Elijah and Moses appeared and were talking with Jesus. Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, “Rabbi, it’s good that we’re here. Let’s make three shrines…” — Mark 9:4-5a
Good old Peter. He gets right to the point. The Transfiguration, where Jesus radiates while talking to Elijah and Moses, took place atop a mountain. Peter’s first instinct was to stay there as long as possible. Commemorate it with a shrine of some sort that would indicate that the spiritual world invaded the physical one at that location. That way they could return there every so often and hope the phenomenon would happen again. That’s what shrines do, which is why we have famous ones like Lourdes, Fatima, and Our Lady of Guadalupe.
But as soon as Peter asked to build a shrine, the vision vanished. Jesus told the three disciples not to tell anybody what they saw. (Good luck with Peter doing that, by the way. You know he couldn’t wait to whisper, “You’ll never guess where we’ve been, and who we saw…”)
They descended that high mountain, and encountered a distraught father with a boy suffering seizures. What a contrast: Jesus, Moses, Elijah one minute, a boy rolling around on the ground and foaming at the mouth.
Perhaps there’s a lesson here. While shrine-worthy experiences atop a mountain are fine, if that’s what our religion is, then we’re self-centered: How can I be entertained? How can I get what I want?
Perhaps we can better encounter a transfigured Jesus if we tend justly and compassionately to the needs of others. “As you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me.”
We might find a mountain top experience on a much flatter, and closer, place.