I have just gotten back from reading ordination exams. I might share a bit more on that process later, but here is the sermon for a couple weeks ago.

Text 1: Exod 34.29-35
Text 2: Luke 9.28-36
Transfiguration of the Lord, Year C


“SHINE, JESUS, SHINE”

What do you want out of church? That is a strange question to ask, especially of folks who have been attending church their whole lives. It seems for some to be a routine, and not a bad one at that. It can bring peace to a person’s life. It can guide and inspire. But it is not a bad question to ask. Because people can lose the reason they do things and then they become poor imitations of what they are supposed to be and ultimately have no power to do much of any good. There is this great joke about missing the point of something. An airplane was in trouble and the captain said to the passengers, “Folks our engines have failed and we’re going down into the ocean. Is there anyone aboard who can do something religious?” So they passed some plates for an offering. We need to remember why we do things so our purpose does not become lost. The question is whether people will find something meaningful in the church.
Today is the feast of the Transfiguration, the last Sunday after Epiphany and the one right before Lent. It is named for something that happens in the Gospel reading. It recalls the time Jesus went up the mountain to pray with Peter and James and John. His appearance changed. That is what transfigured means. Then they saw Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus and thought they were going to stay up there on the mountain and were ready to make huts for them to live in, but instead they heard a voice that told them to listen to him. They were terrified as they entered the cloud and then it was all over and they went back down from the mountain in silence.
This is an unusual feast and we have to pay attention to find what it means. It is not obvious like Christmas, celebrating Jesus’ birth, or Easter, his Resurrection. It is not recalling his death on Good Friday or the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. It is not about his baptism or his return. The key is in what happened to Jesus and the disciples and the meaning of the symbolism. On the mountain Jesus talked with Elijah and Moses and his appearance changed. This clearly shows the disciples that they were following someone who was not an ordinary man. This is someone, like Moses, to whom God speaks directly and who walks and talks with the great men of God of the past. This is just one of the ways light is a symbol of the divine. It talks about Jesus’ purpose for living as the way God is revealed, just like the sun shining over the world. It is that symbolism in the song, “Shine, Jesus, Shine”:
Lord the Light of Your Love is shining,
In the midst of the darkness shining,
Jesus light of the world shine upon us,
Set us free by the truth You now bring us,
Shine on me. Shine on me.

Shine Jesus shine
Fill this land with the Father's glory
Blaze, Spirit blaze,
Set our hearts on fire
Flow, river flow
Flood the nations with grace and mercy
Send forth Your word
Lord and let there be light.

There are other things for which light is a perfect symbol. It is a symbol for enlightenment, becoming aware of reality. It is a symbol for moral goodness, being and living in the light, as opposed to in the dark. It is a light that is to be shared. The disciples would eventually share the good news about Jesus with others. They saw it and would later tell others about it. The voice that told them to listen to Jesus would begin a pattern of life that they would teach to others.
Light spreads out and lightens the world around it. Last summer I was driving along in Wisconsin in the rain on the Interstate Highway when suddenly the sun came out. It was interesting to see all the cars were each surrounded with a cloud of light from the sunlight hitting the spray from their tires and being reflected all around. One big light was the source of all of the halos of light around our cars. Jesus’ transformation into glory is to be the beginning of our own. This is the idea of the last stanza of the song:
As we gaze on Your kindly brightness.
So our faces display Your likeness.
Ever changing from glory to glory,
Mirrored here may our lives tell Your story.
Shine on me. Shine on me.

The event on the mountain has that symbolism as well. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark describe the same event but use the word metemorphothe. That Greek word is the word behind our English word ‘metamorphosis’. It refers to a change in appearance, but what we have most in our minds when we hear that word is how the caterpillar changes form to emerge as a butterfly. It is a change for the better. It is a more glorified existence.
The reading from Exodus talks about the time Moses went up the mountain and saw God. When he came back down he was not aware that his face was shining. This was the result of his contact with God. It frightened the Israelites and they made him put a veil over his face. But when Moses spoke with God he took it off. What he carried away from his time with God would have been marvelous to see, but disturbing to some. But that is what we need if we want our lives to be part of the glory of God.
We need to remember the power of God. The world is full of things that promise and fail to deliver some great meaning in life. God is that ultimate meaning and the church is the place where we seek God together. The result of that is that we live better lives. Not just improved in what we get, but in who we are as people. Many want some kind of spiritual experience yet really don’t want to experience God in that full power. It, like it was for the Israelites and the disciples, can be bewildering, even frightening. It can challenge who we are and what we do. But not to seek that is to somehow make the church and our faith and even our lives into something very superficial. The possibility of seeing God is offered to us. How could you really see God and not be changed, not even be terrified? Sometimes we want too little, not too much. And sometimes we don’t want too much if it will disturb what we really want.
God’s purpose is that we see God’s glory and that we share that glory with others. When we see God we are not to be silent about it. We are to see the light proclaim the light and then become the light for others. That can take many forms as Elizabeth Sherrill found:
A gallery of saints in glowing stained glass filled the windows of the little church: Mary holding the [Christ] Child, St. Peter with his keys, St. John on [the island of] Patmos. Watching the figures transform ordinary daylight into radiance and glory, I remembered a definition I heard once: “Saints are people who let the light shine through.” And I thought, The words apply not just to revered individuals like the ones in the windows but to the unsung saints we honor today.
I’ve known a lot of them, as different from one another as an English teacher and a Paris street sweeper. Yet, through each one, God’s light shone on those around them.
I think of a book report that came back to me in my sixth-grade English class with a line at the top in Miss Cathcart’s green-ink script: “You’re capable of seeing more in this story.” And because she saw something better in me, I reread the book and I did see more.
When I was a student in Paris a few years later, my worn, much mended jacket was in shabby contrast to the elegant outfits of Parisian women. A man was sweeping a gutter with his straw broom as the daily rush of water carried debris into the sewers. As I started to cross the street, he held up his hand and halted traffic so my frayed old coat wouldn’t be sprayed by passing cars. The gesture said, You’re valued just as you are.
And there was the friend who paid a visit after our second child was born, when all I could see ahead was dirty diapers and a sink full of dishes. Margaret pointed out the sacredness of daily chores, and when she left, my untidy apartment looked like a shrine.
Through all these people and scores more, light shone.

Most people will never go to the mountaintop and see Jesus transformed. Yet they need to know that power. We might be the only light they see.

We hear about this time in Jesus’ life when he went up to the mountain. There some of the disciples saw a marvelous event. His appearance changed, his face and clothes became dazzling white. And, like Moses of old, God was present with him. Moses brought back the law, but the voice that spoke to the disciples told them to listen to Jesus. Those disciples came back with a new direction in life, but above that there was the light. They saw Jesus in a new way. They knew that he was not an ordinary man, but one who showed us God. And they took down that mountain the fact that they had seen the light. That is how God works. The purpose of the church is to see God’s glory and transforming power. The purpose of the church is also to share that with those around it. And so its prayer should be: Lord, shine on us. Shine in us.