Luke 9:28-43

Transcript

00:00:00:46 – 00:00:26:29
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us again on a Wednesday as we continue through the Gospel of Luke into the ninth chapter. A familiar story today. I think if you’ve been around church, if you have done much reading in the Gospels, a story called the Transfiguration, or essentially the Change of Jesus. And this is a this is a unique story in many ways.

00:00:26:29 – 00:00:48:41
Clint Loveall
It’s not unique to Luke, but it is unique among the gospels. I’m just going to read it. I mean, I think you know the story and we do want to cover some ground today. So Jesus goes up on the mountain. We’re in verse 28, Chapter nine, eight days after verse 29, while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothing became dazzling white.

00:00:48:41 – 00:01:08:05
Clint Loveall
And suddenly there were two men, Moses and Elijah were talking with them. They appeared in glory, and they were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now, Peter and the Companions were weighed down with sleep, but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and two men who stood with him just as they were leaving him.

00:01:08:05 – 00:01:28:27
Clint Loveall
Peter said to Jesus, Master, it’s good for us to be here. Let me make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Not knowing what he said while he was saying this, a cloud came over and shadowed them and they were terrified and they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, This is my son, the Chosen.

00:01:28:31 – 00:02:02:52
Clint Loveall
Listen to him. When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone and they kept silent. And in those days told no one any of the things that they had seen. So a kind of, if you read the story, kind of an unexpected moment where Jesus shows glory and it’s also a timeless moment. This is one of those scenes that I don’t I don’t mean that we shouldn’t read this literally, but if we read it literally, I think we missed the point.

00:02:03:07 – 00:02:31:34
Clint Loveall
This this is it. A look behind the reality to the core of who Jesus is. His face was changed. He’s dazzling white. It’s also a movement beyond time, as Moses and Elijah, the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, the seminal figures of Israel’s story, stand with Jesus and talk about his departure and what he would accomplish in Jerusalem.

00:02:31:39 – 00:02:57:11
Clint Loveall
This is the intersection, Michael, of lots of streams, of lots of themes. It is an astounding, amazing moment. And I think it’s one of those texts that you have to read through a couple of times, slowly, just to try to hear what Luke is saying, that that this is a moment in which Jesus becomes bigger than anyone imagines at this point in the story.

00:02:57:16 – 00:03:27:43
Clint Loveall
And it can. And we realize that Jesus story also connects with the ongoing story of Israel, the ongoing story of the people of God and Luke does everything he can to help us, I think, grasp the the magnitude of this moment and I think it’s unfortunately easy to miss. But if you stomp down, if you really try to enter this story, listen to the sounds, see the sights, it’s be guided by the words.

00:03:27:48 – 00:03:31:35
Clint Loveall
This is an immense moment in Jesus ministry.

00:03:31:48 – 00:03:54:16
Michael Gewecke
And I would argue Luke has been building to it. This hasn’t come out of nowhere. If you have been with us the last few weeks and it would be worth going back for two or three studies here and getting caught up with us, if you’ve missed a few, is we’ve already had numerous references to the prophets. Herod is told that this is one of the prophets.

00:03:54:16 – 00:04:14:47
Michael Gewecke
You’ve got the disciple saying, Well, some of the people say that you’re one of the prophets here. The prophets literally show up, that the top of the prophets show up and they’re talking with Jesus. Jesus is beside them at the start of this story. And by the end of this story, Jesus is set apart from them. He is glowing.

00:04:14:47 – 00:04:44:28
Michael Gewecke
He has been transfigured. It is clear that Jesus himself is the one who’s chosen, and that comes through. You use that phrase, you know, the sound, literally the voice. This is my son, my chosen. Listen to him, my son, which is a contradistinction to the prophets who are also incredibly important. They also represent God that there is no way a diminution of them.

00:04:44:33 – 00:05:07:57
Michael Gewecke
It is by definition a raising up of who Jesus is. I think that this is a building in the narrative Luke has been. This is an accidental and that’s why reading this literally and stopping there is going to do you a disservice in your study of this text. Yes. The idea that this happened, the idea it’s recorded in multiple gospels, this is an important scene, no doubt.

