The God in the Cloud

Introduction

Today is Transfiguration Sunday; it’s the last week of the block of ordinary time we call Epiphany. On it, we celebrate the “mountain top experience” Jesus shares with Peter, James, and John, before entering the penitential season of Lent. In the Gospel accounts, the Transfiguration marks a transition in Jesus’ ministry that we mimic with the church calendar. After this mountain top experience, the narrative of Jesus’ teaching, travels, and miracles forms an inexorable march to Jerusalem and to death. As we prepare to follow Jesus’ path to the cross for the next several weeks, let’s join him today on the mountain top.

Brilliant Glory

If you’re familiar with this story, you’re probably most familiar with the first part of the narrative. If you’re not familiar with this story, let me quickly demystify what might feel like some Christian jargon. The word “transfiguration” means “a change in appearance” and it identifies an event recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s books about the life of Jesus. In this event, as we heard read earlier, Jesus heads to the top of a high mountain with his three closest disciples (Peter, James, and John). Jesus glows brightly and the disciples see him talking with two important (but long-passed) biblical leaders: Moses and Elijah, both of whom also appear “in glory.” None of the Gospel accounts use the language that describes Jesus’ dazzling bright light to describe Moses and Elijah; we need not assume they glowed in the same way.

Luke tells us that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are talking about Jesus’ upcoming “departure.” This is a very special word for departure: it’s the Greek word that described Israel’s escape from Egypt. The word is “exodus” and it’s a Greek compound word that means “a way out of.” Now a bit of a spoiler: when they’re talking about Jesus’ upcoming “departure,” they’re talking about his upcoming death in Jerusalem.

We find here two of the most important biblical figures for the conversation that’s happening: Moses and Elijah. But why those two? Short answer, we’re not quite certain.

There are so many points of contact between the events in the lives of Moses and Elijah and this moment in Jesus’ life. While it’d be lovely if we could identify the exact reason for these two conversation partners, I think that the ambiguity intentionally shifts our focus to the content of the conversation, not the personalities. The content is something we need to keep in mind as we read next about Peter’s big idea and then God’s response: the conversation was about Jesus’ impending death. In Luke 9, this comes right on the heels of some big conversations. Right after Peter’s confession that Jesus is Messiah (v18), Jesus tells his followers these hard truths:

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised” (v22).

“If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (v23).

“There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (v27).

Let’s really lock this in: everything that follows rests on knowing what Jesus has been trying to communicate about his impending death. He accepts the title Messiah. He claims that he’s going to suffer in Jerusalem and be killed. He warns that his followers face danger as well. And he says this will initiate the visible kingdom of God. Jesus the Anointed King is going to claim his throne by dying, and anyone who wants to see that kingdom must walk the same path. What we’re going to read next about Peter’s big idea and God’s response makes the most sense when we understand what Jesus has been trying to teach about God’s kingdom coming through his own suffering and death.

Presumptuous Good Idea

So now, Peter speaks up. He offers to builds some booths. He expects Jesus, Moses, and Elijah to stay in the booths. It’s unclear where he thinks he, James, and John will be staying.

Now, booth is a funny word for us in modern English. Besides absolutely being one of those words that sounds more fake and ridiculous the more you repeat it aloud, it’s also a word that has changed meaning over time. We use it to describe vendor tables at a convention or tents at a farmers market, and both of those meanings are so far away from what this word meant in the Bible. In Scripture, the words “booth” and “tabernacle” are alternate translations of the same word. It describes a tent-like dwelling and for the people of Israel, it goes all the way back to the exodus from Egypt. As the people wandered through the desert, God’s presence dwelt in the tabernacle that Moses built, and all the people lived in tents in between moves. This was such a formative experience for them that they got an annual feast to commemorate living in tents during the wilderness wanderings: it’s called the feast of tabernacles or booths or succoth if you prefer the Hebrew word. And this is no mere B-list feast. The Feast of Booths is one of the big three: one of the pilgrimage feasts. God’s people were to return to Jerusalem, build tents out of branches and fronds, and live in them for an entire week. You can read about these traditions in Deuteronomy 16 and Leviticus 23.

