I’m sure most of you have seen paintings of Jesus and paintings of the saints where they are depicted with ‘halos’ around their heads. A halo is a Ring of Light!
Artists were trying to depict was that the holy person they were painting was someone who was so filled with Light.
The Light was just radiating out from them. There was an Aura around them.
And, I’m sure many of you know someone who in your own life today who is also someone who is so filled with Light.
Often times, we say that person “Lights up a room!” when they walk into it, a person who is so filled with joy and love and laughter that it radiates out from them and shines for all the world to see.
Well, I mention that to you today, because on the last Sunday before the Season of Lent begins, the Church celebrates what’s known as “Transfiguration Sunday,” and it’s all about the Light!
The gospel reading for Transfiguration Sunday tells the story of Jesus and three of his apostles climbing a mountain together, and while they are at prayer and meditation up there, Jesus becomes completely “transfigured” or “transformed” into Light.
That happened over 2,000 years ago, but billions of years before that when God created the Universe, you may remember God said, “Let there be Light!”
And, at that moment (14 billion years ago, when God created Light), the Christ was born. The Bible tells us that “Christ was first-born of all of Creation.”
Christ is the Light, and (2,000 years ago) a man from the Middle East named Jesus became one with Light, which is why we call him the Christ.
And we, my friends, call ourselves Christian. That literally means that we are Children of the Light. That same Light that was in Jesus (the Christ Light, the Light of the God) is in you, too!
Do you want to know what Jesus said about you? In Matthew 5:14, he said, “You are the Light of the World.”
And, in Luke 17:21, he said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
The Light of the Cosmos, my friends, is within us…or as Carl Sagan said, “We are made of stardust.”
This week, we begin the Holy Season of Lent on Ash Wednesday by receiving ashes on our foreheads.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
We are remembering on Ash Wednesday that we are made of Stardust, and to Stardust we shall we return. We are made of Light, and we will return to the Light.
The date of Ash Wednesday is not a fixed date on the calendar. It changes every year because it is dependent on the date of Easter, which also changes from year to year.
The date of Easter is based on the Lunar calendar. Each year, Easter falls on the Sunday that follows the first full moon on or after the Spring Equinox.
So that’s why Easter was on March 31 last year, and this year it’s on April 20…almost a full three weeks’ later.
And, I love that! I love that the date of Easter changes: That it is dependent on the movement of the Cosmos and the placement of the Sun and the Moon.
Because on Easter, we are celebrating the resurrection of the Light.
And, so, Lent is a 40 day period for us to prepare for the resurrection of the Light in us.
And, so how do we do that? How do we connect with the Light that is within us? Well, today’s story of the Transfiguration gives us some clues.
Jesus and his apostles go to the top of a mountain, and I’ve shared with you before “mountain tops” in the Bible symbolize a place of higher consciousness.
Jesus is meditating in a place of higher consciousness, and it is in that state where he becomes filled with the Light of God.
Many Eastern yogis have also experienced this state, which they call Samadhi. Samadhi is the highest level of meditation. It is when the person who’s meditating loses human consciousness and becomes one with the divine consciousness.
And, that is why the word “Yoga” means “Union with God.” That is the purpose of prayer and meditation: to become united with God.
We not only hear this in the Hindu teachings, but also in the Buddhist teachings. When Buddha was meditating under the Bodhi Tree he attained Enlightenment. He became one with the Divine Light.
Jesus wanted us to achieve this same level of Enlightenment for ourselves, and he us instructions to follow so that we could experience this Oneness.
When we forgive as God forgives and when we love how God loves, we practice “Becoming one with the One.”
Jesus also gave us instructions for how to pray. In Matthew 6:6, Jesus says, “When you pray, go to your inner room and shut the door.” Meaning, close your eyes.
And, he says, “If thine eye be single, thy entire body will be filled with Light.”
Close your human eyes, and begin seeing with the Divine Eye, what our Eastern brothers and sisters call the Third Eye.
Stop seeing things the way the world sees them, and start seeing them from a higher consciousness, the way God sees them. That’s the purpose of prayer. When you focus on that, your entire body will be full of light.
Today’s gospel story ends with Peter wanting to build a temple on top of the mountain to worship Moses and Elijah and Jesus.
But, Jesus says, “No. We must go back down the mountain. Back into the world.” And, he says, “Don’t tell anyone what happened here.”
You see, Jesus didn’t want to be worshipped. He didn’t want a temple to be built in his honor. He wanted us to become the Temple, to be the Temple.
For centuries now, Christianity has been about building temples to Jesus, rather than teaching people to become Temples of the Christ Light. It is much easier to build temples to the guy who achieved enlightenment (and worship him) rather than to seek enlightenment for ourselves.
It’s much easier to praise the man who was able to love everyone unconditionally, rather than to go and love as he did. It’s much easier to build temples than to be temples.
The season of Lent is the perfect time for us to start or to deepen a daily prayer practice, to ascend the mountain each and every day.
The 20th Century Christian mystic, the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, said: “Meditation is not the intellectual effort to master certain ideas about God. Meditation (or prayer of the heart) is the active effort we make to keep our hearts open so that we may be enlightened by God and filled with the realization of true relationship with God. Hence, the aim of meditation in the context of the Christian faith is not to arrive at a scientific knowledge of God, but to know that God’s own nature has been given to us by God as our true nature.”
God’s own nature is our nature. It’s about knowing that YOU and the Father (You and the Mother) are One. This transformation, this Transfiguration, is not just about Jesus. It’s about YOU, too.
And, this transformation is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight! Moses was on the mountaintop for 40 days and nights. Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and nights.
And, the season of Lent is 40 days and nights, a time for us to go up to the mountaintop each day, and to prepare ourselves for spiritual transformation so that we can hear the voice of God more clearly and experience the Light of God more fully.
And, so, my friends, I’d like to invite you each and every day this week to “ascend the mountaintop,” to “enter into the Kingdom of Heaven,” so that you can connect more fully with the Presence of God that is within you.
That’s what the season of Lent is all about: a time for us to prepare for transformation within ourselves, so that we can experience the Light more fully and then shine it for all the world to see.
I’d like to conclude my message with these words from the book, A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
May it be so. Amen.