Amen. Good morning, good morning.
My name is Grant and I'm one of the pastors here at the church
and it is good to be with you. It's good to be back with you.
My family had some holiday over most of August and so we started
it off as you do as a pastor by going and doing a wedding, which
was wonderful. But we've kind of been all over
Ontario a little bit and it's so good.
Connie and I were just reflecting.
My wife and I were reflecting how grateful we are to be back
and settled in Guelph. And for many of you, I'm sure
you can also resonate with this. Glad for kids to be going back
to school and for rhythms to be coming back to normal.
But mostly we're just, we're so thankful for you, for our
church, and for our chance to be back together worshipping.
So that's what we're going to do.
We're going to jump in. We're going to continue working
our way through Luke and we're still in Luke Chapter 9.
We're gonna see. You can open up if you wanna
take some time to find it in your Bibles or on a phone, on a
tablet, do whatever is easy for you to get in front of you.
I think that's the main point. But Luke 928 to 36 is what we're
going to read today. But before we do that, I want to
pray and kind of lead us into it.
So it takes some time. There'll be a few minutes to get
yourselves situated into Luke 9. We'll also have it eventually up
on the screens. But let's let's pray God thank
you for your love and for your grace.
Thanks that you're with us and that we are able to gather
together and worship in this way to be the community, to be the
church. Yeah, we, we're grateful.
We need it, need to do life together in relationship.
And so thanks that this is one of the ways that you bless us.
And thank you guys, that you continue to teach us things,
that you've got words for us and ways in which you long to get
into our hearts and minds and transform our lives.
So I got up, pray that as we wrestled this text out, as we
read our way through this passage about Jesus, your
transfiguration, I pray that that's what you would do today.
God change our hearts and our minds, transform what needs to
be transformed. We need you to do it.
And we pray all these things in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.
So I wonder, I'd be willing to bet that you have, but I wonder
if you've ever had what you would consider an experience in
life where you find yourself looking around and thinking
something here feels different. Something's not quite the same.
And, and maybe you can't quite put your finger on it, you can't
quite name it, but you're looking around, you're in the
midst of this experience and you're going, wow.
Like something is different. It's hard to describe with
words, but there's a moment or there's a place that feels to
you different. And when I say different, I
mean, in some ways that feels spiritual.
And maybe for you, that's language that resonates and, and
you can think, yeah, I've had those moments where it feels
spiritual, where something feels different, where you just kind
of sit and you take things in and you look around you go, OK,
and maybe you have other language to describe it.
Maybe it fell to you a little bit like this otherworldly or
out of body experience. This moment where you're, I'm
not quite sure what is going on. There's a painting in my office.
If you've been in there, maybe you've seen it on your way out.
But there's a painting in my office of a mountain in Israel
that I was able to climb when I was there in 2012.
And I remember coming to the top of that mountain and feeling
that type of experience coming to the top of it.
Like unlike so many of the other places in Israel, which are loud
and filled with different things that you can buy and take home
for you, like tourist traps a little bit with trinkets to
purchase and pictures to be taken.
Like, I remember this one because we got to the top of
this mountain and there was nobody there.
There was nothing to be found. We were just at the top and it
was peaceful and it was quiet. It was calm and it was serene To
me. It felt holy.
There was a holy place. I remember coming to the top
and, and finding a place away from my other, you know, group
members who had also walked up to the top and, and sitting down
on a rock and praying. And I remember experiencing this
divine peace in those moments. It felt to me in in those
moments like the distance between heaven and earth was
small, like it shrunk, and like that entire trip.
For me, it was significant in my spiritual journey.
Maybe your mountaintop experience or your spiritual
experience wasn't on a literal mountain.
Maybe it was alone in a room of prayer, maybe it was during
worship, maybe it was at a concert.
Maybe it was away at camp or in a canoe on a river, like
hundreds of kilometres away from anybody else, any other human
being. I'll give you another example.
