Interrupted by God – Luke 9:28-36 – Grant Vissers

Amen. Good morning, good morning.

My name is Grant and I'm one of the pastors here at the church

and it is good to be with you. It's good to be back with you.

My family had some holiday over most of August and so we started

it off as you do as a pastor by going and doing a wedding, which

was wonderful. But we've kind of been all over

Ontario a little bit and it's so good.

Connie and I were just reflecting.

My wife and I were reflecting how grateful we are to be back

and settled in Guelph. And for many of you, I'm sure

you can also resonate with this. Glad for kids to be going back

to school and for rhythms to be coming back to normal.

But mostly we're just, we're so thankful for you, for our

church, and for our chance to be back together worshipping.

So that's what we're going to do.

We're going to jump in. We're going to continue working

our way through Luke and we're still in Luke Chapter 9.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

We're gonna see. You can open up if you wanna

take some time to find it in your Bibles or on a phone, on a

tablet, do whatever is easy for you to get in front of you.

I think that's the main point. But Luke 928 to 36 is what we're

going to read today. But before we do that, I want to

pray and kind of lead us into it.

So it takes some time. There'll be a few minutes to get

yourselves situated into Luke 9. We'll also have it eventually up

on the screens. But let's let's pray God thank

you for your love and for your grace.

Thanks that you're with us and that we are able to gather

together and worship in this way to be the community, to be the

church. Yeah, we, we're grateful.

We need it, need to do life together in relationship.

And so thanks that this is one of the ways that you bless us.

And thank you guys, that you continue to teach us things,

that you've got words for us and ways in which you long to get

into our hearts and minds and transform our lives.

So I got up, pray that as we wrestled this text out, as we

read our way through this passage about Jesus, your

transfiguration, I pray that that's what you would do today.

God change our hearts and our minds, transform what needs to

be transformed. We need you to do it.

And we pray all these things in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.

So I wonder, I'd be willing to bet that you have, but I wonder

if you've ever had what you would consider an experience in

life where you find yourself looking around and thinking

something here feels different. Something's not quite the same.

And, and maybe you can't quite put your finger on it, you can't

quite name it, but you're looking around, you're in the

midst of this experience and you're going, wow.

Like something is different. It's hard to describe with

words, but there's a moment or there's a place that feels to

you different. And when I say different, I

mean, in some ways that feels spiritual.

And maybe for you, that's language that resonates and, and

you can think, yeah, I've had those moments where it feels

spiritual, where something feels different, where you just kind

of sit and you take things in and you look around you go, OK,

and maybe you have other language to describe it.

Maybe it fell to you a little bit like this otherworldly or

out of body experience. This moment where you're, I'm

not quite sure what is going on. There's a painting in my office.

If you've been in there, maybe you've seen it on your way out.

But there's a painting in my office of a mountain in Israel

that I was able to climb when I was there in 2012.

And I remember coming to the top of that mountain and feeling

that type of experience coming to the top of it.

Like unlike so many of the other places in Israel, which are loud

and filled with different things that you can buy and take home

for you, like tourist traps a little bit with trinkets to

purchase and pictures to be taken.

Like, I remember this one because we got to the top of

this mountain and there was nobody there.

There was nothing to be found. We were just at the top and it

was peaceful and it was quiet. It was calm and it was serene To

me. It felt holy.

There was a holy place. I remember coming to the top

and, and finding a place away from my other, you know, group

members who had also walked up to the top and, and sitting down

on a rock and praying. And I remember experiencing this

divine peace in those moments. It felt to me in in those

moments like the distance between heaven and earth was

small, like it shrunk, and like that entire trip.

For me, it was significant in my spiritual journey.

Maybe your mountaintop experience or your spiritual

experience wasn't on a literal mountain.

Maybe it was alone in a room of prayer, maybe it was during

worship, maybe it was at a concert.

Maybe it was away at camp or in a canoe on a river, like

hundreds of kilometres away from anybody else, any other human

being. I'll give you another example.

I went on this winter hiking trip and we hiked in and I

planned the route. This is all on me, but I didn't

realize how much more time it would take in the winter to hike

this particular trail. And so we're hiking in and the

sun starting to set and then it gets dark.

And so we pull out lights, headlights, and we did most of

the the hike on the snow and ice, trudging through minus 20s

weather to get to our campsite in the dark.

And when we arrived there, it was completely dark and we

struggled to set up our tents and we, there's no way we're

going to make a fire. Everybody just kind of crawled

into bed and tried to sleep. And I remember that night we

heard these like loud pinging noises on the lake.

