EXODUS 34:29-35

PSALM 99

2 PETER 1:13-21

LUKE 9:28-36

Sermon - 8/6/06

Christ Is the Light of the World

Twelve years ago this morning, August 6, I had just spent the night at St. Catherine's monastery, nestled in the foothills around Mt. Sinai. Thirty-six hours before, I had been suffering the effects of dehydration after a day in the deserts of Israel and Egypt; but after a lot of water and minerals, I was feeling fit and rested. This was good, because we arose at 3:00 a.m., aiming to be finished breakfast and ready to hit the trail at 4:00 a.m. for the hike up Mt. Sinai itself.

We gathered after breakfast in a darkness of a depth hard to experience in Central New Jersey. Here, there is a pervasive light-haze from human activity of an energy-intensive, high-tech, densely-populated American kind. We had traveled a route through the desert on 4WD vehicles driven by Bedouin who never met a 20^o grade they didn't like, and had seen graffiti drawn by the Crusaders. We stayed in a guest house at the monastery built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, in the 6th Century, A.D. We had camped and seen stars perhaps as clearly as Abraham had seen them 4,000 years ago.

And now we were going to climb Sinai and see the oasis which sustained Elijah when he fled from the murderous designs of the wicked Queen Jezebel. Now we were going to climb Sinai, where Moses had talked to God, “as one would talk to a friend.” The Bible says Moses returned to the Israelite camp with his face shining so brightly that even his brother Aaron, the High Priest, was afraid to talk with him.

But now it was 4 o'clock in the morning, chilly in the desert (though we knew the temperature would be reaching triple digits by the time we were back down here at noon)and utterly dark. I did not know how long the trail was, how steep it was, how many thousand feet we would gain–and lose–in elevation; and in the dark I had no way to tell. “Wear a hat and sturdy boots, take lots of water, and we'll breakfast at the half-way point and celebrate the Eucharist for the Feast of the Transfiguration a little farther up,” we were told.

So we started walking, carrying flashlights. I just followed the flashlight of the person in front of me, and the one behind followed me, and so on, nearly 40 of us, taking a walk in the dark on faith.

Suddenly, I realized that the whole people of Israel took “a walk in the dark” in their journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. Of them all, only Moses had ever even been to the Sinai Peninsula, through which they had to travel to get to the Holy Land. And they didn't believe in him a lot of the time. And even Moses had only been half-way across the desert.

My experience of dehydration had underlined vividly what was increasingly obvious: without God to guide them, the Israelites wouldn't have lasted a week in the wilderness, never mind 40 years, never mind actually making it across, tiny oasis to tiny oasis, to their new home.

They had gone on “a walk in the dark” as surely as someone with a blindfold, guided from place to place by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, the visible sign of the presence of the Glory of God in their midst.

Dawn, when it came, was dramatic. Not so much the dawn itself, but the vista it revealed for scores of miles in every direction (in contrast to just seeing me and my flashlight an hour before) and the dazzling brightness not obscured by any wisp of cloud, any building, any tree, any leaf.

We could see how high and how far we had to go now, and we could see how God had lit the way for us, in a perfectly natural way (sunlight), which was no less a creation of God than any special effect, and all the more impressive after the profound darkness.

Human life, without the light of God, remains a walk in the dark. Sometimes people follow the flashlight of the person in front of them–who might lead them down a dead end path, or off a cliff, or just on and on until that leader's battery fails, and then there is just darkness. The same can happen if we resolve just to lead ourselves by our own light–we may wander in desert wastes and die looking for the next oasis, be terrified to leave an oasis and drink it dry, or follow our hunches until our own battery fades, and we die, and our darkness is complete.

And when human beings try to create their own light and rule only by its light and by the brilliance revealed in the cloud it forms, such is the fallen state of humanity that even devices designed by humans to end wars become monsters that hold us hostage by their terrifying power. It was on this day that the most dazzling light and most awesome cloud ever to that time created by human beings first appeared–61 years ago, over Hiroshima.

God came to us to light our path. The wisdom of God revealed in the Holy Law was handed down by Moses to the people of Israel, who were invited to live by the light of that awesome reflected glory of God.

In Christ, God came in person to be The Light of the World. Peter, James and John hiked up a far more modest mountain in north-central Israel, where they saw him revealed in glory with Moses and Elijah, leading Peter to mistakenly put him on a par with them–until the Voice came from the supernatural cloud: “'This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!'“

That still is what we need to hear on this, the feast of the Transfiguration. “Listen to him”–and live by his light, not by the light of weapons (nuclear or otherwise), not by the light of self-appointed gurus whose batteries will fade as surely as our own, not by the light of materialism, greed , power, lust or all-consuming self-centeredness.

Listen to Christ. Follow him. It's simple – and hard. But the other option is also simple: go on a walk in the dark and have dawn never come.

Let us follow Christ, the Light of the World.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church