00:05:08:09 – 00:05:47:15
Michael Gewecke
But it’s important not just for what happened, but for what the gospel writers are trying to tell us It represents that the person were introduced to the chosen one is now revealed. And that revelation, importantly comes before the crucifixion and then ultimately the resurrection. And I think that one of the reasons this is so important I alluded to, if not stated a little bit yesterday, and that is that we need to remember the early church was one in which they knew a lot of the debates and a lot of the arguments against the resurrection and crucifixion.

00:05:47:18 – 00:06:14:11
Michael Gewecke
One of them was it was all made up and it was all hogwash. And here Luke is wanting us to see that this transfiguration moment, this thing happened far before crucifixion and resurrection. This thing shows us from the beginning, from the very middle of Jesus’s ministry, that he is the son of God, that he is exceptional, He is lifted up, that he is the one who stands above the prophets.

00:06:14:11 – 00:06:32:30
Michael Gewecke
And that is a way of, I think, helping us know that Jesus is walking the ground that he was going to walk the whole time. There’s no opportunism in this story. There’s no twisting Jesus to something else. This is who Jesus was and this is who the disciples saw him to be.

00:06:32:34 – 00:07:02:42
Clint Loveall
And the Luke does this a favor here. There’s a very devotional kind of verse here. As we get to 32 now, Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but since they stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him, that is this. That’s a storytelling device. You know, Luke is helping us transition away from the Transfigured Jesus to this interaction that’s going to happen with Peter.

00:07:02:47 – 00:07:28:09
Clint Loveall
But before we get there, Luke gives a very subtle lesson, a very subtle sermon, really. They were weighed down with sleep, but because they stayed awake, they saw his glory. And there’s a lot in the Scripture about staying awake, being awake. Jesus tells stories about people who fell asleep and missed their opportunities. Jesus teaches stay awake for the time is at hand.

00:07:28:13 – 00:07:58:52
Clint Loveall
And so when Luke says this, Yes, this is about the disciples. And yes, this has something to do with the story at hand. But behind that, in the bigger backdrop is a word to the church, a word to all Christians, because they stayed awake, because they weren’t distracted, because they weren’t lazy, because they weren’t turned aside. You know, Jesus has just been in the passage before this, talking about those who don’t give up and those who stay the course.

00:07:58:57 – 00:08:23:26
Clint Loveall
And because the disciples do that, they see Jesus’s glory, though they don’t know exactly what to do with it. Then we get to, I think, probably my favorite part of the story, you know, Peter chimes in and kind of wants to insert himself, Master, it’s good that we’re here. Let’s make three dwellings, one for you, Moses and Elijah and all of the gospel writers who say something like this.

00:08:23:31 – 00:08:42:19
Clint Loveall
Tell us. Peter, you know, didn’t know what he was saying. There is something he didn’t understand. There’s kind of that moment where, you know, it proves the old adage, If you don’t know what to say, probably don’t say anything. But but Peter, it runs forward with his words and you can read this to say he wants to capture the moment.

00:08:42:19 – 00:09:11:04
Clint Loveall
You can read this to say he wants to make something of this about himself. Those are probably all fine. There’s nothing wrong with any of those. The essential thing is when you’re standing in the glory and the presence of Christ have the sense to be silent, you have nothing to add. He did not know what he was saying, and at that point the cloud comes over them, kind of echoing some of that language we saw in Exodus.

00:09:11:09 – 00:09:38:06
Clint Loveall
And the Voice says, This is my son, the Chosen. Listen to him. And so again, how much of our how many of our struggles in life could we remedy by not speaking when we should be listening? And, you know, Peter is a good example of that here. Peter often plays that role in scripture. But the truth is we we’ve kind of all been there.

00:09:38:11 – 00:10:03:36
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know if you would agree with this, but this is maybe one of the more difficult texts to do a study on with two pastors because it is just loaded with preaching imagery. So that I think is really deep and wise. This idea that there comes a time to be silent. I have another thing for the same verse I wanted to point out, and that comes from 33.

