Needing the Transfiguration Light: A Sermon for a Nation and World in Crisis

The Epiphany season, which we conclude today, is about light, recognition, and revelation. It began with a star in the Bethlehem sky, drawing the Magi to visit the infant king, and culminates on a mountain top, where Jesus is transfigured, we might even say transformed, before his disciples’ eyes, alongside Moses and Elijah. It is a foreshadowing of what’s to come: Jesus as he will be in the resurrection, even greater than the greatest of the ancient prophets. For a brief shining, radiating moment the disciples, and we, see Jesus as God sees him.

Perhaps like me, when you’ve heard this gospel passage you’ve assumed that the meaning in the story was about what happened to Jesus. I’ve been ordained 20 years, so I must have preached on the transfiguration at least 15 times, and my approach is usually the transformation of Jesus. But what if it’s not only Jesus who was transfigured, but his friends as well? In this morning’s lesson from Exodus we read that after being in God’s presence Moses’ face was so bright that he had to be veiled. In essence, he was transfigured himself through his encounter with God. Only he didn’t know it until others saw him when his face shone too brightly to even be looked at.

This makes me wonder if the same might have happened to Peter and James and John on the mountain, in God’s presence, hearing God’s voice, seeing God’s radiant glory. Only, maybe like Moses they didn’t know it—perhaps because they were blinded by Jesus, by the vision of Moses and Elijah, but also because, you can never really see yourself. Unless you are looking in a mirror you don’t know how look like in any moment. Even then you don’t see your full self, in the way others see you, certainly not in the way that God sees you. Maybe Peter, James, and John didn’t know how their encounter with God had transformed them, such that they, too, shone with God’s glory and light, if not physically, then inwardly. I suspect it was this transformation that allowed them to preach and teach, to heal, and to manifest God through their own lives.

And like those long ago friends of Jesus, maybe, just maybe, we, too, shine with God’s glory when we encounter Christ. We just have difficulty believing it sometimes. We become so much like the disciples, weighed down by our fears, our sense of un-worth, of not feeling good enough, or sometimes, of being afraid of how we might have to change. It’s too bad, because if ever there were a time when we needed to receive that transfiguration, it is now.

As members of the Old North community know, and visitors can imagine, we spend considerable time reflecting on history. The history of our church, the history of our nation and world. And as I look back on our long history, what I see is a church, a community, that from the start was dedicated to transformation, transfiguration, shining the light of hope. Limited and imperfectly, but still real. When we were founded in 1723, people flocked to this church because it offered something profoundly different in Puritan-dominated Boston. A different style of worship, a different type of welcome. We strove to be “A house of prayer for all people.” Consider the angels being revealed today—hovering above us now again—what a difference they must have been from austere Puritan meeting houses. How they must have lifted weary souls to heaven.

The lights that shone from the steeple on April 18, 1775—250 years ago next month—likewise represented something new, the beginning of the transfiguration of this land, from colony to nation. Even those of us who have a special affinity for all things English, as many do, appreciate that lands and peoples should be afforded the right of self-determination. The vision for this nation, so profoundly articulated in the Declaration of Independence, laid the foundations for the people we strive to be—believing that all men, all people, are created equal, and endowed by their Creator, God above and around and within, with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the vision, this transfiguring light, drew my immigrant ancestors here, and I suspect many of yours as well, just as it does so many today from every land.

But for us to enjoy that freedom and live secure in it, we must continue to shine the transfiguring light of hope in our nation and beyond. Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents understood this when they were willing to sacrifice everything in World War II, defending and freeing people held in bondage even in far off lands. Surely we could have stayed out of it. In fact, we did for a long time. We could have let Europe fight their own war. We could have allowed genocide to eliminate the Jewish people, Slavic people, Roma, dissenters and more. We were very late to join the struggle, such that 6 million people were murdered in the Holocaust with much of Europe on its knees. How many more if the US had persisted in looking the other way, minding our own business? Would Britian, too, have fallen? And Canada? Could we then have withstood long? Thankfully we don’t have to consider that historic possibility.

But we do have to consider the possibilities today, if we fail to shine hopeful, transfiguring light in the darkest places of the world. I’m too young to remember the building of the Berlin Wall,  the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Vietnam War. But I do remember how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl—conservative leaders in their times and contexts—stood shoulder to shoulder in friendship and defense of democracy. I remember when students in Leipzig in East Germany gathered in Lutheran churches to pray for peace, followed by massive outdoor protests, gathering as many as 320,000 people. The refusal of police to gun them down led eventually to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the East German state, and ultimately even the Soviet Union. Because allies, shaped by history, stood together. Because in an earlier age President Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, said, “I bin ein Berliner” and President Reagan, a conservative Republican, said “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall.”

In a press conference at 10 Downing Street, in November 1989, after the East German collapse, Margaret Thatcher said, “do not forget none of this would have happened unless we had been determined to defend our liberty in the post-war period... We formed NATO. Its determination is to defend liberty—and we never flinched—which has been one of the factors which have helped to bring about change in the Soviet Union. Do not think that people just by wanting to have a democracy can have it—you have got steadily to build it….” Then she concluded, “May I say this to you: had America stayed in Europe after the First World War and we had had a NATO then, I do not believe we should have had a Second World War. Let us learn that lesson!”

Nations, once adversaries, together shone the transfiguring light of hope and freedom. We need that same light today. The people of Ukraine need that light in their endless dark abyss, under siege by a power far greater than themselves, even as their resilience and steadfast heroism has inspired the world. The people of Russia and most especially President Putin need the light, too, reshaping hearts and minds from aggression and war to peace. The people of Gaza and Israel need the light overcoming decades of division and now devastation. The people of Syria and Afghanistan, too. And we here in the United States need that light, the light of transformation and transfiguration. The light that shines in the darkest corners of our hearts and souls, showing us the love, peace, and justice of God.

We need the light that shows the truth. We need the light to come down from the steeple, from the mountaintop, and into the lives of people living in the rubble of war, amidst bombs raining fire on homes, hospitals, and schools. We need the light to shine in hearts infected with racism, hatred, and fear, in hearts that somehow can’t or won’t believe that our neighbors, our fellow humans, are also God’s beloved, cherished daughters and sons, deserving of respect and protection. We need transfiguring, transforming light. Shining in the darkest abyss. What’s more, God needs us to be that light ourselves. Right now.  May God give us the strength, courage, and vision.

To whom be the glory: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

© The Revd Matthew P. Cadwell, PhD