Tested Faith:

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Holy Spirit, pour out upon us wisdom and understanding, that, being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to receive all that leads to life and holiness. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Luke 9:28–36 NIV

About eight 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 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, 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 three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one 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.

L: This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!

P: Praise to you, O Christ!

We Need to Wake Up

For many years I had a recurring dream every Saturday night. The dream always began the same, I was sitting in my office, reviewing the sermon, and then I would head out into the lobby and then the sanctuary, step up here and then realize I had forgotten to put on my pants. Every week, I would wake up and make sure I had PJ pants on.

Obviously, this has never happened in real life, but the odd thing about dreams is that they feel real in the moment. Your brain cannot tell the difference between a real experience and a dream experience. But you can, when you wake up. When we are awake , we begin to see the world as it really is. No one let me wander around church for 2 hours this morning without any pants. I am fully clothed.

As I read over our passage today, one line stuck with me for several days: “Peter and his companions were very sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory...”

I think many of us go through life sleepy, not ever fully awake. You go through our lives: get up at 6 every day. Be in the office by 8 work until noon. Grab a bite to eat with a colleague, back at the desk by 1. Home by 6. Get supper on the table. Help the kids with homework. Get them in bed. Crash in front of the TV or phone for an hour. And then to bed. And then the same thing all over again the next day. Day after day, chasing the American dream. Drowsy. Spiritually asleep.

I think it real easy living here in West Michigan, with a church on every corner and a multiple mega-churches on Baldwin. Did you know there is no street in the entire country with more churches per linear mile than Baldwin in Jenison? We know how to do church.

But you can do church in your sleep. You can sing the songs and pray the prayers and even help out in Sunday school and serve on Consistory and spiritually still be asleep. Doing all the right things, but not be fully aware of the reality of being in the presence of God and filled with his Spirit.

I know this because that was my experience growing up. I went to church twice on Sunday. Sang in the church choir in high school. President of our youth group. (I still don’t know what the president was supposed to do.) Christian schools from kindergarten through college. Catechism classes from 3rd grade through my Senior year of high school. I knew all the answers. But I wasn’t really awake.

But there have been times when I have been fully awake. When I wasn’t spiritually drowsy. I remember waking up in my dorm room in Noordewier-VanderWerp at Clavin College while having devotions and having it fully sink in one morning in my devotions that God really did care about me specifically. Not in an abstract God loves everyone way, but in a God knows and love me way. And I’ve told the story of waking up to God’s care and concern for those society ignores while living in Chicago that led me to seminary. And a very clear vision from God in seminary while on a retreat. And, hearing a clear call from God while praying in Cherry Creek State Park in Aurora Colorado just a few days before my first conversation with Rich Ribbens about this church in Grandville.

For the last 17+ years it has been my joy to try to be awake and point out the ways God is moving among all of us. Sometimes we saw God together as we gathered to pray before a surgery or by the bedside as we said good-bye to someone we loved. Other times we saw God show up at an event that did not go at all the way we planned and yet God’s spirit was so evident all we could do was offer prayers of thanksgiving. Some of you may remember that first big giveaway when the church was overrun with people in need and by the end the whole place smelled like a Middle School locker room. And when someone complained about the smell that lingered yet on Sunday, Pastor Rick quipped, “That’s the smell of ministry.”

Even these past two years where in my sleepy state I could worry for God’s church and get obsessed with attendance and finances, when I was intentional to stay awake I saw God meeting people in the ruins of a marriage, in the grief by a graveside. While others had their faith rocked by the upheaval of the past two years, but have found a way to hold on to Jesus and others finding God in their hard questions about how to live out his kingdom way in a world so opposed to the ways of Jesus. Others heard a clear call from God to step forward in faith, while others met God in new ways when life slowed down. But in every case, God has continued to show up and transform us.

Here’s the thing about waking up. You can’t make yourself wake up. Have you ever been in a dream and knew it? Even when you know you are sleeping, you can’t make yourself stop sleeping, you just have to wait to wake up.

We can’t make ourselves spiritually wake up either. It just happens. Well that is not entirely true, we can cooperate in waking up. We can be intentional to pray and to read the Bible and to gather with other believers to worship, we can pursue Jesus. These things won’t make us wake up, but they create opportunities for God to open our eyes to the truth of who we are: amazing beloved image bearers of God and deeply flawed people all rolled into one. And to the truth of who Jesus is, not just the theological formulations, fully God and fully man, the messiah, and so on, but the more personal truth: Jesus is our savior. Jesus loves us. Jesus went to the cross and died willingly because we all matter that much to him. And he is ready to meet you in the day-to-day of your life.

There is literally nothing better than being awake to that amazing truth and living life with Jesus.

Dwell in the Glory of God

When we wake up, we can finally begin to see who Jesus really is. His truly glory.

I love how Peter responds when he wakes up. He sees he glory of Jesus and then Moses and Elijah and he suggests they set up three tabernacles. One for each of therm. He wants them to stay. He wants the experience to last. It seems to ab allusion to the tabernacle of God. He wants to make this mountain God’s home. A place to worship.

