Light from Light
AM Psalm 89:1-18 • PM Psalm 89:19-52
1 Macc. 3:1-24 • Rev. 20:7-15 • Matt. 17:1-13
In the gospel reading, focused on the Transfiguration of Christ, it’s easy to see the humor and make light of the disciples’ bewilderment as they stammer and fall down on their faces, having seen what theologians have called the “uncreated light” breaking through the incarnate son of God while on the top of Mount Tabor.
Smirks often arise when we hear it told again and again about how Peter, being out of his mind, offered to build three tabernacles when he saw Christ become dazzling white and brilliant, and conversing with Moses and Elijah. He saw, as it were, the God who is “Light from Light,” as we say in the Nicene Creed every Sunday. And he didn’t know how to handle it, except for one thing: to fall down and worship. Which is the appropriate response, because such uncloaked divinity is terrifying when we don’t recognize it.
But the truth is that the brilliance of the Transfiguration is a glimpse of the sacred reality that not only bursts forth from Christ, but also from us when we have lived a life where we slip away, and others see God in us gleaming too.
A famous passage by Thomas Merton, from his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, speaks to this: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the corner of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… if only everybody could realize this. But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
The Transfiguration is not limited to Christ; it is not even limited to the “holy.” It is the enlightenment of the heart where the energy and love of God find their sense and expression in a life of worship. It’s where we finally understand the glory we are called to, and the resolute image of God, the Light from Light, in everyone else.
Written by Nathan Haydon
Nathan earned a PhD at the University of Arkansas studying medieval literature and writing about the interaction between patristics, monasticism, liturgics, and exile in Anglo-Saxon England. He loves beer, coffee, and cats, but not necessarily in that order.