February 3, 2008
Matthew 17:1-9

The Rev. David A. Davis

“Peter’s Wish” 

            Six days later, Jesus took Peter and James and John up to the mountain. Six days. Six days after. After Jesus had said to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus and his followers had stopped in the area of Caesarea Philippi, in the Upper Galilee, in the shadow of Mt Hermon. The city stood as a monument, a legacy to the Roman Empire and all its power and authority and dominion. Surrounded by all the trappings of imperial rule, Jesus inquired as to what people were saying about the Son of Man. “John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets” were the answers that were called out. Jesus followed up with a direct question. “But who do you say that I am?” That was when Simon Peter made his confession. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” Peter’s affirmation turns to bold-face print when the reader of Matthew’s gospel understands that context of Caesarea Philippi where people really ought to have been voicing their allegiance to one power, and one alone; the power of Rome and its emperor.
            Six days after that, Jesus took the three disciples who seemed to form something of an inner circle, he took them up to the mountain, probably right there at Mt Hermon just to the north of Caesarea Philippi. Six days after Peter’s confession. Six days after Jesus called Peter “the Rock on which I will build my church.” Six days after Jesus tried to teach the twelve about his own suffering, about how he would have to go back down to Jerusalem and undergo suffering and death, about how on the third day be raised. Peter, that Rock, took Jesus aside and rebuked him, “God forbid! This can’t happen to you!” And Jesus called Peter the devil, told him to move out the way, that he was a stumbling block; to him, to his work, to his purpose. “Peter, get out of the way!” That’s when Jesus turned to his disciples and said “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
            Just about a week later, a week after all of that, Jesus, Peter, James and John were up on a mountain by themselves. The bible says that Jesus was transfigured before them. What happened was that his appearance began to change. In some mysterious way, something was going on with how he looked. In a fashion that must have brought to mind the stories of Moses and the burning bush, Moses and the stone tablets, Moses and his face all a glow, Moses up on the mountain, in a manner somehow like Moses, Jesus began to look different. The only way to describe it, the only way to make any sense of it was to say that his face was as bright as the sun. His clothes were radiant. They were dazzling white. And as if the transfiguring part wasn’t enough, then suddenly Moses and Elijah showed up. It wasn’t just his appearance that was changing; now his true identity was somehow being revealed there on the mountain as he stood between the bearer of the Law and the voice of the Prophets. Right there in front of Peter, James, and John, Jesus finds himself embedded in God’s covenant with God’s people. God’s mercy revealed. God’s plan of salvation. The Law chiseled. The Prophet’s Word spoken. The Son given.
            Who could blame Peter for wanting to bask in the glow, the glow of the Transfiguration?  Peter told Jesus “This is good, real good. This is wicked good and awesome and cool. Jesus, this is unbelievable.” Like when they move that bus on Extreme Home Makeover and everyone shouts “Oh my God”, like a grandmother surrounded for a time by every one of her children and grandchildren (she shouts on the inside), like a lover of Bach who sits through all of the Brandenburg Concerto’s only to want to start it all over again right away. “Lord, it is good for us to be here!”
            Then comes Peter’s wish. “Let me make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He’s being polite, of course, so he wants it to seem like Jesus had the idea. But make no mistake about it. It’s what Peter wanted; the three dwellings, the three tents, the three booths, the three temporary structures intended to provide shelter thus allowing everyone to stay on the mountain, for a bit longer, for a while, for a season. Peter wanted to preserve the moment. He wanted to live in the present and then some. Peter wanted to stay there in the warmth and glow and spiritual aroma of the Transfiguration. “Lord, if you wish” he says trying to somehow contain his own eager desire to stay right there, to live with what one preacher called his own “satisfied devotion”, his own “contented obedience.”
            Six days earlier it was “great suffering” and “denying oneself” and “taking up a cross” and “losing life in order to save it”. Here it was a stunning glow, the presence of quite a trio, some tents, a campfire, and a wish that it would never end. No wonder Peter preferred Mt. Hermon. The Messiah’s clothes lighting up the sky like billboards in Time Square. The Lord’s face shining with the piercing warmth of the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean. Let’s stay here! Who wouldn’t wish for that? The mountaintop or the road to discipleship? Some kind of other-worldly spiritual encounters or the daily jolt that comes with faith lived in the real world? A Transfiguration or a crucifixion?  A tent or a cross?
            Before Peter even stopped speaking, the cloud rolled in. A cloud in scripture is never just about the weather. With the cloud came the voice. “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The big three in terms of disciples, they hit the ground and covered their heads in fear. That’s when Jesus came over and touched them. Like when Jesus touched the leper who fell before him begging to be healed, like when Jesus touched Peter’s own mother-in-law who was so sick with a fever, like when Jesus touched the eyes of the two blind men who cried out for mercy, Jesus came up to the three and touched them. “Get up and do not be afraid.”
