SEEING THE LIGHT WITH UNVEILED FACES
Lenticular printing. It’s also called a “flicker picture” or a “wiggle picture.” I saw it recently on a cookie box in the grocery store. The back of the box was imprinted with an image of a cookie that changed shape and color when you looked at the box from a different angle of vision. It reminded me of those flicker pictures that were on novelty items when I was a child. Snow White is slaving away in the kitchen when you hold the card one way; shift it slightly and she’s dressed in a gown ready for the royal ball. A picture of a glass bowl looks like it’s full of hot air balloons if you hold it at one angle. Shift the perspective slightly and you see fish swimming.
Lenticular printing was developed in the 1940’s but was not widely used except on children’s novelties until the 1960s and 1970s. I looked up some information about how lenticular printing works. It involves having two images cut into strips and interlaced with one another. These two images are then combined with a special sheet of individual cylindrical plastic lenses (lenticules) that must be perfectly aligned with the interlaced images underneath them. Each cylindrical lens acts as a magnifying glass that enlarges and displays the portion of the image with which it is aligned. Thus, when we look at the combined picture from one angle, we see the first image; but if we adjust our view, the second image comes into focus.
It’s a different, heat-induced process that causes the same shape-shifting experience on novelty coffee mugs. One image is imprinted on the cold mug; but pour in the hot coffee and it shifts to a different one. I have a coffee cup that magically shifts from a sweaterless Mr. Rogers to an image of him wearing his iconic brown cardigan when I pour my hot, morning coffee into it.
This Sunday’s gospel reading describes Jesus’ transfiguration on Mt. Hermon. Jesus takes James, John, and Peter with him to the mountaintop and suddenly they see him transformed before their eyes. Jesus’ garments are changed to dazzling white and he speaks with Moses and Elijah. The disciples’ angle of vision changes and they see Jesus not as he usually appears but as the Beloved of God who will be crucified and will rise breathing new life into the world. It’s a biblical version of lenticular images. Or maybe of novelty coffee cups like my Mr. Rogers mug. Look at Jesus from one perspective and you see him as a teacher and rabbi. Shift your vision just a bit and you see a completely different Jesus, one robed in light and glory.
Our reading from Paul makes a similar point about how our perspective shapes and re-shapes what we see. Paul writes to the Corinthians about Moses having to veil his face when he came down from Mount Sinai and how we often do not see the world as God created it because we too have a veil over our eyes that distorts our vision. When we dwell in Christ, however, our angle of vision shifts. The distorting veil of our normal perspectives or assumptions falls away and we see ourselves, others, and our whole world in a new way. We see with unveiled eyes the world and everyone and everything within it as it really is.
When we live with veiled faces, we do not see the world as it is but as we are. We always see the world through some lens or interpretive grid that highlights one aspect of reality but simultaneously obscures another. The glass is half full to some; half empty, to others. We see something as a catastrophe; they see it as an opportunity. I see something as a failure; you see it as a learning opportunity. The important question is this, “Through what lens are we looking at ourselves? At others? At the possibilities and challenges that lie before us?”
In Christ, Paul tells the Corinthians, we are given the capacity to clear our vision, to look afresh with unveiled eyes, to see ourselves as God sees us, as God’s beloved ones, and to see everything and everyone around us as equally loved by God. The Spirit of God operates like a lenticular lens, inviting us to change our angle of vision and be transformed by the new possibilities that emerge when we look at our world through transfigured eyes and hearts.
Blessings,
Pastor Thomas