Transfiguration

Scripture: The Transfiguration of Our Lord, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

The story of our Lord’s Transfiguration is admittedly a little strange. Now, according to the Bible, the purpose of a sermon is to “give the sense” of the text, so that’s exactly what I’m going to attempt.

In our Gospel reading, Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah for the first time, and Jesus has promised that there are some with Him who soon will see that the Kingdom of God has come with power. Six days later, He climbs a mountain with His inner circle of the Apostles, Peter, James, and John. The Scriptures do not tell us which mountain, but tradition identifies it as Mt. Tabor, which, believe you me, is a serious climb. It is indeed “a high mountain apart.”

When they arrive at the peak, Jesus is transfigured before them, His clothes glowing with a dazzling, unearthly light. And suddenly Moses and Elijah appear, conversing with Him! Moses, of course, is the great liberator and lawgiver who guided God’s people to the Promised Land and gave to them the Ten Commandments. Elijah, meanwhile, is the most famous and powerful prophet of the Old Testament, through whom God wrought innumerable wonders. And both of them lived many centuries before the birth of Jesus.

Moses and Elijah have several things in common. First and foremost, they both encountered God high atop a mountain. And both of them are believed to have been taken bodily into Heaven, eternally to commune with the one living God.

Bearing witness to all this, Peter and John and James are understandably terrified. Then a cloud overshadows them, and from it booms the voice of God the Father, just as at Jesus’ Baptism: “This is My Son, the Beloved; listen to Him!” This cloud is what the Hebrews call Shekinah, the mystical presence of God. This was the cloud that led the Israelites to freedom and which settled over Mt. Sinai when Moses communed with God. This is also the cloud of God’s presence that descended upon the Temple of Solomon, the very House of God on earth. Here, atop this mountain, in the midst of the Shekinah, Peter and John and James are encountering the veiled glory of God.

During all this Peter blurts something out that may make us wonder if he isn’t a bit crazy. “Rabbi!” he stammers, “Let us make three little dwellings for You and Moses and Elijah!” He’s actually saying that they should pitch tents, have a little campout. Which is sort of a weird thing to propose what with all that’s going on, wouldn’t you say? But Peter, my friends, is not crazy. In fact, he understands what’s happening much better than we do.

You see, all this occurs during an Old Testament holiday known in the Bible as Sukkoth, or the Festival of Tabernacles. And a tabernacle is a tent. Observant Jews still celebrate Sukkoth today. For a full week, the people of Israel erect tents and temporary shelters in which to eat their meals.

Why are they instructed to do this? Well, as it turns out, there are three reasons. Old Testament holidays always hold a sort of triple significance, for past, present, and future—or, put another way, they celebrate creation, history, and hope. The Festival of Tabernacles falls during Israel’s harvest season, and so the harvesters would camp out in the fields during this time to bring in as much of the harvest as quickly as possible. In this way Sukkoth celebrates God’s good gift of Creation. It also reminds God’s people of the time that they spent as wandering nomads, in between their liberation from Egyptian slavery and their settlement in the Promised Land of their ancestors. The little tents join each generation to the memory of what God has done for His people. It lets them live the story of faith.

But on a third level, those little tents look forward to the fulfilment of God’s promises for all humankind. You see, the Bible keeps talking about how God desires to “dwell” with humanity, to “tabernacle” with us. That’s how we lived in the Garden of Eden, walking alongside our Lord. There He dwelt with us, pitched His tent with us. In the time of Moses, God’s special presence hovered above the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy Tabernacle, which was basically a portable temple—a large, fancy tent—where God dwelt with us. When Solomon built his Temple according to God’s instructions, its purpose was to be a permanent Tabernacle, a permanent dwelling for God to live amidst His people.

So in Jewish tradition, then, tents represent God descending to live with Man. Someday, the Bible promises, Creation will be repaired and all sin washed away. Then, once again, God will live with humankind and speak to us face-to-face. By building their little tabernacles, their little tent shelters, each year at Sukkoth, God’s people looked forward to the day when everyone would know God the way that Moses did, the way that Adam did. Everyone would have a little tent over which the cloud of God’s presence would descend and the voice of God would speak to us all. It’s really a beautiful thing to hope for, to read the Bible and say, “Someday I will know God like that. We all will.”

Do Peter’s words this morning make more sense for us now? Peter gazes upon Jesus Transfigured atop Mt. Tabor, and a great truth dawns upon him: Heaven has come to earth. Moses and Elijah, after all, spoke to God atop a mountain, and here they are speaking to Jesus. Moses and Elijah were taken bodily up to Heaven to dwell with God, and here Peter sees them dwelling with Jesus. Wherever God is, that’s Heaven. And Jesus is God come to earth. This, then, is the fulfillment of the promise! This is the end of the age, when God will again dwell with mankind and speak to us face-to-face! And what does a good Jew do to commune with God and welcome Him to earth? Why, he pitches tents; because Peter knows his Bible, and he knows the promises of God.

But then something happens next that confuses even Peter. Peter has realized that it is now the end of the age. He has realized that God has inaugurated His Kingdom by coming to earth in Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! But all of a sudden, it all stops. No more heavenly cloud. No more voice of God. No more Moses or Elijah or blazing white Jesus. It’s just the four of them again. And as Jesus heads back down the mountain, He tells them not to speak of this until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.

How baffling this must be, to see the Kingdom come, to see the promise fulfilled, not with glory and trumpets and shining light but with silence and a descent into darkness. The Transfiguration stands as the major turning point in Mark’s Gospel. Up until now Jesus has been preaching and healing and forgiving sins throughout the Galilee. But after this moment, the direction of His ministry shifts. From now on His movement is towards Jerusalem, towards the Cross, towards the grave.

I think this moment must have impressed itself very deeply upon John. How could it not?  When John writes his own account of the Gospel—the Gospel According to St. John—he begins it by telling us that God’s “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And that phrase, “dwelt among us,” is really tabernacled among us, pitched His tent among us. John is remembering what they learned upon that mountaintop: that Jesus is the veiled presence of God on earth, the one true Temple and Tabernacle. And He has come to bring about a new Kingdom, a new Covenant, a new Creation, not of power and might and majesty but of humility and sacrifice and love.

Brothers and sisters, we live in this glorious new age of Jesus. This is the age of God’s Kingdom, even if it remains hidden in plain sight. When we gather in this assembly, when we come to Communion, Heaven descends to earth and we dwell here again with God. In Jesus we walk with God, we see Him face-to-face. And to remind us of this, we veil the elements of the Eucharist—the bread and wine that become for us Christ’s Body and Blood—with a cloth that looks like a tabernacle. We make a little tent each Sunday right here on the altar. Because in this tabernacle, in this Sukkoth, Jesus promises to meet us, to forgive us, to feed us with life eternal and raise us up in Him forever.

On this day, in this humble space, God has come to dwell with you, to dwell in you, and through you to make the world anew. Such is the promise of God. And God does not break promises.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.