Walking Around Shining Like the Sun

Today is the last Sunday in Epiphany and as always, however long Epiphany is, we started the season with Jesus being baptized and now we end with him being transfigured. The baptism and transfiguration act like bookends for this season of revelation, the season when Jesus is revealed to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and his disciples recognize and follow him. It is a season with two main questions – who do you say that Jesus is? And will you follow him?

During both the baptism and transfiguration, a voice from the heavens answers the first of those questions. In Matthew’s account of the baptism, “when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And in today’s reading, ‘suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”’

We can see these two events as initiations for Jesus – his baptism starts his ministry and perhaps the transfiguration marks the beginning of his journey toward the cross.

Yet the transfiguration event does more than that. It puts Jesus firmly in the Jewish tradition of Moses and Elijah. If you had any doubt that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah this should make it clear. Moses went up a mountain and spent time with God. During that time he received the basis of the law – the ten commandments – and when he came back down his face was glowing. In fact it was so bright that he had to wear a veil so that he didn’t hurt everyone’s eyes.

Now Jesus also goes up a mountain and not only his face but his whole person becomes dazzling white, and wait, wait there’s more…Moses the embodiment of the law, and Elijah the archetype of the prophets appear there with him. You can’t get better credentials than that.

And then there’s The Voice.

It’s not surprising that Peter wanted the moment to last forever. But we are human and those moments of sudden revelation, those moments when we realize that there is no separation, are only fleeting.

The Trappist monk and mystic, Thomas Merton, had a moment like that. He wrote,

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun….

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…. [i]

Just as on the mountain top it was as though a veil lifted and for a moment Jesus was visibly the Son of God, so for Merton that day in Louisville, the veil lifted and ‘it was as if [he] suddenly saw the secret beauty of [people’s] hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.”

Our baptismal covenant calls us ‘to seek and serve Christ in all persons.’ What if the Christ in all of us is shining like the sun, but we cannot see the light of the Christ because we have learned to see the human? What if we could learn to see the Christ as well?

Take a moment to look around the church and imagine all the people sitting here shining like the sun…

now in your mind’s eye (it may help to close your eyes) imagine yourself as you really are - the beloved of God, marked as Christ’s own for ever, and shining like the sun…

now imagine someone you love and see them too shining with the light of Christ…

and now think of an acquaintance, someone you don’t know well and imagine them shining with the light of God…

And finally, think of someone you don’t like and try to see the person they are in God’s eyes and see them also shining with the light of the Christ…
 
Any quick reflections on how that was for you? ( It is an adaptation of the Buddhist kindness practice called metta.)

In this morning’s second reading, from one of the letters of Peter, the writer talking about the transfiguration as a confirmation of prophecy says, ‘You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.’

A couple of days ago I was feeling a bit down. I had received some unwelcome news and was having trouble integrating it. I was fetching something from the sacristy and as I walked back past the font I instinctively put my fingers in and made the sign of the cross on my forehead. As I did so I remembered the commitment of my baptism – “marked as Christ’s own for ever” and I remembered that nothing can take that away and that, like you, whatever happens I am God’s beloved. I walked out of here with a lighter step.

My friends, we are God’s beloved daughters and sons.

As Merton saw, we are all walking around shining like the sun.

And as the epistle says, ‘You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.’

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 
 
 
 


[i] https://ancientanswers.org/words-to-live-by/thomas-merton/at-the-corner-of-fourth-and-walnut-in-louisville/