Do you know someone who must fill every silence with words? Someone who just can’t let two or more people experience something or just sit together without adding sound? My mother-in-law was that way–charming, but just had to have conversation. Plus, you never knew what she might say. Sometimes she could be surprising.
Poor Peter was that way. He was the one who said something memorable at each new experience as they were all puzzling out what was happening to them. Mark puts three straight of these experiences together. He probably knew exactly what he was doing. First we had the group at that den of paganism–Caesarea Phillipi–where Peter proclaims Jesus as the Messiah. Next when Jesus talks about the Messiah suffering and dying, Peter blurts, “Say it isn’t so.”
In the teaching after Peter’s comment, Jesus concludes by saying that some people in the audience will not die before seeing the Son of Man in his glory. The next story (another of Mark’s “immediately” transitions) describes a high spiritual experience of Jesus, James, John and Peter. We call it the story of the transfiguration–where Jesus glowed in the Spirit and the three disciples saw him with Elijah and Moses. And God told then that Jesus was His son. There’s a lot of theology here–the meaning of putting Jesus in the same line, and perhaps the fulfillment of, the two greatest prophets–and the disciples knew it. So Peter fills the awesome silence with the first thing that pops into his head–we should build a monument. That’s what people historically did. He wasn’t out of line. Perhaps thinking too short-term because he didn’t know the outcome of the story, yet. There was a greater monument coming.
When you read the story, what is your reaction? Have you ever had a spiritual experience? Or, do you think they are bogus? Some academic disciplines teach that there is no such thing as a universal spirit and that such experiences are delusional. Or just random neurons firing in the brain. Others are just the beneficiaries of a few centuries of rational, scientific thought–sometimes unknowing. They are suspicious of spiritual experiences lumping them in with overly emotional responses.
In the major debate of the 19th Century, German philosophers decided to explain the forces that have driven human history. Hegel said that it was the movement of the Spirit. Marx said Hegel had it all wrong. It was physical forces, especially economics, that was the foundation of human history. Most people, including many Christians, seem to be unwitting Marxists. Not in the communist sense, but in the sense that they think what’s real is what they can see. They can read the words of the Bible and say they agree they’re true. But they are suspicious of the existence of a God, through His Spirit, working directly in history and in individuals.
I discover this when I sometimes teach on this subject. But as the psychologist Carl Jung said when asked after his long journey into the psyche whether he believed in God, “Believe? No. I know.”
Just so, these three disciples had a spiritual experience that is like your summer camp campfire experience exponentially heightened. It was so memorable, that’s why it was recorded. And if you spend quiet time with Jesus, you too can have spiritual experiences. They don’t come often, and they aren’t always that high. They’re real nonetheless. Bill Hybels, senior pastor of the Willow Creek Community Church, calls many of these experiences “whispers.” Watch for a book coming soon from him about God’s Whispers. From the descriptions and stories he’s shared so far about the book, I think it will help take some of the fear or misunderstanding out of these experiences.
Gary Mintchell
Faith Venture 