After all, he is in the presence of Moses. The one person God talked to face-to-face. The person who gave them the law. The person God used to deliver his people from slavery in Egypt.

And next to Moses is Elijah. In the prophecies of the coming Messiah, it is always Elijah who leads the way. He is the one who will proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom. He is the greatest prophet in the history of the Jewish people.

Peter is putting Jesus up on the same level as these two.If it were anyone, but Jesus this would be a major compliment. But Jesus is not on this mountain as one among three equals.

There is not Jesus and this or that. There is no alternative to Jesus. In fact, Jesus doesn’t need a tabernacle built for God to come and dwell with them. Notice, while Peter is making his tabernacle comment, God descends in the form of a cloud. Jesus doesn’t need a tabernacle to meet with God because he is the tabernacle, the very place God dwells.

We will come back to God’s comment in a minute, but first I want to jump all the way back to the beginning of the passage. Elijah, Moses, and Jesus are all talking as jesus unveils his glory. It is bright as lightning. But what are they talking about, Jesus departure. Slightly more literally, his exodus. It is the same word used hear as used in the Greek Old Testament for the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. Jesus is breaking out of the slavery of sin, the powers of this world. He is leading a new exodus. A new liberation for us slaves to sin.

But think a moment about how Jesus’ glory will be revealed. On the mountain it is like a flash of lightning, but the next time he is lifted up or glorified, it will be on the cross.

The glory of Jesus is not found in the glitz and glamour of life. It is not found in strength and power. In victory and prosperity. It is found in suffering, in rejection, in pain.

Once you see all Jesus did for us, you will never want to fall asleep again. Suddenly, your faith is not just an idea, a concept, but a reality you have expereinced

Respond in Worship

When you wake up, there is one thing in your life that will never the same: worship. Once you have met Jesus and truly seen his love for you and his glory. You will not ever want to miss a chance to worship him. Not just sings songs in church, but offer your whole life to him.

This is not some sort of call to be inspired. To have a spiritual high experience from really cool music and just the right key change or anything like that. Inspiration doesn’t last. The memory feeling fades. The road gets hard and our motivation peters out.

So how do we do this. First we listen to Jesus. Read the gospels. Read them over and over and over again. Let the words and life of Jesus be the one thing you think about every single day. Pay attention to Jesus. Not what you imagine jesus to be like, not how the Sunday school stories portray Jesus, but the Jesus revealed in scripture. Read a gospel every single month.

God is calling us to worship the real God, Jesus, as he is. So watch the real Jesu revealed in scripture. Meet with God.

If you meet with Jesus, you will want to respond in some way. And here Eugene Peterson in his book on the Psalms, called Responding to God, gives us some wise counsel.

If we make our own prayers, we will always end up praying to a God we make in our own image. We will imagine a god who loves the people we love and hates the people we hate. A God who is offended by what offends us and delights in what delights us. But if our God always agrees with us, we can be sure it is not God we are worshipping but ourselves.

Instead, Peterson urges us to pray the Psalms. These are words God has given us to teach us how to talk to God. God spoke in the first five books of the Bible and then God gave us the five books of the Psalms for us to respond. We do not seek God first, we are responding to the God who is already seeking us.

Now, this feels weird at first. The Psalms do not always fit what we may be feeling at any given moment. But when we learn to pray the Psalms, we learn how to talk with God.

Peterson puts it this way:

“The Psalms set their faces against lush eroticism, this rank jungle growth of desire seeking to fulfillment. In a world of prayers that indulge the religious ego and cultivate passionate longings, the Psalms stand out with a kind of angular austerity. […] these prayers don’t seek God; they respond to the God who seeks us. […] they are sometimes awkward, for in our religious striving we are usually looking for something quite other than the God who has come looking for us.”

He says, “Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God that we manage to understand. […] There’s a difference between praying to an unknown God whom we hope to discover in our praying, and praying to a known God, revealed through Israel in Jesus Christ, who speaks our language. In the first, we indulge our appetite for religious fulfillment; in the second, we [worship].”

So, be int he gospels to meet the real Jesus. Pray the Psalms.

And then follow Jesus with other people. Worship with others. Notice, Jesus doesn’t just take Peter up the mountain, but Peter, James, and John. All three are there. All three have the experience. Surround yourself with other people who have experienced the presence and power of God in their life.

CS Lewis many years ago reflected after the death of his friend Charles that when Charles died, Lewis not only lost Charles, but also the part of his friend Ronald that always came out when Charles was around.

We all experience God differently. We all grasp different aspects of God. None of us can fully understand the infinite God and so we need other believers who are awake to the glory of God to help us know God more fully.

You cannot follow God on your own. You need a community with whom to worship. You need a few comrades to share more deeply what God is doing in your lives.

You can’t listen and respond to God without also living, sharing life, with his people.

Jesus invites us up the mountain, he has things to show us. It is embarrassing to talk about those experiences. Paul tries to hide he is sharing his own experience with God in 2 Cor. 12. When you have experienced the glory of God, when you have grasped how wide and long and deep his love is for us, when you have seen it for yourself. it is not something easy to to share.

It is easier to simply say, there is glory on that mountain. God invites you to come and see.

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