Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus(20Feb2011)
Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus: M3 (11 02 20)
Title: Listening to the Real Jesus
Text: Luke 9:28-36
BIG IDEA: We love God as we listen to Jesus.
When I was in high school, I was easily distracted in class. I would drift off in my mind and replay the scene from a recent basketball game – usually experiencing remorse over having muffed an easy shot... Or I'd be daydreaming about a girl that I had a crush on... Wondering if I would bump into her in the hallway later that day... Wondering if she knows who I am? And then the teacher would say something that would grab my attention. She would say, “This is important. This is going to be on the final exam." My head would snap to attention and I would actually listen.
A little more recently, when I've been in the “classroom” with my sailing instructor and he's been explaining something on the whiteboard, I found myself restless, wanting to just get out on the water and start sailing. But then he'll say something like this: "Something really important.... If you don't learn to do this properly with the sail... Your boat may actually capsize and people might die.” My head snaps to attention as I think I don't want to be party to another person's death, especially as a pastor. That would be bad (the Board of Elders would not approve). I better listen.
Have you ever been in the circumstance when you felt that it was really important to listen to someone?
What if God were to tell you it was really important for you to listen to someone?
In the passage that we are going to look at today we will see great spiritual leaders featured, but God specifically singles one out and says, “Listen to him.”
Today as we continue our series, "Following the Way of Jesus,” we're going to look at why God calls us to listen to this particular spiritual leader and how we can listen to him. So why listen to the spiritual leader? And how do we listen to him?
If you have your Bibles please turn to Luke, Chapter 9, vs. 28:
In Luke 9:28-36, we read:
28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. 29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, 31 appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure,[a] which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. 32 Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. 33 As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)
34 While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” 36 When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.
Verse 28 from the text begins with these words,
28 About eight days after Jesus said this…
Eight days after Jesus said what? We read in the preceding text that Jesus was praying in private with his disciples. As he was praying, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” His disciples replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah. And still others, one of the prophets of long ago that has come back to life.” “And what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Christ. God. The Messiah. The Saviour of the world.”
Eight days later now, we read that as Jesus was praying on this mountain, likely Mt.Tabor, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. We also read that two men, Moses, who lived about 1400 years before Christ, and Elijah, who lived about 900 years before Christ, appeared in glorious splendour on the mountain and began talking with Jesus.
We read that a cloud appeared and enveloped them.
So, on Mt. Tabor we see that there was a flash of lightning. There is a bright light. There is fire. We also read that on the mountain a cloud appeared and enveloped Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
The images of fire, lightning, and cloud in Scripture represent the special presence and glory of God. When Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, we read that on the mountain God met Moses and manifested his presence through lightning, thunder, fire and a cloud. We also read that, as God led his people, the Hebrew people, out of Egypt across the wilderness toward the promised land. He led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So, the images of lightning and cloud on Mt. Tabor are manifestations of the special presence of God.
God is everywhere, but God’s presence as we see in the lightning, the fire and the cloud are signs of his special presence with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.
Now in the early history of the Christian church, before what we call the New Testament was formed, there was a debate as to who was the greatest spiritual authority for the church. Was it Moses, to whom God gave the Ten Commandments and the law? Or was it Elijah, who was considered by many to be the greatest of the prophets? Or was it Jesus? They had Jesus’ sayings through their oral tradition, but at the time they didn’t have his words written down in the Gospels or compiled in what we have now--the New Testament.
In this passage, and as we read the Scripture as a whole, we have clues as to who among these three greats was the greatest. When Moses met God on Mt. Sinai, as I said there was lightning, thunder and the cloud, all which were manifestations of God’s special presence. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, his face was radiant. It glowed like the moon. It glowed like something glorious had shone down upon him, and God had shone down upon him. But, according to Matthew’s account of this experience on Mt. Tabor, Jesus’ face shone, not like the moon, but like the sun. We don’t read of Moses’ and Elijah’s face shining like the sun, but we read that Jesus’ face shone like the sun. And if Moses’ face radiated like the moon after he had been on Mt. Sinai, if Moses’ face radiated because another greater light had shone down upon him and he was reflecting it back, Jesus’ face shone like the sun. The source of his glow was something within him.
In Hebrews 1:3, we read:
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.
In Colossian 1:15 we read:
The Son (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God.
What about Elijah? Elijah was a great and courageous prophet. But according to the end of the book of Malachi, the prophet prophesies that Elijah would return as a forerunner for the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour figure of the world.
Jesus tells us that Elijah did return in the person of John the Baptist. Not literally, but John the Baptist had the same spirit as Elijah. According to John the Baptist, i.e., the Elijah figure, he was a friend of the bridegroom (John 3:29). He was not the groom himself, but he was a groomsman. He prepared the way for the groom. He made a path for the groom to walk down. And, according to John the Baptist, who is the Elijah figure, Jesus was the groom he was pointing to, Jesus was greater than himself.
Moses and Elijah and Jesus are talking. According to verse 30, they talk about Jesus’ departure which is he about to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem. The word in our English translation is rendered “departure,” but in the Greek the word is exodus from which we get the word “exodus.” Moses led the Hebrew people out of the land of Egypt across the wilderness toward the promised land. Moses led the exodus of God’s people out of a land where they had been slaves into a place where they became free people.
Jesus did something greater. Through his exodus, which was a symbol of his death, he rescued us from the slavery of sin; he set us spiritually free and brought us into the promised land of God’s daylight. So from the story we know Jesus is the greatest of the three.
