_{*This is the longhand version of the sermon I preached on Sunday, March 16, 2025. I first write it out in longhand to organize and memorize my thoughts. I then create an outline from which to preach, backward from how most people write. I refer to my actual sermon as the cliff notes version. It is not as long, and I sometimes change or add examples based on who is present.}

INTRODUCTION
I have recently begun working on a novel I started a long time ago. Before picking up where I left off, I re-read what I have already written. I call this book the story of what could have been and what should have been, thus, it is loosely autobiographical.

I recently read a section in which the main character contemplates where her life is and where she wants it to be. She compares herself to leaders in her church whom she admires and longs to emulate. She sees something in them she cannot explain, an inner peace and assurance she lacks. She says, “I want to figure out what ‘it’ is that I don’t yet get.”

I wrote that about my pastor and Sunday School teacher.

I spent a lot of time reflecting on that memory and wondered, “do I get it now? If so, what is it?”

MAIN SCRIPTURE

Luke 9:28-36 from The Living Bible

28 Eight days later he took Peter, James, and John with him into the hills to pray. 29 And as he was praying, his face began to shine,[a] and his clothes became dazzling white and blazed with light. 30 Then two men appeared and began talking with him—Moses and Elijah! 31 They were splendid in appearance, glorious to see; and they were speaking of his death at Jerusalem, to be carried out in accordance with God’s plan.

32 Peter and the others had been very drowsy and had fallen asleep. Now they woke up and saw Jesus covered with brightness and glory, and the two men standing with him. 33 As Moses and Elijah were starting to leave, Peter, all confused and not even knowing what he was saying, blurted out, “Master, this is wonderful! We’ll put up three shelters—one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah!”

34 But even as he was saying this, a bright cloud formed above them; and terror gripped them as it covered them. 35 And a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him.”

36 Then, as the voice died away, Jesus was there alone with his disciples. They didn’t tell anyone what they had seen until long afterwards.

REWIND EIGHT DAYS

Before we jump into this text, let’s go back a bit. Luke 9:28 says, “Eight days later he took Peter, James, and John with him into the hills to pray.” So, what happened eight days before this stunning event – often referred to as the transfiguration?

Jesus had just performed the miracle of feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish and had gone alone with his disciples to a secluded place to pray. Jesus tried to prepare them for what lay ahead – the cross.

The people of his day knew well about the gruesome punishment for criminals by death on a cross. What they failed to grasp – or refused to hear – was that this was the kind of death he intended to die.

After stating that he would “be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised on the third day.” (Luke 9:22, New American Standard Bible), Jesus warned the disciples that “[a]nyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all.

Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? If any of you is embarrassed with me and the way I’m leading you, know that the Son of Man will be far more embarrassed with you when he arrives in all his splendor in company with the Father and the holy angels (Luke 9:23-26, The Message).

Jesus is just about to travel to Jerusalem and to the cross. He is about to show disciples – and us – what following him will truly look like. They expected an earthly king and a life of ease. Instead, although difficult for them to comprehend in the moment, they – and we – received something far greater.

ASCENDING THE MOUNTAIN

Eight days after Jesus shared this message with his disciples, he chose Peter, James, and John to accompany him up the mountain to pray.

Let us read that passage again:

28 Eight days later he took Peter, James, and John with him into the hills to pray. 29 And as he was praying, his face began to shine,[a] and his clothes became dazzling white and blazed with light. 30 Then two men appeared and began talking with him—Moses and Elijah! 31 They were splendid in appearance, glorious to see; and they were speaking of his death at Jerusalem, to be carried out in accordance with God’s plan.

32 Peter and the others had been very drowsy and had fallen asleep. Now they woke up and saw Jesus covered with brightness and glory, and the two men standing with him. 33 As Moses and Elijah were starting to leave, Peter, all confused and not even knowing what he was saying, blurted out, “Master, this is wonderful! We’ll put up three shelters—one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah!”

34 But even as he was saying this, a bright cloud formed above them; and terror gripped them as it covered them. 35 And a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him.”

36 Then, as the voice died away, Jesus was there alone with his disciples. They didn’t tell anyone what they had seen until long afterwards (Luke 9:28-36 from The Living Bible).

We can never fully know or appreciate what really happened between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration because the only other witnesses were asleep. But Scripture does record a few important and miraculous events:

1) Jesus went up the mountain to pray – to seek the approval of God before he took this final decisive step in his ministry. Jesus did nothing without first seeking the will of God.

2) There, Moses and Elijah met with him. Moses was the great law giver of the people. Elijah was the great prophet of the people.

3) The scene concludes with the voice of God from heaven giving Jesus his approval and blessing.

Can you imagine witnessing any of that? I have had some pretty cool experiences during my trips to the Abbey of Gethsemani, but nothing compared to what this must have been like.

If Peter, James, or John had any doubt that Jesus was the Messiah, the chosen one of God before, this moment must have certainly convinced them.

