In 1984, the novelist J G Ballard published a book called ‘Empire of the Sun’, The title is a reference to Japan and though the book is a novel, it is based on Ballard’s own experience of life after the Japanese drove out the British from Shangai during the 2nd World war.

The novel was turned into a film (recently re-screened on Channel 4)

The central character of the film was Jim, a spoiled young British boy – played expertly by Christian Bale. He lives with his wealthy family in pre-World War II Shangai. During the Japanese takeover, Jim is separated from his parents and is taken prisoner. Much of the film is shot in a Japanese Concentration camp where Jim grows up from being a boy to becoming an adolescent who learns to survive without a retinue of servants at his beck and call.  Thanks to a meeting with an American who is a bit like Fagin in Oliver Twist, Jim becomes much more the street-wise kid who knows just how to survive.  For him, the Camp is one big adventure playground and he flits and darts between the various groups – American, British and even Japanese.

In 1945, when the Japanese know that the writing is on the wall, the Camp is ‘liberated’ and the inmates are force marched towards Nantow where they are told there will be food. All this is against a backdrop of American planes bombing the airfield which is on the camp’s perimeter.

At one point, he is befriending a Mrs Victor who, with her husband, have been kind to him. She is now alone and Jim stays with her, suggesting that she acts ‘dead’; so that the Japanese won’t shoot her. Unfortunately for Jim, she dies in the night and as morning breaks, Jim sees a bright white light in the eastern sky.  He thinks it is Mrs Victor’s soul going to heaven. Later he was told that what he saw was the atom bomb exploding on Hiroshima.

“I saw it” he said, “it was like a white light in the sky. Like God taking a photograph.”

The day it happened, of course, was August the 6th – the Day of Transfiguration and there is a strange irony that the brilliant light made by that bomb should share its birth with the day when Jesus was surrounded by a brilliant light – transforming Jesus until, as St. Luke tells us, his clothes  became dazzling white.”

The day of Transfiguration, since 1945, has been linked as a day of remembering God’s act of glorifying his Son and also a day when humanity sank to its lowest ebb, using a nuclear force to destroy rather than create.

Here is how one victim of that bomb, speaking last year, described the experience:

On the 6th of August, 60 years ago, I was a college student, 20 years old. When the atomic bomb was dropped, I was near the Hiroshima City Hall, about one kilometer away from the ground zero. I've seen so many Hibakusha wounded, injured and killed in blood and in burns. It was like hell on earth. I really believed Hiroshima was dead at that time. I was fortunate to survive the instant bombing, but one week later, I fell unconscious. For forty days, I was staying in unconscious so I didn't know when the war ended. After so many years, I've survived, but I have many, many illnesses: A plastic anemia, angina, colon cancer, prostate cancer. Many Hibakusha who have survived the atomic bombings still suffer from many, many difficulties and illnesses, and they have been constantly under medical care. The most cruel damage on human beings by the atomic bomb is that even if you luckily survived you have to continue to suffer from psychological and physical disruption of human beings until your life ends. That's why we call the atomic bombing the absolute evil.

He ended his speech with the words ‘No more Hiroshimas’ – a cry that has become a clarion call by many in the world who are against the use of nuclear weapons. A cry that has, of course been heeded so far because no nuclear or atomic bomb has been used in war since those two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, even without nuclear weaponry, war is still a fact of our global life as we know only too well from our television screens at the moment. The Litany is relentless – Israel against Hizbollah; Israel against Palestinians; Terrorists in Afghanstan; The on-going struggle in Iraq. These are some of the current troubled areas but since the end of World War 2 there has never been total peace anywhere in the world.

We don’t seem to have learned many lessons from that global conflict. Nor, it would seem, have we learned the lessons of the Transfiguration.  On the mountain, Jesus was transfigured – glorified, exalted. In the words of Jim in the film, God was taking a photograph of what humanity could become.  For it is within the destiny of humanity to become so filled with the image of God in Christ that we are bound for glory. The pictures filling our television screens at present do not show this destiny which is why we need to be reminded of what the Transfiguration points to.  It points particularly to God’s way of dealing with things.