It is also clear in this story that Jesus is preeminent among the three in this story itself. While Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah, we read that a cloud enveloped them, and a voice came from heaven saying, “This is my Son whom I have chosen. Listen to him.” And after the voice had spoken, according to Peter, James and John, only Jesus was there on the mountain. Clearly God was affirming the unique role of Jesus Christ, his Son, not Moses or Elijah. This is why he says, “Listen to him.”
And the voice of God the Father here on Mt. Tabor is similar to the voice of God at Jesus’ baptism, where the heavens open and his Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove. And God says of Jesus, “You are my Son whom I love. With you, I am well-pleased.”
Gifted commentator Dale Bruner says that one of the things God is saying is, “All I want to say, and all I want to show you about me, I have made known in my Son Jesus. If you want to hear me, listen to Jesus. If you want to get to know me, get together with Jesus.”
So what is God saying to us in this passage? God is saying, and he says it twice, once at Jesus’ baptism and now at his transfiguration: “Jesus Christ is my priceless Son. I am deeply pleased in him. In my Son I will say all I want to say, and reveal all I want to reveal, and do all I want to do.”
Why listen to Jesus? Jesus is not simply another great prophet, not even prophets on par with Moses and Elijah. He is the unique Son of God. He is the exact representation of God’s being. He is the final revelation of God.
A lot of people say Jesus was a great teacher and that’s it… or a prophet. You can’t read the gospels and conclude that he was just a great teacher or a prophet. He claimed to be God. He said things like “I saw Satan fall from heaven.” Normal people don’t say that. When he said “I saw Satan fall from heaven,” he is saying “I preexisted.” He said to the Jewish religious leaders, “Before Abraham was ‘I am’.” When he said this, he was saying something that the Jewish leaders consider blasphemous. Abraham lived 2000 years before the time of Jesus. So Jesus Christ is saying that before Abraham existed, he was already in existence and the reference to being “I am” is a way of saying “I am God,” because when Moses asked God “Who shall I say that you are,” God says in the burning bush, “I am. Tell them that I am sent you.”
We cannot read the gospels and conclude that Jesus was just a good teacher. He claimed to be God. So he was either a liar or he was crazy, or he was and is the unique Son of God, the exact representation of God’s being, God in human flesh. But people in a place like Vancouver don’t want to say Jesus is a liar or a lunatic – he's too popular... It would be a little like a Canadian disparaging Sidney Crosby right after he scored the gold-medal winning role... People just don't call Jesus a liar. But people also here in Vancouver don't want to say Jesus was the unique son of God, the one who gives people special access to God. So, it’s popular in a place like Vancouver to say that Jesus was a great moral teacher or a prophet. But if you read the Gospels honestly, you can't make that conclusion. Either he is who he says he is--the source of all life--or he is a lunatic, a fake.
As God says on Mt. Tabor, he’s God’s unique Son. We must listen to him.
Why listen to Jesus? Because he is the unique son of God.
Why listen to Jesus? Because listening to Jesus helps us to understand how deeply we are loved by God and listening to Jesus helps us to express our love for God.
As Jesus is in prayer with Peter, James and John, as he is with Moses and Elijah, he hears God saying, “This is my Son whom I have chosen.” At his baptism, Jesus hears the words, “You are my beloved Son, my priceless treasure. With you I am well-pleased.” The most important thing that we can hear from God is his voice saying, “You are my beloved son and you are my beloved daughter. I am delighted in you.” It is so simple, but it can be so powerfully healing.
You may say that God says of Jesus that he is the beloved son, that he never said that of me. The Bible teaches in Romans 8 that when we meet Jesus and his Spirit enters into us, the Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit, that we are beloved, the beloved sons and daughters of God, as well. In verse 31, we read that Jesus was about to experience an exodus (a way of saying his death) so that we could be set free from our sin… If you look at Jesus’ death on the cross and understand he died for you, he mysteriously bore your sins and shame in his body so that you could be forgiven and reconciled to God – you'll hear in that how you are allowed in the deepest possible way to be forgiven by Christ. If you have never asked God to come into your life and forgive you of your sins based on Jesus' death for you on the cross, if have never asked him to fill you with his Holy Spirit, you can do that, and begin to know how beloved you are.
My good friend, Joanna Mockler serves as a fellow trustee for World Vision. Joanna recently asked the international leadership of World Vision to pray for the children of the world. World Vision, as you may know, sponsors hundreds and hundreds of thousands of kids around the world. She says, “Pray that God would turn the hearts of these children toward him, and pray they would know how much they are loved by him.” I was just with some of our families at our Family Friday night this past Friday. We were talking about building a house for God, creating a rule of life for the family. I know that for many parents in our community the greatest thing they want their kids to know is that they are loved both by God and by them.
I just got an email from parents here at Tenth who shared:
Our daughter (age 4) has asked us several times whether we would still love her if she turned bad in the future; our answer: we will still love her as she is always our beloved child but our hearts will be broken and want to see her to become a good person again; we tell her this is how God loves us too; we can tell that she feels secure in our love.
When we know that we are loved by our Maker, there is healing in that knowledge. There is something about coming to God daily in a prayerful meditative way that helps us know, not just in our head, but in our heart, that we are loved by God. When that happens we are healed. We are healed from our need to always be doing more, from the need to be earning more money, from the need to be popular, cool. We are free from the need to have lots of influence. We are free from the need to be successful. There is nothing wrong in being successful, but we can be free from the pathological need to be successful to validate our existence. We can be set free by the knowledge that we are the beloved.
So why listen to Jesus? Because in his voice we know how beloved we are by God.