I got like, what is that? And it was the ice, it was

cracking. The pressure of the ice was

shifting and cracking. And it was just these pings

going across. And remember lying awake,

they're going, what is going on? And in the morning, waking up to

this beautiful, peaceful, serene lake, frozen lake that we had

camped on, it was a spiritual for us, those who were there

experience one more to show that they don't just have to be in

the middle of like on the top of a mountain or in the middle of

Algonquin Park in the winter. Doesn't need to be super wild

out of the ordinary experience as a friend of mine sent me this

one day a song and it was in the middle of a day.

We were at our old house in Hamilton and I won't let me

paint this picture for you. There were dirty diapers in the

everywhere and dirty dishes in the sink and like toys strewn

about the family room when I was sitting there with the kids.

And it was not peaceful in the way that you would typically

think. And it was certainly not quiet

in the way that you would typically think.

And it was in the middle of for us, like this difficult season,

discernment. Things are going on.

What are we going to like God, what are you calling us to?

And my friend just sent me one text message.

He said, hey, I was thinking and praying about you.

I think you should listen to this song.

And I listened to the song and I remember sitting there and I

just like, tears started to come.

I just sat and I cried. I'm like, man, this holy place.

Celtic Christianity calls these thin places thin places.

Places where heaven feels close and where God feels immediately

present. Places where the space between

heaven and earth feels small, like it's right there in front

of you, that you can reach out and touch it.

Iona, the island on the western coast of Scotland, often called

a thin place. Luke 9, the verses that we're

gonna read describes, I think, a thin place.

This is one of those mountain tops experiences, one of those

moments where heaven and earth are close and where heaven is

revealed on earth, where the glory of God is on full display.

And so part of the invitation with the passage like this is to

slow down and allow it to unfold in front of you.

And so we are going to work our way through it in a moment.

But instead of just working our way through it kind of chunk by

chunk, what I want to do is just begin by reading it slowly.

And maybe this is the most meaningful part of the entire

sermon for you, but the invitation is just to allow it

to unfold in front of you and to attempt to really experience

what is happening. So I'm going to read about the

transfiguration. This is starting in verse 28.

About 8 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 splendour,

talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure,

which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.

Peter and his companions were very sleepily 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 3 shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and 1:00

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.

So about 8 days ago is how we start off the passage.

About 8 days ago, Jesus has predicted his death.

About 8 days ago, Jesus has challenged his followers to take

up their own crosses and follow him like this is a devastatingly

strong and dangerous invitation to the disciples.

Jesus in his own words, he says the Son of Man must suffer many

things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priest of

the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third

day raised to life. And then he said to them,

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up

their cross daily and follow me. Whoever wants to save their life

will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

And it's this significant moment in Jesus's life and his

ministry. He's now declared that he is the

Son of Man. He's declared that he must be

killed and when will be raised from the dead to new life.

And it's not the message that his followers, his disciples,

were hoping for. It's not the hey, it's time

we're gonna go storm the castle kind of message that they were

expecting. Death was not part of their

expectation. Death, in their eyes, meant

weakness. It meant failure.

It meant that their hopes for a Messiah who would restore Israel

were gone or soon to be gone. If Jesus dies, this thing ends.

And in Matthews version of that story, Peter, who we're gonna

see really bold and brash, he actually begins to rebuke Jesus.

If you read Matthew's account, he says never, literally starts,

never exclamation mark. It's like my kids when it's time

for bed never and they run little.

That literally happens. And then you keep reading Peter,

he begins, he rebukes Jesus, he says this shall never happen to

you. Like never, not a chance.

This can't happen. And you almost picture Peter.

He's like half pleading like, please no, don't let this be the

way. And half are like this better

not be the way because this isn't what we've been waiting

for. Jesus declaring that he must

die. And so we begin this passage. 8

days later. Jesus's declaration that he has

to die is echoing in their ears. About 8 days after this, Jesus

said this. He took Peter, John and James

with them and went up onto a mountain to pray.

So that's the this that he has to die, that he will be raised

up to new life. If you wanna follow me, you have

to take up your cross daily. And then he takes Peter, John

and James with him and they went up onto a mountain to pray.

And I don't care if you're reading in a few Bible like the

church owns, you can highlight those.

Those are good things to underline and highlight.

There are three clues that something significant is about

to happen, and I want us to notice them this morning.

So the first is the purpose. Jesus gets away to pray.

Jesus often gets away to pray during his ministry.

Jesus, in fact, consistently chooses to get away to pray.

And when you begin to look at all of those moments where Jesus

does leave in order to pray, many times it's either just

before or just after something significant happens in his life

and in his ministry. Jesus goes into the wilderness

to pray, says he fasts, and he prays before or sorry.

