Early For Glory
The Last Sunday After the Epiphany
Peter is not wrong.
Jesus shines before him. His face radiant. His clothes blazing white. Moses and Elijah stand there. Two men who once climbed mountains and stood in the cloud of God’s presence. One whose face once reflected borrowed light. One who once stood in the presence of glory.
And now they stand in that same light.
But this time it does not come to a servant.
It comes from the Son.
It looks like the end of things. Like the kingdom has come.
So Peter reaches for what he knows.
Let’s build dwellings.
It sounds impulsive at first, but Peter isn’t rambling. He is reaching toward hope. Toward the Feast of Booths: the great celebration when God would dwell fully with his people and joy would be complete.
Peter sees the glory and thinks: this is it.
And in one sense, he’s right.
The light on the mountain is not accidental. It is a glimpse of the kingdom breaking into the present.
But he is early.
Because just before this, Jesus has begun to speak about something else. Rejection. Suffering. Death. A cross.
Peter heard those words and pushed back.
Now he sees glory and wants to stay.
He is not wrong about where the story is going.
He is wrong about how it gets there.
Before the Feast of Booths, there will be another feast. Before dwelling comes Passover. Before unveiled light comes a cross.
The voice from the cloud does not approve Peter’s plan. It redirects him.
Listen to him.
Listen to the one who speaks of losing your life in order to find it.
Listen to the one who insists that the path to glory runs straight through suffering.
The light fades. The cloud lifts. They see only Jesus.
And they go back down the mountain.
That descent may be the part of the story we know best.
We want what Peter wanted. We want the end without the middle. We want Easter without Good Friday. We want the kingdom without the cross.
We are not wrong to long for glory.
We are just often impatient with the road that leads to it.
The mountain was not a mistake. It was a promise.
A promise that the one who walks toward suffering is already crowned with light. That the cross is not the contradiction of glory, but the way to it.
The disciples will still falter. They will still scatter. Peter will still deny the one he saw shining.
The vision did not make them strong.
It did not keep them from fear or failure.
But it gave them something they could not unsee.
A glimpse of who Jesus truly is.
A light that would not disappear when the road grew dark.
So they go down the mountain.
And so do we.
Not skipping ahead.
Not pretending the middle is the end.
But walking the road he walks, trusting that glory waits on the other side.
Not yet.
But surely.
These midweek devotionals aren’t sermons. They’re meant to complement the Sunday homily. I’ll share the sermon below after it’s preached:
Thank you for connecting the Feast of Booths to Peter's suggestion of building huts on the mountain. No one ever made that connection for me before! What seemed odd now makes perfect sense.