“Let’s stay here, build three little temples, and never go anywhere else, never go down the mountain, back to the people, back to work. It’s good for us to be here. Let’s stay here.”
And, why not? He’d been personally invited to this experience, after all. Jesus had taken him and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves; and Jesus was transfigured before them, his clothes becoming dazzling white like no laundress could make them; and there appeared also Elijah and Moses, which is to say representatives of the Prophets and the Law. Jesus had allowed these three disciples in and no others, as if Peter and James and John were special somehow, uniquely qualified to witness this.
What qualifications Peter had, he perhaps demonstrated, or even developed, six days prior to this, when Jesus was walking with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the way, Jesus asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” and they answered what they must have heard: “Elijah or John the Baptizer or one of the prophets.” Jesus then asked, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
Of course, what he might have meant by this is an open question. To say someone is the Messiah is to say that one is the anointed one of God. But what is meant by that is hardly more clear. Really, it just begs questions: Anointed for what? Anointed as what? Speaking very concretely, to be anointed is to have one’s head smeared with oil, which has the aim or effect of setting one apart from others, setting one to some special status and task. So, clearly, to be anointed is to be special; and so, clearly, to be the anointed one of God is to be super-special. But what does this specialness lead to? What does it mean?
Peter assumed it meant this: getting to stay on the mountaintop, getting to glimmer and glow, getting to pass time with the superstars of their tradition. It’s a vaulted position, this being the Messiah of God.
But God had something else in mind, which Jesus also had in mind, these two being of the same mind. This is what God said, following the Transfiguration and following Peter’s assertion that they should stay on that mountaintop: in effect, “No.”
“This is my Son the Beloved; listen to him.”
I have to say, I love this command: “Listen to him.” It’s something I’ve said to the children when they’re running roughshod over their father, and something he’s said when they’re running roughshod over me. “Listen to your mother!” “Listen to your father!” It’s by way of saying, we stand together. It’s by way of affirming someone’s authority by lending them yours. God saying of Jesus to Peter, “Listen to him,” calls Peter back from running roughshod over Jesus.
But what, we might wonder, was Peter exactly to listen to? What, Peter might have wondered, had Jesus said that he was to listen to?
As it happens, the last thing Jesus is said to have said is that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and must be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and must be killed, and three days later will rise again.
Perhaps it’s this that Peter was to listen to, to hear.
He didn’t at first. He didn’t when Jesus first said this, six days earlier, while walking among the villages of Caesarea Philippi. An exchange that came just following Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God; an exchange just following Peter’s having got it right—now Peter got it terribly wrong.
Jesus said he must undergo great suffering, he must be rejected by the elders, and must be killed; and three days later he will rise again. And Peter rebuked Jesus, in the other synoptic Gospels remembered even to have said to Jesus, “God forbid it, Lord. This must never happen to you!”
Because, really, why suffering? Why submission to death? Why not resistance of this, refusal, avoidance? Why not fight the powers-that-be so to preserve his life?
Yeah, why not self-preservation? Why not self-defense? He had so much work yet to do. He had so much good still to do. He could hardly do that while hanging from a cross, right?
And, really, if anyone could self-preserve through the gauntlet of imperial power, and do it justified, it would surely be Jesus, the anointed one of God, the Son of Man, the beloved Son of God.
Right?
But at this, Jesus then rebuked Peter: “Get behind me, Satan [which is to say ‘adversary’ or ‘stumbling block’]! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” And at that he turned then to the crowd, perhaps speaking over the heads of the disciples or perhaps still also addressing the disciples (maybe he hadn’t given up on them entirely); and he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me.” And he explained, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it.”
None of this apparently stayed with Peter. Most of this apparently slid right off him, for only days later he was right back to aweism—up the mountain, witness to this private revelation, privileged to be partying with the superstars of his tradition. Just days later, he was right back to proclaiming, “It’s good for us to be here. Let’s build private temples and stay right here.”
Forget that down the mountain are people in need.
Forget that those who’ve sought Jesus (the sick, the poor, the unclean, the disgusting) are still seeking Jesus (to be recognized, to be healed, to be saved, to be loved).
Let’s just stay here.
Dietrich Bonheoffer—from the cell in which Nazis had imprisoned him, while Germany beyond cannibalized itself and Europe descended into a nihilist frenzy—famously claimed, “Only a suffering God can help.”
What he might have meant was, if not for a suffering God, then it’s just “Good for God, and to hell with everyone else.”
But God isn’t in this to make it out alive, everyone else be damned. God is in this to make of this old creation something new, to make of this old world enthralled to the power of death a new realm in which life is the fuel for life.
The cross assures us that death is not the ultimate power it seems.
The cross encourages us that true life is much more than self-preservation, survival.
The cross affirms the simple reality amidst the created order of suffering, the painful fact that suffering simply is and the hopeful assurance that it’s not all that is.
And a suffering God goads us past our own private experiences of awe into social self-giving in the hopeful faith that by such self-giving all can be made better, all can be awe, all is praise and glory, all the time—and not only for a privileged few (those who have big backyards in which to eat homegrown grapes, those who have healthy children and long stretches of clean beaches on which to watch them play) but for all, the rich and the poor, the sick and the well, the lonely and the closely held, the faithful and the frightened.
When the topic of aweism popped up on the daily Facebook post out of our denomination’s national office a couple months ago, I got worked up and so weighed in: “I get feeling spiritually moved when seeing something beautiful, when experiencing something lovely. But what can ‘aweism’ say or do in face of all the ugliness and injustice in the world? For that, I think you need a self-giving savior who says, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ The world needs fewer people of privilege enjoying awe and more people of all sorts who, once awestruck, then commit themselves to building up a beloved community that won’t quit even after the awesome feelings fade.” And maybe I laid it on a little thick, but I have increasing impatience for people keeping private what blessing God intends for all.
I will give Phil Zuckerman this, however. Ever since I became a pastor, which is to say ever since I staked my life on the reliability of God’s presence, God’s word (still speaking), and God’s promises to us, I’ll admit to being less and less frequently surprised by the awe that Zuckerman so appreciates. It hardly sneaks up on me anymore. It hardly arrests me anymore—stopped in my tracks for the beauty or mystery of something.