Transfiguration B

The Transfiguration of Our Lord, Year B

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

There is a story told of an American who went over to Paris, and, wishing to buy his wife a little gift, purchased a phosphorescent, mother-of-pearl match-box container; and the beauty of it was that in the dark it was said to radiate a wonderful light. He packed it in his trunk, took it home to the U.S.A., and after the family welcome dinner asked for the lights to be put out. In the dark he took the match-box container from his pocket to present it to his wife, but, when he looked at it, it was as black as the darkness around. Then he said, 'That is just what they palm off on foreigners. I've been swindled.' Next day his wife, a bit curious, discovered on the box a few words in French. She took it down to some friends who had a French maid and had it translated. That night, in the darkness, it was all aglow, for she had followed the instructions written on the box, which said:

'If you keep me all day long in the sunlight, I will shine for you all night long in the darkness.'

http://www.moreillustrations.com/Illustrations/transformation.html

I think most of us can relate to the frustration of not having enough light from that “glow-in-the-dark” thing - whatever it is: toy, t-shirt, or something else. When we first unwrap it and see that it has that phosphorescence, we all do the same thing, right? We either turn off all the lights or we go to another room or closet where we can be totally in the dark, so we can see this object glowing without any other light to compete with it. But when we get there, and we find out it’s not glowing…what do we do? We go and put it under a light, or we sit it right where the sun shines brightest through the window and let it sit and “soak up the light” for a while. THEN, back in the dark room, we’ll see the glow.

We call this day of the church year “the Transfiguration of Our Lord”. In the Gospel lesson, Jesus was “transfigured” before Peter, James, and John. This word in Greek is metamorpsos…it’s where we get our word “metamorphosis”. Here it describes a physical change, one that the 3 disciples can see very clearly with their own eyes. OK, so what does this change in Jesus mean?

To do that, let’s look at Moses first. In the passage from Exodus this morning, “the skin of [Moses’] face shone because he had been talking with God.” Notice that Moses wasn’t aware of the shine that his skin had taken on. But apparently it was more than just a “he brightens up the room with his personality” kind of shine. This was apparently actual light emanating from his skin with enough brightness to scare the people - so much so that they did not even want to come near him.

But this was not Moses’ light that was shining. This was the skin of Moses’ glowing, radiating, because he had been in such close proximity to God that it had absorbed some of God’s “light”…some of God’s glory. Just being close to God made Moses’ skin *shine*. Just think about that for a moment. We don’t have the science to explain this. There is no light bright enough to make our skin shine, no matter how long we sit and absorb it. Oh, we can make our skin burn from too much exposure, but to make it glow? To give off its own light?

No, just like our glow-in-the-dark object, Moses’ skin didn’t glow because it was a source of light. It was glowing from absorbing the light of God’s Glory, from being in His Presence. But did you notice that Moses covers it with a veil at certain times? I want to share with you some comments I read from an Old Testament scholar. He begins by describing how Moses would speak to God face-to-face in the Tent of Meeting:

“When friends speak to one another, their faces do not frown or darken in a scowl. Rather (like the Lord’s face in the Priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24-26), their faces shine. … If the people’s sin, though forgiven, has its lingering effect in their not being able to see God directly, yet they do see God’s face as reflected in the face of Moses whenever he comes back to them from meeting with God.

But now comes an unexpected thing. In various traditional cultures, leaders in worship put on masks in order to represent the deity. Here [in Exodus chapter 34], and hereafter, when Moses speaks to the people in God’s name, he does so ‘with unveiled face,’ and only after he is finished speaking in God’s name does he put the mask on. Then he keeps the mask on until he goes in to speak with God again, at which point he takes the mask off.” [J. Gerald Janzen, Exodus, ed. Patrick D. Miller and David L. Bartlett, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 262–263.]

Moses’ skin is shining and therefore the people see the glow of his skin, rather than just plain ol’ Moses. They know that he represents God to them when he speaks for God. And he only removes the veil when he is speaking for God…or when he is speaking to God. Other than those times, he covers his face.

