2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9: 28-43

The significant fact about stained glass is that it is stained. It's impure. It's warped. The surface is not perfectly flat. So the light that passes through stained glass is incomplete. In order for stained glass to do its job, it must block most of the light that reaches it. Only a portion of the light, distorted and colored, is allowed to pass through.

Telescopes, and prescription eyeglasses, on the other hand, are supposed to be as perfect as we can make them. Some cheap telescopes may produce colored halos. That's an aberration. Some cheap telescopes may make straight lines look curved. That's an aberration. The best telescopes focus the light, while losing as little as possible, and without warping the image. The best eyeglasses focus the light, while losing as little as possible, and without warping the image.

I have eyeglasses, of course, because my own eyes are warped and distorted. The eyeglasses are meant to "correct" the distortion. They produce an incorrect image, which is added to my own incorrect image. The hope is that two wrongs will make a right. Two incorrect images will cancel each other out to produce a correct image. It doesn't always work perfectly. I used to own a pair of glasses that produced ghost images: every bright light had its pale twin beside it. With my present glasses, I often see straight lines as curves, like some of those cheap telescopes. So my brain unconsciously performs another correction, and mentally straightens out some of those curves. My eyeglasses plus my eyes make every person I see bowlegged, and every door I pass through look like parentheses. Yet you all look normal, and doorframes still seem like rectangles to me because ... believing is seeing!

The Hubble Space Telescope was meant to be as nearly perfect as modern technology could make it. But something went wrong. The central mirror was just the tiniest bit warped. I suspect I wouldn't have been able to tell any difference. But it was driving the astronomers wild. So they sent a repair crew up to fix it. They couldn't regrind the mirror in space so they did the equivalent of prescription eyeglasses. They "corrected" Hubble's vision.

I prefer to assume, if there's any question about vision, that I'm the one who's right! After all, my vision has been "corrected." Who knows how badly "your" vision is warped? Who knows if your vision can be trusted? Maybe I'm not alone in thinking like this. Whether we are talking about arguments between husbands and wives, or between Democrats and Republicans, or between different religious denominations, we always know that our own "point of view" is the right one, that our own vision is the correct (or "corrected") one. Who knows if we can trust the other person? Their view may be warped or distorted or filled with impurities.

Down through history humans have always insisted that the other guy had blinders on, or (to use Paul's language) was reading the Bible through a veil. Now we know that WE have unveiled faces! Right?

Now maybe, just maybe, no one has perfect, 20/20 vision. Maybe each of us sees the world in a warped way. Maybe each of us is a piece of stained glass. Maybe we only let a portion of God's light shine through. And the comfortable way to live is to find other people with the same distortions, other people with the same prescription lenses on their eyes. And we'll all sit together, and we'll all worship together in the same way. We will call our distortions virtues, and we will call our impurities "The Truth." And all of our windows will be the same color. Maybe red. The Church of the Red Windows. Over in Wilbur might be the Church of the Blue Windows. The Church of the Green Windows. The church of the Clear-but-Pebbled-Glass Windows.

Churches like this are comfortable. But they are very boring. They block out the variety of God's light. They are so insistent on the one right vision that they block out all the other possible visions. Now the really good stained glass windows have lots of colors. So many colors that between them they let all different kinds of God's light through. And the really good churches have all kinds of people with all kinds of ways of looking. Putting all our distortions together may produce a more true image. So that when people see us in all our differences, maybe it makes their vision of God a little bit more accurate.

I would hope that we could deliberately try to be a church of people who look different and who see differently. We could become a bridge church, so that Roman Catholics married to Protestants can find a church where both are happy together. So that liberals married to conservatives can find a church where both are happy together. Multi-ethnic, multi-faithed, multi-faceted, multi-colored.

One of my favorite scripture verses for years has been Ephesians 3:10, especially after I discovered that one of the Greek words in that verse had once had a different meaning: that God intends--through the Church--to display God's multicolored wisdom. I don't want to make too much of that. Probably the original author only meant to say "complex wisdom," or "abounding wisdom." But doesn't "multicolored wisdom sound good? We could be displaying God's multicolored wisdom.

