Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-195 (Sermon)

A SHACK FOR THE MESSIAH? Scripture: Matthew 17:1-13

by Don McLellan

I am taking a while to get used to the Tasmanian idea of a shack. I have known about Tasmanians and their love affair with shacks for years. But it still bemuses this former Queenslander that you can never be sure what Tasmanians mean when they talk about their shacks.

In Queensalnd a shack is a hut; a humpy; a dwelling only slightly more substantial than a tent. You would not expect running water, let alone hot and cold; you might have to put up tarpaulins to keep the wind out; the toilet is probably just a pit with a hessian screen around it, and anything powered by electricity would be out of the question. I get the distinct impression that there are not many shacks like that left in Tasmania.

Some time ago my wife and I enjoyed four days of R&R in what we were told would be a shack on Bruny Island near Hobart. Some shack! It is as good as anything we have ever lived in, but with the added luxuries of complete silence and isolation and a view to die for. We awoke each morning to glorious views from our bedroom window of a little inlet. It was dead calm the first morning. The moored yachts sat on their own reflections, and the only other form of life we saw was the occasional seagull who also seemed to be taking it easy.

. . .

There came a day when Simon Peter decided that it was time to build a shack or three. Not for himself, but for his friend and teacher Jesus, whom he had not long before identified as the Messiah, and his friend’s friends Moses and Elijah. This remark by Peter clearly belongs to the “it seemed a good idea at the time” genre. His question becomes our question: Should we build shacks for the Messiah?

Just as Jesus and the three disciples arrived at the summit of the mountain, the Lord’s appearance suddenly changed. It was a moment when the future became the present. Putting it another way, Peter and his two mates suddenly saw Jesus, not as he was for the thirty- some years he walked this earth, but as he appears in glory. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothing became dazzling white,” probably because his whole body was shining inside his garments. That’s how Jesus is. That is how we will see him, when we see him as he is.

But Peter and his mates didn’t know this yet. They may have correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah in the previous chapter, but they had still to grasp the implications. They had yet to understand that the cross was vital – inescapable – if Jesus was to carry out his Messianic mission. Now again they don’t understand the importance of what they are seeing. There, with Jesus, are two of Israel’s greatest heroes, Moses and Elijah.

Peter is quite convinced that this is the correct company for someone like Jesus, and he wants the moment to last. Hence his offer to build shacks. The Greek word may be translated “hut” or “booth” or sometimes “tent;” “shack” seems okay too.

We ought to note that Peter had obviously learnt something, because the previous time he had tried to counsel the Lord he was accused of being Satan. Is it ever proper to build a shack for the Messiah? We will come back to that in a moment; but for now please notice that neither Jesus nor the voice from heaven directly answer the question. Peter does not get a yes or a no. Why? Because it is not the main issue.

The real point of the visit to the mountain, with its encounter with Moses and Elijah and then with the bright cloud so reminiscent of the cloud that lead Israel from Egypt, was that the disciples should understand whom they were dealing with.

This was powerful reinforcement of the lessons they had learnt when Peter had declared Jesus to be the Messiah. There they had learnt that Messiah would build his church with all those who would make Peter’s confession; there they had also learnt that dying on the cross was part of Messiah’s mission, and that true disciples must accept the cross – both his and theirs. Without suffering, Jesus cannot be Messiah. Without being prepared to suffer injustice because of him, we scarcely qualify as his disciples. These were not easy things to learn.

Now God makes the same points again. If the disciples are not fully convinced by what Jesus himself has said to them, they must surely be convinced now. They are overshadowed by this bright cloud. Usually clouds overshadow the sun. Here the cloud is the source of light, yet the disciples feel they are in shadow. They are in shadow because they don’t really belong to this light. They are yet to understand the ministry of the Messiah. And they hear the voice of God himself, declaring “This is my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased.”

Commentators tell us that these sentences come from two streams of thought in the Old Testament which Judaism had never linked. On the one hand was the Messianic stream, which spoke of the beloved Son of God in the language of the conquering hero of Psalm 2:7: “You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations.” The Jews took this to mean that Messiah would some day rule the world; and the only way they understood that it could happen was through astute politics and mighty acts of courage on the battle field.

The other stream was that of the suffering servant portrayed in Isaiah 52-53, but introduced in Isa 42:1 as the one “in whom my soul delights.” So we are to understand that these words from the shining cloud on the mountain are reinforcing what Jesus has affirmed in Matt 16: that he is the Christ, the Messiah, and that the Christ is to suffer.

