Sermon: “They Saw his Glory," Season after Epiphany, March 2, 2025

Luke’s Gospel: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws

Scripture: Luke 9:28-45

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Title: “They Saw his Glory”

Today we’re continuing our series on Luke’s gospel. Today we’ve got to, in the words of the Friendly Giant, “look up… way up.”

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John, three of his closest followers up a mountain to pray. And while he’s there Jesus undergoes a surprising metamorphosis–while he’s praying his face changes and his clothes turn a “dazzling white.” Bleached before their very eyes. And then, Moses and Elijah, two stars of the Old Testament–thought to be long-dead, or ascended to heaven themselves–are there chatting away with him.

As shiny Jesus and Moses and Elijah are chatting away, the disciples get really excited. Look at you, Jesus! Look at these guys! Obviously this is a holy place with some holy people. So let’s set up a tent here so we can stay forever! Maybe establish some kind of international wellness center. Or something.

Now, while this idea sounds brilliant to Peter and James and John, somebody doesn’t like it. Who doesn’t like it? Well, God. Apparently.

A cloud descends on them. If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, a cloud is often how the Lord shows up. This cloud descends on all of them and they’re terrified. You’d be terrified too, because you don’t know if God’s coming down for a good reason or a bad reason. Like, a don’t make me come down there kind of reason.

The reason, though, is to provide instructions to the disciples–“this is my Son, my chosen,” thunders a voice from the cloud. “Listen to him!”

Now, I don’t know about you. But every time I’ve ever heard the word “listen.” Or I’ve ever uttered the word “listen” to anyone else–usually my children–the implication is that one of us hasn’t been listening in the first place, and needs to do some listening. Same here. The disciples wanna play around in a mountain paradise with a couple spiritual gurus, but Jesus has other plans. Plans they’d know about. If only they were listening.

And what plans are those, exactly?

Well, plans he told them about just a chapter earlier. And if they were paying attention to what Jesus and Elijah and Moses were chatting about, they’d had caught it again. Jesus’ departure, it says. His exodus in Jerusalem.

And if that’s not clear enough, Jesus makes it explicit again when they get down from the mountain. After Jesus’ appearance returns to normal, and after Jesus casts out an evil spirit–simultaneously cussing out the disciples for not being able to heal them themselves–he gets the disciples in on a holy huddle.

“Let these words,” says Jesus. “Let these words sink into your ears.” Whew. There’s that parental frustration again. If I were to offer a paraphrase it would be something like “get this into your thick little skulls, already.” “The Son of Man,” Jesus says. “The Son of Man–yours truly–is going to be betrayed into human hands.” That’s what Moses and Elijah were talking about, Jesus’ exodus, his departure in Jerusalem. His betrayal, arrest, torture, humiliation, and death on a cross. His plan to suffer and die.

That’s what they’ve been told a THOUSAND TIMES, but they still don’t get it. I mean, they pretend they do. But he’s told them so many times, that they’re afraid to ask.

Now why wouldn’t they get it? After all these opportunities Jesus has given?

A friend of mine told me about attending a University panel called “who is Jesus?” There was a panel made up of a Buddhist, a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim chaplain. The Christian gave a Christian answer, the Buddhist said he was an exemplar of compassion, the Jew said he was a radical rabbi. And the first thing the Muslim chaplain started by saying Jesus was a prophet, a messenger from God. But then in response to the Christian, that he was a prophet but “Jesus was not God’s Son.” Why? “Because God would never let himself suffer and die on a cross.”

I imagine it’s the more or less the same deal with Peter and Andrew and John. Sure, the mountaintop resort with the ski lodge for Moses and Jesus and Elijah, and the shimmering shiny Jesus face. But they still don’t get it because they couldn’t imagine that the Messiah of the Lord, that God in the flesh, could have anything to do with suffering. Let alone death. 

And at the heart of it, we’re just like they are.

Suffering is some of the worst things we can imagine. In fact, we spend a lot of our lives trying to avoid suffering and pain, and discomfort. A lot of our substance abuse of whatever kind is a way to cope with fear, anxiety. To make it go away. We live in B.C., which is where the highest proportion of deaths due to choosing a medically assisted death in Canada—and the main criteria? An end to unbearable suffering.

And it’s all understandable! Suffering is not inherently good. It’s uncomfortable, often unbearable. God on the glacier, in Seal Bay Nature park or on the gold course is beautiful and good. God in a shell crater or our cancer-bed sounds ludicrous.

Suffering can be absolutely terrible. So it’s perfectly reasonable, understandable that we’d do our absolute best to avoid it.

The problem, of course, is that we can’t avoid it. No matter how hard we try. The American pastor Adam Hamilton, whose book we read in our Luke Bible study says that “we all live, at points, a crucified life.”[1] Death, disease, divorce, sin, loss, screwups, or death itself, there’s no going around it. The only way is through it.

