Tabernacles

You may notice that we have two sermons posted today. Below is the homily that I originally wrote for the Transfiguration of Our Lord. I just couldn’t get around that “Jesus … gave him back to his father” line, however, so I wrote an entirely different sermon for Sunday about my personal experience of being powerless in the face of losing a son. That’s the one I’ll be preaching. Still, for those interested in something a little more general about St Peter and his tabernacles, well, why let time spent typing go to waste?

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

One of the things that makes Simon Peter so relatable—so lovable, even—is his impulsive tendency to get things so right even as he gets them so wrong.

It was Peter who proved brave enough, faithful enough, to leap out of his boat in a storm to walk upon water alongside Jesus, only then to promptly sink. It was Peter who first confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, only then to lecture Jesus wrongheadedly about what he thought the Messiah’s job ought to be. And today, in the story of our Lord’s Transfiguration, it is once again Simon Peter who seems to be the only guy with any clue as to what’s actually going on, only then to draw from this realization exactly the wrong conclusions.

The Transfiguration is a miracle in the life of Jesus that is fraught with symbolism and expectation. Keep in mind that, by this point in the Bible, God’s people have been waiting for the Messiah, the Christ, for a thousand years. They know that when He comes, He shall free God’s people from bondage, bring about a new and universal covenant, and inaugurate the resurrection of the dead. You can see how this would be kind of a big deal. And Jesus has just recently confirmed their wildest hopes: that, yes, He is indeed the promised Messiah come to save the world.

On the feast of Tabernacles, an important Old Testament holiday, Jesus ascends a high mountain along with the inner circle of His Apostles. There they witness a remarkable vision. Jesus is transformed, transfigured before their eyes, into a dazzling radiance. Suddenly Moses and Elijah appear, the great figures of the Old Testament who represent the Law and the Prophets. Significantly, both Moses and Elijah met with God atop high mountains, and both were said to have been taken bodily up into Heaven. Here they are now, atop a mountain, in a vision of Heaven, talking to Jesus. The implications are clear: Jesus is the God of Moses and Elijah.

It’s at this point in the narrative that Peter does something truly odd. “Master, it is good for us to be here!” he blurts out. “Let us make three dwellings, one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!” In the midst of a heavenly vision come down to earth, Peter wants to construct tabernacles, tents. He wants to have a campout. Even the evangelist seems confused at this. “Peter didn’t know what he was saying,” writes Luke.

But Peter isn’t crazy. In fact, he’s quite perceptive. You see, in the Old Testament, Moses communed with God in the wilderness by entering a holy tabernacle—basically a large tent that served as the Hebrew’s mobile temple in the wilderness. And the glory of God would descend upon this tent as the Shekinah, the mystic cloud of God’s presence. And Moses would speak to God, as it were, face-to-face. The Jewish festival of Tabernacles looked forward to that day, at the end of the age, when God would reveal Himself to all peoples and everyone would know God as Moses did, directly, face-to-face. Everyone would have a little tabernacle.

See, Peter gets it. This is what he and all of Israel have been waiting for all along. This is the end of the world! God has come down to earth! And faithful, biblically literate Jews know that you meet God in tabernacles, in tents. Just like the tabernacle we build here atop our altar around the elements of the Eucharist. But then, all of a sudden, as quickly and dramatically as it began, the vision abruptly stops. No more dazzling light. No more Voice of God. No more Moses and Elijah. Just Jesus, found alone. And without another word, He and the disciples descend the mountain, down into the valley, down into the shadows of death.

This, my friends, is the turning point of our Lord’s ministry. Before this moment He has been traveling throughout the Holy Land, teaching, preaching, and healing the sick. Yet after the Transfiguration, when He is momentarily revealed for who and what He truly is, He now turns His face towards Jerusalem, towards the Cross, towards the empty tomb. Peter was right. The Messiah had come; God walked on earth; it was the End of the Age. But the promises of God would not be fulfilled in the way that Peter expected. The Messiah’s triumph would not be glory and honor and adulation upon the mountaintop. Instead His path would be one of humiliation and suffering and love unto death—even death on a Cross.

Jesus was not the Messiah Peter wanted. But He is the Messiah that we need.

We are presented, at the two ends of Lent, with two very different images of Christ Victorious. Here atop the mountain, at the Transfiguration, we see Jesus lit up like the Vegas strip: bright and shiny and everything you could want our God to be. At the other end of Lent—at Good Friday—we see His far more shocking glory: enthroned on a Cross, crowned with thorns, robed in blood, and raised up high for all the world to see. And yes, we will see the Light of Christ shining again, transfigured again. But it awaits us now only on the other side of the tomb.

It is the Cross, and not the Crown, which remains the most solemn and beloved symbol of our faith, because only in the Cross do we see how deeply runs the love of God. How much does Jesus love us? All the way to hell and back.

And it is to the Cross that we turn for the next 40 days.

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