A Sermon for the Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:13-21
Luke 9:28-36
What day is it? In our liturgical calendar, it is the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord.
In the calendar of world history, today is the day, 55 years ago, on which the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
For many, today is the anniversary of a tragedy. The Atomic Bomb has been called "wrong" and "evil" because of the many sudden deaths and the innocent suffering.
For others, today is the anniversary of a victory The day the war ended, and horrible atrocities and many deaths were prevented.
I spent an afternoon once with a friend who had been one of the first Americans to enter one of the Nazi death camps at the end of the war. He had a contraband camera and he used it. He still cannot look at the photos without tears. Neither could I.
In Hiroshima: The bomb exploded within 100 feet of the target. The fireball was 18,000 feet across. The temperature at the center of the fireball was 100,000,000 degrees. The people who were near the center became nothing. The whole city was blown to bits and the ruins all caught fire instantly. 70,000 people were killed right away or died within a few hours. Those who did not die at once suffered great pain. Very few of them were soldiers.
In the death camps:. Shredded, roasted, and rotting human flesh. Living skeletons, too weak even to turn their faces toward their liberators. Very few of them were soldiers.
Who was justified? Who was right and who was wrong? I'm not sure those are helpful questions to ask after the fact.
The issue that concerns us today is not the United States vs. Japan or Allies vs. Germany , but human race standing defiantly against God. The average citizen did not choose war. But in recognizing our human ability to imagine such destruction and to use it, the average citizen, and all of us, must see our human capacity for sin -- the ability to destroy God's creation, separating ourselves from God.
Everyone involved in war has a need to ask forgiveness, whether they "started it" or reacted in defense of the innocent.
It's a mistaken notion that forgiveness is necessary only if we somehow made a wrong choice. Sometimes we need to ask forgiveness for the "right" choice.
Because sometimes there are no good choices. There are times when every possible option results in someone being hurt. And then we must make the best choice available.
And then, even our best choice, the one that saves or gives the most life, may contain some sin.
Justified or not, moral or not, killing is a sin. In war one may save a thousand lives by taking one life. It would be a great sin to allow those thousand to die, but there is also sin in the taking of that one life to save the thousand. So in war everyone stands in need of forgiveness. We all stand in need of forgiveness.
To be forgiven is to be released from the consequences of what we've done. That's what the biblical word "forgive" literally means: "to let go." Hiroshima, and indeed most of the war in our past, whether personal or political, is still painful partly because we have not asked for forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to freedom.
There is no freedom or satisfaction or peace that comes as a result of self-justification and blaming after the fact, since there is then no forgiveness.
Remember that judgment belongs to God alone. It is not ours to judge, we can only learn from the past. Our job is to remember.
We listen to the WWII vets. And we remember. We listen to the children, to the story of little Sadako dying of leukemia from the radiation at Hiroshima. How she hoped that if she folded a thousand paper cranes the gods would hear her prayer. We remember Sadako, and children still today fold paper cranes and pray for peace.
When my daughter Miranda was small,
she sat in church and folded dollar bills into paper cranes for the offering.
The money becomes an offering and a prayer for peace. We remember and hope that things will change, like crumpled dollar bills into lovely cranes. That's what we gather at church to do – to remember. That's what happens in the Eucharistic prayer: We remember Jesus . . . . and things do change.
That's part of what Transfiguration is about – we remember and things change. Moses and Elijah appear and Jesus is changed. Jesus is transfigured and the disciples see the glory of God in a human person. Our sins and brokenness also can be transfigured to God's glory when in forgiveness we are washed clean -- dazzling white.
When our sin is forgiven, we are transfigured in freedom. And in freedom, our vision is transfigured. Then we may see anew, like a child.
In Hiroshima fifty-five years ago today, Michiko, a small child, stood near the target site watching when the bomb fell. Later she said, "The light was so beautiful. So many colors."
As we remember the suffering and death and ask forgiveness, as we remember the lives saved and give thanks, perhaps we may glimpse a brilliant many-colored vision of hope for future peace.
In the words of our Epistle Reading: We "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."
May we remember our past. And ask forgiveness for our sins. So that the wars and brokenness in our lives may transfigured into Christ's peace. Amen.