Why listen to Jesus? Because when we listen, we not only know that we are loved by God, but when we listen we also express our love for God.
When we listen to Jesus, we also attend to his call for us. As Jesus speaks to us through the gospels, in particular, and occasionally directly to our heart by his Spirit, and when we follow that word, when we obey that word, we express our love for Jesus. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”
I know the word “obedience” has negative connotations for many of us. Maybe we think of an austere school principal from our past who was very much into enforcing the rules. But none of these sorts of negative feelings of resentment associated with some authority figure applies to our obedience to Jesus Christ, because while Jesus’ word for us isn’t always an easy or soft word, it is always a loving word. The word “obedience” is derived from the Latin word audire, which means “to listen.” “Obedience” means to listen attentively. Listening deeply to Jesus means “to obey” him. We don’t need to experience any sense of fear or hesitation in listening to and obeying Jesus because of the love that Jesus Christ has for us, as his beloved brothers and sisters.
How do we listen to Jesus?
We’re going to experience a shift as we look more practically at how we can become people who listen to Jesus.
There is a clue in our text. In verse 28 we read that Jesus took Peter, John and James up on to a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed. And then we read about how the cloud, the cloud of God’s presence, descended on the mountain. For most of us, when we pray, we are not going to experience the literal cloud of God’s presence. But we know that throughout the Scriptures and throughout the history of the Christian church, when people have prayed, when people have sought God, they have experienced God. Prayer becomes a portal for them to the great mystery. We typically associate prayer with our speaking to God. Certainly part of prayer involves our speaking to God, but ideally our prayer also involves our listening to God. The posture of prayerful silence is the optimal space for us to hear God. It is no accident the prophets and many of the fathers pursued God in the silence of the desert or the cave. Benedictine monk Christopher Jamieson says, "Silence is the gateway to the soul and the soul is the gateway to God."
God’s still small voice is best heard in a quiet place away from the chatter and the clamour of our lives. We live in a time where most people have no silence at all. After a day at school or at work, most people unwind by turning on the television, viewing something on the internet, or fiddling with their iPod. Many people today, particularly young people, don’t want to have any space in their lives where they are quiet and alone experiencing solitude.
I have been reading the essays written by William Deresiewicz. Deresiewicz has taught English at Yale and Columbia. In one of his classes he asked the students, “What does the place of solitude have in your lives?” One of them said, “I find the idea of being alone so unsettling that I will sit with a friend even while I am writing a paper.” Another student in the class said, “Why would anyone want to be alone?” For a lot of young people today the last thing they want to do is be alone and in silence.
Without a prayerful silence in our lives, we will not be able to hear the voice of Jesus. Part of the reason why we have encouraged Practicing the Presence: Spending Time with Jesus in Scripture and Prayer this year is to foster this place for prayerful listening in Jesus’ presence. If you want to learn more about what it means to discern the voice of Jesus, I commend Gordon Smith’s upcoming seminar (In your program: Gordon Smith: The Voice of Jesus: Learning to Listen; Learning to Pray. Saturday, February 26, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Upper East Hall, Tenth Church. On the Tenth website: Under “Seminars” in the Tenth website.) I have found that prayerful silence has been an increasingly important part of my own journey with God. People who know me are aware that I love activity and action and movement, literally and metaphorically. I love to exercise. I love to see movements launched. But I am also deeply drawn to ancient spiritual practices. My doctoral studies, as you may know, are exploring some ancient monastic spiritual practices, which I believe are needed for today.
I have the practice of getting up very early while it is still dark. I don’t want to talk about when I actually get up because I don’t want you to necessarily emulate it. I am probably going to bed earlier than many of you because we have a toddler.
I begin by entering into an ancient spiritual practice established by Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s called The Examen. I enter into an exercise where I prayerfully review the last day and review what I did, how I felt—to use the technical term given to us by Ignatius of Loyola: consolation. That is, feelings of joy and peace, energy and sense of being alive, and aligned with God. Where I experienced feelings of desolation-- where I felt impatient, angry, anxious, sad, disconnected from God, then I will simply take one or two of those feelings and offer them up in spontaneous prayer to God. I might express gratitude for some gift in the previous day. I might lift up something that is causing me to feel burdened.
(If you’re interested in exploring this, there is a great article on the Internet by Dennis Hamm, a Jesuit priest, called Rummaging for God: Praying Backwards through Your Day. The website is in your sermon outline).
Then I usually mix a green drink, pour some cereal into a bowl, and then, as some of you may know, I use my phone and begin to listen to a passage from the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Gospels, or maybe an epistle. If a passage strikes my heart, I will relisten to it…hit the rewind button. I will use the scroll function, scroll back, listen again and again, and then offer that up to the Lord.
This week for example I've begin listening to the Gospel of Mark. I read about how Jesus ate with "sinners" and tax collectors. I am struck by how broad and deep Jesus’ love is for people. I scrolled back to that section several times. I thought about Ken Pierce’s message from last Sunday about how God calls us to love people who are not religious. I thought how I was going to be meeting up with a friend of mine with whom I share a common interest in sport. He's not religious. His views about ultimate reality are different from mine. His lifestyle, at times, has been very different from mine. So I prayed that as I meet up with him I would sense the welcome of Jesus.
While it is still early in the morning, I typically either go running or swimming. I find both running and swimming contemplative experiences. Then I get to the office.
So, we can listen to Jesus as we quietly “rummage for God” as we pray over the things that we have felt over the past day. We can listen to Jesus as we spend time in his Word.
We can also listen to Jesus in "real-time" as we pay attention to the circumstances of our day.