I went on this winter hiking trip and we hiked in and I
planned the route. This is all on me, but I didn't
realize how much more time it would take in the winter to hike
this particular trail. And so we're hiking in and the
sun starting to set and then it gets dark.
And so we pull out lights, headlights, and we did most of
the the hike on the snow and ice, trudging through minus 20s
weather to get to our campsite in the dark.
And when we arrived there, it was completely dark and we
struggled to set up our tents and we, there's no way we're
going to make a fire. Everybody just kind of crawled
into bed and tried to sleep. And I remember that night we
heard these like loud pinging noises on the lake.
I got like, what is that? And it was the ice, it was
cracking. The pressure of the ice was
shifting and cracking. And it was just these pings
going across. And remember lying awake,
they're going, what is going on? And in the morning, waking up to
this beautiful, peaceful, serene lake, frozen lake that we had
camped on, it was a spiritual for us, those who were there
experience one more to show that they don't just have to be in
the middle of like on the top of a mountain or in the middle of
Algonquin Park in the winter. Doesn't need to be super wild
out of the ordinary experience as a friend of mine sent me this
one day a song and it was in the middle of a day.
We were at our old house in Hamilton and I won't let me
paint this picture for you. There were dirty diapers in the
everywhere and dirty dishes in the sink and like toys strewn
about the family room when I was sitting there with the kids.
And it was not peaceful in the way that you would typically
think. And it was certainly not quiet
in the way that you would typically think.
And it was in the middle of for us, like this difficult season,
discernment. Things are going on.
What are we going to like God, what are you calling us to?
And my friend just sent me one text message.
He said, hey, I was thinking and praying about you.
I think you should listen to this song.
And I listened to the song and I remember sitting there and I
just like, tears started to come.
I just sat and I cried. I'm like, man, this holy place.
Celtic Christianity calls these thin places thin places.
Places where heaven feels close and where God feels immediately
present. Places where the space between
heaven and earth feels small, like it's right there in front
of you, that you can reach out and touch it.
Iona, the island on the western coast of Scotland, often called
a thin place. Luke 9, the verses that we're
gonna read describes, I think, a thin place.
This is one of those mountain tops experiences, one of those
moments where heaven and earth are close and where heaven is
revealed on earth, where the glory of God is on full display.
And so part of the invitation with the passage like this is to
slow down and allow it to unfold in front of you.
And so we are going to work our way through it in a moment.
But instead of just working our way through it kind of chunk by
chunk, what I want to do is just begin by reading it slowly.
And maybe this is the most meaningful part of the entire
sermon for you, but the invitation is just to allow it
to unfold in front of you and to attempt to really experience
what is happening. So I'm going to read about the
transfiguration. This is starting in verse 28.
About 8 days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and
James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray.
As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed
and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.
Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendour,
talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure,
which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
Peter and his companions were very sleepily sleepy, but when
they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men
standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus,
Peter said to him, Master, it is good for us to be here.
Let us put up 3 shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and 1:00
for Elijah. He did not know what he was
saying. While he was speaking, a cloud
appeared and covered them, and they were afraid.
As they entered the cloud, a voice came from the cloud
saying, This is my son whom I have chosen, Listen to him.
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.
So about 8 days ago is how we start off the passage.
About 8 days ago, Jesus has predicted his death.
About 8 days ago, Jesus has challenged his followers to take
up their own crosses and follow him like this is a devastatingly
strong and dangerous invitation to the disciples.
Jesus in his own words, he says the Son of Man must suffer many
things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priest of
the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third
day raised to life. And then he said to them,
Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up
their cross daily and follow me. Whoever wants to save their life
will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
And it's this significant moment in Jesus's life and his
ministry. He's now declared that he is the
Son of Man. He's declared that he must be
killed and when will be raised from the dead to new life.
And it's not the message that his followers, his disciples,
were hoping for. It's not the hey, it's time
we're gonna go storm the castle kind of message that they were
expecting. Death was not part of their
expectation. Death, in their eyes, meant
weakness. It meant failure.