Even earlier in Luke 9, before the great transfiguration, and before Jesus warns them of the cost of following him, Jesus asks who they think he is. Peter replied, “The Messiah—the Christ of God” (verse 20, The Living Bible).

Messiah and Christ are the Greek and Hebrew translations for “the anointed one.” In Judaism, the Christ of God was to be a future king who would restore Jewish sovereignty, bring peace, and usher in a new era of righteousness. Peter rightly believed Jesus was the fulfillment of this promise.

I imagine the difference between Peter’s response in verse 20 to his experience to what happened on the mountaintop as knowing who Jesus is and knowing Jesus. The difference may seem subtle, but it is profound. It’s a difference between knowing about someone and intimately knowing someone.

I have no doubt that Peter loved Jesus before this moment, but something surely changed for him here. We know that the change wasn’t necessarily instantaneous with Peter. If we continue to read through the Gospels and the Book of Acts, we see how often Peter stumbled. The end of the Gospel tells us that Peter denied knowing Jesus three times after Jesus’ arrest, but he returned. Each time Peter fell away, he returned.

THE GREAT AWAKENING – MINDS ASLEEP

But for our purposes today, I want to go back to one line in the passage about the transfiguration on the mountain:

“When they were fully awake, they saw his glory” (Luke 9:32).

William Barclay’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke points out that, in life, we miss so much because our minds are asleep.

He lists 3 things that keep our minds asleep:

1) Prejudice – being so set in our ways that our minds are shut. We refuse to even consider a new way of thinking.

We are all guilty of being prejudiced on some level. It may not be as grave as sending Jews to concentration camps or creating Jim Crow laws, but it can be just as dangerous. We see this play out every day. Our society today seems to have lost the ability to listen to anyone who believes or thinks differently than we do. Instead, we call them names, ridicule their naivete, or worse. We have created an invisible dividing line between “us” and “them.”

Albert Einstein once warned that “common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

Maya Angelou once reflected that “prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”

2) Mental lethargy – refusing to do the hard work of thinking.

Why do we do what we do? Why do we believe what we believe? Does it even matter? We may have questions or doubts, but we are too lazy to face those questions head on and seek answers.

Socrates once said that the “unexamined life is the life not worth living.”

3) Love of ease – refusing to even consider any kind of disturbing thought.

During World War II, the German church – Christians, mind you – intent on maintaining their safety and ease, went along with Hitler’s pogrom. We may look back with disgust at how the church behaved, but are we really that different today? We – meaning the larger Christian community – missed out on a great opportunity to reach out and help out during our most recent dark and desperate times during the pandemic. We – meaning the greater Christian community – were just as guilty as the Christian churches during WWII.

Nagarjuna, considered one of Buddhist most influential philosophers, once said: “If you desire ease, forsake learning.”

Theodore Roosevelt once said that “never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”

William Barclay wrote his commentary in 1975, long before the advent of 24-hour television, cellphones, social media, and all kinds of other forms of diversions that keep us asleep today. I am sure we could lump quite a few modern conveniences in one of these three categories.

THE GREAT AWAKENING – MINDS AWAKE

Barclay goes on to list 3 things designed to wake us up:

1) Sorrow – deep sadness or regret.

2) Love – Love will cause us to act in selfless ways like nothing else.

3) Sense of need – profound desperation.

This moment on the mountain, seeing the radiance of Jesus as he stood there talking to two sacred and pivotal figures – dead figures – from Jewish history served as an awakening for Peter, James, and John.

There is so much we could unpack in this alone. Why were they glowing? How did the disciples know the other two figures were Moses and Elijah? Were they scared? Did they believe in the resurrection of the dead before this? Did they think about this moment after Jesus died? Could they not, then, believe that Jesus would resurrect, too, just as he said he would?

These, and other questions, would lead me down a rabbit trail of unanswerable possibilities. Let us return now to our theme of awakening.

The transfiguration woke up Peter, James, and John. If we continue to read scripture, we learn that the disciples did not have an easy go of things after the resurrection of Jesus. As the first part of verse 37says, “on the next day, they came down from the mountain.”

This statement is literal, yes, but also quite poetic. We were never meant to live on the mountaintops, as wonderful as those moments may be. After we experience an awakening – and we often have several awakenings in our lifetime – God calls us to come down from the mountain to work in the mud and the mire of the valley of life.

The transfiguration was the beginning of the disciples’ awakening. I would consider this an awakening of love. This awesome lovely awakening is likely what caused Peter to so naively blurt out “Master, this is wonderful! We’ll put up three shelters—one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah!”

Peter didn’t fully understand what was happening, but he knew he never wanted it to end. Instead, he wanted to go camping with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
However, in the days to come, Peter, James, and John would experience sorrow, love, and need. These three awakenings primed them for what would happen next in the death, resurrection, and future ministries.

I’m not suggesting that we should be excited and hope for something bad to happen to us. Nobody wants to go through tough times. Seriously, who wants to hurt or mourn or grieve? I know I don’t. But we are creatures who long for, strive toward, and bask in lives of comfort and ease. But when we get too comfortable, we are reluctant to change, even if we know we should.