Now let’s move to our Gospel lesson for today. In Mark 9, we see Jesus undergo a similar change, where he, too, begins to shine. But there are some notable differences between this scene and the Exodus passage. First, it isn’t just Jesus’ face; it’s his entire body that changed…even his clothes. In fact, it seems to be his clothes that Mark focuses on. Second, this change that they see Jesus go through is described as “he was transfigured before them” - literally this word means “he changed into another form.” I think this explanation says it very well: “What is promised to the righteous in the new [age] happens already to Jesus in this world, not as one among many others, but as the bearer of a unique call. Before the eyes of His most intimate disciples the human appearance of Jesus was for a moment changed into that of a heavenly being in the transfigured world. This is the anticipation and guarantee of an eschatological reality. Jesus is manifested to the disciples as the Son of Man of the hope of final salvation…” [Johannes Behm, “Μορφή, Μορφόω, Μόρφωσις, Μεταμορφόω,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 758.]

In other words, what the disciples saw in Jesus was a preview of what we can all expect in eternity. They got to see Jesus in his heavenly form, even though it was only for a moment. So much of Jesus’ incarnation - his taking on flesh and walking with us and among us - is about showing us what the Father has in store for us. This was just one example…but an important one. Paul tells us about this in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 - Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. And that is what Peter, James, and John saw - they saw Jesus go through that change.

And so this change that Jesus went through meant that he was not merely shining from being exposed to the Father. This was Jesus’ own light that was shining…because He is the Son of God. In this case, Jesus himself *is* the source of the light. Remember: Jesus is fully human - that’s what the incarnation means - but he is also FULLY divine. He is fully God. And this scene shows the disciples a glimpse of that divine nature within the man they call “Rabbi.”

As the last week of the season of Epiphany, we remember that this whole season is about how Jesus is revealed to Creation. Here, Jesus’ true identity is revealed to these three disciples both visually and verbally. They see his divinity in his transfiguration; and then they hear the voice of God tell them exactly who he is: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” (Mark 9:7)

When we are baptized into Christ, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we are given a command: “let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Our baptism is the beginning of our journey in the life of faith. Over the course of that journey, we can expect God to work a change in us. He works on us to help us to become more of the kind of human beings He wants us to be.

“To Christians the Spirit has granted free vision of the heavenly glory of the Lord, Christ. In this vision they undergo an unceasing and progressive change into the image of the One whose glory they see. It is the Lord Himself, present and active by the Spirit, who brings about this change. ...Man cannot bring about the change by his own activity; it is effected by Christ in Christians.” [ibid, 758]

Christ brings about this change in Christians. With that in mind… let’s go back to our phosphorescent object: we know that if we want it to glow, we have to expose it to light…and the brighter the light, the better. What’s the other rule about using it? The longer it’s exposed to the bright light, the longer it will glow in the dark.

If you look around the world outside the church right now, it’s pretty dark. And I don’t mean that the hours of daylight are short because it’s the winter season. I mean all of the chaos and division and violence and everything else that we see all the time. It’s a dark time in our country. And frankly, it’s been growing darker, slow and steady, for quite a while. But it’s darker now than it’s been in as long as I can remember. So where’s the light?

When Jaylen puts the candles out in a few minutes, I hope you notice that before he puts out the last candle, he takes the flame with his candlelighter and leaves the room with it still lit. There’s a reason our acolytes do that. What he’s doing is taking the light of Christ out into the world. He is showing us what we are all supposed to do: take the light of Christ into the world when we leave.

The secular world tells us all the time that we are to leave our faith in the church and in our homes. They don’t want to hear our religious stuff. Well, sorry…that’s what we are commanded to do. We are commanded to carry our faith out into the world. We are commanded to let the light of Christ in us shine in the darkness around us. We are commanded to share the Good News with those who don’t have it. We are commanded to let the world - yes, that world who hates Christ - to let the whole world know that Christ died for them, to save them from themselves. We are commanded to carry our light outside the walls of this building and let it shine. Have you ever lit a match in a room that’s totally dark? It doesn’t take much to light it up.

As we go out today, remember that we have been in communion with God today. We have heard His Holy Word, we have partaken of His Holy Supper. We go out today with His love in our hearts and His grace on our consciences. When we speak of our faith, let’s do so in a way that people who hear us will think that we were glowing like Moses. Let them see the light of Christ in us. And as we do, let’s watch that light chase the darkness back little by little.

Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.