Part of what I do at the end of my prayer time each morning after a time of quiet reflection over the past day, after having prayed for certain people and issues that I sense I'm to pray for, I pray something : “Lord, I give you this day. Please take the lead. Help me to respond to your initiatives.”
I know this is fairly abstract. So let me illustrate.
Fairly recently, in the morning I had prayed, "I offer this day to you. Please lead me." I almost always go running or swimming in the mornings, but that morning I wasn’t feeling 100% . I do not run and swim out of any sense of obligation. It’s done with a sense of fun. So I headed to the office at about 6 AM and the power is out at the church which is unusual. So I'm sitting in my office in the dark and I do something that I almost never do at that time in the morning, I turn on my cell phone so that I have a little light in my office. As I turn on my cell phone I realize that I have a breakfast appointment that I am not aware of that I would've missed otherwise. (Some of you may know someone else sets up my schedule during the week or I might double book myself.) Early into our breakfast the person shares that he's gone through a very difficult time the last two weeks, and then he asked me why is it that I believe in God--why is it that I believe. I was able to share with this person that I believe in God through some of the experiences I've had with God, and cited some other reasons. Talking about my own faith strengthened my own faith. I hope and pray it made a small difference in his life as well. But looking back, I sense that was a conversation I was supposed to have, and that connection I would've normally missed because I don't turn on my phone that time in the morning. I know this is very subjective, but I simply had a sense that this was arranged by God. I can’t always look back on a day and see as clearly how God guided me. But, I want to listen to Jesus through silent prayer, his word in the gospels, in the circumstances of my life, and also in the choices, especially the major choices of my life.
I tend to be an initiator, a “let’s go for it” kind of person. I really want my life to be attentive to Jesus’ guidance especially in the major decisions of my life.
When I was single, the best advice I ever received was from my friend and pastoral colleague, Brian Buhler, who at the time was pastoring over on the North Shore. He said, “When it comes to marriage, you want God’s guidance there.” It sounds simple, but there is so much wisdom in there.
If I look back, there was one relationship where I had invested so much time and emotion and effort; there was chemistry; we were both followers of Jesus; we were briefly engaged…we both wanted the relationship to work out, but as we thought about it and prayed about it, we didn’t sense any sense of peace or alignment with God around our being married. We did not have any big, logical reason as to why not. It was heart-breaking to break up, but it was God’s will.
Even though, like most people, I had a few relationships before I got married, I thought maybe it was God’s will for me to be single. That was something I continued to offer up to God. When I met Sakiko (reconnected with her after 10 years. I won’t worry you with the details again of that story), I had a real sense of peace and alignment with God. I didn’t get a word from heaven saying, “Marry her.” But we both felt the sense of peace from God in this relationship, moving toward marriage.
When it came to having or not having children, we really wanted a sense of God's guidance. We came to pursuing further graduate studies, I really wanted a sense of God's guidance. When it comes to investing our resources locally and globally, I really want us to be guided by God.
And so I seek to listen to Jesus in prayerful silence, in the Word of God in the gospels, and my circumstances, and in the major decisions of my life.
All of these examples thus far are ways that we can listen to God in solitude, but God also calls us to listen to his voice in community.
When Jesus is praying on Mt. Tabor, later called The Mount of Transfiguration, he is with Peter, John and James. He is joined by Moses and Elijah. This is what my colleague Ken Pierce would call a small group—an amazing small group! Who wouldn’t want to be part of that small group! But throughout the history of Christian spirituality there has been a great tradition of spending time with God in solitude—prayerful silence, listening, or listening to the Scriptures.
But also being within a community of brothers and sisters who share your faith in Jesus Christ is also essential to hearing the voice of Jesus.
I will speak a little more next week on this community aspect, and Gordon Smith will likely address it in his seminar on The Voice of Jesus.
But if we want to fully hear Jesus’ voice we need brothers and sisters who can be a voice of Jesus to us. Throughout the gospels, although Jesus is in regular communion with God, we can only hear God audibly speaking to Jesus twice—at his baptism and on The Mount of Transfiguration. For most of us here, we won’t hear a near audible voice from God very often. For most people that will be the exception. But we can hear God through prayerful silence, the Examen, the Scriptures, through our circumstances, and in the major decisions of our lives--we can listen to Jesus and to community.
If you are dating someone, and you are head over heels over that person, but if all of your Christian friends (I don’t mean people who are Christian in name, but who really know God) together say, “I don’t think you should be with that person,” it could be that God is speaking to you through your community. Or all your Christian lawyer friends, say I don’t think a career in law is for you. It might be that God is speaking to you through that.
So when it comes to listening to Jesus, it’s important to spend time in prayerful solitude. It is also critical to spend time in Christian community because God speaks through the community.
When Peter was asked by Jesus, “Who are you? Who do people say that I am?” Peter replied thoughtfully, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter understood that intellectually on the Mount of Transfiguration in prayer. He had this mystical experience in community where he saw Jesus enveloped by a cloud, and he heard the voice of God affirming that Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God.
As we pray and listen to Jesus in solitude and in community, we probably won’t have the same experience Peter had or exactly the kind of vision that John had on Isle of Patmos while he was praying. Those were unique, one-time experiences, but as we pray alone and with others we will experience God deeply. We will meet him and he will speak to us by his Spirit, through the Scriptures, through our circumstances, and through our brothers and sisters.
This is not your high school principal. It’s not your yoga instructor. It’s God who says, “Listen to my Son. Listen to Jesus.”
Lead the people in a simple prayer of Examen.