So Peter has just overheard a conversation about “exodus” and now he’s suggesting booths. Makes sense on the surface. And I think there may be even more cause to suspect he’s connecting this moment to the festival calendar. Peter may have been basing a well-intentioned intent to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles on a prophetic vision in Zechariah 14. Let’s look at some of the relevant notes in that prophecy:

4: On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east…

9: And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.

16: Then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the festival of booths.

While Luke points out here that Peter did not know what he said, Peter may very well have had a biblical, faith-driven reason for saying what he said. Yes, Peter missed a bunch of details in Zechariah 14 about wars and plagues and other events that come between the Lord’s feet on the mountain, and the celebration of the festival of booths, but I suspect his heart is in the right place. This is not “oh, look at foolish Peter opening his big dumb mouth again” as we sometimes accuse him of doing. On the contrary, this may very well be Peter voicing an ancient prophetic hope, just missing some details on the when and how.

Difficult Grace

Even with the most generous understanding of the background to Peter’s booth idea, God says no. I think we can identify a couple of reasons why. First, Jesus’ whole chat with Moses and Elijah was about his departure that would happen in Jerusalem. After a conversation about going somewhere else, it might not be the right time to build a shelter and stay a while. Second, while Peter did have certain contours of Zechariah 14 dialed in, the whole passage is running in a different direction than what Jesus has been trying to teach his disciples about his upcoming death. For the last week or more, Jesus has been trying to communicate that it’s necessary for him to suffer and die. I wonder if one reason that his disciples were having a hard time wrapping their minds around that truth is that their hearts been shaped by passages like Zechariah 14, expressing a prophetic hope of God triumphant as a king victorious in battle, bringing victory to God’s people, and accepting worship from vanquished enemies. In this case, Peter and friends have a justifiable expectation based on Scripture. What God’s reply to Peter communicates is that Jesus is not going to accomplish that kind of ultimate royal victory, at least not right now. To be sure, God’s people don’t give up on the hope that Zechariah articulated! For example, John latches onto the same imagery to provide apocalyptic hope for God’s people living under an oppressive Roman empire as he writes Revelation. So, the correction Peter should be hearing right now are: not like that, not right now.

Specifically notice how God phrases that correction. God doesn’t say, “hey man, listen, we gotta talk about how you’re interpreting the Bible incorrectly.” God says, “Here’s my chosen Son. Listen to him.” This calls us right back to our foundation: Jesus has been trying to tell them he’s going to suffer and die in order to bring God’s kingdom to earth.

We should note that the unique phrase here “my Son, my Chosen One” (normally, it’s “my Beloved Son”) may also be a reference back to the prophet Isaiah: he wrote four Servant Songs and in those songs, God addresses “my servant, my chosen one in whom I delight” and later refers to the Servant’s suffering under the weight of God’s people’s collective sins. God’s response hints at a prophetic counterpoint to the triumphant victory Zechariah saw.

Let’s take a moment though and talk more about the how of God’s correction to Peter, not just the words. God uses a cloud to get Peter’s attention. This is no fluffy, rainbow unicorn cloud, it terrifies Peter, James, and John. This isn’t the first time God has used a cloud to appear to believers. In fact, you may recall hearing Exodus 34 read shortly before the sermon and noticed some really pointed similarities between that story and the transfiguration. Now notice how the mountain is described in Exodus 24.15–18:

The cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai… Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain.

The mountain is covered by a cloud that terrifies the people of Israel. Additionally, while Moses is on top of the mountain, God is hidden in a cloud to him too (Ex 34.5):

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.”

In Exodus 34, God’s presence is cloaked within a cloud. And in Luke 9, while the disciples had no problem seeing Jesus shining, the presence of God is cloaked in a terrifying cloud again.