00:10:03:41 – 00:10:33:25
Michael Gewecke
What does Peter want to make? A dwelling. He wants to make a tent. He wants to make a physical thing where Jesus could take up residence. And I think that this is another lesson that Luke has to teach us is that the human heart is, by its nature, really tempted to want to contain the work of God. We want to immortalize it in stone or in building or in program or an institution.

00:10:33:34 – 00:10:52:45
Michael Gewecke
You know, we’ve done this a lot of ways in the church for our thousands of years of existence, and it’s just the nature of being church. When Peter sees this amazing thing happened, he’s moved. And I don’t think we have really any reason to discount that. He truly is moved. He’s moved by faith, he’s moved by the majesty of it.

00:10:52:49 – 00:11:16:08
Michael Gewecke
But he does that unfortunate thing and opens his mouth and he tries to lock it down and make it a thing and say, Hey, let’s set up camp here. And that’s a very dangerous thing to do because Jesus is not interested in being locked into that moment. He’s not interested in hanging out on the mountaintop. He knows that the next time he’s going to ascend, he needs to be the cross.

00:11:16:08 – 00:11:40:03
Michael Gewecke
He’s already said that. And so realistically, we, the reader, are taught from a text like this, Be careful what you try to immortalize. Be careful what you try to lock down when it relates to Jesus, because Jesus, by definition is going to undo the things that we try to make permanent. And I just, you know, to spin that clear, that’s just to say it’s interesting how much is here.

00:11:40:03 – 00:12:04:57
Michael Gewecke
It’s so easy to turn this from a lesson text into a meditative kind of text. And I think that’s a testament to Luke. And I don’t think it’s accidental that stuff doesn’t just appear in a story like this. This is have been carefully planted and water that it is available to the Christian who has the eyes of faith, I think to see a lot of wisdom in it.

00:12:05:02 – 00:12:30:36
Clint Loveall
I agree 100%, although from a meta perspective, I do think there’s a word of caution for that very reason. Michael, This is fundamentally a text about the glory of Jesus, and we have to be careful if we would make it about something else. There are wonderful lessons in it. There are wonderful devotional moments in it. There are wonderful things that speak to our experience in our faith.

00:12:30:41 – 00:12:52:28
Clint Loveall
Just don’t miss the fact that this is fundamentally a text about the glory of Christ and about the ongoing work of God, culminating in the one who has been chosen that we are to listen to. And so, yeah, this is a great text. I think this is one of those texts that should just be kind of fundamental in all of our faith.

00:12:52:28 – 00:13:17:47
Clint Loveall
It’s one of those that we should have in our toolbox that we should visit often because it does do such a beautiful job of bridging the connection between who Jesus is and what it means for us that Jesus is that and in our our dangerous temptation to insert ourself in the middle, Hey, let’s do this. Jesus. Hey, Jesus, Let me do this for you.

00:13:17:47 – 00:13:28:25
Clint Loveall
Hey, you know Jesus. It’s good that I’m here. Well, yeah, Jesus doesn’t need us. We need him. And this is, I think, a passage that helps us remember that. Michael.

00:13:28:30 – 00:13:57:29
Michael Gewecke
There’s a really interesting note that comes at the end of the passage that I don’t want to pass by it without at least pointing it out. Know this here that the voice speaks in 35. This is my son, my chosen. Listen to him. And then these words when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And that may seem like just a throwaway kind of statement, but just imagine Jesus has been surrounded and talking to the who’s who of Israel’s past.

00:13:57:34 – 00:14:32:27
Michael Gewecke
And now, with this ragtag group of three disciples up on this mountain, Jesus is alone. And I think Luke is maybe in some ways containing in this one story, both the connection that Jesus has with God, the Father, and the the way that that connection then also connects them with the history of Israel. And also an interestingly simultaneously, the fact that Jesus is alone and will become even more alone as the story continues, as He hangs on the cross, that there’s a kind of foreshadowing.

00:14:32:27 – 00:15:01:17
Michael Gewecke
I think, in the texts like this. And there’s a kind of encompassing of the whole of Jesus’s life. He is all at once mysterious and beyond time and beyond our human understanding. And he’s also a human who experiences aloneness and experiences being at the top of the mountain with nothing but the memory of that voice. I mean, there’s a lot of beautiful imagery wrapped up in the revelation of who Jesus is.

