Sermons

A Tabernacle for the Presence of God

Last Sunday after Epiphany – Transfiguration

A salient feature in Luke’s gospel is that all significant moments in Jesus’ life were preceded by or finished with prayer. This is something to remember, especially in times like now, when life seems increasingly uncertain. Prayer grounds us; it must be the foundation for action.

That’s where today’s gospel begins, with Jesus taking Peter, James, and John up on the mountain to pray. While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.  And, as if that alone were not enough, Moses and Elijah, the greatest prophets in the history of Judaism, appeared in glory to talk with Jesus.

Despite the amazing nature of this apparition and the brilliance of it all, the disciples were drowsy. Really? I mean, one could say for them that at least this time around, they didn’t actually fall asleep like they did when, later in the gospel, Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives to pray before his arrest.

One could say that the disciples were sleepy because they were so deep in prayer that they started dozing off. It is common for rookie contemplatives and meditators to nod off as they try to focus on their inner life.

But it could also be that the weightiness of the visitors–here Moses and Elijah, and God in the Mount of Olives–threw them so out of their element that their response was to remove themselves from these divinely-mediated moments by falling asleep. The whole heavenly scene was too shocking to face awake.

Either way, they seemed ill at ease with all the brightness emanating from Jesus and the celestial visitors. And one can’t really blame them.

With that context, it’s easier to understand Peter’s apparently silly reaction to build dwellings for Jesus and the two prophets. We relish criticizing Peter as a simple-minded man who was prone to put his foot in his mouth and blurt out things that made Jesus get mad at him. But he might have been onto something here.

The Greek word for dwelling is skene, which means “tabernacle.” As Luke scholar James Edwards states, “Having witnessed Jesus’ glory and being reminded of the glory that suffused the tabernacle at its completion by Moses, Peter desires, appropriately, to commemorate the event in a tabernacle.” He adds, “All Judaism held onto the hope that God would once again tabernacle with his people as in the exodus.”

One must understand that during their time in the desert, the people of Israel carried the tablets of the Law given to Moses by God in the Tabernacle. When the Temple was built by Solomon, the Tabernacle was placed in the holy of holies because it contained the presence of God and thus represented the spiritual center of the Israelites.

When the Temple was destroyed, the Tabernacle was never seen again, and the presence of God, the Shekinah, left Jerusalem and went to live on the Mount of Olives.

Just as Peter started to say that they could build tabernacles to house the celestial guests, “a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice said, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.”

Three things are noteworthy: one is that the presence of God is in Jesus, so there is no need to build tabernacles because Jesus is the new temple, and by extension, so are we. The second is the use of the phrase “a cloud overshadowed.” The other time we hear this in Luke’s gospel is at the Annunciation when Mary is also overshadowed. The third is the similarity to what happened at Jesus’ baptism only that there God addressed just Jesus, while here God addressed the disciples too. This is a radical change. It signals that now is when true discipleship begins. Jesus is the new prophet after Moses, but he is also the Son who must suffer and who asks his disciples to follow him in his suffering.

Imagine what Peter, John, and James felt at that moment. They must have been awestruck! No wonder their reaction was to remain silent and keep what they had seen and heard to themselves. It was too much glory, too much God–just too much divinity for the simple folk!

I imagine you all have had moments when you’ve felt the presence of the divine. It may have been while listening to music, through a providential encounter with a person, or in a transcendental moment where you witnessed something mysterious or inexplicable. Sometimes, those encounters leave us peaceful and joyful, but other times, they leave us speechless.

If the encounter came through a vision or a voice, the reaction would perhaps be similar to what the disciples felt. The Israelites were afraid to come near Moses because some of God’s glory had rubbed off on his face and made it shiny. Nowadays, these apparitions might be considered hallucinations and would lead perhaps to a diagnosis of mental illness.

Yet, the fact remains that following God’s calling, whether it comes in the form of a voice from heaven as it happened to Peter, James, and John or as an inner prompting from our hearts, is quite difficult. But the message is crystal clear: “Listen to him.”

Following Jesus, as I have said here before, is no easy task. When you hear that Jesus asks us to love our enemies and to give without expecting anything in return, when we hear Jesus telling us that the poor are first and the rich are last, we feel attacked and intimidated, because we are used to living in a world that is the opposite of Jesus’ world, the opposite of the reign of God.

But right now, when rampant acts of billionaires taking away food and medicines from the neediest in the world, when children and women in Africa are dying of AIDS because of a merciless act by the richest man in the world, when farmers in the heartland of our country are suffering because their crops are rotting on some port abroad and they’re not getting paid; when thousands of federal employees are being fired without cause and will maybe lose their homes and all they’ve worked for; when thousands of immigrants are being unfairly deported while another immigrant is running the show, all Jesus’ injunctions acquire a renewed sense of urgency.

I want to live in a world where the last are first, where poor immigrants have the same rights and value as rich immigrants, where there can be no hate when we understand that love means to keep our hearts open because we are all one and we are equal in the eyes of God. This is the world that Jesus preached, and it’s our obligation as his followers to try and make it happen. It is daunting. There are many forces against God’s realm, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Today is the end of Epiphany, a season where the glory of God is revealed in Christ. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with a reminder of our mortality and ends with Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s an ongoing cycle from light to dark to light again.

This Ash Wednesday will be special here at St. Mark’s as we’ll gather with the Repairers of the Breach led by Bishop William J. Barber, II to process to the Supreme Court peacefully. This is their call to action:

“Stand in prayer, lament, and moral resistance to call the nation to repentance from the sins of injustice, apathy, corruption, and oppression. Our nation must turn away from lies, extremism, and unchecked power and commit to the work of righteousness, truth, justice, and love.”

I can’t wait to join them!

The good news is that we can live like Jesus taught if we really try. He taught us to pray constantly; he taught us that even if we sometimes fail, we can also get it right (that’s why he chose regular people like Peter and friends as his followers); and most importantly, he gave us the Holy Spirit, which is always within us to guide us.

So, no matter who we are, we can practice being real followers of Christ, especially in these dark times. Let’s keep the hope, let’s keep the faith, and let’s do what we can to make the reign of God a reality.