Listen!

06-Aug-23

Luke 9:23-36

Prayer is probably the most important discipline that any of us can cultivate. And Jesus is our prime tutor in this matter. When Jesus needed to pray, when Jesus needed to be alone with God, everything else in his life came to a crashing halt. And so Jesus has gone up into a mountain to pray. Jesus is away from the crowds, and perhaps surprisingly, even away from most of his disciples. Only Peter and John and James are with him on this retreat, and they’re not really with him, because they have managed to fall asleep. A careful study of the gospels will reveal that all of Jesus’ disciples suffered from narcolepsy. Whenever Jesus prays, the disciples sleep. Much could be said perhaps, about the demanding and exhausting nature of doing ministry, but it is far more fun to imagine that the disciples of Jesus had perfected the art of sleeping with a pious look on their faces. Some of them may even have gotten so good at this that they looked like they were deep in prayer. There is no question that some church people have also perfected this manner of sleep.

Luke, I think, would prefer that we tended toward the exhausting demands of ministry, rather than just snoozing off for snoozing for the sake of snoozing off, but the words that he uses to describe this phenomenon have confused translators for centuries. Listen again to what the translators of our pew Bibles have managed to come up with: “Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake…” Hmm…I don’t get it either. Try to think of something like asleep, but alert, and you’ll be pretty close.

But while the three disciples were sleeping alertly, Jesus’ appearance was radically changed, and neither Luke, nor any of us, nor those sleepily alert disciples, can fully comprehend the majesty of this moment. In fact, the whole of chapter nine is filled with amazing, majestic moments. Chapter nine is probably the most dramatic, most life changing, most other-worldly chapter in the whole of Luke’s gospel. The whole chapter represents a turning point in Jesus’ life, the disciples lives, and potentially in our own lives.

The chapter begins with Jesus giving his disciples the power to cure diseases, and the authority to drive out demons. This is stunning. In doing this, Jesus is showing his disciples something amazing. He is in effect saying, as I am in this world, so also are you. Jesus is demonstrating that the torch of the Kingdom of God is being passed on to his disciples.

And lest we forget, the disciples have passed it on to us.

And then Jesus sends the disciples out to preach, and with the preaching, the kingdom is growing and moving out into new areas. And today, that torch is still being passed, even if those new places are across the globe, or here, in our own neighborhoods.

And then there’s the feeding of the five thousand, which is an awesome demonstration not only of how Jesus meets human need, but also about how we are co-participants in meeting that need. Like the disciples, we are the ones who are called to distribute the bounty that Jesus provides.

And that, and no less majestic, is followed by Peter’s awesome and amazing declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the long awaited Messiah.

And after that, there’s the powerfully troubling call to discipleship that immediately precedes our passage this morning. Those of us who are sleepily alert probably ought to take a quick peek at that just now.

Twice in this chapter Jesus goes away by himself to pray, and twice Jesus very plainly tells his disciples that he must suffer and die. And in spite of this overload of profound majesty, the disciples still manage to find some time to argue among themselves about which one of them is the greatest. Being human, sometimes, can even shatter the majesty of God.

But before we return to what we have now come to call the transfiguration, let us consider one more moment of majesty, albeit a quiet moment and a personal one to which only we have become privy. Verse 51 says “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” At that moment, here in chapter nine, Jesus began the long and frightening journey to his death. I cannot imagine the courage that that moment took. It was all about endings, to be sure, but it was also about endings that lead to ultimate fulfillment.

The ministry of Jesus is rapidly changing. It is expanding to the disciples, and the center point of it all is this moment of glory on top of the mountain.

Heaven has broken into the earthly realm. The gates of heaven have opened up, and eternity is occupying the top of this mountain. And Moses and Elijah have come to talk with Jesus. And the sleepily alert disciples are dumbfounded. There is light everywhere. Bright, blinding light. Light that cannot be fully comprehended because it is not of this earth. It is the very light of heaven, and the disciples discover that they are aliens on top of this mountain.

It might have been instructive to us and to the disciples to have known some of the more intimate details of this conversation, but it seems that just as the disciples are beginning to become involved, the conversation is over and Moses and Elijah are gone as mysteriously as they had appeared.

But an observation, nonetheless: this conversation began with prayer. Jesus had felt the need to pray, and in that prayer, heaven embraced him. When we pray, our hearts are also embraced by heaven, and our voices are heard in the very throne room of God. We may not experience blinding light, and visions of Moses and Elijah when we pray, but we are very close to where they are. The hosts of all heaven surround us when we pray. Angels and archangels and seraphs and cherubim are all there, along with saints who’ve gone before us.

It is not an accident that a bit of the heavenly conversation on the mountain is preserved. We learn that Moses and Elijah and Jesus are talking about Jesus’ departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. “Accomplish” is a word that implies purpose, and determination and completion. The death of Jesus was no senseless tragedy. The death of Jesus did not come about as the inevitable result of a crowd gone mad. The death of Jesus was the culmination of God’s plan of salvation, put in place and established long before Adam and Eve felt the soil of this earth between their toes.

Just as things were winding down on top of the mountain, a cloud enveloped everyone. This cloud is the glory-cloud of God’s presence, and it makes appearances throughout the Scriptures, and always for the benefit of the human beings who witness it. We probably remember it best as the pillar of cloud by day and the column of fire by night that led God’s people through the wilderness and reminded them of God’s daily presence, protection and provision. The cloud, though, has been around since the moment of creation, as it hovered over that mysterious deep.

The presence of this cloud terrified the disciples. They knew that this cloud signaled the very presence of God. And then, as the cloud enveloped everyone, there was a voice that came thundering out of it. “This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him.” And then, it was all over. This moment was absolutely essential in the lives of Peter and James and John. It would inform their ministries until the day that they accomplished their own departure from this earth. This moment is also essential for everyone of us who is here this morning. It is intended to inform every moment of our lives, sleeping, waking, or sleepily alert, because we are the ones who now hold the entire ministry of Jesus in our hands. The torch has been passed. We must listen. We must pay attention and we must act, because Jesus is still speaking.