00:15:01:17 – 00:15:21:02
Michael Gewecke
I think you’re right to say, Clint, this is a revelation text. This is about who Jesus is, and yet it is not a one faceted picture of who Jesus is. It’s not just Jesus who’s powerful. It’s also Jesus who’s human. It’s not just Jesus who can talk to the prophets. It’s Jesus who’s going to live his own prophetic life and ministry.

00:15:21:05 – 00:15:28:21
Michael Gewecke
All of that is encompassed in a text like this, and that’s what makes it, I think, such a default, a toolbox context like you called it.

00:15:28:21 – 00:15:45:15
Clint Loveall
Yeah, And I think we see that really well encapsulated if we go to the next passage here. Michael, just kind of quickly, verse 37, on the next day when they come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him and just then a man from the crowd shouted, Teacher, I beg you, look at my son. He’s my only child.

00:15:45:19 – 00:16:03:36
Clint Loveall
Suddenly a spirit seizes him and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him and he forms at the mouth. It mauls him and he and it will scarcely leave him. I beg your disciples to cast it out. But they could not. Jesus answered you, faithless and perverse generation. How much longer must I’ll be with you and bear with you?

00:16:03:41 – 00:16:25:06
Clint Loveall
Bring your son here. While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to the father, and all were astounded at the greatness of God. This is, I think, no accident. Luke. Luke intentionally sandwiches these texts together. He’s not the only one to do it.

00:16:25:06 – 00:17:01:21
Clint Loveall
But the wisdom of putting these texts together is that you get in a literal sense, the mountaintop experience with a valley experienced. Jesus comes down. Luke tells us that they come down the mountain. At the mountain they meet. Having left the glory of the transfigured Jesus, They meet the pain and the suffering of the world. A boy, an only child who is being horribly mistreated by the Spirit and the disciples who were given power at one point to go and do this very thing couldn’t cast it out.

00:17:01:26 – 00:17:24:28
Clint Loveall
And Jesus has this moment of kind of lashing out you faithless, perverse generation. Now, is this directed at the disciples? Is it directed at the people? Is it directed at the evil that before Jesus, the suffering of a child? I would answer yes. There are commentators who will nuance that and try to break that down. More specifically, I would entertain that.

00:17:24:28 – 00:18:11:44
Clint Loveall
It’s all of the above, that it’s Jesus being frustrated at everything about this moment and this same Jesus who just stood with Elijah and Moses in the dazzling glory of his own power and identity, now finds himself met with pain and suffering and failure and lack of faith. And it sounds like harsh words from Jesus. And I, I suppose you could say it is, but I think in conjunction with the previous text, we get something of the experience of the Transfigured Christ and the Christ who exists to serve and to confront evil.

00:18:11:49 – 00:18:24:33
Clint Loveall
And then He heals the boy and we end with this wonderful phrase. And all were astounded at the greatness of God. I think there is a whiplash here, Michael, but I think it’s on purpose.

00:18:24:37 – 00:18:58:31
Michael Gewecke
You know? So, Clint, I think that it’s worth noting that when we read texts like this, I think we’re often maybe confused by the transfiguration story, but then we often just discount stories like this one with the demon. I think for us, we like to ask questions like, you know, is this a psychological illness? What would this be diagnosed with this person be given some kind of medications today or, you know, these are the things that the modern mind brings to attacks like this.

00:18:58:31 – 00:19:36:51
Michael Gewecke
But I want to just encourage you for a moment to imagine with me, take us at our word and make the assumption for just a moment that this mountaintop up and coming down story are told in this order on purpose. And if you’re willing to start with that assumption in mind, and then to read this story and you see that the very disciples who wanted to build Jesus a tent are unable to cast out this demon and Jesus confronting this evil, having just been revealed to be this transfigured Christ.

00:19:36:55 – 00:20:02:04
Michael Gewecke
Now says some very, very challenging words. But don’t miss. In the midst of those words. He heals the boy. He casts out the demon, he does the work that he’s come to do, and that sign and symbol is for all gathered there. Astonishing. The greatness of it is astonishing. And I think that is once again, the point of the transfiguration scene here.

