A Place of Prayer

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

February 27, 2022

Luke 9:28-36

 “A Place of Prayer”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine just days ago is front and center with world events today. Where will this lead? What does the future hold? We wait and watch and pray. With this weighing heavy on our hearts and minds, today we travel up the mountain with Peter, James, and John. In heart and spirit, together with that inner circle of the disciples, we see Jesus in his transfigured glory, revealed for that passing moment there on the mountain top. This Epiphany season began with Jesus’ baptism by John at the Jordan River (Luke 3:21-22), where the Father’s voice was heard: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). And now as the Epiphany season draws to a close the Father’s voice is heard once again there on the mountain top, declaring to Peter, James, and John: “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). Of the four Gospel writers, Luke alone records that at significant points in his earthly life and ministry, Jesus spent time in prayer. These significant points include both Jesus’ baptism as well as his transfiguration (Luke 3:21; 9:28). Before Jesus called the twelve apostles, Luke records that Jesus spent the night in prayer (Luke 6:12-16). On this Festival of the Transfiguration, the final Sunday of the Epiphany season, the theme for today’s message is “A Place of Prayer.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

A place of prayer – that is what this Sanctuary is. It is a place set apart and consecrated as a house of worship where people come to call upon the Name of the Lord. We do this both individually and collectively. People come here to pray who are not members of this congregation. Some of them come but once; others have come on a regular basis. Their only request is to come into the house of the Lord to pray, and we are happy to honor this request. But when Jesus went to pray, he did not go up to the temple in Jerusalem. Rather, “he… went up on the mountain to pray” (Luke 9:28). Jesus sought out that place of lonely solitude, removed from the cares and demands of daily life, to pray to his Father in heaven. It is no accident that, as Luke records, at pivotal moments in his earthly life and ministry – his baptism, his calling of the apostles, his transfiguration – it began with coming to that place of prayer. Do you have a place of prayer in your own life? As a congregation, we are blessed to have this beautiful Sanctuary as a place of prayer that we may come to, but we are not limited to pray only here. Prayer can happen anywhere at any time. But in our faith journey, it does help to have a go-to place where can be in holy conversation with our heavenly Father, even as Jesus was. This might be a specific room where we can retreat to be alone with the Lord. This might be a “prayer chair” where we go to sit and pray. Scripture does not tell us the specific mountain where Jesus went to pray before his transfiguration. Scholars tell us it might have been way up north at Mt. Hermon, rising almost 10,000 feet, where even in summertime there is usually snow on its peak. Or it might have been one of the minor hills surrounding Mount Hermon. Tradition points to Mount Tabor in southern Galilee, just six miles from Nazareth, as the place where Jesus’ transfiguration took place. When all is said and done, it doesn’t matter so much exactly where Jesus’ transfiguration took place. It matters simply that it did take place.

At his transfiguration, Jesus is flanked by those towering figures of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, who represented the Law and the Prophets. Both met the living God at Mount Sinai (so named in Exodus), otherwise known as Mount Horeb (so named in Deuteronomy). We are told that they appeared in glory and spoke of Jesus’ departure (έξοδον), “which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Just a few verses before today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus told his disciples that “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). And now this is affirmed by Moses and Elijah in glory, who saw this from afar in their own day. Both of these men had left the earth in extraordinary ways: Moses died and was buried by God himself in an unknown grave (Deuteronomy 34:5ff.). Elijah was swept up into heaven by a whirlwind after the chariot and horses of fire appeared (2 Kings 2:11). But here stands One greater than Moses and Elijah. Here stands the One to whom Moses and Elijah pointed. Jesus came to fulfill all that was written about him in the Law and the Prophets as the Father’s beloved Son, his Chosen One (Luke 24:44ff.). He came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He came to be that sacrificial offering as payment for all our sin; our disobedience of God’s Law and our failure to heed his message through his servants, the prophets. Over against Peter’s urging for Jesus to stay on top of the mountain, following his transfiguration Jesus went down the mountain and set his face to go to Jerusalem and all that awaited him there. Jesus descended from his transfigured glory there on the mount of Transfiguration in order to go up to another mountain, Mount Calvary, the hill of Golgotha, where he would give his life on the tree of the cross, shedding his blood for us and for our salvation. From the mount of Transfiguration to Mount Calvary, in response to all that God in Christ has done for us, we seek out that place of prayer in our lives, offering to God the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for all that He has done for us.

The Father’s voice that spoke from the cloud on that mountain top speaks to us today: “This is my Son, my Chose One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). When the fleeting moment of transfiguration was over, the disciples were left alone with Jesus. It is the same with us today. At the end of the day, at the end of our life, at the end of the world, we are left alone with Jesus. And that is sufficient. When everything else has fallen away, when everyone else has gone away, there is only Jesus. We chase after many things in life, but none of these things will last. What is lasting and eternal is Jesus only. And so we follow Jesus down the mountain back into the reality of daily life. And in our following, we seek that place of prayer in daily life where we can be with Jesus so that we can both listen to him in his Word and speak to him in prayer. Let us do on earth those things which prepare us for heaven. Amen.