“Now
about eight days after these sayings…” begins our Gospel account today from
Luke, which begs the question: “What sayings?” Which begs the answer: Important
sayings. Really important ones. Just before this scene that we now call the
Transfiguration Jesus has just finished telling the disciples two very
important things. 1) He is going to be betrayed, die, and rise again, and 2) To
be his follower you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow
him. The disciples hear but do not understand—a common trend for this lot.
Peter, who typically represents the church (since he is the “rock” on which
Jesus says his church will be built), doesn’t get it. This suggests, at least
to my mind, that the church, too, is bound to not get it. This makes me sad and
also gives me hope, because I often see the church not getting it.
When the church (Peter) goes up the
mountain with Jesus and sees him transfigured white the church fails to follow
through as Jesus wants. The scripture says that Peter and his companions were
weighed down with sleep. It’s clear that Peter is the ringleader here—it’s
“Peter and his companions;” not the “three disciples.” So this is not about the
disciples—it’s about the church; about what the church does and what the church
does not do. The answer is: the church builds dwellings. It marks sacred
spaces. It remembers important events. It even, to some extent, tries to
re-create them. Peter exemplifies all this with his initial response, telling
Jesus they should be building houses of worship on that space.
But this is not what Jesus wants—not
exactly. The church is not supposed to build first, it’s not even supposed to
remember first; it’s supposed to do something harder: From God’s voice from the
clouds in verse 35: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” The church is supposed to listen to Jesus. If we
listen we will hear the hard words; we’ll hear Jesus say “I’m going to be
betrayed and I’m going to die.” We’ll hear the challenge of discipleship, “Deny
yourself. Take up your cross and follow.” And we’ll also hear the good news:
“Three days later I will rise.” But first we have to listen. As Jesus says in
the story immediately following this one: “‘Let these words sink into your
ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.’ But they did
not understand this saying…” (Luke 9:44f)
I can resonate with Peter on that
mountain. I have memories of great places, great times, and great people in my
life. I’ve felt God at work in me in very specific places that now mean
something extra special to me. Whenever I have the occasion to make a
pilgrimage to those places I take that opportunity to reconnect with a place
that has made me who I am, but those places and those feelings are only any
good if they urge me to listen not for voices from the past but for a God who
speaks to me in the present, who is challenging and changing me right now.
Jesus was obviously there with Peter on that mountain so it’s easy for us, who
stand so far on the other side of history, to be critical of Peter. What’s
harder is for us to see is that this God who stood with Peter is standing with
us just the same today, speaking just as critically today, and commanding us
again to listen: “Let these words sink into your ears!”
If there is anything good I say it
is Christ speaking through me; if there is anything wrong I say it is me
believing with my little head that I can say it better. This is the path to discipleship:
Denying ourselves, giving up the credit to God, because, frankly, God created
it all anyway; taking up our crosses, enduring actual hardship—not small inconveniences
but actual suffering—and following. It’s hard to follow through on this and a
shrine alone will only help a little. The church is the people, after all, and
not the building, and the church must be willing to let God do what God will
do; not what we expect or want God to do with us. That is denying ourselves.
That is taking up our cross.
What does that look like? I’m not
sure I have any idea, frankly. It’s definitely frightening, it should be a
little exciting, absolutely challenging, and should be transforming—from old to
new, dead to alive. That’s the vision of the Transfiguration: A guarantee of
death; a promise of new life, as well as a temptation to worship the place
where Christ has been and the events that once happened instead of the Christ
who is with you right here and now. When we relegate God to history we take the
one thing that God most definitely is—the I AM—and put it in the past tense, instead
calling God the “He was.” When we make religion about a someday-future we ignore
the God meeting us here for the rewards of a future. We cling too hard to
yesterday and we worry too much about tomorrow. Instead, we have a God who
promises that he will always and ever be in the present. Right now.
Peter, for all his wrongheadedness,
does one thing better than everyone else in the Gospels. He always shows up. He’s
a little dense, he’s rash and shortsighted, he cuts a slave’s ear off, takes
his clothes off and jumps out of a boat; he’s way too eager to build a shrine
and he’s way too fast to deny Jesus after he’s arrested, but nobody—nobody—is better
at showing up than Peter. I love that Peter is the church, because Peter’s
defining virtue is nothing more or less than his ability to show up. So, when I
look at the church and think “Man, we really stink at following Jesus” I also
remember Peter and realize the same thing could be said about him. He was a
terrible Christ-follower in a lot of ways, but Jesus was never judging him on
his ability to get it; he was pleased
by the fact that he was always there. Peter didn’t understand what Jesus said
about the future and, as we see in this Transfiguration episode, he overvalued
the past. But (and this is a huge BUT) he was a rock star at showing up. He
showed up big-time. In her book, Pastrix,
Nadia Bolz-Weber says that Mary Magdalene was the patron saint of just showing
up. I like this, but I think we actually might have two of those in scripture.
Peter and Mary. It was Peter, after Mary, who ran to the tomb on Easter morning.
It was Peter who asked the seemingly stupid questions that everyone else was
wondering, and it was even Peter who denied Jesus three times—hardly a virtue,
of course, but in order to deny him he had to show up in a dangerous place in
the first place. I love this about Peter.
I love this about the church,
because it means that the church is OK to ask the stupid questions, and it
means that it is OK for the church to not have all the answers. The church’s
primary function is not to answer all of life’s questions but to be the place,
above all other places, where people can just show up. There should be no
pressure to perform here, presence is enough. At our best that is what we are:
Present. We show up. I want to put that on our sign out front: “Grace/Red River
Lutheran Church: We show up!” but I think people would misunderstand. This is
not just about being in church on Sunday; it’s about understanding that because
we often stink at what we do there is no one who can claim to be above any
other. The cleanest pig in the pen is still a smelly, dirty pig. So, instead of
spending all our time measuring up to some imagined godliness we get to do what
Jesus would have us do anyway: Show up and listen. No building shrines; no
trying to save one another’s souls. Forget the memories of what once was and
the worry about what may be. Instead, show up. Be present. Be aware. Listen.
Listen. Listen.
If we could do that, boy, would that be a church!
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