God Slept Here
“O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with you, O Father, and you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
Collect for the Feast of the Transfiguration
How do you commemorate life’s most important experiences? Many of us throw parties on our birthdays, fancy dinners on our wedding anniversaries, and receptions after funerals. We find it important to take time to mark and remember these significant events.
Nations do the same. Americans commemorate the history of the United States in a number of ways. We set aside special days and seasons to remember and reflect on our history: Independence Day on July 4th, Black History Month in February, Thanksgiving on November 25th. We also install monuments and commemorative plaques to symbolize and learn from our past. In the Northeast you’ll find placards everywhere signifying the great events in the life of the country that occurred there. Signposts that the Continental Congress convened in these halls, that Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton dueled in this neighborhood, that George Washington slept under this roof.
During the time of Jesus, the nation of Israel would often commemorate the mighty acts of God in its history. One of these remembrances was the Feast of Tabernacles. On these festival days, Jews would erect tents and sleep under them to recall the forty year wilderness wanderings of their ancestors. Their forebears were pilgrims on the run, and their contemporaries needed physical reminders that God was with them there.
“On the holy mount” where Jesus was “wonderfully transfigured,” the apostle Peter offered to build tabernacles to commemorate the occasion. Something important had happened here. Moses, the leader of the wilderness wanderings, was somehow in their midst. Peter’s master “in raiment white and glistening” was declared God’s “well-beloved son.” It’s here that Jesus is shown as God himself who “became flesh, and tabernacled among us.” How could Peter not erect a marker?
But Jesus would not let him commemorate the Transfiguration that day. He wouldn’t allow it, because he knew the apostle would think that God came to tabernacle with humanity in its glory. Whereas the message of the gospel is that the Incarnation is about God pitching his tent in our ruined habitation so that he might redeem and heal human nature.
This means that God has tabernacled with you in your history, which includes the worst parts of your story. In those places where you feel most abandoned, embarrassed, and ashamed God had pitched his tent there. In those spaces where you don’t have it together and don’t measure up there’s a placard that reads, “Jesus slept here.” And what this means is that it’s those areas of your life that are now sacred. These are places where God can meet you.
On this Transfiguration Day, we can do what Peter couldn’t. We can celebrate that the God of the universe tabernacled among us “in his beauty,” so that he might glorify our fractured human nature from the inside out. This is something to commemorate: God slept here!