Luke 9:28-36
March 2, 2025
Have you ever had one of those days at work when in the mid-afternoon, maybe around 3:00pm, you find yourself to be a little tired and hungry? You’ve already had lunch and it’s not time yet for dinner, so you realize you just need a little something to eat or drink, some kind of snack, to hold you over until it’s time to go home.
In our Gospel lesson for today Jesus gives three of His disciples what we might call a “spiritual snack” to hold them over until that glorious Sunday morning when Jesus rose from the dead on Easter. Jesus knew their faith would need to be strengthened as He was about to experience a very difficult part of His ministry, where He would face tremendous opposition to His claim that He was God in the flesh. One week earlier Jesus asked His disciples if they knew who He was, and Peter spoke up on behalf of the disciples and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It was a great confession of faith as Jesus had never told them that, but the Holy Spirit had worked faith in their hearts in order to see Jesus as the promised Savior of the world. But then in the verses leading up to our text, Jesus drops this bombshell on them and tells His disciples, “The Son of Man just suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised to life” (Luke 9:22). Peter then pulls Jesus aside and tries to talk Him out of it, saying that he will never let that happen.
So a week later Jesus takes 3 of His disciples – Peter, James, and John – away from the crowds of people who had been flocking to Jesus and the disciples for healing, to the top of a mountain to pray. But, my guess is that by the time they reached the top it was late at night, because the disciples soon fell asleep.
If you have ever been awakened in the middle of the night, I’m sure you remember how you may have been a little confused. Sometimes it takes a few moments to fully wake up and figure
out where you are or what’s going on. Now imagine what the disciples experienced. As Jesus was praying, we are told in this text that His face was altered, his clothes became dazzling white, and suddenly two people – Moses and Elijah, from the Old Testament – were talking with Him. At this moment, Jesus was giving His disciples a glimpse of the future. He was revealing Himself as more than just a carpenter, teacher, or healer. He was showing them that He was the true Son of God. I’m sure Peter, James, and John were stunned and maybe even a little groggy, but when they were fully awake, we are told they recognized Jesus in all His glory.
But what were Jesus, Moses, and Elijah discussing? Why was it so important for Moses and Elijah to appear to talk with Jesus? It says in verses 30-31, “Two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Not only were they talking about Jesus physical departure from this life through His death on the cross, but I’m sure they were also discussing what His death would accomplish. Namely, that by His death, Jesus would free the world from the punishment of sin so that we could live with Him forever.
I’m sure this had to be an incredible moment, and based on Peter’s words, he did not want this event to end. So in an effort to hang on to this mountain top experience Peter says, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
We’ve all had mountaintop experiences that we did not want to end, such as graduation, your wedding day, or a family vacation, but they all come to an end and we have to come back down. It is necessary for us to return to the routine of our lives to evaluate and learn from the mountaintop experience. And that’s what Peter and the other disciples had to learn about Jesus’ life. It was not all fun and glory. For two years the disciples had seen Jesus do some amazing things. They saw Him heal the blind, deaf, and crippled. They saw Him feed over 5000 people with just a small amount of food. And they saw Him walk on water and control nature. But
God’s purpose for sending Jesus to this earth also involved the agony of the cross. In fact, mountaintop experiences often occur only in relation to the valleys of life, because it in life’s valleys that most of us grow. We grow as a result of having to struggle with heartbreak and evil. We grow as a result of having to crawl and fight our way out of life’s valleys. I think many of the opportunities that we are presented with in life for growth are never the ones we would choose, but they are the ones we get.
And so when we reach those peaks in our lives, it is often because of the strength we have gained crawling out of the valleys. This Wednesday, we will begin the season of Lent, and one of the mysteries of Lent is the message that God’s victory in Christ over Satan came in the agony of the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. I don’t know if we will ever fully understand what that means for us, but Jesus’ journey through His valley of suffering definitely tells us something about God. Lent tells us that the suffering of death and the hurt of failure are where we find God’s presence. God certainly stands with us on our mountaintop experiences and we usually feel closer to Him during those moments, but God is also always with us to hold us up, strengthen us, and support us as we make our way out of the valleys of hardship and suffering.
Peter, James, and John wanted to preserve this moment, but that was not God’s plan. In fact, God seems to make this very clear as He appears to interrupt Peter as it says in verse 34, “As Peter was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them…and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him” (Luke 9:34-35). And suddenly it was over. No more dazzling white clothes, no more prophets, no more words from God the Father – only Jesus, standing there with the original appearance He had when He came up the mountain with His disciples. God wanted the disciples to listen to Jesus and I would guess that they probably listened to Jesus more than ever before. Like Peter, maybe we need to be reminded that if we really want to see God’s glory we just need to stop and listen to Jesus.
And the season of Lent gives us the opportunity to listen to Jesus even more with additional worship services on Wednesday nights.
Through God’s Word, we have been given a glimpse of the future – a future that does not end in death, but in life. And we have a responsibility to share that news of the future with others, that this Jesus came down from that mountain to focus on His mission to save us. A mission that involved climbing up another mountain, yet not with His disciples, but with a cross on His back.
Now maybe many of you have shared that Good News of Jesus’ love and forgiveness with others, and have invited people to worship, but they have rejected that news. That doesn’t mean we have failed or should give up. When a blind person cannot see the sun, it is not because the sun is not shining, it is because they are blind. So when a person rejects our invitation, it is not because our message was defective, it’s because Satan has blinded their hearts. But that doesn’t mean we give up sharing this important news of the future. Instead, we continue to come to worship and listen and pray, knowing that the light of Jesus’ cross and empty tomb pierces our dark and dreary days when nothing seems to go right, assuring us that Satan has no power over us and better days are ahead. Satan may try to use our sins and failures to prompt us to live in the shadows of doubt, but God continues to shine on us through Jesus so that we constantly stand in the spotlight of His love.
We have this great advantage over the disciples in that we can see across the valley of suffering and hardships to another mountaintop – the peak experience of Jesus’ resurrection over sin and death that we celebrate on Easter morning. So we know our future is in heaven, but in the meantime we need to continue listening to Jesus and to feed on His Word, not as a snack, but as a meal for strength, because in moments of great joy or terrible agony, He is there, always loving, always guiding, and always ready to listen to us.