The Way of Jesus: M3 (11 02 20)
Title: Listening to the Real Jesus
Text: Luke 9:28-36
BIG IDEA: We love God as we listen to Jesus.
When I was in high school, I was easily distracted in class. I would drift off in my mind and replay the scene from a recent basketball game – usually experiencing remorse over having muffed an easy shot... Or I'd be daydreaming about a girl that I had a crush on... Wondering if I would bump into her in the hallway later that day... Wondering if she knows who I am? And then the teacher would say something that would grab my attention. She would say, “This is important. This is going to be on the final exam." My head would snap to attention and I would actually listen.
A little more recently, when I've been in the “classroom” with my sailing instructor and he's been explaining something on the whiteboard, I found myself restless, wanting to just get out on the water and start sailing. But then he'll say something like this: "Something really important.... If you don't learn to do this properly with the sail... Your boat may actually capsize and people might die.” My head snaps to attention as I think I don't want to be party to another person's death, especially as a pastor. That would be bad (the Board of Elders would not approve). I better listen.
Have you ever been in the circumstance when you felt that it was really important to listen to someone?
What if God were to tell you it was really important for you to listen to someone?
In the passage that we are going to look at today we will see great spiritual leaders featured, but God specifically singles one out and says, “Listen to him.”
Today as we continue our series, "Following the Way of Jesus,” we're going to look at why God calls us to listen to this particular spiritual leader and how we can listen to him. So why listen to the spiritual leader? And how do we listen to him?
If you have your Bibles please turn to Luke, Chapter 9, vs. 28:
In Luke 9:28-36, we read:
28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. 29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, 31 appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure,[a] which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. 32 Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. 33 As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)
34 While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” 36 When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.
Verse 28 from the text begins with these words,
28 About eight days after Jesus said this…
Eight days after Jesus said what? We read in the preceding text that Jesus was praying in private with his disciples. As he was praying, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” His disciples replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah. And still others, one of the prophets of long ago that has come back to life.” “And what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Christ. God. The Messiah. The Saviour of the world.”
Eight days later now, we read that as Jesus was praying on this mountain, likely Mt.Tabor, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. We also read that two men, Moses, who lived about 1400 years before Christ, and Elijah, who lived about 900 years before Christ, appeared in glorious splendour on the mountain and began talking with Jesus.
We read that a cloud appeared and enveloped them.
So, on Mt. Tabor we see that there was a flash of lightning. There is a bright light. There is fire. We also read that on the mountain a cloud appeared and enveloped Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
The images of fire, lightning, and cloud in Scripture represent the special presence and glory of God. When Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, we read that on the mountain God met Moses and manifested his presence through lightning, thunder, fire and a cloud. We also read that, as God led his people, the Hebrew people, out of Egypt across the wilderness toward the promised land. He led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So, the images of lightning and cloud on Mt. Tabor are manifestations of the special presence of God.
God is everywhere, but God’s presence as we see in the lightning, the fire and the cloud are signs of his special presence with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.
Now in the early history of the Christian church, before what we call the New Testament was formed, there was a debate as to who was the greatest spiritual authority for the church. Was it Moses, to whom God gave the Ten Commandments and the law? Or was it Elijah, who was considered by many to be the greatest of the prophets? Or was it Jesus? They had Jesus’ sayings through their oral tradition, but at the time they didn’t have his words written down in the Gospels or compiled in what we have now--the New Testament.
In this passage, and as we read the Scripture as a whole, we have clues as to who among these three greats was the greatest. When Moses met God on Mt. Sinai, as I said there was lightning, thunder and the cloud, all which were manifestations of God’s special presence. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, his face was radiant. It glowed like the moon. It glowed like something glorious had shone down upon him, and God had shone down upon him. But, according to Matthew’s account of this experience on Mt. Tabor, Jesus’ face shone, not like the moon, but like the sun. We don’t read of Moses’ and Elijah’s face shining like the sun, but we read that Jesus’ face shone like the sun. And if Moses’ face radiated like the moon after he had been on Mt. Sinai, if Moses’ face radiated because another greater light had shone down upon him and he was reflecting it back, Jesus’ face shone like the sun. The source of his glow was something within him.
In Hebrews 1:3, we read:
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.
In Colossian 1:15 we read:
The Son (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God.
What about Elijah? Elijah was a great and courageous prophet. But according to the end of the book of Malachi, the prophet prophesies that Elijah would return as a forerunner for the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour figure of the world.
Jesus tells us that Elijah did return in the person of John the Baptist. Not literally, but John the Baptist had the same spirit as Elijah. According to John the Baptist, i.e., the Elijah figure, he was a friend of the bridegroom (John 3:29). He was not the groom himself, but he was a groomsman. He prepared the way for the groom. He made a path for the groom to walk down. And, according to John the Baptist, who is the Elijah figure, Jesus was the groom he was pointing to, Jesus was greater than himself.
Moses and Elijah and Jesus are talking. According to verse 30, they talk about Jesus’ departure which is he about to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem. The word in our English translation is rendered “departure,” but in the Greek the word is exodus from which we get the word “exodus.” Moses led the Hebrew people out of the land of Egypt across the wilderness toward the promised land. Moses led the exodus of God’s people out of a land where they had been slaves into a place where they became free people.
Jesus did something greater. Through his exodus, which was a symbol of his death, he rescued us from the slavery of sin; he set us spiritually free and brought us into the promised land of God’s daylight. So from the story we know Jesus is the greatest of the three.