It is not so much these words that cause the reaction in the disciples as the voice and the vision. They know they are in the presence of God in a way they have never experienced before; and they now know that Jesus their friend is far more than a great person. He is God’s own chosen one; he is far superior in status than Moses and Elijah; he is none other than the beloved Son of God. No wonder they fall to the ground in fear.

But the final words from God are the ones that must surely govern all of Christian thinking, all of Christian activity. He is the beloved Son; he is the Messiah who will serve humankind through his suffering. Should we build a shack for the Messiah?

Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t. How can we find out? The answer is to obey the simple command he gives his disciples here: LISTEN TO HIM.

I am taking the word “shack” here to mean a temporary structure put in place until something better is built. In a sense, all ministries are shacks for the Messiah.

This church, though quite beautiful, is a shack for the Messiah: it is a temporary structure for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission. There won’t be any churches in heaven, but we have churches now, along with missionary and para-church agencies, because we need structures if we are to manage efficiently the resources needed to do God’s work. And if you plan to serve the Lord, you will almost inevitably join an existing “shack” or perhaps construct one of your own.

Down through history all sorts of shacks have been built for the Messiah. Some have been built because, as part of his great plan and purpose, God has moved his people to build them. They have been a necessary part of the process of bringing in the Kingdom. Some have been built because Messiah wanted them built. Others have been built, and I wonder how Messiah really feels about them.

Great shacks have been built for the Messiah to demonstrate how much we respect him – but if they sit incongruously in surroundings of poverty and squalor and hopelessness about which we do nothing, what does this say? What does a gilded church with padded pews and air conditioning say to people without enough to feed their children or to people who have seriously lost their way? What does the Lord himself say about them?

I’m not just talking about churches, but about every kind of project that we humans have come up with in our zeal to help the Lord achieve his aims. You can set out to build a shack for the Messiah, and find that you have built nothing at all. Two kinds of things can go wrong: you can begin to build a shack and not be able to finish, or you can build a shack that the Lord doesn’t want to live in.

How can you be sure that the shack you are building for the Messiah has his approval? I don’t want to be simplistic here, but surely the first thing to do is to listen to him. That’s what the voice from heaven said to the first disciples; that’s what it says to us too.

These words are not words of rebuke. Peter had not rushed in to build without checking with Jesus. He had sought his will: “Lord, if you wish (= if it is your will), I will build.” God had simply asserted the first principle of understanding the will of God, and that is to listen. Listen, not to the voice of a man or even of an angel, not to the voice of some prophet who purports to have some great revelation, but to listen to the Son of God himself.

So today we must listen to the Spirit, for it is the Spirit who speaks today on behalf of Jesus. But there is a danger. The danger is that we may think we have the voice of the Spirit when we are basically hearing our own grand schemes or the ideas of some attractive person. We need to be clear about hearing the voice of God.

The voice of God is never inconsistent with the word of God, and you can’t hear the word of God without reading the Bible. It is there that we read the principles that must govern the work of those who labour in the Kingdom of God. It is there that we find the checks and balances so necessary if we are to avoid going off on tangents and flights of fancy. It is there that we may test the big ideas to see whether they are the ideas of God, or merely the ideas of men and women.

This kind of thing lies behind Paul’s warning in 1 Cor 3:10-23. Here was a church in which a group of people had become extremely impressed with the work some men of God had done, and they had begun to hero worship mere men. To use our shack metaphor, Paul had laid the foundations for a magnificent cathedral. But now some people, with ambitions more their own than God’s, were wanting to construct the edifice according to their own plans. What were they building with? Would their work stand the test of time? Would it stand the ultimate test, the test of fire? There will come a day when “the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done” (1 Cor 3:13).

Whatever we build must be according to the Master’s plan, and must reflect the true status of the Messiah. To Peter and his mates Moses and Elijah are still just as important, which is why God told them to listen to Jesus. In terror they fall to the ground; but Jesus comes and tells them not to be afraid. And when they look up, they see “no one but Jesus himself alone.” Every bit of this story sets out to tell us that Jesus is unique, that he is the Messiah, that he is Lord, and that our obedience and allegiance must be to him alone.

What were the lessons the disciples learnt that day? I think they learnt that Jesus is not merely a man to be admired, but God to be worshipped. He is not just a great person, but the greatest human being that ever lived. While he is the king of kings, he is also the suffering servant.

But for themselves they learnt what we must also learn: that if we want to build a shack for the Messiah, we must first listen to him.

– Don McLellan <>