That's immediately after his baptism and before his ministry

starts. So it's at least beginning of

his ministry. Things are just about to ramp

up. What happens?

He's led into the wilderness, He fasts and he prays.

Before Jesus calls the 12 disciples and names them.

He goes up onto a mountainside and gets away to pray.

After he heals a man with leprosy, crowds begin to gather.

And like, things are just kind of picking up steam here.

And they bring the sick to Jesus in order for him to heal them.

But Jesus, it says he withdraws to lonely places in order to

pray. Prayer consistently drives the

mission and the ministry of Jesus.

And so the first sign is that he's gone up to a mountain to

prey. The second sign that he wants to

notice here are the people. So the purpose now, the people

for so much of Jesus's ministry. Jesus goes off in a particular

direction. And what happens?

Crowds follow, sometimes many, sometimes just a few here and

there. But it it seems like in this

moment, Jesus is really deliberate to pare things down

and to get away. Not even all of his disciples,

not even just the 12 disciples are invited into this moment

with Jesus. Only Peter, John and James are

invited up this mountain. And those are the same three who

we're gonna see later on toward the end of Jesus life will be

invited up another mountain to pray once more before Jesus's

death. So the crowds are gone.

Most of the disciples are left behind.

Jesus goes with Peter, James and John.

The third thing that I wanted to notice is the place nothing

small happens in the Bible when the story shifts to up on a

mountain. And we've talked a little bit

about this throughout the series.

There's a reason why spiritually rich and impactful moments in

life are called mountaintop experiences.

The Bible is filled with them. Bible is filled with stories of

people ascending, going up mountains in order to meet with

God, in order for God to be immediately present with them.

And so Moses. We see Moses in Exodus and if

you want to go take a look at it, Exodus 3429, Moses is taken

up Mount Sinai to meet with God in order to receive the Law and

the 10 commandments. Moses gets to do it twice

because he comes down and he smashes the 10 commandments and

then he has to go back up that mountain.

But when he returns, it says that his face and his clothes

are shining with light because he had been in the presence of

God. Moses goes up the mountain.

Elijah also goes up a mountain, only this time it's to defeat

the prophets of of ball on the mount or on Mount Carmel.

And in that story Elijah goes up and it's kind of this like duel.

You can go and read it, but God causes fire to rain down from

heaven, lighting the altar, proving himself to be the one

true God in that mountaintop experience.

And so we have these three, the the people, the place, and and

the purpose pointing us to something happening as he was

praying. 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, those

same 2 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, we're going to get to that Eventually.

They saw his glory and the two men standing with him.

Jesus is, and I'm sure if your Bible has headings in it, Jesus

is transfigured. That's what most Bibles name

this section of the Gospel of Luke.

And Luke doesn't use that specific word.

He doesn't use the specific word like Matthew and Mark

transfigured. That word is a word that sounds

familiar to our ears. It's metamorpho where where we

get metamorphosis from and it means to be transformed, to

change form, but not just like the shape shift and like look

different, like put on a mask, kind of pretend to be somebody

else. Like this is to change in a way

that reveals and keeps with inner reality what is really

true. It's the same word that Paul

uses when he writes to the church.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Allow God to transform your heart and your mind in the way

that it was intended to be. Jesus, Like I said, he doesn't

shape shift he he doesn't look completely different like the

disciples still recognize him as Jesus.

Instead, he begins to reveal the fullness of who he really is to

those disciples. This is the fullness of who

Jesus is. Son of God on display, fully

human, fully God. All of his goodness, all of his

wonder and majesty is being revealed in this moment to the

disciples. And it says they go from being

very sleepy to fully awake. They saw his glory.

They see Jesus's true nature, his full glory on display.

The glory of God is present. Heaven and earth are not just

close, but heaven is breaking into earth, and the disciples

get to witness it. They get to see it fully awake.

They see it with their own eyes. Jesus is God, God's glory, fully

present on earth, inside of human history, and on behalf of

humanity. Sometimes you and I need to be

woken up to who Jesus really, truly, fully is, and sometimes

we need to be reminded to see clearly, Stanley Hauerwas says.

Jesus is transfigured and we begin to see the glory of the

God whose home is among mortals. I love that line.

We begin to see the fullness of who God is, his glory on

display, not just this God who dwells like in the stars away,

but whose home is among mortals. And then he continues, who will

dwell in us and make us his people, wiping every tear, and

death will be no more. What Hawass is pointing us

toward, I think, is that the final promise found at the very

end of the book in Revelation, God's coming to dwell on earth,

God's restoring things to the way they were meant to be.