It is also clear in this story that Jesus is preeminent among the three in this story itself. While Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah, we read that a cloud enveloped them, and a voice came from heaven saying, “This is my Son whom I have chosen. Listen to him.” And after the voice had spoken, according to Peter, James and John, only Jesus was there on the mountain. Clearly God was affirming the unique role of Jesus Christ, his Son, not Moses or Elijah. This is why he says, “Listen to him.”
And the voice of God the Father here on Mt. Tabor is similar to the voice of God at Jesus’ baptism, where the heavens open and his Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove. And God says of Jesus, “You are my Son whom I love. With you, I am well-pleased.”
Gifted commentator Dale Bruner says that one of the things God is saying is, “All I want to say, and all I want to show you about me, I have made known in my Son Jesus. If you want to hear me, listen to Jesus. If you want to get to know me, get together with Jesus.”
So what is God saying to us in this passage? God is saying, and he says it twice, once at Jesus’ baptism and now at his transfiguration: “Jesus Christ is my priceless Son. I am deeply pleased in him. In my Son I will say all I want to say, and reveal all I want to reveal, and do all I want to do.”
Why listen to Jesus? Jesus is not simply another great prophet, not even prophets on par with Moses and Elijah. He is the unique Son of God. He is the exact representation of God’s being. He is the final revelation of God.
A lot of people say Jesus was a great teacher and that’s it… or a prophet. You can’t read the gospels and conclude that he was just a great teacher or a prophet. He claimed to be God. He said things like “I saw Satan fall from heaven.” Normal people don’t say that. When he said “I saw Satan fall from heaven,” he is saying “I preexisted.” He said to the Jewish religious leaders, “Before Abraham was ‘I am’.” When he said this, he was saying something that the Jewish leaders consider blasphemous. Abraham lived 2000 years before the time of Jesus. So Jesus Christ is saying that before Abraham existed, he was already in existence and the reference to being “I am” is a way of saying “I am God,” because when Moses asked God “Who shall I say that you are,” God says in the burning bush, “I am. Tell them that I am sent you.”
We cannot read the gospels and conclude that Jesus was just a good teacher. He claimed to be God. So he was either a liar or he was crazy, or he was and is the unique Son of God, the exact representation of God’s being, God in human flesh. But people in a place like Vancouver don’t want to say Jesus is a liar or a lunatic – he's too popular... It would be a little like a Canadian disparaging Sidney Crosby right after he scored the gold-medal winning role... People just don't call Jesus a liar. But people also here in Vancouver don't want to say Jesus was the unique son of God, the one who gives people special access to God. So, it’s popular in a place like Vancouver to say that Jesus was a great moral teacher or a prophet. But if you read the Gospels honestly, you can't make that conclusion. Either he is who he says he is--the source of all life--or he is a lunatic, a fake.
As God says on Mt. Tabor, he’s God’s unique Son. We must listen to him.
Why listen to Jesus? Because he is the unique son of God.
Why listen to Jesus? Because listening to Jesus helps us to understand how deeply we are loved by God and listening to Jesus helps us to express our love for God.
As Jesus is in prayer with Peter, James and John, as he is with Moses and Elijah, he hears God saying, “This is my Son whom I have chosen.” At his baptism, Jesus hears the words, “You are my beloved Son, my priceless treasure. With you I am well-pleased.” The most important thing that we can hear from God is his voice saying, “You are my beloved son and you are my beloved daughter. I am delighted in you.” It is so simple, but it can be so powerfully healing.
You may say that God says of Jesus that he is the beloved son, that he never said that of me. The Bible teaches in Romans 8 that when we meet Jesus and his Spirit enters into us, the Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit, that we are beloved, the beloved sons and daughters of God, as well. In verse 31, we read that Jesus was about to experience an exodus (a way of saying his death) so that we could be set free from our sin… If you look at Jesus’ death on the cross and understand he died for you, he mysteriously bore your sins and shame in his body so that you could be forgiven and reconciled to God – you'll hear in that how you are allowed in the deepest possible way to be forgiven by Christ. If you have never asked God to come into your life and forgive you of your sins based on Jesus' death for you on the cross, if have never asked him to fill you with his Holy Spirit, you can do that, and begin to know how beloved you are.
My good friend, Joanna Mockler serves as a fellow trustee for World Vision. Joanna recently asked the international leadership of World Vision to pray for the children of the world. World Vision, as you may know, sponsors hundreds and hundreds of thousands of kids around the world. She says, “Pray that God would turn the hearts of these children toward him, and pray they would know how much they are loved by him.” I was just with some of our families at our Family Friday night this past Friday. We were talking about building a house for God, creating a rule of life for the family. I know that for many parents in our community the greatest thing they want their kids to know is that they are loved both by God and by them.
I just got an email from parents here at Tenth who shared:
Our daughter (age 4) has asked us several times whether we would still love her if she turned bad in the future; our answer: we will still love her as she is always our beloved child but our hearts will be broken and want to see her to become a good person again; we tell her this is how God loves us too; we can tell that she feels secure in our love.
When we know that we are loved by our Maker, there is healing in that knowledge. There is something about coming to God daily in a prayerful meditative way that helps us know, not just in our head, but in our heart, that we are loved by God. When that happens we are healed. We are healed from our need to always be doing more, from the need to be earning more money, from the need to be popular, cool. We are free from the need to have lots of influence. We are free from the need to be successful. There is nothing wrong in being successful, but we can be free from the pathological need to be successful to validate our existence. We can be set free by the knowledge that we are the beloved.
So why listen to Jesus? Because in his voice we know how beloved we are by God.
Why listen to Jesus? Because when we listen, we not only know that we are loved by God, but when we listen we also express our love for God.
