February 10, 2013
Last Epiphany, Year C
Luke 9:28-36
About fifteen years ago I had some
time before starting a new job and headed off to Israel. I had a backpack with a few changes of
clothes, a guide book, my Bible, a journal, James Michener’s The Source,
and really not much of an agenda or travel plan.
I began in Jerusalem and was
entranced the moment I saw the ancient stone walls surrounding the Old City. I loved walking through the cobblestone
streets, watching people leaving written prayers in the crevices in the Western
Wall, buying falafel from carts in the squares, smelling the different spices,
and meeting so many different kinds of people.
Living in America where everything is
so new, it was surreal to be surrounded by pieces of such ancient history. I kept imagining what it might have looked
like in Jesus’ time. Wondering if maybe
I was walking in some of the places where he walked. It made the whole experience feel holy, from
my physical walking - to the ethnic food I ate - to the encounters I had with
other people. My weeks in Israel felt
like part of a pilgrimage or spiritual journey.
The only part I didn’t enjoy,
ironically, was my visit to what many Christians describe as the holiest place
in Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which claims to contain both
the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and the site of his burial. There’s disagreement, of course, about
whether that is actually the physical site of either of those things. Apparently, their locations were decided by
the Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, during a visit to Israel. Along with the locations of the grotto where
Jesus was born in Bethlehem and the spot where he instructed his disciples on
the Mount of Olives. Helena decided that
these places needed to be located and preserved and turned into churches so
that they could be visited and adored by other believers. And so she picked out the spots and her son
sponsored the building of churches on those sites.
But for me, the church ruined the experience
of being in the place where Jesus (may have) died and been buried. Instead of getting a feel for what it might
have looked or felt like for Jesus, or finding any room for quiet or
contemplation, I found myself in this very grey and ornate church full of
people and guarded by a cadre of priests and caretakers from several warring
religious traditions.
I’d found a much clearer sense of the
holy and a closer connection to Jesus walking along the Sea of Galilee, sitting
on the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, even wandering the tented
shops than I had in that supposedly-holiest-of-all-places church.
I can’t fault Helena for what she
did. She wanted to preserve the place
for future generations. To set it apart
to be revered and remembered. To make
sure that the story was not forgotten. I’ve
done it myself, in all kinds of ways. Like
the poem I wrote about a dream I had of God that I go back to wistfully,
wishing I could experience it again. And
the yellow silk suit that may forever hang in my closet because it’s the one my
mom wore to my wedding. My life and
house and office are full of shrines to specific moments of holiness or joy that
I want to preserve or recreate.
It isn’t a new religious instinct in
the least. All over the Old Testament we
read about people who had some experience of God and so they quickly build an
altar to commemorate the moment; to mark that place as holy ground. There is something in us that wants to turn
the holy into something tangible that we can return to over and over
again. Sometimes we just want to grasp
onto those moments and stay in them as long as we can.
I think that’s
what happens to Peter in our Gospel story for this morning. Peter, James and John have all gone up the
mountain with Jesus and he is transformed before their eyes and is suddenly
joined by Moses and Elijah. The disciples
don’t always get it right, but they know that what they’ve seen is a Big
Deal. They know that they’ve just
witnessed something incredibly holy. And
so Peter responds by saying to Jesus, “Let us make three dwellings, one for
you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!”
It reads as an awkward, almost
comical moment. You can almost imagine
God wanting to grab Peter by the shoulders in frustration and say, “You fool!
Don’t you get it yet?” before heading into his “This is my Son, my Chosen;
listen to him!” bit. But who could blame
Peter? He witnessed an encounter with
God and he wanted to stay up there on the mountain, basking in the glory of the
place, building a shrine and maybe even his life around that moment to signify
it as holy in the only way he knew how.
And he wasn’t the only one. In the 4th century a Byzantine church
was built on Mt. Tabor, where it was thought this event occurred. Followed in the 12th century with a
church built by the Crusaders. Followed
by the church that now stands, a Franciscan monastery built in the 1920s just
to Peter’s specifications, with three chapels dedicated to Jesus, Moses and
Elijah.
During Adult Ed last week we were
talking about moments of epiphany in our own lives. Times when we felt closest to God, or had a
new understanding of God or ourselves, or had a clearer sense of our
calling. A number of us shared similar
experiences of feeling weary or overwhelmed or gray and then finding ourselves
suddenly renewed and refreshed so that we were able to be in the moment and
appreciate our lives in a new way. Someone
described it as finding a “reset button,” and that resonated with me too. Though I think all of us agreed that the resets
never last as long as we wish they would.
I bet Peter badly needed a reset
button. He’d been following Jesus on
long, dusty roads; hearing Jesus preach and teach and having trouble understanding
him; dealing with crowds and sickness and neediness as far as the eye could see
and often without a place to lay his head; hearing doom-and-gloom warnings from
Jesus about what was in store. Poor
Peter must have been so weary, so overwhelmed after climbing up this mountain
with Jesus, and suddenly he is presented with this shining moment – this mountaintop
experience. And he doesn’t want to go
down again. Who would? Ordinary life after this would be a rude
awakening.
And yet, of course, that’s exactly
what happens next. Jesus doesn’t want Peter
building tents. He wants Peter to hike back down the mountain with him and
continue teaching, healing and loving the world. They have work to do.
Living apart from the cares and pains
of the world isn’t the point of Jesus’ transfiguration and it isn’t the point
of those rare but wonderful epiphanies and reset moments in our lives. Those moments are meant to help carry us down
the mountain; to help us imagine the possibilities once we return to sea
level. To give us energy and inspiration
to remember the glory and joy and celebration when we are back doing our work
in the the sometimes messy, challenging, unfriendly world.
That reset
button certainly seemed to work for Peter and James and John up on the mountain
that day. Seeing God’s light shining
through Jesus on the mountain must have given them eyes to see God’s light shining
through the chaos to come -- through Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, through
fear and loss, through the bittersweet confusion of resurrection. And it must have given them something to hold
on to as they continued Jesus’ work in the world along with the ragtag bunch
that was the early Church.
Maybe our
own lives’ epiphanies, whatever they may be, wherever we may find them, no
matter how fleeting they might feel – maybe those moments can give us courage
and strength as we go about our various callings in the world. Maybe they can help us to remember that the
same God who is with us in the mountaintop moments is there just as surely in
the dry and lonely valleys. And maybe they can inspire us to look anew for that reflected glow of God in ourselves and in the
people around us. Holy ground is everywhere. Amen.
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