March 2, 2025
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Luke 9:28-36
Tuning into Jesus
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
We’ve been journeying through the season of Epiphany. The thrust of this liturgical season is to shine light on the person of Jesus. Exactly who is Jesus? How do we understand him?
The season began on January 6 with the Day of Epiphany. The foreign-born Magi see a star in the sky. We had a big star in our sanctuary on this front wall. The star was a sign that something with cosmic significance had entered the world. The Magi followed the star to Bethlehem and there they found the newly born Jesus.
The season continued with Jesus’ baptism by John. The heavens were rent asunder and the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove and landed on him. A voice spoke from the heavens. In the succeeding weeks we witnessed Jesus’ miracles of healing, acts of power over the created order, and his revolutionary preaching. Each one of these stories shed further light on the question “Who is this?”
And now we end on this final Sunday in Epiphany. It climaxes with this remarkable story of Jesus’ transfiguration. All of the previous texts indicated that Jesus was someone pretty special. A Messiah king? A man with healing capabilities? A remarkably wise sage?
But this story about what Peter, James and John witnessed puts Jesus in an entirely different category. He is revealed as divine.
Jesus takes Peter, James, and John along as he goes up a mountain to pray. And while Jesus was praying, his appearance was transformed. He began to shine with a heavenly radiance. He looked not of this world.
And as if that wasn’t enough, two key figures from Israel’s past joined him. Beside him stood Moses and Elijah. Both men had experienced mountaintop encounters with God. Each of them represented the canon of Israel’s holy scriptures: Moses with the Torah and Elijah with the prophets. Israel had revered the legacy of these two men and the words of the Law and the Prophets.
But then awe turned to terror when a mysterious cloud lowered onto the mountain and enveloped them. And then the voice from the cloud: “This is my Son! Listen to him!”
And then, just like that, the cloud was gone, Moses and Elijah were gone, and Jesus looked like plain old Jesus.
The voice from the cloud instructed the disciples to listen to Jesus. There he was, standing with Moses and Elijah. The voice said to listen to Jesus. It doesn’t mean: listen to Jesus and shuck the Old Testament. What it does mean is that Jesus is the interpretive lens through which we take our understanding and direction, and that includes how we interpret the Hebrew scriptures.
Listen to Jesus. The words from heaven instruct us to keep our ears tuned to Jesus. Above all other voices, all the world’s urgings and siren calls, we are to keep our hearts and minds tuned to Jesus.
The story is told which took place during the days before telephones. The telegraph reigned supreme for long distance communications. One day, a young man saw an advertisement for a job as a Morse Code operator. On the appointed day and time he showed up at the indicated address to apply.
When he arrived, he walked into a large office area. The room was filled with the sounds of people busy at work, and the tap-tap of a telegraph echoed throughout the room.
A sign was there: Applicants for Morse Code Operator, please fill out a form and wait until you are summoned.
He sat down and filled out his form. Seven other applicants were already seated in the area. They were waiting to be summoned for an interview.
Suddenly, the young man stood up. He entered into the office and the door shut behind him. Surprised, the seven other applicants looked at each other because nobody had asked the man to go into the office.
A few moments went by, and then the telegraph boss walked out with the young man. The other applicants assumed he’d be escorted out of the building for barging into the office unannounced. But to their surprise, the employer said to them, “Gentlemen, thank you for coming today and applying for our position of Morse Code Operator. However, I need to tell you that the position has just been filled.” He looked to the young man.
The other applicants were flummoxed. One of them spoke up, “I don’t understand. He was the last one of us to arrive, and none of us even got a chance to interview. And yet, he got the job.”
The employer said, “Well, all this time you’ve been sitting right here. And the telegraph you hear in the room has been signaling the following message: If you understand this message, then come right in. The job is yours.
“None of you listened to or understood the message. This young man did. The job is his.”
In our world filled with the cacophony of many voices and distractions, to whom do you listen? We listen to Jesus.
As God’s people, as believers in Jesus Christ, our directive is to stay attuned to him. His priorities become our priorities. Throughout his ministry he demonstrated a radical and complete kind of love.
• He loved the stranger; he welcomed the outcast; he showed mercy to the foreigner; he touched the leper.
• In his teachings, he instructed that those who have two coats to share one. He told us that when we give food to the hungry and tend to the sick, we are doing so to him.
His was a radical kind of love. It doesn’t jive with the mechanics of our broken world. To some ears, it might even sound downright political. A message of blessing for the poor and woes to the rich, that doesn’t set well. But still, these are his words. And he is the one we are commanded to listen to.
“This is my Son. Listen to him.” This is our command. Listening to Jesus is something like tuning a radio, the old kind, with a dial. Cruising the bandwidth, there are all sorts of other radio frequencies broadcasting their message.
As we tune up and down the dial, we’ll hear all sorts of stations vying for our attention. Some will even sound like the Jesus station. They have a righteous and holy cast. The words have that stained glass kind of sound. But their message is decidedly not that of Jesus’. The test for us, my friends, is the measure of Jesus’ love.
St. Paul noted this in his letter to the Galatians. He wrote to them:
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
These stained-glass voices may, at first, sound righteous and holy, but with further consideration, we see that they are not based on Jesus’ radical and transforming love. They are more concerned with judgment and condemnation; they suspect the stranger and reject the outcast; they preach a gospel of prosperity.
The true measure for us, my friends, is this: do they reflect the love of Jesus?
Up and down the radio dial we search. Our ears are searching for the voice of Jesus. The whistles and static of this world’s many diversions drown out the clear signal of his voice.
What we need to do is to follow Jesus’ example. He took his disciples to a set apart place to pray. We need a time and place to center our hearts and minds upon the voice of our Lord and Savior. He calls us to love: to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor as ourself. He says, “Follow me.” We follow the example of his love, for God and for our neighbor.
And he also calls us to see HIS love. Look to him. Look to his life. Look to all he has done for you. He came to dwell with us. He took our sins to the cross. And in rising from the dead he has claimed victory even over death. What wondrous love is this!
I came here to Hope seven years ago on February 12, 2018. It was the Monday following Transfiguration Sunday. And now today, my last day here comes full circle. I’ve been your pastor for exactly seven cycles of the liturgical calendar!
As I retire, I hope you know how much I’ve loved you and loved being your pastor. Although our paths will now diverge, the ties that bind us together will remain. May the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord continue to be our light.