It meant that their hopes for a Messiah who would restore Israel
were gone or soon to be gone. If Jesus dies, this thing ends.
And in Matthews version of that story, Peter, who we're gonna
see really bold and brash, he actually begins to rebuke Jesus.
If you read Matthew's account, he says never, literally starts,
never exclamation mark. It's like my kids when it's time
for bed never and they run little.
That literally happens. And then you keep reading Peter,
he begins, he rebukes Jesus, he says this shall never happen to
you. Like never, not a chance.
This can't happen. And you almost picture Peter.
He's like half pleading like, please no, don't let this be the
way. And half are like this better
not be the way because this isn't what we've been waiting
for. Jesus declaring that he must
die. And so we begin this passage. 8
days later. Jesus's declaration that he has
to die is echoing in their ears. About 8 days after this, Jesus
said this. He took Peter, John and James
with them and went up onto a mountain to pray.
So that's the this that he has to die, that he will be raised
up to new life. If you wanna follow me, you have
to take up your cross daily. And then he takes Peter, John
and James with him and they went up onto a mountain to pray.
And I don't care if you're reading in a few Bible like the
church owns, you can highlight those.
Those are good things to underline and highlight.
There are three clues that something significant is about
to happen, and I want us to notice them this morning.
So the first is the purpose. Jesus gets away to pray.
Jesus often gets away to pray during his ministry.
Jesus, in fact, consistently chooses to get away to pray.
And when you begin to look at all of those moments where Jesus
does leave in order to pray, many times it's either just
before or just after something significant happens in his life
and in his ministry. Jesus goes into the wilderness
to pray, says he fasts, and he prays before or sorry.
That's immediately after his baptism and before his ministry
starts. So it's at least beginning of
his ministry. Things are just about to ramp
up. What happens?
He's led into the wilderness, He fasts and he prays.
Before Jesus calls the 12 disciples and names them.
He goes up onto a mountainside and gets away to pray.
After he heals a man with leprosy, crowds begin to gather.
And like, things are just kind of picking up steam here.
And they bring the sick to Jesus in order for him to heal them.
But Jesus, it says he withdraws to lonely places in order to
pray. Prayer consistently drives the
mission and the ministry of Jesus.
And so the first sign is that he's gone up to a mountain to
prey. The second sign that he wants to
notice here are the people. So the purpose now, the people
for so much of Jesus's ministry. Jesus goes off in a particular
direction. And what happens?
Crowds follow, sometimes many, sometimes just a few here and
there. But it it seems like in this
moment, Jesus is really deliberate to pare things down
and to get away. Not even all of his disciples,
not even just the 12 disciples are invited into this moment
with Jesus. Only Peter, John and James are
invited up this mountain. And those are the same three who
we're gonna see later on toward the end of Jesus life will be
invited up another mountain to pray once more before Jesus's
death. So the crowds are gone.
Most of the disciples are left behind.
Jesus goes with Peter, James and John.
The third thing that I wanted to notice is the place nothing
small happens in the Bible when the story shifts to up on a
mountain. And we've talked a little bit
about this throughout the series.
There's a reason why spiritually rich and impactful moments in
life are called mountaintop experiences.
The Bible is filled with them. Bible is filled with stories of
people ascending, going up mountains in order to meet with
God, in order for God to be immediately present with them.
And so Moses. We see Moses in Exodus and if
you want to go take a look at it, Exodus 3429, Moses is taken
up Mount Sinai to meet with God in order to receive the Law and
the 10 commandments. Moses gets to do it twice
because he comes down and he smashes the 10 commandments and
then he has to go back up that mountain.
But when he returns, it says that his face and his clothes
are shining with light because he had been in the presence of
God. Moses goes up the mountain.
Elijah also goes up a mountain, only this time it's to defeat
the prophets of of ball on the mount or on Mount Carmel.
And in that story Elijah goes up and it's kind of this like duel.
