The Glory of God

The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
Mark 9:2-9

Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 

I love Mark’s account of the transfiguration because it is so honest in portraying the disciples’ terror. Matthew omits their terror, and Luke tries to minimize it, but not Mark. Mark is honest. The transfiguration was terrifying, but not because it was miraculous. There are plenty of miracles in Mark’s Gospel, but we are never told that they’re terrifying. We’ve heard stories of Jesus healing and casting out demons these past few weeks, and people were amazed and astounded by these miracles, but not terrified. There are only three occasions in Mark where we are told the disciples are terrified. The first is in Mark 6, just after the feeding of the five thousand. The disciples are in a boat, trying to cross the Sea of Galilee to go to Bethsaida. It is night, and there is a strong wind that is frustrating their efforts to row across. Jesus had stayed behind on the other shore to pray, but suddenly they see him walking across the water, and they are terrified. We heard the second occasion of the disciples’ terror this morning: how, when Jesus took Peter and James and John up a high mountain, presumably to pray, as was his custom. Suddenly, Jesus’ clothes are bleached dazzling white, the word in Greek means to flash like lightning, and beside him are Moses and Elijah, who were promised to return to herald the messiah’s arrival. And Peter begins to babble, because the disciples are terrified. The third occasion comes after the crucifixion, when Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. When they get there, they find the stone rolled away, and a young man in a white robe tells them, “He has been raised; he is not here.” And they went out and fled from the tomb in terror.

No one is ever terrified by the many miracles in Mark’s Gospel, but these three stories (walking on water, transfiguration, and resurrection) terrify the disciples. Why is that? To us, they seem equally as miraculous as healing someone’s withered hand or casting out demons, don’t they? After all, healing, exorcism, miraculous feedings, walking on water, transfiguration, resurrection, aren’t we just giving many different names for impossible? But for the disciples, these three actions belong to a different category from mere miracle. They were all divine acts that could not be explained. They could explain healings and exorcisms and miraculous feedings. Elijah and Moses and the prophets had done those things. If you just knew the right spells, you could do them too. In fact, there are ancient depictions of miracle stories from the gospels where Jesus is shown holding a magic wand. Clearly, there was a category in the ancient world that could explain these things.

But not walking on water, or wearing clothing that flashed like lightning, or being resurrected. These were things that gods did. In Greek and Jewish literature alike, these acts were reserved to the Gods. Only Hermes or the Spirit of God could move across the waters, as God’s Spirit did in creation. You knew when you saw a god or the Most High God because of their clothing, which was like nothing that human beings could make. And for the Greeks and Romans, resurrection was a sign of being exalted to godhood. These moments in Mark’s Gospel are moments when the disciples are allowed to clearly see Jesus’ divinity, and it terrifies them.

And that is why Peter wants to make three dwellings. He is terrified, and he wants to find a way to accommodate the divine into his categories. He wants God to fit into the way that he understands the world to work. But that is not what God does. Instead of changing to fit our categories, God changes us to fit God’s categories. That is why we began our worship this morning with a prayer that God might changed into Christ’s likeness from glory to glory. From glory to glory. From the transfiguration to the resurrection.

It’s no mistake that we are hearing this Gospel reading today, the last Sunday after Epiphany. On Wednesday, we will begin our Lenten fasts, seeking to allow God to work in us through the individual disciplines we each will choose, so that we might be made more like Christ. I don’t know about you, but I have tended to think about Lent as a journey to the cross, to Good Friday. But that is too small an understanding, like Peter’s attempt to make dwellings on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Our collect this morning gives us the clue that this is the wrong idea: we are journeying from glory to glory, because the Lenten road is a journey to Easter and the resurrection. It’s a journey that leads us beyond our theology and our categories, all of which are ultimately too small to contain God.

As we heard this morning, our God is a transcendent mystery, infinitely above all our attempts at understanding. At the same time, in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Creator became our brother, like us in every way. I don’t understand this, any more than I understand the transfiguration. But I do know this, and I believe it, even as I do not understand it: God breaks into our world in incarnation, in walking on water, in transfiguration, in resurrection, in bread and wine, so that we might become like God.

Amen.