Light in the darkness

My wife Lorna was preparing to lead the children’s group at her church last Sunday. The lesson in the manual was about the Transfiguration of Jesus. It’s a strange and wonderful story. Jesus invites three of his followers to accompany him to the top of Mount Hermon, where they see an inner light radiating from him, so intense that even his clothing shines. A voice from heaven says ‘This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.’

The challenge facing Lorna was how to help young children understand and connect with this supernatural event. It occurs to me that the Transfiguration is about seeing Jesus as he really is, recognising his true identity. By extension the story is also about seeing others as they really are, and seeing ourselves as we really are. What am I seen to be when you scratch the surface of my life? This is a lesson which even the youngest child can begin to understand.

On Tuesday I heard a radio interview from Cleveland, Ohio with neighbours of Ariel Castro. He seemed normal, they said. Just an ordinary guy who drove his school bus and played his music and joined in community BBQs. But last week, the darkness in that man’s heart, the darkness behind the door of his house became public knowledge.

Wasn’t it a bit unfair that just three of Jesus’ followers got to see the wonder of the invisible God radiating from him? I think the point is that while Jesus’ glory was seen most incontrovertibly on the slopes of Hermon, it was visible throughout his whole life – in his words, his wisdom, his power to heal, his focussed rage, his forgiving love, his purity of heart, his connectedness to the Father who is the source of all glory.

His was a glory which kept breaking through, hidden in plain sight, visible to those with faith and perceptiveness. So all Jesus’ followers saw the glory, albeit with different degrees of intensity.

In the same way today, we can all experience something of the glory of God, although the intensity of our spiritual experiences will differ.

For if we have eyes to see it, God’s glory keeps breaking through in nature, in the wonder of the cosmos, in the goodness and truth and integrity of all men and women, in art and music, and especially in the lives of those who are open to God.

And yet, darkness also seems to break through. In the night of Auschwitz, in terrorist atrocities, in the nightmare of war, but also in a hundred news stories every day in which darkness is visible in individual and corporate acts.

I think there is a comparison between the young women held captive in Ariel Castro’s house, and those young people in our society who are held captive by drink and drug addictions, by a media-induced anguish over body-image, by the abusive behaviour of adults or partners.

Wee so used to the erupting of darkness that until some incident like that in Cleveland pulls us up we forget how abhorrent it is.

People may say of us that we’re ordinary folk, we’re normal. But scratch the surface. What lies behind the front door of our hearts – even those of us who have glimpsed the glory?

Sometimes it seems, looking at our lives and at the world around us that the erupting darkness and not the glory-breaking-through is winning. I remember preparing to preach just a few days after the London bombings of 2005, that terrible eruption of evil masquerading as good in the minds of the perpetrators. What did the folk in church need to hear that Sunday?

And then it occurred to me that on the cross of Christ Glory and Darkness wrestled, and Glory overcame. On the cross there was an explosion of love of such intensity that it sent ripples backwards and forwards through the pool of history. And this shining through of glory in the place of death and darkness gives a sustaining hope.

Today too, glory can overcome the erupting darkness. Holding the candle high, Jesus joyfully descends into dark cellars. Wherever his feet tread all is light, and those who are held captive by and in the darkness are either set free immediately, or else begin a journey towards freedom.

And the Bible’s future vision – whatever it may look like in practice – is of a coming dimension where the glory is permanently visible, and darkness has been eliminated.

But today God entrusts to the fragile clay of our lives the treasure of his presence. We are broken, frail and imperfect, but the light of God is in us, and people watching us will see in our lives, our words, our relationships a small transfiguration, a glory breaking through.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 16th May 2013)