Preached on 5th August 2018 at St michael & All Angels, Bedford Park
Family Mass for the Feast of the Transfiguration: 2 Peter 1:16-19; Mark 9:2-10
Easy question first: What do these four things have in common?
They’re all sources of light.
Next question: What’s different about them?
The ways in which they produce light:
The bulb in the electric light creates light when electricity runs through a coil of wire.
The candle creates light when the carbon in the wick burns, and that combustion produces light.
The glowstick produces light when you break the tube on the inside, mixing chemicals together and as those chemicals react with each other they give off light. This reaction’s called ‘Chemiluminescence’.
A similar reaction happens within the fireflies, but the chemicals in their tails are naturally produced within the creature. This is called ‘Bioluminescence’ and it also occurs in glow-worms and certain types of undersea creatures.
What other sources of light can we think of?
The Sun is another one: It produces massive amounts of light: That light is created due to nuclear reactions happening within its core, so what we’re seeing there is another way of producing light.
Light is a form of energy, and what have we learnt in school about energy?: It can never be created or destroyed, it has a source, it comes from somewhere – so when you see light, whether it’s from the Sun, or a lightbulb, or a firefly’s bottom, it’s come from somewhere.
In our Gospel reading today, we heard about Peter, James and John being dazzled by a very bright light. Where did that light come from?
What was it about Jesus that made him shine with a dazzling light? What was the source of that light?
Jesus shone with a light that came from God. The shining light showed those three disciples that Jesus wasn’t like any ordinary human being, there was something Divine –Godly about him.
And of course, because they needed a hint, the disciples also heard the voice of God the father, saying to them:
“This is my Son, the Beloved; Listen to Him.”
So the light that was coming from Jesus, dazzling the disciples wasn’t down to electricity, chemistry or nuclear reactions… It was down to his Godliness.
Now let’s go back to our lights: Let’s take a moment to think how they make us feel:
Have you ever been in a dark room that’s been lit up with candles or glowsticks? If not, can you imagine it? Or out at night surrounded by fireflies.
What sort of feelings do you have in those places? Awe? Wonder? Joy?
So how do you think the disciples felt when they saw the light of God shining in front of them?
The Gospel says they were ‘terrified’, but what else might they have felt?
Joyful? Excited? Having a sense of something beautiful or wonderful? Certainly very emotional…
When we feel something intensely emotional it has an effect on us: It can change the way we talk to people, the way we behave.
Pop your hand up if you’ve experienced something that’s been so emotional it’s changed your life? –I’m not going to ask you what those experiences were, they’re personal to you.
As the disciples went down the mountain Jesus told them not to tell anyone else what they had seen. But I’m pretty sure that even though they weren’t allowed to say what had happened, the experience changed them in some way: In what they thought, or in how they acted.
Let’s try another experiment now:
I need some volunteers to take these mirrors, and we’re going to line up first mirror with this lamp. When we shine it around, what do we see?
The light from the lamp is reflected, it lights up another part of the church.
And what happens if that mirror reflects the light onto another mirror? And another?
See how the light is passed on: We have a shining mirror, which shines because the light has been reflected onto it from another mirror, and another, until eventually we get to the source of the light, which in this case is the flow of electrons through the wire in the bulb.
But what was the source of light shining from Jesus in the story?
So if this lamp is shining like Jesus, who shone with the light of God, then His light shone on the disciples (indicate a mirror).
And we call this story the ‘Transfiguration’, which is a word that means ‘change: To change your figure or your form, and look different… And so when Jesus changes his appearance to become dazzling, and he shines on his disciples, what do they do?
They change too: And then they come down the mountain, and interact with the other disciples and their friends and family – and even though they’ve been told not to tell anyone, they’re behaving differently because the experienced has changed them too…
And what effect does this have on those people the disciples meet? (Line up another mirror)
…And the people they meet… (Line up another mirror)
The light is passed on, reflected. None of these mirrors are the source of the light, but they are able to shine the light from the source onto the other mirrors and help the light to spread.
Do any of you have any suggestions on how we can reflect the light of God, and help it spread to transform the lives of the people we meet?
So on this Feast of the Transfiguration, let’s think how we can be mirrors, so that when we feel the light of God shining on us, we can reflect it onto others.
Fr. Edward 