When we listen to Jesus, we also attend to his call for us. As Jesus speaks to us through the gospels, in particular, and occasionally directly to our heart by his Spirit, and when we follow that word, when we obey that word, we express our love for Jesus. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”
I know the word “obedience” has negative connotations for many of us. Maybe we think of an austere school principal from our past who was very much into enforcing the rules. But none of these sorts of negative feelings of resentment associated with some authority figure applies to our obedience to Jesus Christ, because while Jesus’ word for us isn’t always an easy or soft word, it is always a loving word. The word “obedience” is derived from the Latin word audire, which means “to listen.” “Obedience” means to listen attentively. Listening deeply to Jesus means “to obey” him. We don’t need to experience any sense of fear or hesitation in listening to and obeying Jesus because of the love that Jesus Christ has for us, as his beloved brothers and sisters.
How do we listen to Jesus?
We’re going to experience a shift as we look more practically at how we can become people who listen to Jesus.
There is a clue in our text. In verse 28 we read that Jesus took Peter, John and James up on to a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed. And then we read about how the cloud, the cloud of God’s presence, descended on the mountain. For most of us, when we pray, we are not going to experience the literal cloud of God’s presence. But we know that throughout the Scriptures and throughout the history of the Christian church, when people have prayed, when people have sought God, they have experienced God. Prayer becomes a portal for them to the great mystery. We typically associate prayer with our speaking to God. Certainly part of prayer involves our speaking to God, but ideally our prayer also involves our listening to God. The posture of prayerful silence is the optimal space for us to hear God. It is no accident the prophets and many of the fathers pursued God in the silence of the desert or the cave. Benedictine monk Christopher Jamieson says, "Silence is the gateway to the soul and the soul is the gateway to God."
God’s still small voice is best heard in a quiet place away from the chatter and the clamour of our lives. We live in a time where most people have no silence at all. After a day at school or at work, most people unwind by turning on the television, viewing something on the internet, or fiddling with their iPod. Many people today, particularly young people, don’t want to have any space in their lives where they are quiet and alone experiencing solitude.
I have been reading the essays written by William Deresiewicz. Deresiewicz has taught English at Yale and Columbia. In one of his classes he asked the students, “What does the place of solitude have in your lives?” One of them said, “I find the idea of being alone so unsettling that I will sit with a friend even while I am writing a paper.” Another student in the class said, “Why would anyone want to be alone?” For a lot of young people today the last thing they want to do is be alone and in silence.
Without a prayerful silence in our lives, we will not be able to hear the voice of Jesus. Part of the reason why we have encouraged Practicing the Presence: Spending Time with Jesus in Scripture and Prayer this year is to foster this place for prayerful listening in Jesus’ presence. If you want to learn more about what it means to discern the voice of Jesus, I commend Gordon Smith’s upcoming seminar (In your program: Gordon Smith: The Voice of Jesus: Learning to Listen; Learning to Pray. Saturday, February 26, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Upper East Hall, Tenth Church. On the Tenth website: Under “Seminars” in the Tenth website.) I have found that prayerful silence has been an increasingly important part of my own journey with God. People who know me are aware that I love activity and action and movement, literally and metaphorically. I love to exercise. I love to see movements launched. But I am also deeply drawn to ancient spiritual practices. My doctoral studies, as you may know, are exploring some ancient monastic spiritual practices, which I believe are needed for today.
I have the practice of getting up very early while it is still dark. I don’t want to talk about when I actually get up because I don’t want you to necessarily emulate it. I am probably going to bed earlier than many of you because we have a toddler.
I begin by entering into an ancient spiritual practice established by Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s called The Examen. I enter into an exercise where I prayerfully review the last day and review what I did, how I felt—to use the technical term given to us by Ignatius of Loyola: consolation. That is, feelings of joy and peace, energy and sense of being alive, and aligned with God. Where I experienced feelings of desolation-- where I felt impatient, angry, anxious, sad, disconnected from God, then I will simply take one or two of those feelings and offer them up in spontaneous prayer to God. I might express gratitude for some gift in the previous day. I might lift up something that is causing me to feel burdened.
(If you’re interested in exploring this, there is a great article on the Internet by Dennis Hamm, a Jesuit priest, called Rummaging for God: Praying Backwards through Your Day. The website is in your sermon outline).
Then I usually mix a green drink, pour some cereal into a bowl, and then, as some of you may know, I use my phone and begin to listen to a passage from the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Gospels, or maybe an epistle. If a passage strikes my heart, I will relisten to it…hit the rewind button. I will use the scroll function, scroll back, listen again and again, and then offer that up to the Lord.
This week for example I've begin listening to the Gospel of Mark. I read about how Jesus ate with "sinners" and tax collectors. I am struck by how broad and deep Jesus’ love is for people. I scrolled back to that section several times. I thought about Ken Pierce’s message from last Sunday about how God calls us to love people who are not religious. I thought how I was going to be meeting up with a friend of mine with whom I share a common interest in sport. He's not religious. His views about ultimate reality are different from mine. His lifestyle, at times, has been very different from mine. So I prayed that as I meet up with him I would sense the welcome of Jesus.
While it is still early in the morning, I typically either go running or swimming. I find both running and swimming contemplative experiences. Then I get to the office.
So, we can listen to Jesus as we quietly “rummage for God” as we pray over the things that we have felt over the past day. We can listen to Jesus as we spend time in his Word.
We can also listen to Jesus in "real-time" as we pay attention to the circumstances of our day.