I once served in a church that had beautiful stained glass windows. It was almost scary--the windows were so dramatic nobody cared if the sermons were any good. Then one of the windows lost its glory. The congregation built a new addition on their building, and it blocked the sunlight from that window. It now faced an air shaft, so that very little light could shine through it.

Get ready for an amazing insight here: what makes any window beautiful is not the distortion, not the impurities. What makes it beautiful is the glory of God shining through. No matter how great the artist, when we block away the light, the window loses its glory. And when humans turn away from the light of God's face, when they block God's light with whatever veils or distortions or impurities they can find, they lose God's glory.

I once served a church that had no stained glass windows at all. They also built an addition, and, as so many churches do, they hired the cheapest possible contractor. Turns out he was cheap because he'd never built anything more complicated than a garage before. He built us little, dinky windows, that fit between the studs, and let in about as much light as you'd get in a garage. And frankly, from the outside, it looked nothing like a church. We ripped out the tiny windows and installed tall, skinny windows. They still fit between the studs, but it looked more like a church, and, more importantly, we actually got some light inside.

For a brief moment in time--was it the high altitude, was it the clear air, was it the angle of the sun?--for a brief moment in time Jesus became translucent, and the light of God, the glory of God shone through. ... His disciples remained just as opaque as ever. As you read on you discover they can't do the simple healings Jesus thought he had taught them. They squabble about their pecking order. They misunderstand everything Jesus tells them. Opaque? Those guys were so thick you couldn't shine X-rays through them.

I wonder sometimes if Jesus was always that bright, and the disciples just didn't let themselves notice. I wonder if something happened on top of that mountain, not to Jesus, but to Peter, James, and John. I wonder if their dark glasses got knocked off, somehow, and there they were, squinting against the bright light, scrabbling around on the ground with their fingers, to find their shades. "Wow, Master, it's great to be here, but do you think we could build a tent with thick canvas walls, and keep the light inside, where it's safe?"

I wonder sometimes how those disciples spent all that time in Jesus's company, traveling with him, watching him, listening to him, to still be so thick. Because here I am, 2000 years later, and I understand him perfectly. ... Or do I? You don't think I have my own dark glasses, do you? Surely I don't misunderstand, do I? ... After all, a person who weighs as much as I do must be pretty thick! How much power do you think God's X-rays need to penetrate me?...

Much later, some kind of transformation did happen to those disciples. The billion candlepower glory of the resurrection began to shine through them. They, too, were transfigured. They, too, were transformed. Their veils were stripped away, their sunglasses were discarded, their thickness was penetrated. And all of them, with unveiled faces, began to be transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

It's pretty clear they were still filled with impurities. It's pretty clear they were still warped. Peter and Paul fought. Paul and Barnabas fought. Everybody in the church at Corinth fought. It's pretty clear that being transformed into the same image doesn't mean they all looked alike. But maybe the glory of God shining through them transformed the entire Church into a glorious, multicolored, radiant image of Christ.

That is what God intends for us. It's scary to take off my Foster Grants and let God's light shine in. It's scary to be exposed to God's X-rays. When I became a Christian, I thought I might lose an impurity or two, but I never bargained on being transformed. I always thought I could stay mercifully opaque. And I still tend to squint my eyes, and flinch away from the light. I still wish I could keep God's glory wrapped up in canvas. It's uncomfortable being so translucent, all my flaws so obvious. It makes it hard to pretend that my distortions are virtues. It makes it hard to pretend that my impurities are "The Truth." But God wants me transformed.

I think we've got two really great stained-glass windows here, and they can be a metaphor of what God intends this church to be like. Distortions and impurities adding up to beauty. Differences that can cancel each other out. A hundred wrongs adding up to make one right. We are not unique because all our faces are the same, all our voices are the same, all our windows are the same, but because they are all different. We can't pretend that our flaws are really virtues. We can't claim that we alone have the unveiled eyes that see The Truth. And the light of God shines through all this to make glory! We are not unique in that we all think alike, but we can be different while still loving each other. And the light of God shines through us to make glory! The multicolored wisdom of God.

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)

Creston Christian Church, Creston, Washington, USA