“It is good, Lord, for us to
be here,” Peter says to Jesus.
My wife, it seems to me
occasionally, comes from a family of dawdlers.
Trying to keep a deadline with them has in the past nearly driven me to
decidedly un-Lutheran language. And,
it’s inherited: I'll find our eldest son, in the midst of our flurry of activity to get
out the door and to church on time, is re-tying his shoes, or trying to create
some kind of folk art at the kitchen table, sans coat, shoes, or hat.
There really are times,
though, that I would love for the world to just have a ‘pause’ button, that we
could use for a moment. Our eldest
daughter, nestled in the crook of my arm and smelling of strawberries and
prettiness; or our younger son, sitting beside me and reading to me from the
latest masterpiece his five-year-old imagination created. Sitting in church, surrounded by my friends, looking
at the pulpit that I have stepped into every week, but won’t again. It is
good, Lord, for us to be here.
Indeed.
It may truly be good to be
where we are, at any given moment. But
there is also a need to be always prepared for what is to come. When I joined the Canadian Forces, the least
amount of adaptation I had to do came with adjusting to the ‘sense of urgency’
that our instructors at basic training worked to instil in us. The idea that we would move quickly, without
rushing, but with a sense of purpose to the task at hand – whatever that may
be, from digging a hole, creating a shelter, to mending the sick, or tending
the dying.
That ‘sense of urgency’,
though, is all through the gospel text this week, beloved of God. Some disciples climb the mountain with
Jesus. I don’t see them dawdling. They see Jesus transfigured before them,
becoming as pure as light – and Peter asks that they stay there. But that’s not all. There’s clouds, and a voice from heaven
repeating what had be spoken at Jesus’ baptism.
Peter stands, and offers to build three houses. He’s probably sketched out a brief plan on
the ground in front of him. When you’re
up to pleasing the Almighty, you don’t dillydally.
Peter’s sense of urgency is
to keep that moment going. It is good
for them to be there – just them, Jesus, the mountain, and the memory of that
tremendous experience of God. They know
they’ve just seen the stuff that writes pages of Scripture. They’re into their own retelling of Exodus,
when God appears on the mountain. Peter
wants to stay there – urgently. The
faster stuff can get written down and commemorated, the faster that they can
get to writing these things down.
Jesus has his own sense of
urgency, as well. Jesus has lived in
that moment – it’s occasionally maddening to me that Jesus, who knew full well
how to read and write, just didn’t. – and we’ll never know how he felt. But we do know that literally, from the top
of that mountain, that it was all (metaphorically speaking) downhill from there. To Jerusalem
Whether Jesus tells Peter
simply not to be afraid of him, or of the Heavenly Father, or of what the
people had just seen – he’s also telling Peter not to be afraid of what’s ahead
of them. Don’t be afraid of the road to
the cross. Don’t be afraid of the cross. Don’t be afraid of suffering, of dying, of
death.
You know those times in your
lives, beloved of God, when you’ve wanted to stay there, on top of the
mountain, on top of the world. Maybe it
was the moment you knew you loved your spouse.
I hope it was the moment you first realized you loved your Saviour, or
that your Saviour loves you. I’ve been
there. You don’t want to leave. You feel like you shouldn’t have to. Better to build a tent up there, and close up
shop, rather than risk contaminating the purity of your experience with the
harsh and dirty world.
You do have to come down. But when you’re down from that mountain, you
do travel with your Saviour. You travel
with the one at the centre of the story, who simply says, “be not afraid.” And you needn’t be afraid.
Beloved, your world will
change. Your understanding of Scripture,
of the Bible, of the Church will change – hopefully, it will deepen and
strengthen, as you travel down from that mountaintop experience. But it will change, deepen, strengthen,
because the One and only source of that experience walks with you. You walk with Jesus. Jesus walks, with you.
And about that journey,
beloved of God – it is good for you to be there,
too. It’s in the journey down from the
mountain that faith is found, and nurtured, and grown. Walk together. Pray and praise together. Build each other up. Listen to the Holy Spirit speaking among
you. Feel the Saviour, walking with
you. Move with a sense of urgency – knowing
that each moment you spend together is only a brief glimpse of God’s kingdom of
earth. Thy kingdom come, you should pray, so that it would be on earth, as
it is heaven.
And there, beloved of God, is
definitely a good place to be.
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