Transfiguration Sunday, 03/06/2011

Sermon on Matthew 17:1-9, by Gregory P. Fryer

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.

The story of the Transfiguration of Our Lord grants us a glimpse of the reality concerning Jesus: that he is adorned with light. We see him radiant with a beauty that for now is hidden from us by the horrors of the cross. For now, his suffering and sacrifices are so appalling that we tend to avert our eyes from him:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3, KJV)

But in the Transfiguration of Our Lord, we see him with heaven's eyes. We see him as we shall see him one day when the great trumpet sounds, the eastern sky is split, and Jesus comes again in beauty and power. He is the Light of the World, and in him there is no darkness - none at all.

Both we and our Maker favor the light. We are creatures meant for light. We are not mole creatures, unsuited for light, but lovers of light.

And judging by the Bible, so is God. He loves light. Let us recall, for example, the first of God's creative commandments: "Let there be light!" Against a brooding, fitful darkness, God declares that there shall be light:

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.(Gen 1:2-3, KJV)

This verse lead the great Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann to speak of the discomfort of the darkness:

With the three clauses of the second verse, the narrator seeks to describe the opposite of creation, the "before." The Hebrew expression tohu wabohu indicates a desert waste, analogous to the Greek chaos; its darkness is uncanny, something like what animals experience during a solar eclipse...(Claus Westermann, Genesis, Eerdmanns, page 8)

Imagine the appalling darkness of Jonah in the whale. He had tried to escape God, and so, naturally he ends up in the darkness, in the belly of a whale. It is threatening. It is a crushing darkness. The soul draws back from such darkness.

Indeed, the soul always draws back from darkness, both darkness around us and within. Our city, for example, spends lots of money to give us some light in the darkness. Visit the farm or many a small town, and you will remember just how dark the night can be. In olden days, there was so much darkness, in the castles, in the huts on the frontier. But here in the city we try very hard to pump the darkness back, because then we are safer, then we are happier.

And if there should be any darkness swirling around in our mind or our souls, we know that we will be better off if we can get rid of it. Hasten off to the pastor, hasten off to the psychotherapist, do what you can not to yield to the original chaos God overcame with his good command, Let there be light.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.(John 3:19, KJV)

Dark impulses of rage, revenge, lust - let us not yield to them. Contend against them. Seek the light.

Imagine the joy of the blind man who can now see. Imagine the joy of springtime, when the days lengthen and we enjoy some more sunlight. We are built for light, I say. I am praising light, you see. I am trying to make the theme that humanity inclines toward the light.

So, let us incline toward Jesus!

It is the great promise of the last book of the Bible, Revelation, that we are heading toward him, toward a world of light:

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.(Rev 21:23-24, KJV)

And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.(Rev 22:5, KJV)

Jesus is the light of the world. In him there is no darkness, nor shadow of turning. And therefore it is inevitable, I suppose, that when Judas went out from the Last Supper to betray our Lord, the Bible should include the note about the night:

So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.(John 13:30, NRSV)

And again, it is inevitable that when Jesus was dying, when he was hanging on that cruel cross, that reality should slip back toward that original restless chaos and darkness. And thus we have the strange and appalling darkness in the middle of the day:

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.(Matt 27:45, KJV)

From noon till three in the afternoon, our world toyed with darkness and chaos. We risked slipping back into it. Only the mercy of God in raising up Jesus from death spared us from eternal darkness.

It is with this Jesus, the light of the world, that we have to do as we head now into Lent. It is with Jesus, our Lamp, that we have to do as we head into life and into the years remaining to us:

And we have the prophetic word made more sure. You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:19, RSV)

This is our hope, that when darkness threatened humanity and when eternal night loomed, Jesus stood up to the darkness. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5, RSV) "This is our theology," as Luther said:

This is our theology... Mary bore the child, took it to her breast and nursed it, and the Father in heaven has his Son, lying in the manger and the mother's lap...And the angel desired that we should see nothing but the child which is born... For if I receive even the costliest and best in the world, it still does not have the name of Savior... In my sin, my death, I must take leave of all created things. No, sun, moon, stars, all creatures, physicians, emperors, kings, wise men and potentates cannot help me. When I die I shall see nothing but black darkness, and yet that light, "To you is born this day the Savior" [Luke 2:11], remains in my eyes and fills all heaven and earth. The Savior will help me when all have forsaken me. And when the heavens and the stars and all creatures stare at me with horrible mien, I see nothing in heaven and earth but this child. (Luther's Works, Vol. 51, Sermons, "On Christmas Day, 1530), pages 213-14)

Imagine that, perchance, on some summer evening, you were to swallow a firefly - didn't choke, just swallowed it. And more, imagine that this firefly shown so brightly within you that it fairly illuminated your face and caused your garments to become white as no fuller could make them. And then, indeed, imagine that this illumination caused you no harm, but rather worked toward your happiness. So it is, my friends, with this Blessed Sacrament to which we are now bidden. When we take the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus into our mouths, let Christ then shine through us, out into a world too much caught in a swirling, appalling darkness. Let Him who is the Light of the World radiate out through us, by living lives of holiness and goodness in this town, thereby cheering things up, "like a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts," even Jesus Christ our light and our life, to whom belongs the glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Pastor Gregory P. Fryer
New York, NY
E-Mail: gpfryer@gmail.com

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