March 3, 2019 “Huddle” – Luke 9:28-36

Luke 9:28-36
“Huddle”
March 6, 2019 – Transfiguration Sunday

I’m not a football fan. I don’t like or watch it at all. But I understand the Super Bowl was a bit of a disappointment this year. So this morning I thought I’d offer you fans another opportunity to think about the game and how it relates to our life in Christ and today’s text.

In 1894 football was being played at Gallaudet University, the first college for the deaf. As the team stood on the field planning their next play, quarterback Paul Hubbard realized that what he was telling his team in American sign language could be seen and thus “overheard” by their opponents. So he gathered his team into a tight circle in order to hide his hand signals before each play. That little circle was soon adopted by football teams everywhere as the best way to communicate on the field. The “huddle” was invented.

1,900 years earlier, before anyone ever thought of football, there was an historic huddle preceding the greatest play the world ever saw. Jesus Christ went up onto a mountain and stood in a huddle with the two best players to precede Him. We read in verse 30 of our text that “And, behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah.”

The Christian Church has long called this huddle on a mountain top the “Transfiguration” of Jesus, because of the amazing transformation in His appearance. As Jesus prayed there on the mountain, His hidden glory as the Son of God began to leak out, to be revealed in His physical form.

We mark this event with a Sunday in the church calendar for a couple of reasons. First, because the Transfiguration is a miraculous confirmation of who Jesus is, truly the glorious Son of God. Second, we remember the Transfiguration as a major turning point in the story. It’s here on this mountain that the play Jesus came to run was confirmed as the fulfillment and completion of everything God did up until then. In the calendar of the church year, Transfiguration Sunday marks the end of the season of Epiphany and gets us ready for the season of Lent. It moves us from weeks of celebrating the light and glory of Jesus, to a harder, darker time, a season to remember that the greatest glory of Jesus is to be found on a road marked with humiliation, suffering, and a gruesome death.

The huddle on the Mount of Transfiguration is not just for two shining figures who walked out of the pages of the Old Testament. As Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah about what He was about to do, you and I ought to listen in as well, and learn something of the game plan for our own lives. We are meant to join the huddle.

There were people like you and me up on the mountain. Jesus had taken along His three closest disciples, Peter, John and James. Verse 28 says he took them with Him to pray. Even before Elijah and Moses appeared, Jesus did not choose to be alone, but to pray together with others, to huddle with three friends who walked with Him.

That first huddle of three disciples and Jesus did not last very long. As we discover in verse 32, “Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep.” Jesus must have prayed for hours. They couldn’t stay awake. Their eyelids grew heavy. Their heads drooped. They let themselves slump sideways. They drifted off to sleep there on the rocky ground. As you may remember, this was not the last time this would happen. In a few weeks, just before Easter, we will recall how those same three men fell asleep again while Jesus prayed, then in a lonely place named Gethsemane.

Peter, John and James really were like you and me. Weak and weary, they closed their eyes just before everything exciting was ready to start. They gave up when this business of praying with Jesus got too long and tiring. Their eyes were closed when Jesus’ face began to change and grow brighter. They did not see the transformation of His garment from the dingy gray and brown of cheap linen into white so pure that Mark says no bleach on earth could produce it. They were insensible when two other bright figures appeared with Jesus and began to converse with Him. In other words, they almost completely missed that awesome huddle between three spiritual giants. They were asleep.

Being a disciple of Jesus has its moments of glory. Occasionally you or I find ourselves on a mountain with the Lord. His light is dazzling. There is a stunning answer to prayer and we realize He is near. We receive strength to overcome temptation and feel His power. We see a sunrise and are overwhelmed with the beauty of Creation. And in those times when we feel forgiveness and restoration after falling into sin, we experience again the fullness of His grace. Brilliant, shining moments. But in between them we often find long, hard days and hours of just trying to be faithful in prayer, in Bible study, in service to others. We just slog along the spiritual road, and it can be pretty hard not to just grow very weary and fall asleep, like Peter in the huddle on the mountain.

Part of our struggle and weariness is a misconception about what should come out of our spiritual “huddles.” True football fans among us wouldn’t think this about the huddles they watch on television or from the bleachers. But the spiritual misconception is that when we’ve really huddled well, the plays that follow will all be spectacular. A long bomb into the end zone. A quarterback sneak that goes all the way. A clever reverse that draws the defense to one side while a handoff is made to a receiver who takes the ball way down the field on the other side.

