“From One Degree to Another”
Transfiguration Sunday
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Download the sermon (mp3)
Many of us started this morning by greeting someone or being greeted by someone with the words, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” Maybe someone even wished you a happy Chinese new year. But here inside the church we are celebrating something else, too. There are no greeting cards for it, and no expectations for flowers, chocolates, or gifts. I know of no one who goes out for a romantic dinner in celebration of it. We observe it every year, but most of us would be hard-pressed to say why. But let me be the first to wish you a good one: Happy Transfiguration Sunday!
Perhaps you remember the transfiguration story. Jesus takes Peter and James and John to a mountaintop. And while he is praying, the appearance of his face changes, and his clothes become dazzling white – he is transfigured. Moses and Elijah appear with him, and they talk with him. And Peter and his friends, sleepy though they are, manage to stay awake for the whole thing. Peter is overcome by the moment, and has a great idea. “Master! It is good for us to be here! Let’s set up some tents and stay awhile!” And while he is speaking, a cloud comes and overshadows them all, and they are terrified. Then a voice comes from the cloud. “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice has spoken, suddenly only Jesus is standing there, alone; Moses and Elijah are gone. And the three friends keep silent. They go back down the mountain, tell no one what they’ve seen, and get back to their work with Jesus.
It’s a strange story, but a beautiful one. Luke tells us that the subject of the conversation Jesus has with Moses and Elijah there on the mountain is Jesus’ upcoming departure – in other words, his crucifixion. Shrouded in light, they speak of dark things. But even the dark things they discuss will ultimately also yield to light. Jesus will be despised, rejected, and crucified. But beyond all of that, he will be resurrected and exalted. This transfiguration is a glimpse of what is to come – light, and more light, even in the midst of darkness. This story is meant for our hope. It is meant for our courage, and our boldness.
Light stands at the beginning of the story of our world. In the beginning, we are told, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep. And God’s first word was this: “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And it was.
When Jesus took his friends up the mountain to receive a revelation about who he was, what they saw was light. He glowed with the same goodness that stood at the beginning of creation. The light of the cosmos shone in his face. The truth of God’s good, first word – let there be light – came to fullness in him, a fullness that enveloped him and shimmered in him and burst out of him, streaming into any who would receive it. And it was good.
For lack of a better word, the church has always called this light glory. It is our best word to describe something for which there really are no words. The thesaurus takes a stab at it, saying that glory is synonymous with magnificence, splendor, beauty, wonder, grandeur, brilliance. Yes. But it is more, too. It is also power, danger, strength, and majesty. But it is more than these, too. Glory is the light of God somehow radiating through from beyond the universe. Glory sparkles, glows, burns just beneath the surface of things. And it is good.
We have shunted the whole concept of glory to the realm of the church. But its real realm is all of reality. Everything God created is infused with the light of God, and little sparks of God are smoldering everywhere. That glory is often veiled to our eyes, veiled with earth and veiled with flesh. But straining behind all those veils is the very light of God.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he writes, “but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed…. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another….” (3:16, 18).
As followers of Christ, we are meant to be people of the light. We are meant to look for and see the goodness of God glinting everywhere, and so not to despair but instead to pattern our lives after that goodness. We look on Christ, and take his light into our own being, and let it shine in our living. Our actions and our being are meant to conform to the image of Christ, to sparkle with all the goodness of God. And yet it’s not always as simple as that, is it? We struggle with real moments of darkness. We let our bad thoughts and worst habits take over more than we would like. Sometimes we struggle even to believe in Christ our Light, let alone to let our lives shine with him. Words like “glory” and “transformation” seem very far removed from our day-to-day realities.
But Paul says we are all of us being transformed. And if you do not feel very transformed, take heart – it is not some sort of complete and momentary conversion, it is not done yet, it is a process. We are conformed to Christ by degrees. We shine with his light, little by little. We let it flicker in our lives, day by day. We choose to look for God’s reality flashing behind the veil of everything around us. We choose to believe in the goodness behind it all. We renounce delusions and dark things. We ask each day to be given more light, and to move with more light, and to shine with more light. We ask to be given the eyes to see. And we let ourselves be changed.