You can go and read it, but God causes fire to rain down from
heaven, lighting the altar, proving himself to be the one
true God in that mountaintop experience.
And so we have these three, the the people, the place, and and
the purpose pointing us to something happening as he was
praying. As he was praying, the
appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright
as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, those
same 2 appeared in glorious splendor.
Talking with Jesus. They spoke about His departure,
which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they
became fully awake, we're going to get to that Eventually.
They saw his glory and the two men standing with him.
Jesus is, and I'm sure if your Bible has headings in it, Jesus
is transfigured. That's what most Bibles name
this section of the Gospel of Luke.
And Luke doesn't use that specific word.
He doesn't use the specific word like Matthew and Mark
transfigured. That word is a word that sounds
familiar to our ears. It's metamorpho where where we
get metamorphosis from and it means to be transformed, to
change form, but not just like the shape shift and like look
different, like put on a mask, kind of pretend to be somebody
else. Like this is to change in a way
that reveals and keeps with inner reality what is really
true. It's the same word that Paul
uses when he writes to the church.
Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Allow God to transform your heart and your mind in the way
that it was intended to be. Jesus, Like I said, he doesn't
shape shift he he doesn't look completely different like the
disciples still recognize him as Jesus.
Instead, he begins to reveal the fullness of who he really is to
those disciples. This is the fullness of who
Jesus is. Son of God on display, fully
human, fully God. All of his goodness, all of his
wonder and majesty is being revealed in this moment to the
disciples. And it says they go from being
very sleepy to fully awake. They saw his glory.
They see Jesus's true nature, his full glory on display.
The glory of God is present. Heaven and earth are not just
close, but heaven is breaking into earth, and the disciples
get to witness it. They get to see it fully awake.
They see it with their own eyes. Jesus is God, God's glory, fully
present on earth, inside of human history, and on behalf of
humanity. Sometimes you and I need to be
woken up to who Jesus really, truly, fully is, and sometimes
we need to be reminded to see clearly, Stanley Hauerwas says.
Jesus is transfigured and we begin to see the glory of the
God whose home is among mortals. I love that line.
We begin to see the fullness of who God is, his glory on
display, not just this God who dwells like in the stars away,
but whose home is among mortals. And then he continues, who will
dwell in us and make us his people, wiping every tear, and
death will be no more. What Hawass is pointing us
toward, I think, is that the final promise found at the very
end of the book in Revelation, God's coming to dwell on earth,
God's restoring things to the way they were meant to be.
All of it begins in and with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
Moses representing all of the law and the prophets.
Elijah rather representing all of the prophets pointing us
toward Jesus and Jesus pointing us toward the end of the story
where God's presence will finally come to rest on earth as
it is in heaven. We're told Jesus, Elijah and
Moses, they speak with one another about Jesus's death,
literally his departure, how he will depart, which he was about
to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
Their conversation is forward-looking.
This mountaintop experience isn't just happy emotion.
Feel good, wonder at who Jesus is, celebrate and then go home.
Mountain Top Experience Over This mountaintop experience is
filled with the conversation of Jesus death, Fred Craddock
writes. This is a mountaintop
experience, but not the kind about which persons right
glowingly of sunrises, soft breezes, warm friends, music and
quiet time. On this mountain the subject is
death, and the frightening presence of God reduces those
presence to silence. In due time, after the
resurrection, he says, they will remember, they will understand,
and they will not feel heavy. In fact, they will tell it
broadly as good news. But here's the thing.
They're not quite ready yet. Peter, I love Peter.
Peter confronted with Jesus, whose face is shining with Moses
and Elijah, who really like honestly, right, shouldn't be
here in this moment says the most Peter thing that comes to
his mind. Peter, if you don't know, acts
first thinks maybe like that's how he moves.
That's how he operates and it's bold.
