Mark 9:2-9
This week, I came across a social media post by a fellow priest that I cannot stop thinking about. It reads like this: “Noticing in this Sunday’s gospel lesson that Peter begins that time honored church tradition: Facing a terrifying existential threat (in this case the glory of the Lord) by proposing a building project.”
OUCH. That really hit way too close to home for me. I cannot tell you how many times in my church career I have been an enthusiastic (and sometimes not so enthusiastic) participant in the discernment and execution of a building project. I remember the renovation of the nave of my childhood parish like I was the junior warden at the time, that’s how big of an impression the process made on me at age 13. The parish I attended in college completed a brand new parish hall from the ground up the week of my ordination, almost four years to the day after I attended the vestry meeting where the project was proposed. The parish I served in Kentucky after seminary completed a massive project that involved doubling the total square footage of their fellowship hall and adding a maze of classrooms underneath it. When I started there in 2019, they had already been working toward it for over 5 years, and it was completed after I left to join you here. Just in the last three years, both of these congregations I serve have either explored or acted on significant building renovations. In the glaring and revealing light of this social media post, I am looking back at all these experiences with new eyes.
What was the existential crisis in my home parish all those years ago that led to a total renovation and modernization of the worship space? A precipitous decline in young families among the membership as the youth of the parish grew up and moved on or moved away and the neighborhood around the church aged. What was the existential crisis in the parish I served in Kentucky that led them to fight for over half a decade to complete the parish hall renovation? A similar shift in demographics combined with a crisis of leadership. I was not here to speak to the choice to expand and renovate the parish hall at St Mark’s, but I think it’s fair to say that some of our fervor for preserving and updating this building isn’t UNrelated to the trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that for the first time in our nation’s history, church attendance dropped below 50% in 2021. I know various ideas and conversations about expansion and renovation and building have been floated at Grace as well over the past few years, probably -at least in part- for similar reasons.
A time-honored church tradition, the priest wrote. I know it is meant to be funny, and I admit that I laughed and shared it with friends. But I also know that every priest, whether they’ve worked a year or half a century, can testify to the truth underlying the humor. What Peter does in the light of the transfigured Christ demonstrates a deep and fundamental impulse of humanity. When something massive, scary, awe-inspiring happens, and we don’t know what to do- we build. We make. We create, we construct, we plan. When our worldview is shaken, when our understanding of reality is disrupted, we simply must do something with our hands. Peter thought he understood what he was doing, who his teacher was, what they were all up against. He gets it right, he confesses Jesus as the Messiah. Then Jesus goes and tells his disciples that he will soon die a violent death on a cross, and that there will be nothing they can do to stop it, and Peter is right back in the wilderness, trying to scrabble for purchase on uneven terrain. When Jesus takes Peter and his friends up the mountain, they are still reeling from that revelation, only to receive another. A blindingly bright, cosmic vision of Jesus’s divine power leaves them speechless and terrified, grasping for something to say that matches the gravity of the moment.
It is good for us to be here, let us make three dwellings. Some translations have three shrines, or three booths, or three tents. Let us build something Jesus, let us DO something. We do this all the time. Churches build bigger sanctuaries when their attendance dwindles. Cities build more luxury apartment complexes and shopping centers to revitalize dying downtowns when all their residents really need is more affordable housing and better bus systems. Corporate offices renovate the break room and fill it with pizza and alcohol to boost morale, when their turnover rate is very directly related to the top-heavy compensation structure. When we face something that threatens our existence as we know it, we pick up a hammer and go looking for nails, often turning away from the truth in the process.
Was Peter wrong? No, and I think you’ll notice that nowhere in this passage is he rebuked or scolded for what he’s suggested. Are we wrong for wanting to build something that will outlive us? Of course not, if we are doing it for the glory of God. There is literally a church, a monastery actually, built on the very mountain where the Transfiguration of Jesus took place. Peter didn’t get around to it, but humanity sure did build dwellings to mark the spot where heaven shone through the veil as brightly as the sun. This is not an inherently sinful or ugly thing, this gut reaction we have to build. So God does not scold or punish Peter. What does God say instead?
Listen. Listen to him. This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him. That’s all. God chooses to use the Big Voice and speak directly to these three terrified men, a rare thing even in Scripture, and that’s all he says. Listen to my beloved Son. Listen, Listen, Listen. How often do we forget to do that before we start to build? How often do we forget to ask- who lives where you want this road to be built? What creatures inhabit that land you want to develop? What vulnerable populations are we leaving out with this proposed budget, or this long-term strategic plan, or this vision and mission statement? What opportunities will we gain, and what opportunities will we lose, if we make this change? Who are we serving with this project?
The institutional church is often criticized for being slow to change. I do believe that in many cases those criticisms have been valid, that the church has deliberately stayed one step back from where God is calling us out of fear. But one gift of an institution with the size and long life of the Church is that our cultural inclination for urgency, for growth at all costs, for rushing to build on top of unrecognized holy ground, is tempered by the millions of people who have listened first. The mystics and prophets and elders and young people of vision throughout the church’s history and in the present have called us back to that place of listening to God’s beloved. We also have the generations upon generations of builders, of Peters proposing projects, to thank for the physical buildings and governing structures we have today. We need both. We need to change in order to become who God is calling us to be, in order to build the future God dreams for us. But first we need to listen.
Mother A Writes 