February 18, 2007 Last Sunday after Epiphany,
Transfiguration Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 139: 7-12; II Corinthians 3:4-8, 17-18; Luke 9: 28-36
When I am close to despair, I think of a certain image and I find myself
comforted and strengthened and heading back on track. The image is of a stream
of light that is flowing from beyond this world, a stream that is always washing
over us and flowing through us. It is the light of God’s all forgiving, all accepting,
unconditional love. I picture myself opening to it, entering its flow. That image
works for me because I believe in the light, or I choose to act as if I believe in it
even when I am in the shadow of doubt and despair.
I am not the kind of preacher who calls upon you to believe. I have yet to
do an altar call here. But if Transfiguration Sunday is going to be of any use to us,
we need to believe in the light. We do not need to believe in the factual accuracy
of any one story about the light, but to gain the grace that is possible to receive
from it we need to believe in what the disciples saw shining from Jesus and the
children of Israel saw reflected in Moses’ face and the Psalmist saw shining
through the shadowed night and Paul saw reflected in those around him who were
being transformed.
Somehow we need to suspend our rational disbelief in order to be in a place
where we can receive the benefits the light has to offer. We need to think about
whatever helps us believe. If the stories of light in the Bible are not enough, then
we can think of the stories of the saints seeing visions of light or becoming visions
of light themselves.
If it helps, think of stories like Corrie ten Boom’s of the light she saw in her
saintly sister’s face in a Nazi death camp. The ten Booms were Dutch Christians
who had been caught helping the Jews escape. In the death camp Corrie’s sister
kept her faith and her Christ-like love and she inspired many others to keep
theirs, but she was weak and grew sick. Her face became ghastly pale and gaunt.
Through it all she kept looking to the light.
Eventually she died. That day another prisoner came running up to tell
Corrie to come see what had happened. It was a miracle, she said. A kind worker
let them sneak into the room where bodies were piled waiting to be taken away.
There they saw that in the short time since her death, Corrie’s sister’s face not only
had regained a look of health and youth and peace, but it was actually radiant.
One of the things that most strengthens my faith in the light is to look
beyond Christianity. In Taoism I have seen how the ancient sages compared the
power of the sacred way to light. Similarly the ancient Jewish mystics saw the
glory of God’s presence, called the Shekinah, as a radiant light.
We also have the testimony of people of all faiths and no faith from around
the world who have died and come back to life. Many of them have met in death a
Being of Light who made them feel so unconditionally forgiven and welcomed
and loved that they did not want to come back, but who sent them back to love and
serve this world. They felt the deepest peace they had ever known in that light.
Then they came back and worked toward the dream of peace on earth.
If we can bring ourselves to believe in the light enough, then we will find
ourselves asking how we can experience it in our lives and how we can fill up
with its grace. How can we feel forgiven and forgive, how can we feel loved
and love, how can we feel peace and help create a more peaceful world? The
light can save us from our own darkness, but in a world gone mad with violence,
a world lost in the shadowed night of loveless injustice, we desperately need to
shine this light and show its sacred way in order to change the world into what
we dream it may yet be.
The scriptures can tell us much about how to live in the light. The Psalm
says, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”
It reminds us that God is always present to lead us and hold us fast. It does not
matter how far we have strayed, God’s Spirit is always as near to us as our own
breath. Nor does it matter what shadows have darkened our hearts or what night
has swallowed the earth. The Psalm says, “Even the night is not without light to
you; the night is as bright as the day.”
Paul reminds us that this light is a gift God gives to us. If we want to fill
with light, we need to have the humility to receive it as a gift. We cannot be open
to receive if we are all clenched in a compulsive, controlling, all consuming way
of life. Compulsivity shuts off receptivity.
The light of God’s presence is a gift, but Paul also shows us that we have
some work to do to get it. Our job is to turn ourselves toward God’s presence
wherever it may be in our lives and to keep focused on the light. He says, “And
all of us…,seeing the glory of the Lord as if reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
The transfiguration story in Luke shows us that if we are going to see the
light, we need to follow where Christ leads. We need to climb the mountain of
prayer. We need to stay awake. We need to be courageous. It is frightening and
disorienting to be in the presence of a higher power that wants to change us.
And yet, as confused and afraid as Peter may have been, he said to Jesus,
“It is good for us to be here.” It is good to come into the presence of God, to see
the light, because it strengthens our faith. It is good to be changed by it, because it
changes us into instruments of God’s justice and healing and peace, it changes us
into beacons of hope and into forces of life-giving creativity. The change doesn’t
happen all at once. Peter still got things wrong and even denied Jesus, but by
keeping his faith he kept increasing his own share of light. By being on the
mountain or at the tomb or in that room at Pentecost Peter made himself available
to receive grace and be transformed. We need to do the same.
The dancer and choreographer, Twyla Tharp, talks about this in other terms
in her book, The Creative Habit. She talks about the “paradox of creativity.” She
says, “In order to be habitually creative, you have to know how to prepare to be
creative, but…it’s only after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into
your efforts.” The disciple Peter did his preparation by showing up at the right
time at the likely place, but then he had to wait for what would come.
In theological terms what Tharp is talking about is called grace, the light or
inspiration the Holy Spirit breathes into us. Tharp calls it luck. The paradox is
that we have to be “prepared to be lucky” as the writer E. B. White said. We have
to work at a spiritual practice to be ready to receive freely-given grace.
Tharp quotes the champion professional golfer, Gary Player, who said,
“The more I practice, the luckier I get.” The more we practice the spiritual arts
and disciplines, the more grace we may find in our lives. Not because we are
good, but because we are prepared to receive. We do not always receive, of
course, or receive what we want. The spiritual life has its barren deserts and
inexplicable dark nights. But the way out is more likely to come to those who
continue to open to grace, even when it feels painfully absent. When people
continue to seek the light through times of terrible darkness, they shine out to
those around them all the more poignantly.
Twyla Tharp writes, “Being prepared for luck is like getting a voice
message that tells you, ‘Something good may happen to you between 9:00 AM
and 5:00 PM today. Make sure you are at your desk (or in your studio….)
working. And keep your eyes open for it.’ The more you are in the room
working, experimenting, banging away at your objective, the more luck has a
chance of biting you on the nose.”
If we want to be transformed like Christ with grace, if we want to bring into
this world the light of love and healing and peace, we need to get prepared to get
lucky. We need to be on the mountain of prayer to receive the vision of light and
hear the voice or God when they come. We need to practice looking for God in all
things. We need to go to our desk or studio or office or classroom, or to our
committee meeting or volunteer work or church in the faith that something good
may happen, prepared for grace, even if a thousand times before it has not
happened. We need to act as if we believe and go about our praying or serving
even if we are lost in the deep shadow of doubt or despair. We need to practice
doing whatever works for us to make us feel that we are in that stream of light
flowing from beyond this world, in the sacred way, in the presence of God’s all-
forgiving, unconditional love.
The good news is that Lent is upon us. That is good is good news for those
who long to be transformed into greater light because the darkness of Lent was
created by the ancient church to deepen our spiritual practice. So I hope you will
be intentional about it and set aside time to read or pray or walk—whatever helps
you connect to the Spirit. I hope you will come to the Ash Wednesday service to
reflect on your spiritual life, or come to the Prayer of the Heart, or come to Dick
Devor’s Bible class, or come to me seeking spiritual direction, or come to church
on Sunday mornings and prepare yourself to be lucky. Prepare yourself for your
highest dreams to come true. The more you practice, the luckier you get, because
“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.”
Let us pray in silence, turning our focus entirely to God, and watching and
listening for something good to happen to transform us…
Sermon 02/18/2007