Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Light is a powerful symbol of God’s presence in scripture. For God’s people, light is as powerful and necessary as water. It drenches us in God’s promise of hope and liberates us from the darkness that threatens us. C. S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun: not because I can see it, but because by it, I see everything else.” The light of Christ illuminates our world and offers us the perspective of possibility instead of the darkness of despair. This is the light that Moses reflects whenever he went before the Lord to speak to him. It is the dazzling brightness of Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration. As St. Paul reminds us, it is the source of freedom and transformation, and in it, we do not lose hope.
The story of the transfiguration of Jesus offers us deep insight to the nature and person of Jesus Christ and his divinity. He takes three of his disciples—Peter, James, and John—and goes up a mountain to pray. While praying, a strange and miraculous thing occurs—Jesus becomes dazzling bright, radiating light from him—and suddenly, Moses and Elijah show up and start talking fishing stories with him. Then a cloud encompasses all of them and God’s voice is heard, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.” It is an awesome and fearful sight. Scripture tells us that the disciples were “terrified.”
Moses’ story is not so different, save one detail. Whenever Moses encounters God, the experience is so powerful, that his face shines and the people are afraid to come near him. The fear and awesomeness are similar, but instead of Moses being the source of the light, scripture is clear that Moses only reflects the light of God. While Jesus shines like a divine lit up Christmas tree, humanity’s role as believers is to reflect God’s light out onto a dark and broken world.
Moses’ going up the mountain to talk with God is not his first experience of the divine. Before he ever set out to free the Israelites from the Egyptians, he encountered God in a burning bush. No one was with him to complain that his face was too shiny to look at that time, but that experience grounded Moses’ mission and ministry. The Lord told Moses to set the captives free from Pharoah that they might go to his holy mountain to worship him. Let’s be very clear about this—God doesn’t direct Moses to simply free the Israelite slaves; he directs him to free them from serving a false god, Pharoah, that they might serve and worship the one, true God—YHWH. For God, liberation is about being free not do whatever you want, but to worship God. The light by which we are to see, the light that led the Israelites from bondage, is the light of God who, by that light, calls us into truth and liberates us from the darkness of our false gods of politics, wealth, and power.
We are to live in the light of God and reflect that light in our lives. Robert Fulghum in his book, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down Upon It, tells a story about Alexander Papaderos, a philosopher and founder of an institute dedicated to human understanding and peace on the isle of Crete. During World War II, Hitler’s paratroopers attempted to take the island. The villagers fought back though their only weapons were kitchen knives and hay scythes. They won the first battle, but the second wave of paratroopers slaughtered them—lining up populations of whole villages and shooting them. Papaderos’ was a child in that time and he and his family survived, in part because they lived in a remote village on the island. One day, he found a wrecked German motorcycle and took one of the broken pieces of its mirror. He scraped the edges until they became round and would play a game with it in which he would try to reflect the light of the sun into dark places where the sun would never shine. Papaderos became fascinated with this little game of trying to shine light into the most inaccessible places he could find. He kept the mirror throughout his life and would often play his little game.
One day when he was older, he came to understand that his game of reflecting light into dark places was not simply a game, it was a metaphor for what he wanted to do with his life. He came to understand that he was not the light, nor the source of the light, but that light can only shine into the darkest of places if he reflects it. He went on to say, “I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places in the hearts of men—and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.” Since then, he has dedicated his life to reflecting the light of God into the darkest places of people’s souls.
As believers, as followers of The Way, this is the meaning of our lives as well. We are liberated from the darkness and false gods of this world—not so that we don’t experience suffering but that we may not be imprisoned by those sufferings— we are liberated, to shine the light of God for all to see. We are liberated to reflect that light into the dark places of people’s souls. We cannot do that when we speak words of hate or division, those are clouds of shadow and darkness. We can only reflect the divine light when we are reaching out in love and humility and joy. That is what our Savior Jesus did for us. That is what Moses did for his people. God’s light is always liberation from the darkness that the false gods would lure us to serve. Instead, God’s light is an invitation to worship the God of love and inclusion and mercy.
Shining that light may not be easy—it can be threatening and cause other people to respond with fear. But shining the light of Christ also inspires awe. As people of God, we are called to shine the light of God in this world just as the sun shines upon us. So that by it, we might see and maybe inspire others to see as well.