To Shine with Love

"You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."  —2 Peter 1:19

This past Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration. It's a strange story even by the Bible's high standard of what counts as strange. It would be easy to dismiss the moment—where Jesus is on the mountain, momentarily seized by a divine luminescence, and joined by what seem like the ghosts of Moses and Elijah—as one more neat trick that establishes his credibility and authority. 

The story is a critical turning point in Luke's gospel. After they come down from the mountain, Jesus turns his face more intently toward Jerusalem, and his conflict with the religious and political authorities starts to build toward its violent climax. The Transfiguration is a moment that previews the end—God's victory of life and love over the most powerful forces of hate and destruction—before the hardest part of the journey begins. The preview of the end is meant to sustain Jesus and his disciples through the hardest part of their journeys.

That's what it means to follow the way of Jesus. We journey through a painful, hard, unjust, and often heartbreakingly cruel world having received a preview of God's ultimate end: to restore, heal, and renew the whole cosmos with perfect love. We carry that end with us, doing the best we can in our relatively small lives to shine light into the darkness, to subvert cruelty with heaps of loving kindness, to join Jesus on the side of those who are cast aside, forgotten, and disregarded. 

And while we were not on the mountain with Jesus, God is always offering us glimpses of transfiguration. I saw it last night in the palpable love present among the congregation that gathered for the Reverend Roger Weaver's memorial in Eveleth. I saw it as I drove through the beauty of the iron range. You can see it in every ordinary moment of quiet, every small act of love, every common gathering around our diocese. As Peter reminds us in recounting his experience on the mountain, we do well to be attentive to all of these as to a lamp shining in a dark place. We are attentive to all of these so that we, too, might shine with the radiance of love in every moment, every breath, every encounter we are given. 

Grace and peace,

The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop