Feast of the Transfiguration                                   August 6, 2006

The Feast of the Transfiguration
        is one of the most important High Holy Days
                of the Church Year.
In Eastern Orthodox Churches, it ranks
        right up there with Christmas and Easter.
But in the West, we haven’t emphasized this part of the faith.
And since this Feast Day rarely falls on a Sunday,
        most of us miss it altogether.

But today this High Holy Day is a Sunday.
So the lessons are about light on mountain tops.
In our Old Testament lesson, Moses is transfigured.
He comes down from the mountain emanating so much holy light,
        that he has to wear a veil
                so that people can bear to look at him.

We usually think about Moses on the Mountain receiving
        the Commandments – and that is important.
But God didn’t do anything miraculous to the commandments.
God could have made the Commandments flashy

        – maybe given them on a scrolling digital sign –
                if this event were really all about the rules.
Instead, the commandments were just etched in stone.
The divine glory shone from the face of Moses himself.

The Feast of the Transfiguration is about the glory of God
        shining in human beings.
So much of Scripture is about the glory of God.

But “glory” is a corrupted word in our language.
It has come to mean being the object of praise.
In Scripture God’s glory is not something we give God.
It’s something God already has.
There is no adequate translation for glory.
The best translation would be /“radiant beauty.”//

St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the chief authors of Nicene Creed, said that
         God is the absolute beauty whose radiance shines upon
                 and is reflected in all creatures
Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the most influential teachers
         in shaping Christianity, taught that God is beauty,
                 and God is infinitely beautiful.
He called God “the splendor that gathers all things
         toward and into itself.”

The beauty of God surpasses human language.
So the prophets stammer obscurely about it.
Ezekiel describes God this way:

         “There was something that looked like burning coals of fire,
         and torches moving to and fro . . . and the fire was bright,
         and out of the fire came lightning.”

St. John the Divine describes his vision of God this way:

         “A throne stood in heaven, and one seated on the throne.
         And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian
         and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like emerald. . .
         From the throne issued flashes of lightning, and voices
                   and peals of thunder. . .”

God’s glory is vast and awesome like a storm in the mountains.
I don’t know whether Lord Byron meant to be describing God
   when he wrote about a mountain storm in “Chile Harold’s Pilgrimage;”
   but he sounded just like an ancient prophet having a vision.

He set the stage by describing something like contemplative prayer:

         “All Heaven and Earth are still – though not in sleep,
                  But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
                  And silent as we stand in thoughts too deep . . . .

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
         In solitude when we are least alone;
         A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
         And purifies from self . . . .”

Then Byron gives us a vision of God as a storm:

        “The sky is changed – and such a change! O Night,
                 And Storm and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
                 Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
                 of a dark eye in Woman. Far along,
                 from peak to peak, the rattling crags among
                 Leaps the live thunder . . . .

And this is in the Night: – Most Glorious Night!
         Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
         A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, --
         A portion of the tempest and of thee!”

If we take our picture of God from Holy Scripture,
         it will be somewhat like Byron’s storm, but more than that.
It can just as easily be a quiet, serene beauty.
I have experienced God’s presence in the resonance
of North Sea waves surging in and out of Fingal’s Cave,
         in the sunrise over the olive groves surrounding Delphi,
         and in the early light cast across pastures
                   between Montezuma and Americus.

No doubt, many of you have found God in such places
         or entirely different places.
Those who have little sense of God,
         and may not think of themselves as religious,
         could begin by opening their eyes and their hearts to Beauty.
Any beautiful thing is a window to God.

Theologian David Bentley Hart says,

         “Creation’s beauty is God’s glory;

                   a Taboric effulgence, upon all things . . .

                   that proclaims God’s splendor . . . .
          The delightfulness of created things
                   expresses the delightfulness of God . . . .”

And for those of us who have a sense of God in prayer,
          in Scripture, and in worship,
          and who think of ourselves as religious
                   can expand our sense of God in the same way –
                   by opening our eyes and our hearts to Beauty.
If we learn to appreciate the tones and textures of reality,
          then we will liberate our sense of God
                   from a Cosmic Legislator and Judge.

God may be a Cosmic Legislator and Judge,
         but if so, that’s God’s night job.
God’s day job is shedding the effulgent splendor
         of radiant beauty into the Void,
                   thereby transfiguring the Void into the Cosmos.

If we appreciate the tones and textures of reality,
        then we will be like Jesus – human beings fully alive –
                  and so become ourselves part of the glory of God

        – or as Byron put it, “a portion of the tempest and of thee!”

This is the connection between our Old Testament lesson
        and our Gospel lesson.
Remember that glory means radiant beauty,
        and remember St. Irenaeus’ adage,

        “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
Well, Moses was a human being very much alive,
        and very much in love with God.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his spiritual biography of Moses,
       wrote about Moses’s habit of lingering in the presence
                 of God because he had an insatiable longing
                 to take in more and more of God’s beauty.

That’s how he soaked up the glory of God
       until he radiated the holy light himself.
Just so, when Jesus was a boy, his parents
        had to drag him out of the Temple,
                 because he wanted to spend time with God.
And, throughout the Gospels, Jesus is forever
        going away to be alone for prayer.

In today’s Gospel lesson, he’s praying on Mt. Tabor.
And he takes on the holy light.
He has become a human being fully alive.
It is only possible to become fully alive
        in the presence of Life itself, in the presence of God.

That makes Jesus the expression of God’s glory,
       the light in our darkness,
       our hope and the one who shows us our way.

If we want to become fully alive,
       to take the light into ourselves,
                 we do it by spending time with Jesus in prayer.
But not everyone is ready to do that at the same time of life.
If we aren’t sure what we believe,
       or if prayer feels just impossible to us,
                 we can always resort to Beauty.
We can let ourselves fall deeper and deeper into Beauty,
       until we fall right through it into God.

                                                         Amen.