Part of what I do at the end of my prayer time each morning after a time of quiet reflection over the past day, after having prayed for certain people and issues that I sense I'm to pray for, I pray something : “Lord, I give you this day. Please take the lead. Help me to respond to your initiatives.”
I know this is fairly abstract. So let me illustrate.
Fairly recently, in the morning I had prayed, "I offer this day to you. Please lead me." I almost always go running or swimming in the mornings, but that morning I wasn’t feeling 100% . I do not run and swim out of any sense of obligation. It’s done with a sense of fun. So I headed to the office at about 6 AM and the power is out at the church which is unusual. So I'm sitting in my office in the dark and I do something that I almost never do at that time in the morning, I turn on my cell phone so that I have a little light in my office. As I turn on my cell phone I realize that I have a breakfast appointment that I am not aware of that I would've missed otherwise. (Some of you may know someone else sets up my schedule during the week or I might double book myself.) Early into our breakfast the person shares that he's gone through a very difficult time the last two weeks, and then he asked me why is it that I believe in God--why is it that I believe. I was able to share with this person that I believe in God through some of the experiences I've had with God, and cited some other reasons. Talking about my own faith strengthened my own faith. I hope and pray it made a small difference in his life as well. But looking back, I sense that was a conversation I was supposed to have, and that connection I would've normally missed because I don't turn on my phone that time in the morning. I know this is very subjective, but I simply had a sense that this was arranged by God. I can’t always look back on a day and see as clearly how God guided me. But, I want to listen to Jesus through silent prayer, his word in the gospels, in the circumstances of my life, and also in the choices, especially the major choices of my life.
I tend to be an initiator, a “let’s go for it” kind of person. I really want my life to be attentive to Jesus’ guidance especially in the major decisions of my life.
When I was single, the best advice I ever received was from my friend and pastoral colleague, Brian Buhler, who at the time was pastoring over on the North Shore. He said, “When it comes to marriage, you want God’s guidance there.” It sounds simple, but there is so much wisdom in there.
If I look back, there was one relationship where I had invested so much time and emotion and effort; there was chemistry; we were both followers of Jesus; we were briefly engaged…we both wanted the relationship to work out, but as we thought about it and prayed about it, we didn’t sense any sense of peace or alignment with God around our being married. We did not have any big, logical reason as to why not. It was heart-breaking to break up, but it was God’s will.
Even though, like most people, I had a few relationships before I got married, I thought maybe it was God’s will for me to be single. That was something I continued to offer up to God. When I met Sakiko (reconnected with her after 10 years. I won’t worry you with the details again of that story), I had a real sense of peace and alignment with God. I didn’t get a word from heaven saying, “Marry her.” But we both felt the sense of peace from God in this relationship, moving toward marriage.
When it came to having or not having children, we really wanted a sense of God's guidance. We came to pursuing further graduate studies, I really wanted a sense of God's guidance. When it comes to investing our resources locally and globally, I really want us to be guided by God.
And so I seek to listen to Jesus in prayerful silence, in the Word of God in the gospels, and my circumstances, and in the major decisions of my life.
All of these examples thus far are ways that we can listen to God in solitude, but God also calls us to listen to his voice in community.
When Jesus is praying on Mt. Tabor, later called The Mount of Transfiguration, he is with Peter, John and James. He is joined by Moses and Elijah. This is what my colleague Ken Pierce would call a small group—an amazing small group! Who wouldn’t want to be part of that small group! But throughout the history of Christian spirituality there has been a great tradition of spending time with God in solitude—prayerful silence, listening, or listening to the Scriptures.
But also being within a community of brothers and sisters who share your faith in Jesus Christ is also essential to hearing the voice of Jesus.
I will speak a little more next week on this community aspect, and Gordon Smith will likely address it in his seminar on The Voice of Jesus.
But if we want to fully hear Jesus’ voice we need brothers and sisters who can be a voice of Jesus to us. Throughout the gospels, although Jesus is in regular communion with God, we can only hear God audibly speaking to Jesus twice—at his baptism and on The Mount of Transfiguration. For most of us here, we won’t hear a near audible voice from God very often. For most people that will be the exception. But we can hear God through prayerful silence, the Examen, the Scriptures, through our circumstances, and in the major decisions of our lives--we can listen to Jesus and to community.
If you are dating someone, and you are head over heels over that person, but if all of your Christian friends (I don’t mean people who are Christian in name, but who really know God) together say, “I don’t think you should be with that person,” it could be that God is speaking to you through your community. Or all your Christian lawyer friends, say I don’t think a career in law is for you. It might be that God is speaking to you through that.
So when it comes to listening to Jesus, it’s important to spend time in prayerful solitude. It is also critical to spend time in Christian community because God speaks through the community.
When Peter was asked by Jesus, “Who are you? Who do people say that I am?” Peter replied thoughtfully, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter understood that intellectually on the Mount of Transfiguration in prayer. He had this mystical experience in community where he saw Jesus enveloped by a cloud, and he heard the voice of God affirming that Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God.
As we pray and listen to Jesus in solitude and in community, we probably won’t have the same experience Peter had or exactly the kind of vision that John had on Isle of Patmos while he was praying. Those were unique, one-time experiences, but as we pray alone and with others we will experience God deeply. We will meet him and he will speak to us by his Spirit, through the Scriptures, through our circumstances, and through our brothers and sisters.
This is not your high school principal. It’s not your yoga instructor. It’s God who says, “Listen to my Son. Listen to Jesus.”
Lead the people in a simple prayer of Examen.
posted by Shigematsu at 1:49 PM
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