Shrine Builders (Festival of the Transfiguration; Mark 8:27--9:8; February 7, 2016)

Shrine Builders

Festival of the Transfiguration
Mark 8:27--9:8
February 7, 2016

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

I've never really understood the transfiguration story. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be telling us. I'm not clear about why it's where it is in Mark's gospel. I mean, is this supposed to be Jesus meant when he told his friends that "some standing here won’t die before they see God’s kingdom arrive in power"? If not, what did he mean by that prediction? And I don't really understand what we're supposed to be seeing in our mind's eye. We are told that his clothes were dazzling white, whiter than the laundry products of Jesus' day could have gotten them, but, if Jesus was transformed, into what was he transformed?

I don't get Jesus in this story, but I do get Peter. He sees this overwhelmingly awesome thing. He sees Moses and Elijah with Jesus. (By the way, how does he know they were Moses and Elijah? Were they wearing name tags? Did they introduce themselves?) He was terrified. He did not know what to say. So, of course, he didn't just keep his mouth shut. No, he blurted out something.

Family systems theorists tell us that, When we don't know what to do, we do what we know. That's what Peter did. Confronted with an event that was new and overwhelming, he said, "Rabbi, it’s good that we’re here. Let’s make three shrines—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." This seems appropriately foolish, familiar, somehow. Like I said, I get Peter. He makes sense, or at least his nonsense feels familiar.

On the face of it, Peter's statement, "Rabbi, it’s good that we’re here. Let’s make three shrines—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." is pretty illogical. What in the world makes Peter think that shrine-making is the appropriate thing? But Peter's suggestion isn't quite as nonsensical as it sounds.

Let's take a closer look at the text. Peter says, "Let's make three shrines..." There are several different ways to translate the Greek word that is taken as "shrines" here. The word is skênê. It refers to a tent or a booth. I'm going to have to be convinced that "shrine" is a good way to translate it. So far I’m not convinced.

Skênê occurs several times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, especially in two contexts. The first is one of the festivals, Sukkoth, the Festival of Booths. Sukkoth lasts for eight or nine days (depending on whether you are in Israel or elsewhere). During Sukkoth each family spends some time in a sukkah, a temporary shelter made from leafy branches. There is a picture of a sukkah on the front cover of the bulletin. It can't be built under a cover of any kind. Its roof has to be loose enough so that it is possible to see the stars through its holes. Families eat meals under the sukkah and they invite their friends. If you are ever invited, accept the invitation.

Sukkoth commemorates the time that the Israelites spent in the desert, living in temporary shelters as they wandered from oasis to oasis. It remembers and celebrates a time when the Israelites lived in immediate dependence on God, when God provided food in the form of manna, and Israel wanted for nothing. Sukkoth is a harvest festival and also celebrates the way that God continues to provide for God's people. Always in the Greek Old Testament, the Hebrew word sukkah is translated as skênê.

The other context for skênê is the Tent of Meeting. As I'm sure you remember from Sunday School, Israel didn't always have a Temple. When the Israelites wandered in the desert and in the days of the judges, instead of a Temple, Israel had a large tent. There are detailed instructions for how to make the Tent of Meeting,but the main things is that it is portable. As you remember, when God moved, Israel moved too. When God stopped in a place, Israel set up the Tent of Meeting and it served as the place where God was worshiped until God moved again. Of course, like the Temple it protected Israel from direct exposure to God and to God's glory. Seeing God face to face was said to be fatal and being too close to God's glory wasn't healthy either. Remember that this was before sun screen with SPF protection.

I make light of the situation, but ancient Israel did not. We have lost the sense that God is powerful to the point of being dangerous, but Israel had not. If that sense had faded for Peter, James, and John, it was quickly recovered as Jesus was transformed, Moses and Elijah appeared, and they were overshadowed by a cloud.

When you don't know what to do, you do what you know. If Peter, James, and John had been British and found themselves overwhelmed, awe-struck, and at a loss, they would have made tea. It's what the British do when they don't know what to do. Since Peter wasn't British and tea was out of the question, what did he know how to do that he could do when he didn't know what to do?

He could build a sukkah. Better yet, he could build three sukkoth, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. When Israel was confronted the awesome presence of God's glory, they built a sukkah for it. Every year of his life Peter had commemorated Israel's experience in the desert by building a his own sukkah. Peter didn't offer to build the sukkoth because he wanted to somehow preserve the experience of the transfiguration. In this way our translation is a little misleading. Peter didn't intend to build a shrine. When faced with something new and awesome, Peter responded by calling on the past to provide a model for the present. When you don't know what to do, why not do what you know?

But, of course, in the story we know that doing what he knew was the wrong thing to do. He acted out of fear and ignorance--"He did not know what to say, for they were terrified."--and was immediately overridden by God. A cloud "overshadowed" all six of the figures on the mountaintop. God spoke out of the cloud, “This is my Son, whom I dearly love. Listen to him!” Then, when the cloud was gone, so were Moses and Elijah and the disciples were left alone with Jesus.

Like the sukkoth that Peter proposes to build, the cloud and God's voice throw us back to the Exodus. When Israel had finished the Tent of Meeting as instructed, the cloud of God's presence "overshadowed" it. During the exodus, too, God spoke to Moses out of the cloud, commanding Moses and the Israelites to listen. Now, however, the cloud of God's presence does not overshadow a sukkah of any kind and the voice from the cloud commands the disciples to listen to Jesus.

As temporary as it is, as portable as it might be, a sukkah no longer seems to be in order. Even the paltry protection against God's glory is not allowed. God no longer takes up residence in a tent, but in the open air; leather walls or leafy branches will not shield us. Peter is summoned to a new and immediate way of being with and listening to God.

He must have been confused. His best and really only response to this overwhelming presence is set aside. He is forced to sit in the presence of God without distraction, even the distraction of having something useful to do. He can't build three sukkoth or even one. He can't even make tea. He can only listen, which, of course, in the Bible almost always means listen and heed.

I don't know how it went for Peter after that. He doesn't do too well in the New Testament. In the gospels he is always the fool. In Paul's writings he is always wrong. Maybe Peter has an untold story. Did he learn not to trust in his sukkah-making but instead to attend to God present and speaking in each moment? I don't know.

I do know that we, his spiritual descendants, have never really learned his lesson. We build our sukkoth, not of leafy branches or leather, but of wood, bricks and stone. We cannot imagine our life as God's people without a building to contain it. And that may be part of the illness from which the contemporary Church suffers: our life as God's people is contained. How often have our buildings become our mission and the Church been reduced to a memorial society with a building on the front of which a bronze plaque is fixed that says, "Once on this spot, the people of God, empowered by God's Spirit, healed the sick, set captives free, announced the day of God's favor, and preached good news to the poor. We maintain this building in their honor because we don't know what else to do."

This is a part of our illness that, afraid and not knowing what to do, we have done what we know. But however we struggle with our illness, we cannot forget the story of a man who was told to leave off pitching tents, building booths, and making shrines and to listen to Jesus instead, and who did.

The cure for our illness, then, would be for our life to be let loose, into the world, into our communities. The cure for our illness would be for the past to open up our present and future rather than to set limits for them. The cure for our illness would be to be overshadowed by the cloud of God's presence and to hear God's voice speaking once more, directing us away from all the useful things we might think of to do, and bidding us to listen to Jesus.

When we don’t know what to do, we do what we know. Until we do something else. And who knows what will happen then?

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.