His healing touch. He leaned over and touched them there on the ground. He touched them not just in their fear, but in their yearning to just stay put, to stay there, to linger in that moment of Transfiguration. He touched them in their complacency, in their desire to remain comfortable, in their wish to preserve the occasion of a spiritual mountaintop, in their longing for a safe retreat. Fear came not only in response to the voice of God from the cloud, but in response to what might come next down the mountain, down the road, on the way to Jerusalem, in their life of discipleship. That’s when Jesus touched them told them to get up. And just like that, the moment had passed, the Transfiguration was over, Peter’s wish remained just that, a wish. For when they looked up from their fear, they didn’t see anyone or anything but Jesus, and him alone. And somewhere between the lines of scripture, Jesus must have said, “Come on, let’s go”
They hadn’t even made it down the mountain when Jesus started to talk again about suffering. And in a whole lot less than a week, the needs of the sick began to press in on them. They couldn’t have been down from the mountain very long when Jesus started teaching about being humble like a child and searching after one of the little ones who was lost and struggling when someone sins against you within the community of faith and forgiving seventy times seven. The experience of the Transfiguration had to still be fresh in their minds when Jesus told the rich young man to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor, when he talked about how hard it would be for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, when he told the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, that one about the workers who were hired late in the day and received the same wage as everyone else. “So the last will be first and the first will be last”, Jesus said. It couldn’t have been that long after they left Mt Hermon that they found themselves at the Mt of Olives when Jesus sent them to find a donkey and colt so that he could ride on it, ride on to Jerusalem. So that he could ride on toward the cross. Some time before the cock crowed, sometime as Peter went from one denial to the next, at some point during that grueling night of supper and betrayal and denial and desertion, Peter must have thought about Mt Hermon and all that glory, the glory day. He must have yearned to go back there, to the glow and the light and Elijah and Moses and Jesus. “I should have made those tents”. He must have still wished for the Transfiguration, for it to never end!
Peter’s wish. That’s where we come in and find our place in this otherwise strange and distant story from the Bible. Yearning to preserve a moment of spiritual intimacy that is a real to us as the rising sun. Longing to linger within the confines of our satisfied devotion, our contended obedience, the safe haven of a tent pitched for me and my Jesus. Hoping to stay for a good long time where things feel right and familiar when it comes to God and faith and life; a sort of comfort zone of our own choosing. Wishing that Jesus the Christ would stay with us here on the mountaintop of our own experience, rather than leading us down the way toward discipleship, sacrifice,  and servant hood, down the way where faith is hard and priorities have to be set and temptation lurks and the world has this nasty way of not letting go and sickness and death and suffering are all too fresh, down the way where the first shall be last and the last first and what looms ahead of us is not a mountain, but a cross.
Who among us wouldn’t vote for the Transfiguration? There on the mountain, they never sing a song in worship that you don’t like; there’s never a petition in a prayer that makes you uncomfortable, much less mad; the preacher never says anything that upsets you, anything you disagree with. There on the mountain the Session never talks about things difficult. The Church never asks for money or raises the matter of stewardship. You never have to meet anyone new and all the new comers miraculously know everyone. Nothing ever changes in the room where you worship, everything is just the way you like it on the mountain because it’s all about our satisfaction, our comfort, feeling at home deep in the bones of faith and life.“This is so good!”
Of course, just down the hill, just down the road, just off the mountain is where Jesus starts to point to suffering and the needs of the sick and poor rise up so quickly. Just down there, is where people of good conscience disagree about important things and God alone is Lord of the conscience as life has this way of smacking faith right in the face again and again. Down that road is where the economy falters and jobs are lost and some corporations post record profits while record numbers of folks lose their homes. Down the road is where war rages on and people strap bombs to unknowing women and send them into a crowd. Down the road is where faith encounters politics and policy and practice. It’s not about a candidate’s faith as much as it is about how your faith informs what you think about taxes and immigration and education and healthcare and war and the economy. “Faith and politics don’t mix”, that’s what you say when you’re up on the mountain. Because on the road that heads down your faith is challenged every moment when it comes to your politics, your money, your vote, your decisions, your values, your life.
And just when you and I find ourselves longing for that moment again, for that high mountain away somewhere, for that spiritual respite that goes on forever, for life’s Sabbath time, and when you and I cover ours head in fear and when we have that overwhelming desire to just be comfortable again in faith’s own skin, just right about then, Jesus comes and touches us, with that healing touch, by grace and in the power of the Spirit, he says “Come on, let’s go!”

 

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