On Friday night, in this room, I witnessed something like a transfiguration. This church, led by Sue Ellen and the Board of Christian Ed, hosted a Valentine’s party for the children from this church and from Hikone Housing. 36 children showed up, including a large group of young teenagers. We had dinner, did crafts, made Valentines, and played games. The last part of the evening occurred here in the sanctuary. I would lead a few minutes of music and then Sue Ellen would give a talk, and then the children would be dismissed.
I started off with my churchy little songs about love. The children sat in the pews and sang along. But there was a rustling, an energy in the room that I was no match for. There was a lot of movement, and some interruptions, and some non-musical noise. There were bows on the end of each pew for a wedding the next day, and I was worried about the children playing with those. My own child kept interrupting me to ask if we could sing “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” I kept pressing forward with my agenda, trying to impose my own particular order on how the music was going, trying to keep the children in their seats as more and more of them wanted to join me up on the chancel.
Right before we sang “Jesus Loves Me,” a group of middle school girls asked if they could come stand up front, too. I relented and told the whole group that anyone who wanted could come up. The kids burst forth like they’d been set free from some sort of prison, and they rushed the chancel. Just a handful of children stayed in the pews. About 25 kids, maybe more, stood up here in front.
I came down the steps to the floor level and turned around to face them, to teach them some sign language to use for the chorus. And when they started singing, the whole place lit up. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.” And the sound got louder, and some of the kids started clapping to the beat and I think a few were stomping and maybe dancing and some of them were doing the sign language too. We sang it with a kind of rhythm I’ve never done it in. “Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.” And it seemed to me like the whole room was suddenly filled with light, and each one of those kids was twinkling and shimmering with the very light of God. And it was good. And I was transformed by it.
Are we ready to let that kind of light shine more and more in our church? Are we ready to move with that kind of light, and to be changed by it?
Even though Paul assures us that growth and transformation happen by degrees, he does not mean it is a passive process. “Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.” If the very light of God has shone in our hearts and over our lives, how could we keep that light hidden? We act with great boldness! Paul says. What would boldness look like for you, for us? What would it mean to move by degrees towards more light, while acting boldly with the light we’ve got? What if when worship ends today we were to leave here with the zeal and audacity to shine with God’s light on the snowy streets of Ann Arbor? What if we dared to speak of the truth we’ve experienced of a good God who seeks relationship with us through Jesus, and who by grace makes forgiveness and freedom possible? What if we gave ourselves to encounters with people to whom we meant to be ministering, but in the process we let them show us God’s light in new ways too? What if we let the children from Hikone teach us a thing or two about singing God’s praises? What if we let the homeless and the hungry turn a mirror back at us to show us something about our own fears and prejudices? What if we risked inviting people to church, and then let ourselves be challenged and changed by them once they were here?
It’s all right if we fail at some of our efforts, you know. Luke tells us that the first thing the disciples did after coming down that mountain was to fail. They tried to exorcise a demon and couldn’t do it. They flopped thoroughly and publicly. And also boldly.
Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, Paul wrote, we do not lose heart!
We had our own spectacular failure with our pavilion for the homeless. I’m proud of that. Not that we failed, but that we risked failure, that we tried something bold, something whose outcome we could not manage or predict. We failed. But discipleship isn’t about success, it isn’t about not failing, it’s about being faithful, it’s about following, it’s about shining. It’s about trusting that, from the ashes of our failures God can light a new spark.
The light shining in our hearts is for sharing. We share it by telling the truth we know. We share it by honest living and by renouncing our assumptions and our agendas. We share it by risking failure. We share it by being willing to be changed. We share it by loving boldly, and living boldly, and believing boldly, and ministering boldly.
There is an ancient story from the Desert Fathers, those Christian monastics of the early centuries who went into the desert to pray and to learn and to try to become more like Christ. One day Abba Lot went to see old Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office. I fast a little. I pray and meditate. I live in peace and, as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” And old Abba Joseph stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”
Are you ready for that? I think I am ready. I am ready for this church to speak boldly, to reach out boldly, to love boldly, and, at times, to fail boldly. I am ready for us to move from one degree of glory to another. I am ready for us to become all flame. How about you?