Fireworks and the Darkness

I love to watch fireworks. 
They pull me into a place of awe.
Standing in the darkness, I am watching for pure delight. 

Colour shot into the ordinary dark,
for nothing but celebration,
holds something of the transformative qualities of play. 

Fireworks remind me that life is about more than the practical,
the explicable,
the next task,
the next outcome,
the managed moment,
the expected result.

So, I love to watch fireworks. 

And what of the last burst in the series;
the last of an aerial display,
delightfully building in brilliance and intensity,
calling out our breath in a softly falling reverence
an outbreath that matches the soft-falling of the last bright, cascading spark into the night. 

Where did it go that bright energy? 
Where in the darkness is it?

Today is Epiphany Last or Transfiguration Sunday. 
We stand on the balcony of Epiphany
looking out over the winding path of our coming journey through Lent:
through desert landscapes
and betrayals
terror
and tender moments.   

We stand on that curved balcony
and we look out over the road,
into the dark,
and we wait,
because we know there is one more shower of light,
a display so grand it seems to contain within it
sparks of all the bursts and cascades that have preceded it.

Lights apprehended through all the showings of Epiphany, 
since the Magi followed that wild star. 

We stand on the balcony of Epiphany and wait for it,
Epiphany’s closing light.

And it comes,
in that unmanageable sketch of brightness. 
It comes in a display that challenges the mind..
It comes like the last of the fireworks.

Today the fuse is lit on the most intense of the Epiphany lights – transfiguration. 
There is no sharp rifle crack with this unleashing of light. 
It is approached and accompanied by quiet. 

Into our minds and hearts it falls,
the shining of the beloved face,
the soft light on the homespun clothes,
the good company of those gnarled old journeyers,
Moses and Elijah who continue to show up to converse with glory. 

Into our imaginations come the three men who were called to be alone with Jesus,
Called to come away up the mountain when they might rather have been having their supper
Called on a mountain hike where they found themselves shadowed by cloud,
wrapped up tight with the Holy Voice
that says,
Listen to this One, my own, my beloved. 

Like so many texts of glory manifested
this one can have the strength drained out of it,
til it just gets kicked to the side of the road,
 robbed of its energy. 
This glory that might fall into our day
like the last, best willowy cascade falls into the night,
this holy tale calling us to reverence,
strengthening us for service,
engaging our imaginations,
lighting the rough shadowed road of Lent,
is sometimes avoided for the skin of the miraculous that clings to it. 

It is often managed in a particular way so that we can make it relevant,
as we often long for God to be relevant to our particular way of unfolding the world. 

This text is equally mis-used,
as are other texts of glory,
to set Jesus up burnished and impermeable.
one hardly present at our gatherings round the table.

But this text has its own gift to give us. 
It calls us to hold the fullness of who we are in relationship with, Jesus Christ. 

it calls us to integrate bright glory and the dark earth,
shine and shadow

It calls us to be ourselves tied together by clouds

with the voice of God
who calls us beloved through Christ. 

So, it would be a shame to leave the Epiphany balcony
where we watch the lights of revelation fall through the sky
without paying attention to this one last pyrotechnic expression. 

Huddled on the balcony,
our fingers starting to numb with the cold
and our cheeks turning red
we wait for this last quiet text to erupt
and then
let fall, small sparks into our understanding. 

We stay to claim the revelatory,
identity-clarifying gifts of this text
even as we turn our faces to the Lenten dark. 

We notice that this divine encounter begins by a call to be alone with Jesus. 
That it is attended by tradition and prophecy
represented by the presence of Moses and Elijah. 

We notice that it is told in symbols of mountain and light and cloud,
symbols that we are grateful can carry a mystery too great for our words to tell. 

We notice that ordinary everyday disciples like us are invited to be present. 
That these very disciples,
even as the glow fades and Moses and Elijah slip away
hear the voice of God and are struck with knowing something new about the One they follow
and what their following is to be. 

We notice too that moments of transfiguration,
moments when our understanding of Jesus’ identity
and our own
overwhelm us with both clarity and mystery
cannot be contained in a building,
a booth,
or in any church structure,
whether old or newly imagined. 

It is big work to carry both glory and humility. 
It is much easier to weigh in on the side of one or another
as though they were only ever opposite.

Glory and humility – 
If we were to back up from this morning’s text
and read what precedes it
we would hear Peter affirm Jesus as Messiah, glorious. 
And we would hear Peter’s denial
when that Messiah speaks of his own suffering.
Impossible, you cannot be the Messiah,
the anointed,
the glorious and suffering one. 

Once we acknowledge your glory,
we can never know you in the dust. 

But in this narrative,
in this life,
in our lives
we aim to. 

We follow the one whose life is the mysterious site of glory and humility. 
The one whose life is our pattern.

It’s easy to shy away from glory. 
I’m very suspicious of its lexicon myself. 
It has been misunderstood and misused.
It has been soldered onto a church triumphant 
and has harmed both those who lived a life of religion
and those they reached out toward. 

Glory words, often make me uneasy.
But I am called by texts of transfiguration,
texts that may seem outdated and impractical,
not to shut glory out. 
I am called to conversation with both glory and humility,
both revelation and hiddeness,
both gracious presence and unmanageable other. 

I am called and I am comforted by texts like the one from 2^nd Corinthians that urges us
not to hightail it and run from glory but
to see it, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”.

I am called not to dismiss glory but to see it differently,
the light of it shining in the tired eyes, in the beloved’s face.