Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9
The movie, “Miracle on 34th St.,” ends with a scene that’s a lot like the one we’ve just read. A mom, her new husband, and her daughter drive from their city apartment to a house in the suburbs on Christmas Day, thinking they’re on a work errand. The little girl actually wants nothing more than a house in the suburbs for Christmas, but the grown-ups have been pretty clear that Santa doesn’t do large structures. Once the family is inside the house, they see that this has been no mere errand, but the house is, in fact, theirs for the taking. And they notice something that causes all of the pieces to fall into place. A walking cane is leaning up against the corner of one wall. The parents look at one another with their mouths open, a deep realization washing over them. The gift is real, and so is the giver: Santa Claus has actually given them this house.
The brilliant piece of the movie – the most revealing piece of the movie – happens right here. Up to this point, these two adults have spent a lot of time becoming friends with a man called Kris Kringle, the owner of the walking cane. Kris believes that he is Santa Claus. Eventually, they come to believe that he is Santa Claus, they affirm their child’s belief that he is Santa Claus, and they invest a lot of time and energy into convincing other people that he’s Santa Claus. So you’d think that they actually believe he’s Santa, right? Well, in a way, they do. Up until now, they’ve allowed Kris Kringle to be Santa. And they’ve believed in Kris, in their friend. They’ve believed in his goodness, his ethical soundness, his decency, his sanity. They’re happier when he’s around, he’s a positive influence on their child. He’s made New York City a friendlier place to live in. But he’s their Kris Kringle – their buddy, Santa on their own terms. Do they really believe that he flies all the way around the world in one night? Or that he gives people houses for Christmas? Does he have real, actual, Santa powers?
Miracle on 34th St. works so well on us because we recognize the sort of holding back that happens when we are asked to truly believe in something. The last scene of that movie isn’t meant to uncover the cynicism and hard-heartedness of the man and the woman who, despite having said they believe in Santa Claus, don’t really believe until this one “aha moment.” It’s just a point of connection between us and them, a place for us to recognize how hard it is to give ourselves over to faith in something that we think is impossible, or unimaginable.
It’s the same with the disciples, Peter, James, and John, as we follow them up the mountain with Jesus today. Notice how the scene is set for us: “Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ ….” Peter, it turns out, says he believes in Jesus. Six days earlier, he’s confessed him to be the Messiah, the one they have all been waiting for. Over and over again Jesus has been revealing himself to those around him: at his birth, when the magi come to worship him; at his baptism, when the heavens open and God speaks from above; when he heals, and when he teaches, like we’ve heard him doing in the Sermon on the Mount. Like us, the disciples have witnessed all of these epiphanies, and what’s more, they’ve seen other people – people who barely know Jesus – come to him from out of nowhere, and say they believe in him with no evidence, no grounds for doing so. Peter makes a bold move and says, “They’re right – it’s you.” And when we hear it, we hear him saying “I believe that you are God,” or “I believe that you’re not lying about being sent from heaven.” What he’s really saying is, “Everything that I’ve been taught to look for, every hope that my people have pinned on God for deliverance, for restoration, for eternal joy and for eternal peace – everything Moses gave us in the Law and everything Elijah and the prophets proclaimed to us … everything we had started to believe could never happen … I think it’s you. The Messiah does exist, and he’s come in you.”
And Peter does believe. But again, when he goes up that mountain and discovers what’s waiting for him, we have that walking cane moment. Picture strolling around the Potomac with the president, and suddenly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln appear before you. Well, for Jesus’ friends to see him with Moses and Elijah was more profound than that! They symbolized the truth about God as these men knew it. There’s no bigger thing that could have happened to Peter than encountering Moses and Elijah – except encountering God, which is the next big shocker. While Peter is whipping himself up into a frenzy, a voice from heaven silences everything. When Peter falls to the ground in fear, something in him has changed. He believed before, but now he knows. Like Kris Kringle’s friends, he would have testified in a court of law to Jesus’ being the Messiah, but now he can testify with every cell in his body to the fact of Jesus.
Peter is an icon of faith for us because of his confession that Jesus is the Messiah. But you and I know that his faith was not unwavering. About six weeks from now we’ll sit in this same room and read about the hours before the crucifixion, when Peter denied Jesus three times. And part of why he does so is because the Messiah he had spent his life hoping for was not supposed to die like a common criminal. Reality didn’t match up with his belief. Part of why the grownups in Miracle on 34th street stopped believing in Santa Claus was because their world had ceased to be magical – it was busy, cold, lonely, even painful. Reality and Christmas did not align. What Kris Kringle revealed to these people was not that they were bitter, faithless, or jaded – simply that they were mistaken. And the same is true for Peter – nobody could say that Peter was passionless or unhopeful. What God shows him in Jesus is just that he’s made a mistake. It’s a mistake we make every day. We know that pain is real, that suffering is real, that violence and broken relationships, disparities of all kinds, are real. But we think that they constitute reality. The things that hurt us are real – there’s no denying it. Reality, however, is about who wins the day. Reality is about who sets the terms of the debate. Reality is about who is finally responsible for all of this. And that is God. That is all that is healthy and reconciling and redemptive in the world. That is love. When Peter looks over at Jesus on the mountain and sees that his face is shining, he’s not seeing something new that has happened to Jesus – he’s seeing Jesus as he really is. He’s seeing the reality of God’s good creation reflected in the face of God’s Son. It is his great epiphany.
I would not be surprised if that next Christmas, the Miracle on 34th St. family didn’t find themselves wondering about Santa Claus, even while living in their new house. I think Peter probably had moments throughout his life when he wondered if it had all been a dream. Each one of us lives with the routine ups and downs of belief. Each one of us in this room will face a severe assault on our belief, if we haven’t already. Our challenge is to not hold back. Our challenge is to remember the shining face of Jesus. It is to develop a sense of the really real, to learn to recognize Reality as belonging to God, and to claim that reality as our own.
(Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 8:00am, 11:00am, and 5:15pm)
