Genesis 12.1-4 Psalm 33.4-5, 18-19, 20, 22 2 Timothy 1.8b-10 Matthew 17.1-9
We all live with expectations. There are those immediate mundane ones: that we’ll get up in the morning, do our daily routine, go to bed that night expecting to do it all over again the next day. We have longer term expectations with respect to our personal lives concerning work, marriage, etc. We live out all these expectations in the context of an overarching expectation that informs and gives direction to our lives. That is, we have a sense as to our destination in life; and then, what we expect to find there – happiness, fulfilment, etc. We usually think we know the way, and have a sense that we’ll know we’ve arrived. We are so often mistaken in that. We need to know where we are going, and what we should expect to find there, and indeed, to have the good sense to know if we have arrived, or if there is still some distance to go. Are we willing to go to the land that God would show us? Do we know what to expect? Is it what we want? Or are we still conflicted about what God offers us?
For quite some time the Western world, the modern Christian, has lived with an ambiguous set of expectations, one of which is that of “having it all.” That is, to achieve the material paradise that modernity promises as well as the kingdom of Heaven – but we can’t have both. Each costs us something to attain, and we don’t have the spiritual means to pay for both; besides, they are in contradiction to each other. It is the gain of the world against the loss of the soul, and we can mistake the one for the other in our mistaken expectations.
Today we see Peter responding to the great revelation of Christ atop Mt. Tabor, the Transfiguration, according to his long-held expectations concerning Israel and the coming of the Messiah.
And we know at this point in the gospel story, that just in the previous chapter, Peter has made his great confession that he believes Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God. We also know from that story that he is struggling with what that means – that the man he knows to be the Messiah must suffer and die. He rejects this.
So, in today’s gospel, Jesus, brings him to the mountain top to help convince him; I also think to reassure him – “Look, I am the Christ, I have the law and prophets on my side, Moses and Elijah, this will be the fulfilment of all things. So, as resistant as you may be, as afraid as you are apt to be of what this means for you, don’t be.” And that is a message for all of us even unto today – for the longtime initiated, for those preparing for baptism at Easter. Let’s not be naïve about what an authentic Christian life is about, but neither should we be afraid.
What Peter does here, in light of his prior understanding of the Messiah, is he assumes that he was right after all, the Messiah does not need to suffer and die! Perhaps, all the talk of suffering and death was just a test and having passed that test he is now seeing the inauguration of the Messianic age. He misinterprets what he is seeing, but understandably so.
These expectations of his would have come from hearing the Torah and prophets read aloud from childhood, and discussed by the men of the community. Indeed, the study and discussion of prophecy had intensified at about this time, very much in light of the spiritual and political crises that had left the Jews in such a precarious state at the outset of what we call today the first century… and as you’ve likely heard from other preachers, the stories, the prophecies, all were pointing to something happening soon. Not only were they looking for the Messiah who was to come, they had a sense as to what would show them that this was the Messiah, the things that he would do, the things that would happen. One big thing was the establishment of God’s House on a holy mountain that would become the universal “high place” or holy place for all humanity. This was foreseen by the prophets Isaiah, and later Micah. Of course, for Jews like Peter, James and John, the assumption would have been that they were talking about Zion, about Jerusalem, the Temple mount. It would not have dawned on them that it could be another mountain. That is, until they met Jesus, and in his company, they’ve already had to rethink what a Messiah is against their expectations that he would, perhaps have been a political or military figure; and not a lay preacher from the Galilee. As they accompany him, hear his preaching, learn his teaching, and witness the miracles he performs, the assumptions about the Messiah change; he will fulfil prophecy, but not as anticipated.
So, let’s give them this: there are getting there, but they still haven’t arrived at a proper understanding of Christ.
So, Peter, mistakes this revelation for an arrival, a sign along the way for the final stop. He thinks it’s time to build those booths, shrines for these three great men to which the nations will flock from the four corners of the earth to see, hear, and gain wisdom from. This is the new age, the beginnings of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
But as quickly as he thinks this, God the Father intervenes and tells him, and the others, they need to listen to Jesus and put away their own ideas concerning Christ, his mission, and where we are in terms of the history of salvation.
Those of us who are old enough, remember the end of the Cold War and the years immediately following. There was such exhilaration as we were told that the last great world conflict had finally been resolved: Marxism lay defeated by Liberalism, and a new world order was being established. A prominent historian, Francis Fukuyama declared that this was the end of history – my word!
That is, if we understand history as the chaos of human conflict, that great tempest was finally subsiding into a tranquil calm. Look, the forces of democracy and capitalism had defeated authoritarianism and communism; and avoided the absolute destruction of nuclear war. Sure, there was still Red China, but the communists there were warming up to the ideas of free markets and trade – this would bring them along gradually into the liberal democratic fold. And they were already secular, that is, religion had been successfully restrained albeit by force.
Who wouldn’t be a believer in the story now being told through every news outlet, that was in the background of t.v. shows, movies, pop songs, a story that this earthly life continues to get better and better? The triumph of the West was proof of what we have come to call the Myth of Progress, the story that modern civilization prompts us to live out of, to form our expectations from: that things will materially continue to get better. Longer, healthier lives for us all. Technology that will free us from the drudgery of work and allow us the freedom of recreation. The growing and spreading prosperity will naturally put an end to human conflict, because the cause of human conflict, it is presumed, is material poverty. So, we will have peace more and more than we will have war; we will have safety in our communities more so than crime because all needs will be met.
The crisis of our times is coming in the growing realization that maybe that myth is a false one; that maybe the root of conflict isn’t simply material want; that even when the hungry are fed, they are not satisfied; and that the prosperity we had, and that is disappearing, was an illusion, was unearned, and has revealed itself as a massive unpaid, perhaps unpayable debt.
Personally, having grown up with expectations of technological marvels and the possibilities they would open up for me and for future generations, I’m disappointed. The digital age we live in doesn’t strike me as being better, just different. True, I don’t have backbreaking work, but where are all the fantastic compensations that were to make my life thrilling? Where is my flying car? Why can’t I vacation on the moon? More seriously, when I look at the state of things in my country and immediate community, I see decaying infrastructure, an incapacity to fix it, debt and a fraying social fabric that is making that bright future forecast in my youth, a ridiculous fantasy.
As I said, we form our expectations from a larger story we are told. For ancient Egyptians, they ordered their lives to a story of an afterlife for which they spent their lives in preparation. For Jews in the time after the fall of the House of David, it was a story of waiting for the Messiah. For Christians, the story of Jesus tells us to live in anticipation of a Second Coming. We had a civilization that did that: Christendom. Now, there is no going back to that; it was far from perfect. Yet it’s aim was redemption from our sins. That when Christ came again, he would find people overjoyed to see him, not dreading his judgement.
That civilization, contrary to the myths of modernity, gave us the institutions of the hospital, the university, the principles of accountability applied to all, of moral responsibility for the sick and the poor, of equal justice, but justice tempered by mercy, all of which we have, not as the legacy of Athens and Rome, but as a heritage from Christ and his Church.
It is all these that we see degraded, corrupted, and in need, not so much of reform, but as they die, it is resurrection they require. But to get to that needed rebirth, is the hard road of Christian conversion, for us, for the society that surrounds us oblivious to its true need.
As with Peter, James and John, after we reach the summit of the Mass today, which is the Eucharist, we too must descend, and get back on Abraham’s road, journey and invite others on the journey, to the place that God would show us.
Amen.