February 26, 2017 Transfiguration
Sunday Matthew 17:1-9
When I think of the disciple Peter I
think of someone who speaks first and then thinks later. How often does he say something in haste only
to be proven wrong? Perhaps his most
infamous guffaw is when he vehemently promises that he will never deny
Jesus. Then that same night when
confronted by a lowly female servant he denies Jesus, and then does it two more
times.
However sometimes Peter says things
that are right on target. We see both
his ability to be amazingly insightful and his tendency to put his foot in his
mouth in the verses immediately before our gospel reading for today. There we find Jesus has asked the disciples
who do people say that he is. The
disciples reply that some people say he is Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the
prophets, or that he is John the Baptist.
Then Jesus says, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter famously replies, “You are the Messiah,
the Son of the living God.”
Jesus commends Peter, and for a few
glorious moments Peter is flying high.
But then Jesus goes on to explain what it means that he is the
Messiah. That he will be rejected and
arrested and beaten and die. Now when
Peter says, “God forbid it Lord. This
must never happen to you!” Jesus
replies, “Get behind me Satan! You are a
stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but
on human things.”
Shortly thereafter comes the
Transfiguration that we read about today.
A question on our minds might be what sort of proclamation is Peter
making this time? Is he brilliant or is
he foolish?
To our ears his words immediately
sound foolish. What is this that he
offers to make three dwellings on the mountaintop; one for Jesus, one for
Moses, and one for Elijah? What on earth
is he thinking? Is he trying to make
this mountaintop experience to last forever?
Is he trying to win favoritism from these three great giants of faith?
But let’s look at Peter’s words more
carefully. I think we’ll find he’s
actually said something quite profound.
A big holiday in first century Judaism
was the Festival of the Booths. It was
an eight day harvest festival that took place at the end of September or early
October. It was a celebration of the
harvest and giving thanks to God for the season’s produce. The key part of the festival was to dwell in
booths or tents in commemoration of the 40 years the people wandered in the
wilderness under Moses.
In Jesus day the festival was also a
celebration of the end of time and God’s ultimate salvation. It was believed that Moses and Elijah would
have a part in all of those events.
And so look at it from Peter’s
perspective. He knows that Jesus is
God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Son of God. He knows that Moses and Elijah are going to
come at the end of the age. He sees
Jesus and Moses and Elijah all together on top of a mountain and he comes to a
well thought out, theologically astute conclusion. The end has come! This is the ultimate Festival of the
Booths! He offers himself in service to
these men to make the tents or booths for them.
But of course Peter is totally
wrong! I think this is indeed one of
Peter’s shining moments. He’s made the
right offer and he’s said the right thing, yet he’s completely missing what God
is up to. The voice from the cloud
interrupts Peter while he’s speaking and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved;
with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”
God is about to do something new.
There are no precedents. It is
totally unpredictable. So the disciples
are to just listen and watch. Of course
that something new to come would be the crucifixion and eventual
resurrection. The disciples had
absolutely no way to put that into anything they understood about God.
I think it is helpful for us to think
well of Peter here, and not to mock him, because we’ll see a lot of parallels
with ourselves.
This church has been around a long
time. None of us were alive when it was
founded. By God it has served
generations of people: teaching them, shaping them, maturing them into
disciples of Christ. How many people
have been baptized here, confirmed here, married here, and had their funerals
here? A lot. You know well how to be the church in this
place. You know how to care for the poor
and the needy. You know how to take care
of this building and property. You know
how to do worship and do it well. All in
all you know how to be faithful Christians.
Several years ago I did a funeral for
a teenager in my community. We expected
a huge crowd for the service. A local
funeral director and I had worked out how we thought it best to handle it
all. But for some reason a woman from
another church, who I will kindly describe as a “busybody,” kept horning in and
checking to make sure we had it all under control. She even came an hour before the service to
check our preparations and see if we needed help. Of course she found our preparations lacking
and rambled on endlessly about what we were doing wrong. I rarely lose my temper but I turned and
snapped at her, “This church has been doing funerals for 110 years! I think we know what we’re doing!” The funeral director guffawed in
laughter. And indeed, everything worked
as planned.
We know what we’re doing, and we know
how to do it well. Peter knew how to do
things, and do them well. There’s
certainly nothing wrong with that. But
we know Peter’s well-informed offer was missing something.
Notice the voice from the cloud does
not scold Peter. The other times Peter
says something outright wrong Jesus takes him to task for it: “Get behind me
Satan,” and, “Before the cock crows you will deny me three times.” No, there’s no criticism or correction at all
for Peter at the transfiguration. It’s
not that he’s wrong. It’s that he hasn’t
listened enough to know what to do.
I don’t have to point out to you that
despite the fact that we know how to be a church and be a church well, that way
of being isn’t working too well anymore.
Recent polls show that all church denominations are declining. Even the charismatic mega churches that were
once envied are also declining. What
does this mean? Are we all doing
something wrong?
We easily beat ourselves up when our
churches don’t flourish the way we think they should. While we do indeed need to be self-critical
and disciplined, we have to remember that the church is ultimately God’s – not
ours. God will make sure that what God
needs to get done will get done. You can
try to hinder it all you want, but God’s will is still going to get done. We are honored for God to ask us to
participate in that work, but it does not rest exclusively on our
shoulders. Therefore we do not worry.
God is up to new and dramatic things
every day. In our knowledge and
experience let us not be like Peter and think we can know for certain what God
will do. No, instead let us approach
each day and each moment with eyes open to new things. Let us not let our knowledge get in the way
of seeing what God is doing. No, let our
knowledge remind us that God is unpredictable; dependable, loving, forgiving;
yes… but not predictable.
God is amazingly good. God is amazingly loving; more amazing and
loving than we can imagine. So let us
not be surprised when God stretches our imagination. Jesus was revealed in glory at the
Transfiguration. May we too see God in
glory. And may we always be open to the
new things God is doing.
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