This coming Sunday we will be hearing the gospel lesson for Transfiguration Sunday.

We remember a time when Jesus went up on a mountain with some of his closest followers: Peter, James, and John.

Wild and wonderful things happen on that mountain.

Jesus’ clothes become bright and suddenly he is talking to two key figures–Moses and Elijah–from Israel’s tradition that have not walked the earth in a long time! In centuries!

That should get our attention. These wonderful developments left Peter, James, and John overwhelmed. Peter even proposes that he build a shield against these signs, something to make the encounter more manageable.

Yet all this wildness witnesses to a very simple message. God speaks from heaven and points to Jesus as God’s Son, and then tells everybody, “Listen to him.”

Our faithfulness begins with that simple act: we listen to the one who has been listening to God for eternity!

We are about to enter into the time of the year Christians call Lent. I’d invite you to find some spiritual practice that allows you to listen to Jesus and through him to God.

Forty members of the Lutheran churches in Eau Claire have written devotions to help you hear what they heard when they listened to God. I commend those to you.

But I also invite you to find a way to spend time with God’s word directly and engage in prayer as a way to do what God commanded on that mountain: listen to Jesus.

Andrew for some reason wasn’t along on this excursion. Imagine how attentively he would have listened to his friends who shared what they overheard as Jesus, Moses, and Elijah (!) had talked with each other. He must have been riveted to their story as they shared about listening to the voice of God booming from heaven, telling them to listen to Jesus!

I invite you to trust that others have heard things from God when they were not with us. Listen like Andrew attending to the words of his friends. Listen to people–this year we are trying hard to attend to younger voices–who would be willing to share with you their experience of the wildness and wonderfulness of God.

Andrew’s first response probably was skepticism. But when he saw the earnestness with which they shared he may have gotten to a place to hear what they had to say.

He listened to the ones who had listened to God as well as to the wisdom of the Law and the Prophets, who had been told by God to listen to Jesus, the One who had listened to God for all eternity.

Let us be all ears, ready to be surprised by the wild and wonderful ways God has been revealed to others.

The key: listen, listen, listen

About Philip Ruge-Jones

After I served for eighteen years as a professor of theology at Texas Lutheran University, my family decided to return to the Midwest where my wife and I grew up, attended college and seminary. Read more...