All of it begins in and with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.

Moses representing all of the law and the prophets.

Elijah rather representing all of the prophets pointing us

toward Jesus and Jesus pointing us toward the end of the story

where God's presence will finally come to rest on earth as

it is in heaven. We're told Jesus, Elijah and

Moses, they speak with one another about Jesus's death,

literally his departure, how he will depart, which he was about

to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.

Their conversation is forward-looking.

This mountaintop experience isn't just happy emotion.

Feel good, wonder at who Jesus is, celebrate and then go home.

Mountain Top Experience Over This mountaintop experience is

filled with the conversation of Jesus death, Fred Craddock

writes. This is a mountaintop

experience, but not the kind about which persons right

glowingly of sunrises, soft breezes, warm friends, music and

quiet time. On this mountain the subject is

death, and the frightening presence of God reduces those

presence to silence. In due time, after the

resurrection, he says, they will remember, they will understand,

and they will not feel heavy. In fact, they will tell it

broadly as good news. But here's the thing.

They're not quite ready yet. Peter, I love Peter.

Peter confronted with Jesus, whose face is shining with Moses

and Elijah, who really like honestly, right, shouldn't be

here in this moment says the most Peter thing that comes to

his mind. Peter, if you don't know, acts

first thinks maybe like that's how he moves.

That's how he operates and it's bold.

In many moments it is bold, but we continue to read This is so

as the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, Master, it's

good for us to be here. Let us put up 3 shelters, one

for you, one for Moses, and 1:00 for Elijah, and then we get this

line in parenthesis. He did not know what he was

saying. This is the Bible version of a

footnote, OK? This is the like you, Luke wants

us to know that this is not the way Jesus, you know, had

intended this, this maybe to go in this like this is Peter's

working something out here, all right?

This is what he wants you to know.

Peter's trying to figure it out, but here's the thing.

You and I can be a lot like Peter, right?

You can probably get into Peter's mind a little bit.

Here's Moses, Elijah, Jesus, three people who ascended

mountains and met with God. At least two of them had faces

shining with light. Like there's something similar

going on here. This is a moment.

This is a mountain top experience.

This is this is a moment that we want to sit in and enjoy.

And like, Peter's getting wrapped up into things and you

can imagine how his mind starts to go right, Like maybe this is

the moment we've been waiting for.

Maybe this is the coming of the Kingdom.

Like Jesus, maybe you, maybe you got it wrong a little bit.

Like maybe we don't have to leave this mountain.

Maybe we can stay here. Let's try to make sense of it.

Let's think about how we can configure this so that this can

be the thing. Like maybe just you don't need

to go back down the mountain and and die in Jerusalem.

Like maybe that part can we can put it on hold for a little bit.

Maybe we don't have to leave this emotionally high,

wonderful, great mountaintop experience.

So he says, listen, Gee, this is a good thing that you brought

us. This is our moment finally.

Like I know you've been doing the thing and like Moses and

Elijah, but like, maybe we can do something now too.

Like, hey, we wanna help. I'll build 3 shelters, one for

each of you. We can pitch a tent and we can

stay. That's what he's saying.

What Peter's referencing is the tent of presence.

When Israel was wandering in the desert, Moses would leave, go

outside of their camp, and he would put up a tent of presence

where God would meet with him. And so Peter's going, hey, we've

got language for this. We, I can see what's happening.

We can understand this and we can make sense of it and we can

capture it and we can hold on to it.

He wants to build a shelter and commemorate and contain this

amazing gift of God, His presence and His glory on full

display. Like maybe, maybe we don't have

to leave. Only Peter is interrupted again.

This there's listen, there's a lot, I think there's a lot of

comedy in the scripture when you know how and where to find it.

So here's Peter saying like, hey, maybe this mountaintop

experience doesn't need to end. Jesus let me do this mid

sentence. While he was speaking, a cloud

appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered

the cloud, so they are hit by fear.

And then 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.

They did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.

Listen to them. I think we have the same

tendency as Peter to limit God or to contain God, to try to

understand what God is doing and put it in a box that feels safe

and comfortable and cozy. Now I wonder how you try to

limit God. What tents are you building to

make your life a little bit more easy to manage?

And then if God's in this box over here, then I can have this

box right here and I can have this one over here, and I can

make sense of everything. And it's neat and it's tidy and

this is the way it's meant to be.

And maybe it's as simple as, hey, church is its own box.

I go to church on Sunday because that's the right thing to do,

because that's what my mom and dad did as my grandparents did.

And I'm gonna continue to do the same thing.

I'll tell you one of the boxes that I wrestle with as a pastor

putting God in and I don't have a name for it.