Let’s consider for a moment, “Why the cloud?” Doesn’t God want to be near us? Isn’t the Bible’s big overarching narrative a story about God pursuing us and rescuing us from the mess of sin we’ve fully participated in? As the songwriter asks us, “Does the Father truly love us? Does the Spirit move among us? And does Jesus, our Messiah hold forever those He loves? Does our God intend to dwell again with us?” He does!

So, what’s the deal with the cloud? Doesn’t God want to be near us, want us to know what God is like? Isn’t that the whole deal with the Bible? Isn’t this book God’s trustworthy self-revealing communication to us? So I ask again, why would God hide in a cloud?

While any question that starts with “why would God” is probably light years beyond our ability to thoroughly answer, I think we can make an observation here that I hope will invite you to further meditation over the coming days and weeks. I’d like to suggest that appearing in the cloud is God’s love to us. If you’d like a big fancy theological label for this, we often call this kind of self-limiting divine condescension “accommodation.” Or if you prefer normal people words, God bends close to us in love.

Let’s remember what condition we are in. We’re finite and limited and small, and we can’t handle all of God in this condition. Additionally, we’re selfish and proud and petty and 100 other variations of broken, and truthfully, we don’t really want all of God in this condition. So God, in love, puts on a cloud and gives us a limited, obscured, clouded version of God’s presence.

I love how theologian John Calvin describes this in his Institutes:

God … lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children[.] Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height (1.13.1).

Conclusion

I’d like to conclude with two practical suggestions for us: first, a two clouds where we can expect to find God’s presence, and second, what we should expect to hear from God.

First, a couple cloudy places we should expect to find God. Look around the room. Look at all the people sitting here. The first cloudy place I commend to you is the church. We’re not perfect. I wish we were. I wish everyone in this room (starting with myself!) never sinned. I wish all God’s people around the world never sinned. But we do, and we have to repent and we have to forgive and we have to repair relationships. Furthermore, I know many people in this room have been through really painful experiences in a church. Some have been injured by other members or even sinned against by church leaders. And yet if you’re here listening to this, you’re still trying to find God through the cloud. There’s something in you that knows, “cloud notwithstanding, God is here.” God is here in the church; among one another we experience the presence of God. But we’re not perfect. We, the church, are a cloud God is revealed in.

Additionally, we should expect to experience God in a cloud called the Bible. “Wait just a minute!” you might say. “Isn’t the Bible inspired and true? What do you mean the Bible is like God wrapped in a cloud?” What I mean is this: yes, the Bible is true, it is God-breathed and useful (2 Timothy 3.16), it is “completely reliable” communication from God, not from mere human will (2 Peter 1.19-21). It is also a finite book about an infinite God. The simple fact that the Bible has a page count tells us that it’s not sharing absolutely everything about God. Further, not one page of the Bible was written by or to a 21st century English-speaking Western Christian (or to anyone in most other years, locations, cultures, etc). Scripture faithfully reveals God in the words, images, languages, metaphors, and cultural contexts of ancient near eastern tribal nomads, semitic kings, poets, and prophets scattered across the Bronze and Iron Ages, and subjects and citizens of the Roman Empire spanning much of the regions north and east of the Mediterranean Sea. At times, it’s so hard to bridge the cultural divides between the earliest authors/audiences and our context. If that’s not a big ol’ cloud through which we try to see God, I’m not sure what else to call it. I think Paul is making the same point in 1 Corinthians 13.12 when he writes that “now we see in a mirror dimly.” The reflections of God we find in Scripture are not perfect and precise like a modern mirror, and yet though it’s like using a mere piece of polished bronze, we see God there.

Now, when we come to these clouds, what should we expect God to reveal? Can the cloud after the transfiguration give us a hint or shape our expectations there? To be honest, there are times when the cloudy view feels really dissatisfying. Sometimes we do our best to look through a darkened reflection and the lack of clarity makes us feel distant or confused, sometimes (with Peter and James and John) we feel frightened by the cloud. What then? With Peter and James and John, we can expect to hear God tell us through the cloud: “Here is my son. Here’s my son who became one of you and experienced your suffering and bore your sin. Listen to him.” When you feel like God is distant or cloudy in a frightening way, look to Jesus.