00:20:02:06 – 00:20:28:42
Michael Gewecke
Astonishment, mystery, the absolute power of God. Jesus Christ is the one revealed in this mysterious, almost timeless way on top of the mountain and at the base of the mountain, really in the mocking grime of human existence. A boy, just a child afflicted by the demonic. In the worst case in the lowest place. Jesus Christ reigns supreme again.

00:20:28:42 – 00:20:52:35
Michael Gewecke
And the greatness of that moment is astonishing to everyone who’s gathered. So whether at the mountain or at the foot of the mountain, Jesus Christ is revealed to be the all powerful Son of God who comes to right what is wrong in the world. And that is seen in this whole sort of continuum of the story told right back in front of each other.

00:20:52:37 – 00:21:10:55
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And again, you have to exercise some caution here. But if you want to read this from a devotional or of almost a preaching standpoint, what does this tell us? It tells us that you can’t live at the top of the mountain. At some point you come down from those experiences and real faith has to face the real world.

00:21:10:55 – 00:21:42:18
Clint Loveall
I remember Michael a couple of years ago when we were at Jamaica Presbyterian Church in New York City, and we have this wonderful worship experience, and because of their proximity to the city and the neighborhood that they’re in, you know, you come out of church with this wonderful glow and happiness and immediately before you even get back to the subway terminal, the homeless people on the street, so that these two things always exist together.

00:21:42:23 – 00:22:05:54
Clint Loveall
The moments of reprieve, the moments of faith in celebration, and the moments of service, and where faith, those moments in which faith has to confront the problems and struggles of the world we are not exempt from either. We don’t live only with the pain of the world, but neither can we build a booth and stay up on the top of the mountain.

00:22:05:54 – 00:22:34:45
Clint Loveall
That real faith takes us to both places, and real faith matters in the valleys, in the struggles with people who are suffering. And, you know, again, I’m second generation in the text here. That’s maybe not the exact meaning of it, but I think it’s a meaning we see in it. And again, I just think the power of Luke putting these two stories the way he has back to back really helps us get to some of those places.

00:22:34:49 – 00:22:53:33
Michael Gewecke
We’ve run to the end of our time. I know I can have a long time to have an exclusive on this, and so maybe we’ll we’ll get to this in another study if you’d be interested. You know, feel free to put that in the comments. But I do think, Clint, that in some ways we have something to learn from these stories where Jesus conquers the demonic.

00:22:53:38 – 00:23:21:39
Michael Gewecke
It’s not a language that we’re very comfortable with in our modern lives, but there’s something helpful in understanding yourself when you realize this idea that we sometimes can’t help the bad that comes from us, that that sometimes the firewall comes down. We say a thing, we blur, the thing we we regret immediately are our hands or feet drive us to do a thing that wasn’t thoughtful, that there are times when the brokenness inside escapes the firewall.

00:23:21:39 – 00:23:45:46
Michael Gewecke
And when that happens that when the brokenness inside of us exerts force into the world and does demonic things, broken things to us and to others, that is a place where an encounter with the risen Christ is the only hope we have for restoration. And for salvation is the word that we use in the church. This story is an invitation for you.

00:23:45:46 – 00:24:09:49
Michael Gewecke
You might not think of yourself as being demonically possessed like this boy, but if you begin to recognize the ways in which the brokenness of our hearts exerts power on us, real power, then you might see that a text like this is a source of very good news, that there is a force, a power, a love Jesus Christ, the Savior who is able to heal even those broken places inside of us.

00:24:09:54 – 00:24:30:21
Clint Loveall
Yeah, there’s a lot there. Again, two very powerful stories, an interesting section of this chapter. Luke is going to do some other interesting things before this chapter is over. Hope you can join us tomorrow or reminder that as of tomorrow we would kind of be finishing the ninth chapter of Luke will be on hiatus for the rest of the summer.

00:24:30:21 – 00:24:37:49
Clint Loveall
We’ll get back in chapter ten, which we think is a decent restarting point. So hope you can be with us. Thanks for being with us today.