"Light Fright" - Sermon from March 6, 2011
The Sunday of the TransfigurationMarch 6, 2011“Light Fright”Psalm 99; Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14My son Zach is going to school in Santa Barbara, California. It’s a beautiful place. I don’t know how anybody studies there. Quintessential California: the Pacific to his left, the mountains to his right, the Central Coast wine country just to the north and Hollywood/LA not far to the south. We tease him about “going native.” He’s biking, surfing, rock climbing, going to Disneyland…. And we hope he’s studying some, too.We went out to see him last summer. Respecting my age and overall decrepitude, he took me on a mountain hike up a “gentle” trail, not to the top, but to a lower peak overlooking Santa Barbara and the ocean. It was beautiful, and we stayed there quite a while. I told him I wanted to enjoy the view, but the truth is, I needed a some time to recover from the “gentle” climb.I think of that climb when I read “Jesus took Peter James and John and led them up a high mountain, and he was transfigured before them” (Matt 17:1-2). Surely as Ann Fontaine suggests, “Transfiguration reveals what was always there.” But why were their eyes suddenly opened to see him as he always was? Oxygen deprivation, I suspect. An unguarded moment.“His face shown like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah.” Some biblical interpreters want to argue the story is purely symbolic. Jesus was always informed by the law and the prophets. Others argue it is a resurrection appearance pushed back before the cross, a kind of foreshadowing of what’s to come. Maybe so, but this sounds to me like our typical response to mystery: reduce it to size, control it with our minds, explain it away as - normal.Truth is, mystery scares us, and no mystery more than the unexpected presence of God! Sheer fear was the three disciples’ response. Matthew says Peter reacted with chatter, proposed a building program on the spot. It’s always tempting for us religious types to confuse buildings with the holy and divine. It’s one way we try to tame the wild mystery of God. We prefer our glory in manageable doses, contain it in bricks and mortar, manage it and maintain it, domesticate God like a caged pet in a zoo.They hear the voice of God, what George Herbert called “reversed thunder:” “This is my son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased: listen to him!” The glory of Christ? The voice of God? You would think of all people these three religious fellows seeking more than what the religion of their forbears could offer would dance with ecstasy at this direct personal experience of transcendence. But what do they do? They hit the dirt! Says Matthew “They fell to the ground and were overcome by fear” (Matt 17:6).Why don’t we think that’s a strange reaction from three guys who were in the habit of talking to God regularly to ask for stuff and claimed to be seeking God? We find this reaction all over the Bible, with Moses and Samuel, with Mary and Joseph and Paul. People say they believe in God, but when God appears to them in some glorious way, they get the heebie-jeebies! Every time God appears or just sends an angel, the first thing they have to say is “Fear not!” You can look it up.Raises the question: if we believe in God, why would God’s presence surprise us? And why in heaven’s name would it scare us? I’m not saying it’s unnatural. Hebrews warns: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31). Fearful, because we suddenly know we’re not in control of life or death or anything really. Scary, because we know God might change all our plans and send us off in some new direction. Terrifying, because all our illusions, deceits, idols, and excuses evaporate like the darkness before the dawn. No wonder we don’t see glimpses of glory more often. We keep our heads down and our eyes closed, stick to our familiar paths. We find he darkness easier than risking the weight of glory.It takes courage to open your eyes and see, to let down your guard and let the light shine, to put yourself into God’s hands, be ready to do God’s bidding. “God was in Christ,” wrote the evangelist John, “and we beheld his glory.” And they were never the same. It was always there, but something happened on that mountain to open their eyes to it. It still happens. Christ takes hold of someone and changes everything. Would you let that happen to you?I’ll tell something even scarier. The Bible says God’s glory isn’t just in Christ. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” says the psalmist (Psa 8:1). You can see it from a mountaintop in Santa Barbara or even our own Mount Bonnell. But you don’t even have to go outside. Paul says, “God chose to make known how great are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). You can’t run away from that. If the glory of God was in Christ, and Christ is in us, we carry God’s glory within us, too.In the second century Bishop Irenaeus of Antioch said: “The glory of God is a person alive.” But we don’t see it because we don’t look for it. We don’t stop to look, truly to behold the people around us - let alone listen to them - but God’s glory is there. Mother Teresa saw it even in the desperate souls of Calcutta she served, whom she called “Christ in his most distressing disguises.”Artists and mystics see it everywhere. Wrote Catherine of Sienna:“I won’t take no for an answer,”
God said to me
When he opened His arms each night
wanting us to dance.
Claimed John of the Cross:My soul is a candle that burned away the veil;
only the glorious duties of light I now have.
“What does the light talk about?” asked Meister Eckhart.
I asked a plant that once.
He said, “I am not sure,
but it makes me grow.”
Said Francis of Assisi:It was easy to love God
in all that was beautiful.
The lessons of deeper knowledge, though,
instructed me to embrace God
in all things.”Wrote Thomas Merton:In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world…. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! … As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.Do we have the faith, the nerve to see God’s glory in everything, in everyone, especially – hold on to your pew! - in ourselves? Writes Marianne Williamson:What’s startling to realize is that God’s glory is everywhere, all around us. We need only open our eyes to see it. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God.Your playing small does not serve the world.There is nothing enlightened about shrinkingso that other people won't feel insecure around you.We are all meant to shine, as children do.We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.It is not just in some; it is in everyone.And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously giveother people permission to do the same.As we are liberated from our fear,our presence automatically liberates others.Thus Henri Nouwen insists we should not ask, “How to live for the glory of God” but “How to live who we are, how to make true our deepest self?” He suggests we pray with the mantra “I am the glory of God” and live into it until it becomes not just the focus of our meditation, but a living reality.Jesus tells the three, and all of us disciples made queasy by a glimpse of glory, “Get up and do not be afraid.” Then he leads us back down to the valley where the demons are mean and the opposition strong and the cross lies in wait. But we are no longer the same. Our eyes have been opened. We have been transformed by the vision of God’s glory. We have seen the light and know the darkness cannot overcome it. And once your eyes have been opened, how can you ever close them again? Let down your guard and live by the light, dear friends. Behold the glory all around you. See God’s glory in your own soul. Practice transfiguration, and your fear will disappear. Amen. May we pray?We gaze at the darkness all around and feel despair, dear God. But you have shown us your light. You have urged us to look for you in even the least of these. Teach us to behold your glory in the people around us, to listen for your voice in every word and whisper, to find the light you have planted in our own souls. You do not change, but you change us and leave us no longer the same. Then by your light we can live in faith, hope, and love, take bold risks to assert your grace, and extend the reign of your peace in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.