In many moments it is bold, but we continue to read This is so
as the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, Master, it's
good for us to be here. Let us put up 3 shelters, one
for you, one for Moses, and 1:00 for Elijah, and then we get this
line in parenthesis. He did not know what he was
saying. This is the Bible version of a
footnote, OK? This is the like you, Luke wants
us to know that this is not the way Jesus, you know, had
intended this, this maybe to go in this like this is Peter's
working something out here, all right?
This is what he wants you to know.
Peter's trying to figure it out, but here's the thing.
You and I can be a lot like Peter, right?
You can probably get into Peter's mind a little bit.
Here's Moses, Elijah, Jesus, three people who ascended
mountains and met with God. At least two of them had faces
shining with light. Like there's something similar
going on here. This is a moment.
This is a mountain top experience.
This is this is a moment that we want to sit in and enjoy.
And like, Peter's getting wrapped up into things and you
can imagine how his mind starts to go right, Like maybe this is
the moment we've been waiting for.
Maybe this is the coming of the Kingdom.
Like Jesus, maybe you, maybe you got it wrong a little bit.
Like maybe we don't have to leave this mountain.
Maybe we can stay here. Let's try to make sense of it.
Let's think about how we can configure this so that this can
be the thing. Like maybe just you don't need
to go back down the mountain and and die in Jerusalem.
Like maybe that part can we can put it on hold for a little bit.
Maybe we don't have to leave this emotionally high,
wonderful, great mountaintop experience.
So he says, listen, Gee, this is a good thing that you brought
us. This is our moment finally.
Like I know you've been doing the thing and like Moses and
Elijah, but like, maybe we can do something now too.
Like, hey, we wanna help. I'll build 3 shelters, one for
each of you. We can pitch a tent and we can
stay. That's what he's saying.
What Peter's referencing is the tent of presence.
When Israel was wandering in the desert, Moses would leave, go
outside of their camp, and he would put up a tent of presence
where God would meet with him. And so Peter's going, hey, we've
got language for this. We, I can see what's happening.
We can understand this and we can make sense of it and we can
capture it and we can hold on to it.
He wants to build a shelter and commemorate and contain this
amazing gift of God, His presence and His glory on full
display. Like maybe, maybe we don't have
to leave. Only Peter is interrupted again.
This there's listen, there's a lot, I think there's a lot of
comedy in the scripture when you know how and where to find it.
So here's Peter saying like, hey, maybe this mountaintop
experience doesn't need to end. Jesus let me do this mid
sentence. While he was speaking, a cloud
appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered
the cloud, so they are hit by fear.
And then a voice came from the cloud saying, This is my son
whom I have chosen, Listen to him.
When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone.
The disciples kept this to themselves.
They did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.
Listen to them. I think we have the same
tendency as Peter to limit God or to contain God, to try to
understand what God is doing and put it in a box that feels safe
and comfortable and cozy. Now I wonder how you try to
limit God. What tents are you building to
make your life a little bit more easy to manage?
And then if God's in this box over here, then I can have this
box right here and I can have this one over here, and I can
make sense of everything. And it's neat and it's tidy and
this is the way it's meant to be.
And maybe it's as simple as, hey, church is its own box.
I go to church on Sunday because that's the right thing to do,
because that's what my mom and dad did as my grandparents did.
And I'm gonna continue to do the same thing.
I'll tell you one of the boxes that I wrestle with as a pastor
putting God in and I don't have a name for it.
I just called the pastor box, but maybe it can resonate with
you. This is the box where I read my
Bible most days because I'm getting ready for a sermon that
I have to preach on Sunday, or because I'm looking for some
word of encouragement that I can send to somebody else.
I spent hours studying, reading, reading commentaries, what other
people say about the passages that we wrestle through and very
quickly what I can do and I can find is I find myself going,
Hey, I have spent so much time in the script My my job, my time
with Jesus, my time reading the Bible.
It's done nice tidy. Leave it when I go home, right?
The door can shut on my office and I go home.
And what I don't do is my own quiet time, my own hey God, you
need to confront me for me moments.
You need to challenge my heart. You need to get into my life.
