There are moments when something overwhelming breaks into your world. It is so striking that Jesus and Moses glow from the experience. There is amazing power in these experiences to explain, the motivate. And our first urge is to rush to tell the world. What if, instead, we waited a moment. What if instead, we asked what is it to taste the glory that is being poured out?

Opening Scene

Jesus takes Peter and a couple other disciples up the mountain. This may not be quite a hike up St Mary’s but I imagine they were a bit tired when Jesus starts praying. Their exhaustion starts weighing them. Maybe their eyes are getting heavy…  

When the mountain top lights up –clothes as bright as a flash of lightning– and two new people appear. Peter is startled, fully alert, and at attention. 

The Temptation to get busy!

It an amazing moment. And Peter decides there’s got to be something to do. You might recognize this. Everything is going along, and then something completely unexpected happens. It’s tempting to jump in and start doing … something. 

Hey Jesus. Let’s build some booths. Build something! I remember a book describing people as tool-using monkeys. The lunge to build booths is something we do. Something amazing happen and we decide we should capture the moment. Today, we pull out the phones. Take a selfie. Maybe edit it in the phone. Post it to social media. Maybe that will get a new follower. 

What happens when someone asks them later. What was it like to be there?

There’s a trend now for people to go on vacation and find a spot and just sit for a while and fully take in the moment. Slow Vacations. One writer talked about how other people would show up in groups. They would point their phones at things and then rush off to the next thing. 

What happens when someone asks them later. What was it like to be there? Not what picture did you make but what did you experience?

Peter, What was it like to be in the presence of the divine? 

From Who is Jesus to what does it mean to The Messiah of God

In the Luke there’s this question that keeps getting asked: who is Jesus? Even Herod has asked it. Finally, Jesus turns to Peter and asks him. Who do you say I am? Who is Jesus? Who do you think I am. And Peter answers the Messiah of Gd. 

Luke’s early readers probably weren’t Jewish so the answer begging a new question: What does it mean to be the Messiah of God? Our passage is where Luke begins to answer that question What does it mean to be the Messiah of God? with one day, Jesus took them to the mountain top to pray.

And Peter can’t stop long enough to take in the experience. The Lunge to build booths is what we always do… but building a booth or shooting selfies doesn’t answer the question.

This idea of glory

Moses is said to have talked to bush that burned but was not consumed, a bush that glowed and heard a voice. Once the people are free from Egypt, they camp out at the base of a mountain tell Moses, we’re scared of what’s up there. Will you go and tell us about what happens? What you hear and experience? And, one day returns and his face is glowing. 

Did you ever meet someone whose face glowed? They’ve just fallen in love, they have had an epiphany. Something about what they just experienced is written on their face. Now imagine what that glow might be like if they spent a week alone with the ultimate force in the universe, the ground of being, the life coursing through the veins of the world.

The people were afraid. Did they fear that he’d brought a bit too much of that experience back? Were they afraid their ordinary world might get in the way of Moses doing that Moses thing they told him to do? Was the veil a bit like another booth. Moses, I want to take a selfie with you. But, you’re not quite right… can you change outfits?

But, Peter, what was it like to be with Jesus on the mountain?

Getting Each Other, Getting Experience

You’ve got this sense that god and his people are struggling to understand each other but in being with each other, in that experience, God and Moses understand each other other.

The essence of the apple

And how does Moses ever explain “getting god.” Commandments, rules, guidelines, dogmas, books of discipline?

What is the experience of glory? What is the essence of an apple? Everyone who’s eaten an apple can try to describe it but that description will always be different than the experience of biting into a ripe, juicy, tart but sweet apple, the way it feels on your teeth, pushes on your gums and lips, the time a trickle of juice ran down your check. No matter how juicy our descriptions, they fall short of what it would be like if the first time you picked up an apple you were fully there at each bite.

Even if those words captured the experience for me, would they capture it for you. Actually, this passage says no. Perhaps because the Hebrew word for shine is awfully close to the word for horn, horn was the word used in the Vulgate translation, the one that was used all over Europe for centuries. Begetting painting after painting of figures in horns. For some, Moses experience being touched by god began to be seen as the Jew is demonic.

Peter, What was it like to taste the divine?

A microcosm

What Peter and his two companions almost experience is like that description of biting into an apple. It doesn’t just remind us of multiple experiences in Moses’ life, it’s pastiche of the entire gospel tradition. Jesus takes on the work of the law giver and the prophet. Like Jesus Baptism, prayer leads to Presence descending upon him. And the Voice speaks celebrating and lifting up this child gd dearly loves. You are my beloved child. Listen to him! The two glowing figures remind us of the story of the empty tomb. 

I doubt any one word or phrase can capture the experience, but the attempt is threaded through scripture and hymn. This thing behind the mask, the experience on the mountain tops … encountering the radiant glowing presence… scripture and hymn name the glory. 

Distinctive the Presence

Walter Bruggeman wrote “The presence of God makes Israel’s life distinctive. Indeed, God’s presence makes all creation different. Without this One of holy, dangerous splendor, life may indeed be reduced to banal control and self-indulgence, to the management of technique, the trivialization of human dignity, and the self-serving devouring of the earth.” 

Isn’t that the risk when we rush to make those Booths, instead of stopping and experiencing glory. Why stop at asking the natives to pose and change their clothes? Can we move a few buildings around? The glare off the adobe is too bright, can we paint it a different color?

Peter, what was it like to be blinded on the road to Damascus?

Conclusion

It’s easy to take an experience like this and rush to building booths. What does it make my life mean? What do I need to go do? Build booths up here to hold my selfies? Rush down the mountain to tell the world you shot selfies? Write a tell-all biography about getting to shoot the selfies and build the booths? Instead, maybe, notice something.

But, Peter, what was it like to savor the apple?

Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Peter and many since all have these experiences writ large. Minutes, hours, maybe days. And then life returns to normal. We are taken down the mountain. Abraham had several of these experiences with decades in between. When we encounter the divine, when we experience glory, when we truly feel the presence, instead of rushing to build booths, experience the apple, experience the presence, experience the divine in all it’s brilliant, absurd, dangerous, frightening, unexplainable glory. Don’t start by asking what it means or trying to build booths. Instead, let the juice trickle down your check… and savor the sensation on your skin.