What is Peter thinking?

There are many questions to ask about the Transfiguration. Did Jesus really become luminous ? What kind of light was it? Where did Moses and Elijah come from? Why did Jesus tell the disciples not to speak of about this? Where did Moses and Elijah go? But the one that has been bothering me this week is “What on earth was Peter up to? I am trying to get into his head “Rabbi it is good for us to be here, let us make three dwellings one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Why did Peter want to make homes, booths, tents, tabernacles or shelters all of which descriptions appear in the various translations of the Bible that I consulted? It seems so strange, Moses and Elijah have certainly come from heaven, after all they have been gone a long time, and Jesus has also come from there even if Peter may not know that yet. So really they hardly need a hut! 

Peter’s reaction then cannot be about Jesus, Moses or Elijah but must be about him. He says “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here.” I believe him too, on top of a mountain, high up, with his closest friends James and John and then suddenly so clearly and palpably in the presence of the divine. Moses, Elijah and Jesus, himself so gloriously transformed, and the voice of the Father. It would have been good to be there. So Peter’s instinct is to preserve this, to hold onto the feeling, the intensity of which we can only guess at. And as we might have done he suggests a way to keep the moment, to keep Moses, Elijah and Jesus there in a tabernacle, a tent one for each. It is at once a slightly childish idea, let’s keep everything the same and all will be OK and also a very deep thing : a need for security an escape from fear of the future or as he so clearly expresses it a shelter : it is good here and now.

But as we know Jesus and the church needed to move on. Jesus takes the three back down the mountain knowing that he, Jesus, has not come to be comfortable but to challenge the church of the Pharisees as he found it, to go to Jerusalem, to be crucified and then  by his resurrection to show us the truth. 

The newspapers and magazines last week have been full of comment on a leaked paper from Church House proposing cuts in stipendiary clergy. This caused alarm from all sides prompting a volte face from the archbishop of York who had previously stuck to the line “there are no plans, noting to see here” to “there have to be plans but not from me.”  We may be feeling  more or less like Peter : We like it how it is. So let us do what we can to preserve where we are. But the church is n ot our church, it is Christ’s church. We cannot box up God and so we need faith that whatever we may fear Jesus will lead us down the mountain to the right place.

Amen