The word Transfiguration means transformation or change and in the Transfiguration of Christ this change was to turn outside in and inside out. What I mean is that the inner glory of Jesus became totally visible – so visible in fact that it was dazzling. It dazzled the disciples in such a way that Peter tried to capture the moment just as a flash camera captures a moment and commits it to an image which is forever held – though, of course, for ever static.  The problem with a photograph is that it is nothing more than a snapshot which becomes an aid to the memory but which simply holds the moment.  Which is why when normality was resumed, Jesus took his three friends down the mountain and committed them to silence, at least until after the Resurrection – the total transformation of humanity in an even more dazzling display of God’s glory.

If the Transfiguration is about Jesus being transformed, the Resurrection holds forth a promise that all of us can be transformed.  And what allows this to happen is what takes place between the mountain and the empty tomb.  What takes place, of course, is the Crucifixion.  This is the real moment of transfiguration for us all and it is God’s way of dealing with human frailty, sin and the temptation, ever present to a greater of lesser degree, to choose evil rather than good. 

The way of humanity is often the way of destruction – a destruction which leads to opposing sides of a dispute into an orgy of killing. Present events remind us that all too often we try to solve our difficulties with each other by violence. In the Middle East, as elsewhere, this violence reduces some people to dust and creates a waste land of countries. 

Last year in the Czech republic I visited an old synagogue which had been turned into a museum of World War II. The Exhibition then on display was of photographs of the aftermath of war. One set of photographs burn in my memory. They were of the Polish Capital city of Warsaw. The series began with a photograph of a vibrant, lively city and then, by stages, the final photograph was reached – of a wasteland of rubble, a scene of total dereliction.  Starkly, this showed me the human way of conflict.

God’s way is the exact opposite. In the Transfiguration he gives us a snapshot of human glory – Christ transformed and it is as if God is telling us that this is what we can become if we follow his way of doing things. 

What follows the Transfiguration is the journey to Jerusalem and to our Lord’s death on the Cross.  There, Jesus absorbed all human pain, conflict and hurt and he became the instrument of our transfiguration.  He absorbed human sin and nailed it to the Cross and he did so out of sheer love for humanity. What transforms the Cross is love because the Crucifixion is God’s ultimate statement of His love for us.  “You can do this to me,” his actions say, “and yet I will go on loving and you cannot stop me for it is only love that transforms humanity and changes our destiny.”

A young Russian priest was arrested when communism took over his country. For years he was held in a prison camp and there he was beaten and tortured. When he was eventually released his friends asked him what was left of him. ‘Nothing’ he said, ‘they have taken everything away. Only Love remains.”

That priest had discovered the one thing that changes every human situation and disarms every human conflict – sacrificial self-giving love. The Cross which Jesus took upon himself and by which all of us can be changed – and when we are changed, the world is changed.  Only Love remains – only love will conquer the human heart. Only love will Transfigure the world.  Perhaps this morning we are unable to see that as a possibility in the Middle East – all we can hope is that the world will come to its senses before it is too late.

But there is one area where we can see this possibility and that is in our own lives and in our own dealings with others. Wars do not begin on dusty desert battlefields far from home. They begin in our hearts – when we refuse to allow others dignity or understanding. When we want what we want come what may and when we believe our own views to be the only right views – a sure way to begin oppression of others.

That is not God’s Way. God’s way is to call us to stand at the place of the Cross – at that intersection where human pain, hurt and conflict meet and are held by the transforming love of God.

It is only when we stand in this place where God in Jesus Christ always is – the place of transforming love - that we will begin to see the glory in each other. That is the central message of the Transfiguration. If we do not grasp it then not only will we ill treat others, we will also diminish ourselves – and, more importantly, we will deny God.