In The Presence of God

Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the 4 Gospels and from a literary perspective it is tightly and well written.  It is packed with symbolism and layers of meaning.  And he chooses to tell the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration with both the divine mystery and the common, human element apparent.

In Mark’s Gospel, three times, Jesus is revealed as the Son of God: at his baptism when God says, “This is my beloved Son, with him I am well pleased, in this passage, and at his death when the Roman centurion says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”

At his baptism, his ministry is beginning, the declaration is full of promise and hope.  At his death, the declaration is one of steadfastness in the midst of despair.  And here, we have the combination of glory and suffering.

It makes me think about those optical illusion pictures that show two things at once.  The first one I remember seeing as a child was the one of a vase, or the profiles of two people, or a vase, or two people.  The picture isn’t mystery or common, divine or human, glory or suffering; it is both.

And Peter, James, and John are struggling to see the complete picture.  In the foreground they see the connections to their history, to the story of the Hebrew people.  Jesus takes them up on a high mountain.  Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the high mountain is the place nearest heaven, the place of revelation.  Moses goes up Mount Sinai and meets God.  Elijah is on Mount Horeb when God speaks to him.  And there he is transfigured before them.  The Greek work is metamorphothe; a metamorphosis takes place, a complete transformation.  He is changed.  We don’t know what that looks like other than that his clothes are white, really white.  And Mark’s way of saying it, if you translate it literally, is so human:  glistening white, very, like snow, there is no way on earth to whiten any more fully.  They are so white, you just can’t describe how white.

And of course, Peter, James and John would see in the foreground the face of Moses after he had been in God’s presence.  It was so bright that the people couldn’t look directly at him.  And all of a sudden, Elijah and Moses are standing with Jesus talking.  And so, like any of us would be, they are terrified.  And Peter, blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

Remember the deaths of Moses and Elijah?  They are shrouded in mystery.

When Moses dies, the people have been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years after escaping from Egypt.  They are headed to the Promised Land, on the plains of Moab and “Moses climbed from the Plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, the peak of Pisgah facing Jericho. From there on the mountain God showed him the promised land.

Then and there God said to him, “This is the land I promised to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the words ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I’ve let you see it with your own eyes. There it is. But you’re not going to go in.”

Moses died there in the land of Moab, Moses the servant of God, just as God said. God buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor. No one knows his burial site to this very day.”

Elijah, remember is walking along with Elisha, and suddenly a chariot and horses of fire come between them and Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind to heaven.

And now, Peter, James, and John, are up on the mountain with Jesus, and Moses, and Elijah.

What would you say?  Here’s the thing, this must be what Peter really said, because Mark knows he has to offer an excuse for it.

“It’s a good thing we’re here.”  Really, is it?  You can read Peter’s reaction several different ways.  Maybe he is wishing they weren’t there.  No one has seen God and lived.  I wonder if he hoped Jesus would turn around from talking to Moses and Elijah and remember that he had brought them with him and send them back down the mountain.  “It’s a good? thing we’re here?”  Or, maybe he sees Moses and Elijah and Jesus and sees their holiness – these are God’s messengers – and is glad that he and James and John are there and able to serve them.  It’s a GOOD thing we are here.

Let us make three tents for you, one for each of you.  He is trying, desperately, to understand what is happening.  The only experience he has that speaks to what you do in this situation is the Festival of Booths.

The Festival of Booths commemorates the 40 years of living tents as the people wandered in the wilderness.  And we read this morning how Moses would pitch a tent outside camp, and the Lord would speak to Moses there in the tent.

The Festival of Booths also is associated with the promised Sabbath rest of the end-time.

They are terrified and trying to understand.

There is a strange little detail that Mark gives us right at the beginning of this passage…six days later.  Six is the number of incompletion.  It is a penultimate…it is the feeling of jumping out of an airplane in those moments before your parachute deploys.  Six days later.  Later than what?

Six days later than Jesus and his disciples were in the villages of Caesarea Philippi and he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?”  John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”  And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Six days later, standing with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, not knowing what to say, a cloud overshadows them.  They know from the story of God’s presence with the Hebrew people that God is in the cloud.  “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”

An Episcopal priest tells about whining to a wise monk about how dull and fruitless and boring his prayer and worship seemed to be. And the monk pointed out that he was looking for the effects of his prayer and worship in the actions themselves.  He was looking for some kind of experience of God, some kind of manifestation of God, some powerful sense of God’s presence.  He wanted to be on the mountaintop surrounded by cloud.  And he says he was trying to conjure an experience of God by his devotion, by the fervency with which he sang or sense of wonder that he was able to find as he approached the Sacrament of Communion.

And the wise, old monk told him he was missing the point. “Look for the effects of prayer in your life, he said, not in the prayer itself.”

And the priest admitted, the monk was right.  His prayer and worship life was boring because he had built tents.  Places where he had experienced God before, or ways others had experienced God, he was returning hoping to find God still there, unmoved.   He said, “I was praying not as a way of living into righteousness or right relationship, but as a means to an end.”  He was praying because he wanted to experience God.  “Like the man who is really hoping for a kiss at the door when he pays for dinner ….Some people complain that they don’t get anything out of worship. They are looking for the effects of the worship in the worship itself and not in their lives.  I was bored because I was an adventurer and a thrill seeker. I wanted that powerful experience of God and I was not really looking for judgment or transformation or renewal.”

George Barna in his 2001 book “Habits of Highly Effective Churches,” shocked many church leaders.  The book reported that surveys indicate that among regular church goers, one-third have never experienced God’s presence. And, only half of all regular church-going adults experienced God present at any time during the past year.

Why not?  I can lament the state of the church with the best of them.  But, God is faithful and steadfast.  So, why not?  Why can’t we come here, or better yet head to the nearest mountain, and experience God?  Our deepest longing is connection with God.  Why can’t we figure out how to plug in?  What prayer will work?  What hymn will soften your heart every time?  Why doesn’t worship give us an experience of God every time?

Jesus doesn’t let us build him a tent.  Jesus didn’t stay on the mountain.  The disciples, those closest three, Peter, James and John, they didn’t understand it.  They were terrified.  But at the same time in that optical illusion way, they want it to last.  It is good that we are here.  This, this is good.  Let’s hold, right here, pitch tents.  But it is only the sixth day.  And this is not the end.  We are headed to Jerusalem, and only then will we really know Jesus.

Want to experience the presence of God?  Come to the mountain, yes.  Come to worship, yes.  But then follow Jesus down the mountain, to Jerusalem, to the cross.