"Living in the Light"  San Williams, UPC

Matthew 17:1-9

Most of us have heard about the famous Marfa Lights.  About ten miles outside Marfa, in far West Texas, tourists regularly gather in hopes of glimpsing the elusive, unpredictable lights.  These lights are said to bounce around the sky like brightly glowing balls that vanish and re-appear.  Some people consider the lights a mystery, while others seek to explain the lights as swamp gas, or the distant headlights of passing vehicles. Well, Mathew’s story of the transfiguration also tells of a mysterious light.  Accompanied by Peter, James, and John, Jesus goes up to a high mountain.  While there, Jesus is transfigured before them—his face shining like the sun, his clothes a glistening white.  But unlike the Marfa lights, the light of which the Bible speaks is not a luminous phenomenon of one sort or another. Rather, it is about opening our eyes to see the world in a radically new light.

In the first place, on the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples—Peter, James and John—see Jesus as they have never seen him before.  Even though the light of God had been in Jesus from the beginning, the brilliance of that light had been largely hidden from the disciples’ eyes.  Yes, they had seen him feed the hungry and heal the sick. They had listened to him tell parables about the Kingdom.  They had seen him blessing the poor, eating with sinners, and associating with the lowly. They'd looked on with dismay as Jesus predicted his own rejection, suffering and death.  And just prior to today’s story, Matthew tells how Jesus had startled his disciples by inviting them to take up their cross and follow him, to lose their life in order to gain it.  All these things the disciples had seen and heard. But when Jesus led them up the high mountain, they saw more of Jesus than they had known—they saw the light of God blazing in the face of Jesus.  Jesus appeared to them no longer merely a teacher, rabbi or prophet,  Rather in this moment of piercing lucidity they saw—as John puts it in his Gospel—the true light that had come into the world.

 And from this new way of seeing Jesus, there followed a new way of seeing the world. The light that poured forth from Jesus radically altered the disciples’ perception of the world. For example, the poor had been almost universally regarded as unloved and unwanted by God, but in the light that Jesus brought, they came to be seen as special objects of God’s favor. Tax collectors and prostitutes were shunned, but Jesus cast an entirely new light on their status when he shared meals with them.   Misfortune was construed as God’s punishment for some sin, but Jesus shines the light of forgiveness on sinners and makes their suffering his own.  People had been taught:  “Love your neighbor and hate your enemies,” but Jesus recasts the old proverb in a new light:  "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.”  

There’s a story in the Jewish Talmud about a young student who had been instructed to pray each day at dawn.  The student came to his teacher and asked, "Rabbi, when is dawn? Is dawn the moment when the last star fades from the sky, or is it when the sun creeps above the horizon?”  His teacher replied, “No, my son.  Dawn is the moment when you can look at the face of another and see not an enemy, but a friend.” Just so, the light shining in the face of Jesus changes the way we see others.

Riding the city bus recently, I watched a disheveled man come aboard at one of the stops. In a gruff tone, he announced to the driver that he needed to go downtown but didn’t have the fare. I sat there wondering what the driver would do, maybe even secretly hoping the driver would say, “Sorry, fellow, but if you can’t pay, you can’t ride.” As I was having these thoughts, an elderly, grey-haired lady in the seat across from me, fumbled through her tattered purse, hobbled to the front of the bus and silently handed the man a bus pass.  She saw what I and others had failed to see:  a young man in need of help. She saw a neighbor where others of us saw only a stranger.  She offered hospitality, when it would have been so easy to respond with hostility.  She gave him kindness while others of us regarded him with suspicion.  So that day, riding on the city bus, I was reminded once again that the light still shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.  When we truly believe in Jesus as the light of the world, we see others differently.

In addition, by seeing Jesus and the world in a new light, the disciples began to see themselves in a new way.  At first they were afraid and confused. Peter, you recall,  proposed to build three booths.  Maybe he was thinking of the booths his ancestors had built in the wilderness, or maybe he wanted to hold on to the experience. Perhaps he wanted to attach some dogma or institutional authority to what was essentially a mystery. In any case, Peter’s plans were disrupted when a bright cloud passed over them and a voice from heaven echoed the voice at Jesus’ baptism:  "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”  With that, Jesus walked over to the frightened disciples, touched them, invited them to rise, syaing, “Do not be afraid.”  So the transfiguration episode concludes in a moment of grace and empowerment. Author Annie Dillard writes: “The question from agnosticism is, ‘Who turned on the lights?’  The question from faith is, ‘Whatever for?’”  Matthew’s story comes down to that question:  What’s the transfiguration for? Surely the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop was not simply for the purpose of dazzling and overwhelming the disciples. Jesus had no gluttonous desire for adoration, no need to demonstrate superiority and power over his disciples.  Quite the contrary. Rather, his transfiguration was for the purpose of empowering the disciples to follow him in doing God’s will. Jesus had earlier called his disciples the light of the world.  He had promised them that “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God.”  Now by his touch he released them from fear, and lifted them with him into the light of God’s transforming love.  So you see, Jesus is not the only one who undergoes a transfiguration. The disciples experienced a transfiguration of their own. 

I heard a story about a seeker who went from church to church trying to discover an authentic Christian community.  Finally, the seeker found a church that seemed to radiate the light and love of Christ. The members were known for their goodness and for the sincerity of their service.  “I see everything you do,” the seeker said, “and I’m impressed. But before I join your community, I have a question:  Do you believe that God works miracles?” “Well,” they answered, “it depends on what you mean by a miracle.  Some people call it a miracle when God does the will of people. We call it a miracle when people do the will of God.”

Friends, that’s the real miracle that Jesus works in the lives of his disciples.  He empowers us to do God’s will.  He commissions us to live in the light of God’s inclusive, inexhaustible love.  He frees us from fear and leads us along lowly paths of service.  Such is the light that shines in the world’s darkness, and which the darkness cannot overcome.