The Epiphany season that we are concluding today with the Transfiguation of Our Lord, began with the story of the miracle at Cana when Jesus, who was attending a wedding banquet, turned water into wine. John the evangelist concludes the story by stating that “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana in Galilee, and revealed his glory.” It is worth noting that the story of the wedding at Cana also takes its place at the beginning of John’s gospel. At the end of that gospel Jesus’ crowning glory culminates with the cross. The logic of the Epiphany season is similar to the themes and structure of John’s gospel. The miracle at Cana, the first of Jesus’ signs is read at the beginning of the season, and at the end we hear the story of the Transfiguration, a prelude to Jesus’ passion and a prefiguration of his resurrection. The manifestation of Jesus’ glory is the theme of the entire season. The disciples who were with Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration do not yet comprehend the full extent of that glory until Jesus has been raised from the dead. Yet the Transfiguration does point the disciples in the right direction. They will see that final glory and experience it in their own lives when Jesus has undergone his passion and has been raised victorious from the dead. As the church they will undergo their own passion that will be inflicted on them as a result of the world’s persecution or indifference. Their suffering, however, will be vindicated and their witness validated when, because of Chirst, evil, sin, and death will be no more.

The backstory, if you will, to the Transfiguration is the account from Exodus of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai to deliver the law to the people of Israel. We are told that Moses’ face shone because he had been talking directly to God. Moses, whose skin shone so brightly, placed a veil over his face when he spoke to the people, and he removed the veil whenever he spoke to God. Paul, contrasting Moses and Jesus, focuses on Moses’ veil. The Israelites could not see Moses’ face because of the veil; but we may behold the glory of Christ revealed. Moreover, we can be transformed by the Holy Spirit into the very likeness and glory of Christ. Paul writes: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

The overriding image in all these readings is light. In fact, light is the overriding image of the Christmas and Epiphany seasons, the liturgical cycle that reaches its high-point, so to speak, today. The star over Bethlehem shone night and day to illumine the birthplace of him who, according to John’s gospel, is the Light of the World. The darknes of the world could not overcome that light, not even when the sky turned black at Jesus’ crucifixion. Light also shone with a particular kind of intensity on the Mount of Transgfiguration when Jesus radiated the brightness of what would soon become his resurrected glory, a glory that we too, who are in him, can share, according to the apostle Paul, and thus achieve the true destiny of a humanity created in the image of God.

The famous Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, wrote about the feast of the Transfiguration in precisely this vein:

“One word dominates this feast…This word is light…The world is a dark, cold and terrifying place. And this darkness is not dispelled by the physical light of the sun. On the contrary, perhaps, the sun’s light makes human life seem even more terrible and hopeless as life surges relentlessly and inexorably, bound by suffrerings and loneliness, toward death and annihilation…But then comes the appearance on earth, the entrance into the world, of a man, humble and homeless, who has no authority at all over anyone, who has no earthly power whatsoever. And He tells people that this kingdom of darkness, evil and death is not our true life; that this is not the world God created; that evil and suffering and finally death itself can and must be conquered; and that He is sent by God, his own Father, to save people from this terrible bondage to sin and death.

“Human beings have forgotten their true nature and calling, renounced them. They must turn to see that they have lost the ability to see, to hear what they are already incapable of hearing. They must come to believe all over again that good is stronger than evil, love stronger than hate, life stronger than death. Christ heals, helps and gives himself to everyone. And nevertheless people do not understand, do not hear, do not believe in him. He wants from them only freely-given faith, freely-given love, freely-given acceptance….He reveals to three of his own disciples that glory, that light, that victorious celebration to which man is called from eternity….

“And from that time [i.e., the time of the Transfiguration], Christianity, the Church, faith is one continuous, joyful repetition of [the words of the disciples who were with Jesus on the mountain], ‘It is good for us to be here.’ But faith is also a plea for the everlasting light, a thirst for this illumination and transfiguration. This light continues to shine, through the darkness and evil, through the drab grayness and dull routine of this world, like a ray of sun piercing through the clouds….”

Psalm 36[:9] says, “in your light we see light.” As witnesses to God’s saving presence in Christ, we bring light into the darkness of this world as we reflect him who is the light, a transfiguring, transforming light that is the very glory and manifestation of God. It is literally the light of a new day. It is not our light that we radiate; rather, we reflect the light of Christ, who is the glory of the God of Israel. That light accomplishes a couple of things. First, it reveals the world for what it really is. In this light there can be no secrets, no hidden falsehoods, and no shadows in which one might be able to hide.

We can easily become enamored of the world that offers so many temptations, accept what it has to tell us as absolute truth, and observe what it has to show us as pure reality. With the light of Christ, however, our perceptions change. Now we see things as they really are, and we see things that had been concealeded in the darkness—you know, all those dirty little secrets, the magician’s and the politicians’ illusions, all those scandelous details about not only our closest friends, but also about ourselves—these illusions, falsehoods, scandals, and lies are now exposed to scrutiny and ultimately to divine judgment.

The light of Christ shows us who we really are, and the world for what it really is. It is against these sinister forces that Christ engages in a life-and-death struggle, wages an all-out, take-no-prisoners, winner-take-all war. We, who reflect his light and shine his light in the darkest of places, fight with him, under his command, and at his side. His weapon is light against which the darkness cannot prevail.

But the light of Christ also brings warmth, comfort, peace, forgiveness, hope and new beginnings. Here is where we ought to shine, where our lives should radiate a commitment to life, where our choices and priorities reflect Christ’s love, where the pursuit of wisdom and truth are motivated by him who is Wisdom personified, where we are not afraid to denouce the lies that support powerful people and powerful interests, where our faith calls for, prays for, and works for abundant new life even for those deemed unworthy of life who live in a world that is, as Schmemann said, “a dark, cold and terrifying place. With the light of Christ that darkness and coldness and terror will not frighten us, because in Christ they will not overcome us.

-Amen-