For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6)

A married couple were having coffee in their kitchen one morning and the wife looked out of the window into the garden of their next door neighbour. A young couple had moved in and their white washing was hanging on the line. “Her whites don’t look very clean”, the wife said. Her husband didn’t argue. A few days later they were sitting again in the kitchen and the neighbour’s whites were hanging on the line. Again the wife looked out of the window and said, “Her whites don’t look as white as they should.” Her husband didn’t argue, even when she said, “Maybe I should advise her on which soap powder to use.” A few days later they were again sitting in the kitchen looking out of the window at the neighbour’s white. This time the wife said, “See! Aren’t her whites much cleaner and brighter. She obviously took my advice.” “Maybe,” her husband replied. “Or maybe it’s because I got up early this morning, before you were awake, and I cleaned the windows”.

Some would say there’s something unlikely about this story. After all, whoever heard of a husband cleaning the windows. Some, I dare say, who would think that the story of the Transfiguration of Christ is unlikely. I’ll not comment on the first, but for the second, this event occurs in all three gospels and is referred to in the second letter of Peter so I’m inclined to believe it. After all, so many amazing things in the life of Jesus that this fits right in. All these amazing things, though, are more than just incredible spectacles - that would make Jesus little more than a particularly good showman. Each miracle - each incredible event in the life of Christ - communicates something; each has meaning, and perhaps few more so than the Transfiguration.

In all three accounts of this event Jesus’s clothes became dazzlingly white. Two words - “dazzling” and “white”. On that mountain, in the presence of Peter, James and John, the light of Heaven shone into the world through this man - this Son of Man - this human being. Yes, I know that he was the Son of God as well and I know that for the last 1600 years or so Christianity has held that Christ had two natures and that one was wholly divine. Nothing I’m saying here is going to suggest otherwise. But he was also wholly human and so I say again, on a high mountain near the Sea of Galilee the light of Heaven shone into the world through a human being.

This, I think, is the important meaning of this passage. As if to emphasise this Moses and Elijah appear alongside Christ to emphasise, yes, that Jesus is the outworking, the culmination, of a purpose God has been pursuing through the people of Israel. But that’s the point. Neither Moses nor Elijah is the Son of God. Neither of them has a divine nature, yet here they are shining alongside Jesus. And the purpose of God has been worked out through the people of Israel - not by angels or superheroes, but by human beings.

“It is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts” wrote Paul to the Corinthians. Paul had trouble with the Corinthians. He wrote at least four letters to the church at Corinth, two of which we have in the Bible. Sometimes you get the feeling that he was banging his head against a wall in between dictating bits of them. They didn’t seem to be getting it. They were going through the motions of Christianity but they were missing the point. They were eating the bread and drinking the wine but they didn’t get that this was supposed to be something they did together because in Christ all are brothers and sisters. They were doing the preaching and speaking in tongues but they were fighting over who had the best spiritual gifts.

In short, they were messing up. They were missing the point. They were missing the amazing offer God makes through the coming of Christ into the world - the offer to follow him as an example of what we are meant to be; to allow the light of Heaven to shine into the world through us. To be, as Jesus himself said we should be, light to the world and salt to the earth. 

There are those who say we can’t be that. There are those who would say that, as human beings, we are so flawed that we can never be anything other than darkness: that we inevitably fall for the temptations of greed and selfishness; that we inevitably succumb to the hatreds and fears that drive us to take up arms against those who are different; that we inevitably accept the injustices that blight our world as long as we are comfortable. There are those who would say that we are “hard-wired” for - let’s call those things for what they are - sin.

Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter either way and it doesn’t matter for the same reason that Paul kept writing to the Corinthians and for the same reason that he speaks of God saying, “Let light shine out of darkness” - a reference to God’s first act of creation, “Let there be light!” Light can shine out of darkness. It doesn’t matter if we mess up, as the Corinthians did - as long as we see that. It doesn’t matter if we’ve been selfish and greedy - as long as we see that. It doesn’t matter if we’ve hated and been unforgiving - as long as we see that. It doesn’t matter if we’ve closed our eyes to poverty and injustice - as long as we see that.

As long as we see that and want to be otherwise. As long as we accept the forgiveness that God offers in Christ and accept, by the same token, the offer God makes us in Christ to be washed clean of all the things that tie us down - all the things that cramp us and deform us and make us less than we are meant to be. As long as we embrace the hope that, through the love of God, light can shine out of the darkness - it can shine in us.

Suppose we got up, each day, with this image in our minds - of shining with the light of Heaven; of being a light that shone out of the darkness. Suppose we got up, each day, with this single thought in mind: “I am a child of God, made in the image of God, and today those I meet will see the love God has for them reflected in how I treat them”. Suppose we got up, each day, and embraced that new day as a fresh opportunity to witness to God’s love for his children. Fresh because, if we didn’t embrace that opportunity yesterday, we can today.

An opportunity to bear witness to a light that reveals the poorest, homeless refugee as brother to the richest man on the planet; a light that reveals those who are of different faiths, different cultures, different languages as brothers and sisters to each other; a light that reveals a simple truth: the most powerful thing in this world is a hand offered to someone who’s hurting and the offer, “Let me help.”

You and I, we are flawed creatures. Yet that light shines in our hearts. And that’s why God came into this world as a human being: to remind us that for all our flaws, we can do this. He has washed us whiter than white and he’s cleaned the windows. The rest is up to us.

Lord, may we shone as your Son did. May we reveal your love to the world in all we say and do. And when we don’t, forgive us and inspire us to shine again.

Preached at Kirkpatrick-Fleming Parish church