Sermon - 2019-03-04

I want to start today by looking at the very first line of the Gospel lesson.  How many of you, when you heard this line of “after eight days of saying these things Jesus took just a few of the disciples to pray…”, now how many of you are wondering, “What did Jesus talk about?  What did I miss last week? Was that the lesson that I have been waiting my whole life to hear and I missed?” Or how many of you just sat back and are waiting for me or someone else to give you the answer?  But then you are waiting for the answer that you want to hear and not the answer that God gives to us.

Scripture is something that will often surprise us by speaking directly to us everyday of our life and it is a source that can help us on the journey of life and faith by learning what others have done and even more, we can learn from their mistakes so that they do not happen in our own life.  Now if you were wondering what did we talk about last week, well you are out of luck, I am not delivering that sermon again. And we did not talk about the previous verses of Luke 9. Instead, I will just tell you. Jesus shares with his own disciples what it is that will happen to him. Jesus talks honestly, about the names that others have called him and how he will undergo suffering by the chief priests and the scribes.  His life will come to a point that intersects this world and the world will reject him. He will be killed and laid to rest but will rise again on the third day so please have hope.

Now we come to today’s Gospel lesson of Jesus needing to go and pray.  Yes, even this world was a lot for Jesus to enter into and he needed to talk to God, the Father in Heaven, and be reconnected to Him through prayer.  Now many of us when we go to pray, we may sit in chair, take a deep breath and begin to unload the worries and concerns of our lives. Still some of us gathered for a meal will pray to give thanks to God for what we have on the table, yes even the vegetables.  Now when we pray, we speak words but it does not always seem that something immediately happens. I mean most of long for an experience like what Jesus has and the other disciples witness happening.

Our clothes change to a dazzling white, perhaps the choir of angels begins to play around us and helpers from heaven gather around to speak a word of comfort, peace, and hope that God is with us.  Many of us would like this, many of us would like to have this experience but many of us would probably think that we had died when this happened. This is it, it all ends here. However, for Jesus and the disciples, they are still on earth.  They are experiencing something that would change their life and now go back into the world to CHANGE THE WORLD!!

When the prayer is over, the disciples declare, we should build three structures.  Three of them, one for you, one for Elijah and one for Moses. Here high on the mountain, we will do this for you.  Yet while these men were having a mountain top experience, the clouds came to over take them and clearly delivered the message that they should have understood.  “This is my Chosen One, My Beloved, Listen to Him!” Oh if only all of our answers to prayers were this clear and direct. If only we could experience these words in our own life.  

Yet you have.  Over and over again.  For each week, we gather together for you to listen and learn.  For you to grow closer to God and hear the message of His Word for you and the community that is gathered together.  Each week, we are a community gathered together in God’s presence and allows us to be God’s people. Reminding us that God is indeed with us.  That we are called to share and be in this Kingdom of God every single day. So please listen clearly: “You are chosen. You are loved. You are welcome here.”  Amen.