You need to reorient, rearrange things in my own spirit.
For me, not as a pastor, eventually maybe as a pastor.
That's a box that I think many pastors or people who work for
churches can end up inadvertently putting God into.
Many of us can be like Peter when really what we need is this
level of divine interruption. I wonder if you've had any type
of experience where you've been stopped dead in your tracks and
hopefully it's an OK experience that you're like not, I'm not
talking like car accident, like not that level of, of
experience. But I'll give you one.
For me, I when I was training and running a lot, and this was
when we were living in Hamilton, we ran through the winter.
And in order to run through the winter, you basically are
committed to running in the dark.
Like that's just, that's it. And so this was the fall was
starting to get dark early and that we would run, we would go
trail running so early in the morning so that we could be back
home at 1/2 decent hour that we started with headlamps.
And you can probably imagine where this is going.
And so we start with headlamps running through the woods,
through the forest on the Bruce Trail in Hamilton.
And I had one moment where I was running and my headlamp, if you
ever used the headlamp, it's really good at illuminating like
just a very specific area in front of you and not all of the
things in front of you. And I ran smack into a branch
that I didn't see it like, and I landed on my back and lying in
the mud and there's cobwebs all over me and stopped dead in my
tracks. And in moments like that, you
really like, you do wonder, you second guess all of the
decisions you've made in life that have led you up to that
moment. That's the level I think of
interruption that Luke has or that that that Luke draws up for
Peter here. This is like while he was
speaking mid sentence. Like I've got the knowledge,
I've got the wisdom. I know the way we should go.
Hey G. And mid sentence God shows up.
Peter is interrupted and in that interruption I think they
finally start to get that this is different.
The disciples and Jesus have an experience with God the Father.
God's presence descends on them, says that Peter and the other
two disciples, they're caught up, they're afraid as they
entered the cloud, like something here is happening.
And then a voice speaks. And really what we see here is a
parallel story to Jesus's baptism.
There, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, Jesus is
baptized. When he comes up, there's a
voice that speaks. The voice comes from heaven.
You are my son, whom I love with you.
I am well pleased. Here again, God confirms who
Jesus is. You are my son.
This is my son, and God confirms the mission that Jesus has been
sent on. So at the baptism, the beginning
of the ministry of Jesus with the one of the things that
baptism does is it confirms Jesus's identity as the Son of
God and it confirms the mission, the ministry that he is going to
embark on. This isn't just some random
person that is doing some random thing.
God is affirming, confirming Jesus's identity and his
mission. Here again, this is my son whom
I have chosen. Listen to him.
God's divine interruption confirms Jesus identity and
confirms Jesus's mission and it corrects Peters understanding
and Peters will. Peter is pulled in this moment
into alignment with God's mission and with who Jesus is.
You know, I think there's a chance that some of us, maybe
all of us, need to be interrupted.
That level of fall on your back, pull the cobwebs off, wipe the
dirt and get back up kind of interruption until your life is
interrupted by Jesus, truly and properly.
All aspects of it shifted because of who he is.
You aren't fully awake and you're not living fully alive,
but there is great hope to be found in learning to allow God
to be God, and in learning to allow that God to interrupt your
life when he sees fit. Allow that same guy to stop you
dead in your tracks. Correct your understanding,
correct your desires, and correct your will and pull you
into greater alignment with what Jesus is still doing in the
world today. Let me pray, God, thanks for
your love and for your grace thinks that you're with us and
thinks that you interrupt us and you interrupt our lives.
Now we're grateful for that, as painful as a process as it may
be at times. So God, I pray that you would
interrupt and I pray that you would align our hearts, align us
as a church with who you are and what you're doing.
Jesus here say we we love you. Would you help us live out that
love in this world? So we gotta teach us, encourage
us, challenge us, rebuke us. All of it.
We need you to as we continue to worship.
I do pray that we would go encouraged because you continue
to show up and because you continue to be present.
We pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.
Amen. Amen in.