But the good news is we don’t have to go through it alone.

Remember the second line of Christmas carol, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: “veiled in flesh, the Godhead see/hail the incarnate deity.”[2] In the transfiguration we get a peek behind the veil of Jesus’ human flesh. The fullness of God.

The late Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, said that not only does the “fullness of [divine] mystery is concealed in his simple form…” that the transfiguration points to “the presence of the Triune God and all of salvation history in [Jesus’] body, which is destined for the cross.”[3] In the transfiguration we get a peek behind the veil of Jesus’ human flesh. The fullness of God. A God who goes to the cross. To the very worst kind of suffering imaginable.

The Transfiguration, the Christian thing is that when the Creator of the universe took on the skin we’re in, he took on the fullness of our human nature an life. Rather than avoiding suffering and pain at all costs, this God faced it head on, went right into the heart of it all to the point even of death. Why? The great church Father Gregory of Nazianzus said it like this: “What the Son of Man has not assumed he has not redeemed."[4] What the Son of Man has not assumed he has not redeemed. That because God has been there in the worst of suffering, none of it is a place of hopelessness. But it is now a place of hope.

Whether it’s suffering for the sake of following Jesus for the love of our neighbours, or its suffering that we’ve brought on ourselves, or its suffering that’s just part of being human beings with human bodies.

The Christian thing is not that we will be delivered from suffering and death, but that God has been there, God is there with us. Because God has been there and overcome it, with him, ours too, will be overcome. And because God is with us, we can take comfort and find strength in the middle of it all. And strength to eachother.

The great preacher Fleming Rutledge tells the story of a physician, Joanna Siebert. A story about a patient she feared treating on account of how heartbreaking the situation was.

“Today I visited an 8-year-old girl dying of cancer,” wrote the Minister. “Today I visited an 8-year-old girl dying of cancer. Her body was disfigured by her disease and its treatment. She was in almost constant pain. As I entered her room, I was overcome almost immediately by her suffering–so unjust, so unfair, so unreasonable. Even more overpowering [however] was the presence of her grandmother lying in bed beside her with her huge body, embracing this precious, inhuman suffering.

I stood in awe, for I knew I was on holy ground…. The suffering of innocent children is horrifying beyond words. I will never forget the great, gentle arms and body of this grandmother. She never spoke [a word] while I was there. She was holding and participating in suffering that she could not relieve, and somehow her silent presence was relieving it. No words could express the magnitude of her love.”[5]

Now, this is clearly a moving scene in of itself. The incredible love and compassion, is enough to move anyone, Christian or not.

But for those with eyes to see, it’s also more than that. And the eyes are the eyes of the gospel. That at the heart of all things there is a God who is not only known up on the beauty of a holy mountain, but became most present to us in the absolute ugliness of a broken human body hanging on a cross. Down in the valley of the shadow of death. In the words of the 23rd Psalm.

At this moment, this grandmother, cradling her granddaughter, was an icon of Jesus Christ. In the same way she held this little girl close to her body, absorbing her fear, her suffering, her pain, the Lord of heaven and earth has come even closer to us. Wearing our skin, bearing our sins, and carrying our pain. To the naked eye it might be heartwarming, but ultimately tragedy. But through the eyes of faith–eyes that have been trained to see the glory of God on a cross–the two of them were on holy ground. Because there is no ground that our God has not trod for our sake.

Of course, we don’t know if the little girl made it or not. But the good news is that the good news stands either way. The promise of the gospel is not that God will save us from all suffering and pain. Whether it’s our fault or not. Nor that we can hide from it by whatever our favourite means of bliss may be. But the promise is to help us through it, to bear our suffering and our pain. To accompany us through the valley of the shadow of death, that we may fear no evil. Neither depth nor height, nor sickness, nor suffering, nor violence, nor sword. Not even death itself. Knowing that our Lord is with us, and–in the end–will lead us to where he has gone. To that future so bright that neither sun nor moon is needed. Thanks to the everlasting presence of our God.

May you, dear friends, be encouraged by this news. That whatever you may face, you, too, you are not alone, but our God goes with you. And, not only that. But may you be encouraged by this good news, may you–in the words of the Apostle Paul–”encourage one another.” On account of the God we’ve got, may you, like the grandmother who held her granddaughter close, bear one another’s burdens.

After all, he is God’s Son, God’s chosen. It’d be wise to listen to him!

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

[1] Adam Hamilton, Luke, 148.

[2] Voices United #48.

[3] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “Second Sunday of Lent,” in The Light of the Word: Brief Reflections on the Sunday Readings (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 284.

[4] Gregory of Nazianzus, “Letters (Division I): Letters on the Apollinarian Controversy,” New Advent https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3103a.htm

[5] Quoted in Fleming Rutledge, “The Love Olympics Go to Jerusalem,” The Bible and the New York Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 84-85.