An awakening could be as horrific as the tragic death of a loved one or a natural disaster, but it could also be something as simple and sweet as the birth of a child or falling in love.

There is a beautiful scene in the Pixar movie, Wall-E when the robot, Wall-E, is dodging his way through a maze of “passively sedentary” humans in order to get to his robot friend, Eve. When he finds her, a woman sits in his way. She is moving along on a conveyor belt comfortably sitting in her chair absorbed in a screen, oblivious to Wall-E’s attempts to get her attention or anything else going on around her. He has to shove her chair, breaking the speaker at her head and jarring her from her trance before she sees him and lets him pass. A few scenes later, we see the rest of the people around her still in a trance, but she stands at the railing of the ship, gazing in awe at the stars surrounding her.

This is what we must remember:

It is not about how we are awakened. Rather it is about who we are awakened to – Jesus Christ – and what we do once we come down from that mountain of awakening.

In his Lenten Devotional referencing the Beatitudes, Jeren Rowell (the president of NTS where I went to school) writes, “What Jesus is talking about here in such a beautiful and poetic way is a manner of living where we take our cues not primarily from the world around us but from a focus on him that enables us to approach life differently from what would otherwise be the case . . . Jesus is saying that if you really want to be Christian, if you really want to walk the way of Jesus, then your core attitudes will be different from what you see in the world. Here is the good news: this does not depend on your strength or your ability to choose the right attitude. God is able to change your mind and give you the blessing of attitudes that reflect the very character of Jesus” (20-21).

We are all called to work toward the same goal, but the beautiful thing for us is that we don’t have to look alike or act alike or be alike to get there.

CONCLUSION:

I told you in the beginning about the main character in the story I am writing comparing herself to people she admires and wondering what “it” was that she did not yet get. I told you that I wrote that about my former pastor and Sunday School leader and wondered, “do I get it now? If so, what is it?”

I think I do.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a rock star. More than that, desperately wanted people to see me, love me, admire me. I thought that being on a stage and being adored by fans would somehow make me feel whole, complete, worthy.

I gave up on my dream to be a rockstar a long time ago, but that desperation to feel whole, complete, and worthy stayed with me for a very long time. If I am honest with you, I have to admit that that desire only left me a few years ago.

Yes, I was already working as a chaplain and already an ordained elder in the church and already preaching sermons and still feeling this need to be seen.

My great awakening – the big one that helped me to finally understand what “it” is – was the pandemic. Everything I saw and experienced working as a hospital chaplain during the worst of COVID and the way I was treated by those on the outside, a church family who was supposed to love and care about me broke me just enough for me to finally awaken and see what it was in them that I couldn’t quite see before – it took a broken heart and a broken spirit for me to get that it is not now, and never has been about me – it’s just about Jesus.

Casting Crowns has a song that sums it up perfectly:

Only Jesus

Verse 1:

Make it count, leave a mark, build a name for yourself
Dream your dreams, chase your heart, above all else
Make a name the world remembers.

But all an empty world can sell is empty dreams
I got lost in the light when it was up to me
To make a name the world remembers
But Jesus is the only name to remember

Verse 2:

All the kingdoms built, all the trophies won
Will crumble into dust when it’s said and done
‘Cause all that really mattered
Did I live the truth to the ones I love?
Was my life the proof that there is only One
Whose name will last forever?

Chorus:

And I, I don’t want to leave a legacy
I don’t care if they remember me
Only Jesus

And I, I’ve only got one life to live
I’ll let every second point to Him
Only Jesus

My style of preaching or writing may not look much different. That is because we use what we know. I realize that I do not have to be fluent in both Greek and Hebrew like my former pastor or have a Ph.D. and teach at the college level like my former Sunday School teacher.

I’m a storyteller. That’s how I make sense of the world and that’s how I communicate. But my focus is vastly different. My focus in everything I do is no longer about me – ONLY JESUS.

In his book Twelve Ordinary Men, John MacArthur writes about the lack of the disciple’s pedigree. Most, in fact, lack much of a biography at all. He points out that “this is because Scripture always keeps the focus on the power of Christ and the power of the Word, not on the men who were merely instruments of that power. These men were filled with the Spirit and they preached the Word. That is all we really need to know. The vessel is not the issue: the Master is.” A few pages later, he goes on to say that “together, they [the disciples] contribute to a very complex and intriguing group of twelve apostles. There’s at least one of every imaginable personality.”

Could you imagine how boring life – and ministry would be otherwise?

CHALLENGE

My question for you to ponder this week is:

Have you been awakened? If so, what awoke you?

If not, why do you think not? Do you want to be?

Whether you have had this kind of experience yet or not, are you willing to surrender everything you are and everything you have for the sake of Jesus Christ?

I am going to invite the worship team back up here to sing I Surrender All – just the words, no music. As they sing, listen to these words. I encourage you to make this your prayer.

As always, the altars are open for anyone who needs to come and pray. Pastor Tim and I will be here to pray with you.

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Video of the song, Only Jesus referenced above.

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Songs Performed during service: