Catching God's light

Earlier this summer, you may know that a group of parishioners, inspired particularly by the sparkly outfits of some of our youth, began scheming about a Sunday when everyone could be invited to wear their sparkliest get-up. I mentioned that the Transfiguration happens on August 6th, but that we could celebrate it on the Sunday following. So here we are, on a particularly sparkly Sunday, to celebrate the Transfiguration.

In the Gospel today, Luke tells us that Jesus went up a mountain with Peter, John, and James to pray. And while he was praying, “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.”

Something about Jesus was suddenly so radiant that the disciples could see him differently. The Transfiguration is, in part, about revelation: for one brief moment, the disciples are given a glimpse of who Jesus truly is.

And perhaps that gives us a place to begin today. Because light, radiance, is really interesting. Glitter and sparkles don’t make light. A mirror doesn't make light. A stained-glass window doesn't make light.

They catch it. They reflect it. They make light visible.

And I wonder if that is one of the things we are invited to think about when we celebrate the Transfiguration: what happens when God's light catches us?

Jesus has taken Peter, John, and James with him to a mountain to pray. Throughout Scripture, mountains are places of communion with God and of transformation. This is no exception.

We hear that Jesus' face changes and his clothes become dazzling white. And immediately, if we have been paying attention to our Old Testament lesson, we should recognize something familiar. Moses comes down from the mountain after speaking with God, and his face shines. Moses has been in the presence of God, and something about that encounter becomes visible on his face.

Moses is not the source. He's just been standing close enough to catch it.

But Luke gives us something different in Jesus. Moses' face shines because he has been in the presence of God. Jesus' own appearance is transformed, and the glory of God is revealed in him. There is something here that the disciples are being invited not simply to admire, but to recognize.

And now Jesus is on another mountain, in prayer, and his appearance changes.

We hear that Moses and Elijah are with Jesus, speaking with him. Moses embodies God's work of liberation from bondage, while Elijah embodies the prophetic call to speak truth and call God's people back toward God. Luke tells us that they are speaking with Jesus about his “departure,” and the Greek word here is exodus. They are speaking with him about the exodus that he is about to undergo: his death and resurrection, his ultimate work of liberation for the sake of all of God's people.

Then there are the disciples. They are exhausted, struggling to stay awake, but somehow they remain awake long enough to see it.

And Peter responds in a way that I think is actually pretty wonderful.

He says, “Master, it is good for us to be here.”

Peter gets something right.  We often point out Peter’s wrongs in this passage that come in his reaction to what he has seen. But let’s be reminded, he sees something beautiful and holy and overwhelming, and his first response is joy.

“It is good for us to be here.”

Of course, Peter then gets a little carried away. He wants to build three dwellings—one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Peter wants to hold on to this moment.

And Peter's instinct is not so different from our own. Who among us hasn't experienced something wonderful and immediately wished we could somehow preserve it? We take pictures. We tell the story again. We save the keepsake. We try, in some small way, to hold on to what made us joyful.

Maybe that's part of what we're doing with Sparkle Sunday, too. We take this strange, dazzling, holy story and give ourselves a tangible way to celebrate it—to put on a little sparkle and say, “It is good for us to be here.”

And perhaps some of us felt a little resistance to that. Church is often perceived as such a serious place, after all. But Peter's instinct wasn't wrong. He saw something beautiful and wanted to rejoice in it.

And that brings me to prayer.

Because there is one detail in this story that I think is easy to overlook: the Transfiguration happens while Jesus is praying.

Luke says, “Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.”

And I think that's reassuring. Because so often, in the face of tremendous theological stories like the Transfiguration, we can feel daunted by how we are supposed to respond. How are we supposed to live like people who have seen God's glory?

Luke gives us this seemingly simple origin point: Jesus prayed. He entered into relationship with God, and there, in that relationship, something was revealed.

Prayer works this way for us, too. Not necessarily because every time we pray our faces will literally start glowing—although I suppose that would make things considerably easier to explain—but because prayer creates space for us to notice. Maybe that's the beginning of an answer: we live like people who have seen God's glory not by staying dazzled, but by returning, again and again, to the kind of attention prayer teaches us — the willingness to keep noticing. It gives us space to become aware of God's presence, to remember, and to be changed.

This moment of glory doesn’t let Peter stay there. The cloud comes, the disciples are terrified, and God speaks: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice has spoken, Moses and Elijah are gone, and Jesus is there alone. Eventually, Jesus and the disciples come down the mountain.

The Christian life is not about staying permanently on the mountaintop. We don't get to live forever in the dazzling moment. But the disciples come down having seen something they cannot unsee. They have seen Jesus in glory. They have heard the voice of God. And they carry that experience with them.

 And that is one of the gifts of celebration. We celebrate not because everything is always wonderful, but because sometimes we are given glimpses of the glory that is always there. Notice what Moses and Elijah are actually talking to Jesus about, in the middle of all that light: his death. His exodus. The most radiant moment in this whole story already has the cross inside it. Glory, here, isn't the opposite of what's hard—it’s what steadies him for it. Those glimpses become what we can carry into the hard places.

This is why we need moments of joy and celebration, too. Not because they erase the challenges, but because they remind us that what is hard is not all there is. This is part of what we do when we worship: we practice remembering. We practice attention. We return to these stories, to baptism and Eucharist, to the feasts of the Church, because ordinary life can make it easy to forget that God's glory is still here.

We gather together to celebrate that light, that glory. We give ourselves permission to rejoice. True joy is not frivolous. It is not a denial of the difficult things in our lives, and it is not pretending that the world is perfect. Joy says something different. It says: even here, God is present. Even here, Christ is with us. Even here, the light is shining.

Look around today: there is sparkle everywhere. Some of it is on our clothes. Some in the crafts created and worn. In the flicker of candles. In our eyes. In laughter. Some comes in through our windows that make this space alive.

The Christian life is, in part, learning to notice where God's light catches. We don't create the light. We catch it. We reflect it. And sometimes, we call that sparkle.

And when it is time to come back down, may we carry that light with us. Because the point of the Transfiguration isn't that we get to stay on the mountain. It is that, having seen who Jesus truly is, we can follow him back into the world—even and especially into the difficult places—carrying the light we have received.

So this is our invitation today: to notice the light, to celebrate the light, and then to carry the light with us into the world.

Amen.