Putting Down Stakes

Passage: Mark 9:2-13

Jesus and his three best friends climb a mountain together.  When they get to the top, there’s a blaze of unnatural light.  It seems at once to be both falling on Jesus, and emanating from him.  And suddenly there are two more people with them.  Somehow the disciples recognize them – though they’ve never seen them.  The two newcomers are Elijah and Moses, perhaps familiar to the disciples because their words, through the Scriptures, are so familiar to them.  And there proceeds a heavenly discourse, the three shining ones speaking in unknown language of things too bright and marvelous to be understood.

The disciples are hopelessly out of their element.  Peter’s only impulse is to try to capture this moment.  Save it.  Tie it down.  He says, “Lord, wouldn’t it be great if we put down some stakes and put up tents, and just stayed here?”  But Peter’s voice is drowned out by a louder voice.  A voice from heaven that says, “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.”  And everything goes dark.  The moment has passed, to be preserved only in the memories and accounts of its witnesses. 

What was Peter thinking?  What all of us think when we catch a glimpse of heaven here and now.  How can I hold on to this?  How can I nail this down to be able to come back to it whenever I want to feel better?  The impulse isn’t bad.  It’s just misguided.  It’s rooted in the assumption that our lives belong here.  That this world is our home.  God provides humanity glimpses of heaven not to make us more comfortable here, but to unsettle us.  To entice us forward.  To instill in us a homing instinct for the next place – the better place.  We want to put down stakes.  Again and again God invites us to pull up stakes and move onward.  And upward.