view], 10-and-a-half metres in diameter. Picture that a moment – that’s 34-and-a-half feet wide.
Made around the year 1230, the window is dedicated to Christ, who is shown at the centre, his right hand raised in benediction, with adoring angels all around him. This is Christ Triumphant, surrounded by the 24 Elders of the Apocalypse, crowned and carrying phials and musical instruments to announce Christ’s second coming and the Kingdom of God.
I’ve never been there to see this window in its great scale and glorious colour, but even pictures of it stir up feelings of awe and wonder. This is Jesus, high and lifted up, shining in glory.
Then, beneath the rose window are five lancet windows [click to view]; the central one beneath the rose shows Mary carrying the infant Christ. The four lancets either side of this show the four evangelists sitting on the shoulders of four major Old Testament prophets – so we see Luke being lifted up by Jeremiah, Matthew on the shoulders of Isaiah, John being held high by Ezekiel, and Mark by Daniel. [1]
It seems that the glazier-artist created these lancet windows to illuminate some words of Bernard of Chartres, a 12th-century master and chancellor of the Cathedral School, who famously said that “We are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants, and we can see better and further than them not because our sight is more piercing or our size is larger, but because we are raised into the air and carried up into the air thanks to their gigantic height”. [2]
Like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants, the gospel writers are elevated by the prophets, the books of the New Testament are uplifted because they are firmly founded on the Old Testament writings. And all look up to Christ himself, high and glorified.
That metaphor, that we stand on the shoulders of giants, has entered our way of speaking about ourselves. It helps us to acknowledge that we see the world the way we do because we build on the understandings gained by those who have gone before us. Isaac Newton, who formulated the laws of motion and of gravity, wrote a letter in 1675 saying, “if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” And a celebrated scientist of our age, Stephen Hawking, put it this way: “Each generation stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before them, just as I did as a young PhD student in Cambridge, inspired by the work of Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein.” Stephen Hawking also wrote a book called On the Shoulders of Giants, which explores the major works of physics and astronomy that inspired him. [3]
Whose shoulders do you stand on? One way of thinking about this is to consider which teachers most influenced you, whether at school or in working life. Another way is to think about the writers of those books which you’ve found most helpful, or the artists or musicians whose works have lifted you to appreciate life in new ways. You’ll know me well enough by now to expect me to say this next thing – that the ‘giants’ whose shoulders we stand on are not always the ‘greats’, the heroes of culture or faith.
Some of our ‘giants’ are people who lived modest lives but moral lives, inspiring lives, who despite their modest circumstances nevertheless taught us a great deal of good which we’ve taken into our own lives, and we’re all the better for it. My Auntie Dot’s energetic volunteering activities in church and Red Cross, taught me much of what I needed to know about how to live a life of commitment to public service.
We give thanks for those whose shoulders we stand on. What a good view of the world we have because they uplift us.
In another corner of Chartres Cathedral three lancet windows under the West Rose Window illustrate, in turn, the genealogy of Christ, the life of Christ, and the Passion of Christ, and this latter window includes a panel depicting the Transfiguration [click to view], that moment on the mountain top when the glory of Christ was fully revealed. [4]
The fearful, awestruck, disciples watched their teacher, Jesus, meeting with two giants of their faith: Moses the law-giver, who led the people out of slavery to the edge of the Promised Land, and Elijah, the great prophet and miracle-worker of the northern kingdom of Israel, who defended the worship of the Hebrew deity Yahweh over that of the Canaanite deity Baal.
To the disciples it is as if Jesus is being lifted up on the shoulders of these two great forerunners, so that, thanks to their gigantic height, he can now see better and further than them. The voice from the clouds and the glory shining on that mountaintop, the voice of the Father, makes clear that Jesus now eclipses even Moses and Elijah in his authority: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’
Many of the giants on whose shoulders we stand have, in turn, looked up to Jesus, convinced that he is the one who can lift us to see better and further; he is the one with the ultimate power to raise us and carry us, thanks to his gigantic height.
John Davies
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral; American Friends of Chartres Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral stained-glass windows.
[2] Wikipedia: Standing on the shoulders of giants.
[3] Wikipedia: Standing on the shoulders of giants.
[4] University of Pittsburgh Digital Collections: 1: The Transfiguration of Christ.