I just called the pastor box, but maybe it can resonate with

you. This is the box where I read my

Bible most days because I'm getting ready for a sermon that

I have to preach on Sunday, or because I'm looking for some

word of encouragement that I can send to somebody else.

I spent hours studying, reading, reading commentaries, what other

people say about the passages that we wrestle through and very

quickly what I can do and I can find is I find myself going,

Hey, I have spent so much time in the script My my job, my time

with Jesus, my time reading the Bible.

It's done nice tidy. Leave it when I go home, right?

The door can shut on my office and I go home.

And what I don't do is my own quiet time, my own hey God, you

need to confront me for me moments.

You need to challenge my heart. You need to get into my life.

You need to reorient, rearrange things in my own spirit.

For me, not as a pastor, eventually maybe as a pastor.

That's a box that I think many pastors or people who work for

churches can end up inadvertently putting God into.

Many of us can be like Peter when really what we need is this

level of divine interruption. I wonder if you've had any type

of experience where you've been stopped dead in your tracks and

hopefully it's an OK experience that you're like not, I'm not

talking like car accident, like not that level of, of

experience. But I'll give you one.

For me, I when I was training and running a lot, and this was

when we were living in Hamilton, we ran through the winter.

And in order to run through the winter, you basically are

committed to running in the dark.

Like that's just, that's it. And so this was the fall was

starting to get dark early and that we would run, we would go

trail running so early in the morning so that we could be back

home at 1/2 decent hour that we started with headlamps.

And you can probably imagine where this is going.

And so we start with headlamps running through the woods,

through the forest on the Bruce Trail in Hamilton.

And I had one moment where I was running and my headlamp, if you

ever used the headlamp, it's really good at illuminating like

just a very specific area in front of you and not all of the

things in front of you. And I ran smack into a branch

that I didn't see it like, and I landed on my back and lying in

the mud and there's cobwebs all over me and stopped dead in my

tracks. And in moments like that, you

really like, you do wonder, you second guess all of the

decisions you've made in life that have led you up to that

moment. That's the level I think of

interruption that Luke has or that that that Luke draws up for

Peter here. This is like while he was

speaking mid sentence. Like I've got the knowledge,

I've got the wisdom. I know the way we should go.

Hey G. And mid sentence God shows up.

Peter is interrupted and in that interruption I think they

finally start to get that this is different.

The disciples and Jesus have an experience with God the Father.

God's presence descends on them, says that Peter and the other

two disciples, they're caught up, they're afraid as they

entered the cloud, like something here is happening.

And then a voice speaks. And really what we see here is a

parallel story to Jesus's baptism.

There, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, Jesus is

baptized. When he comes up, there's a

voice that speaks. The voice comes from heaven.

You are my son, whom I love with you.

I am well pleased. Here again, God confirms who

Jesus is. You are my son.

This is my son, and God confirms the mission that Jesus has been

sent on. So at the baptism, the beginning

of the ministry of Jesus with the one of the things that

baptism does is it confirms Jesus's identity as the Son of

God and it confirms the mission, the ministry that he is going to

embark on. This isn't just some random

person that is doing some random thing.

God is affirming, confirming Jesus's identity and his

mission. Here again, this is my son whom

I have chosen. Listen to him.

God's divine interruption confirms Jesus identity and

confirms Jesus's mission and it corrects Peters understanding

and Peters will. Peter is pulled in this moment

into alignment with God's mission and with who Jesus is.

You know, I think there's a chance that some of us, maybe

all of us, need to be interrupted.

That level of fall on your back, pull the cobwebs off, wipe the

dirt and get back up kind of interruption until your life is

interrupted by Jesus, truly and properly.

All aspects of it shifted because of who he is.

You aren't fully awake and you're not living fully alive,

but there is great hope to be found in learning to allow God

to be God, and in learning to allow that God to interrupt your

life when he sees fit. Allow that same guy to stop you

dead in your tracks. Correct your understanding,

correct your desires, and correct your will and pull you

into greater alignment with what Jesus is still doing in the

world today. Let me pray, God, thanks for

your love and for your grace thinks that you're with us and

thinks that you interrupt us and you interrupt our lives.

Now we're grateful for that, as painful as a process as it may

be at times. So God, I pray that you would

interrupt and I pray that you would align our hearts, align us

as a church with who you are and what you're doing.

Jesus here say we we love you. Would you help us live out that

love in this world? So we gotta teach us, encourage

us, challenge us, rebuke us. All of it.

We need you to as we continue to worship.

I do pray that we would go encouraged because you continue

to show up and because you continue to be present.

We pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen. Amen in.