Spiritually, we seem to expect major gains on every play. Some deep insight every time we read the Bible. A thrilling sense of God’s presence whenever we sing praise songs. Clear and beautiful answers to our prayers. News of many converts from our missionaries.

But football fans know that isn’t how it works in their game. Lots of plays are just sheer grunt work. A short pass for a few yards. A two-yard push up the middle with defenders all over the ball carrier. Over and over, just holding onto the ball and trying to move it forward a little. That’s more like a lot of Christian life. Moving inches forward, only a little at time, waiting patiently for the rare miracle play and not being disappointed when it doesn’t happen. We even go backwards, the spiritual equivalent of lost yardage or a punt. That’s more like reality both in football and in faith.

When Jesus and Moses and Elijah huddled together on the mount of Transfiguration, they talked about the play which Jesus would soon begin to run. Of Matthew, Mark and Luke, only Luke gives us an inkling that the big play was the content of that conversation. Look at the word Luke chose to describe what Jesus would do. Verse 31 says, “They appeared in glory and were speaking about his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” That’s a strange word for this play, a “departure.”

We tend to think of what Jesus accomplished as salvation, as resurrection, as new and glorious life. And it is all those things. But He only accomplished all that, via a “departure.” He was going to Jerusalem to depart life, to die on the Cross in the horrible way that criminals were often executed by the Roman empire.

If you go to where I spent five years of my life, the University of Notre Dame, you will find a huge portrait of Jesus on the side of the fourteen-story Hesburgh Library building. It’s a wonderful mosaic of the resurrected Lord, coming out of the tomb, arms outstretched in His great victory over sin, death and the devil. A procession of all the saints and scholars of history are represented around and beneath Him, following Jesus as the living Word, their first guide to truth.

Many of you know that mural at Notre Dame has a nickname based on the fact that it is visible from the football stadium, or at least it used to be, rising above one end zone. Those outstretched, upraised arms seem to mirror a referee’s arms raised to declare a touchdown. So that great piece of Christian art is fondly known as “Touchdown Jesus.”

What I want us to realize now, as we read this story of Transfiguration, is that our Lord only gets to be “Touchdown Jesus” on the other side of a long, slow, painful, push down a field toward goalposts shaped like a cross. He did not win through some great demonstration of divine skill and power. He won by leaving the field, by a departure, a death. Jesus only held His arms up in glorious victory after His arms were stretched out for Him on the Cross. That’s the grand play the three shining figures discussed on the mountain. Not a triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, not a glorious ascension into Heaven a few weeks later, but a departure into the darkness of death.

Don’t get me wrong. He’s still “Touchdown Jesus.” The power of God raised our Lord out of darkness and death and gave Him the greatest victory in history. Jesus’ arms in heaven are raised high in the triumph and joy of the new life He gained new life not just for Himself but for anyone who accepts it. He’s alive and leading that grand procession of all His people. He is the living Word, the source and beginning of all truth.

So if you trust Him and follow Him, He’s going to bring you safely to the goal, to join in a great end zone celebration that will last forever. He’s already run the play, the game is won. You just need to get out of the stands and run onto the field to join Him. But that’s where it gets more complicated than football.

The word “departure” here in Greek is actually “exodus.” Can you hear it? Here was Moses, the leader of the great exodus of God’s people from bondage in Egypt, talking to the One who would accomplish a greater exodus. Moses led Israel into a great, but difficult departure from their old lives so that God could save them from slavery. Now here is Jesus leading us in a great, but difficult exodus from life itself, so that God can save us from sin. Jesus died in a great exodus for our salvation. To receive it, you and I are invited forward into our own exodus, our own dying, our own Cross.

Right before these moments of glory on the mountain, though they didn’t understand, Jesus told His disciples very clearly what the play was, both for Himself and for them. Back in verse 22, He plainly predicted His own death. He said He had to suffer; He had to be rejected; He had to be killed. Only then would He be raised again to life. In verse 23, He applied that same strategy to you and me. He said “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

You don’t get the glory without the Cross. Mountain top experiences can fool us into thinking that’s not true. It sure fooled Peter. He saw all that glory shining around him, Moses and Elijah and Jesus, and probably thought he had arrived. This was the end of the game. Touchdown! It was all over but the celebration. So Peter told Jesus in verse 33, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Let’s sit here in the glory. This is a good thing. This is what we signed on for. Let’s just stay here. But it was not time to stay. It was time to depart.

Notice what Luke says about Peter in a little parenthesis at the end of the verse, “not knowing what he said.” He didn’t know. Neither do we whenever we start to imagine we can just stay where we are and have the glory without the Cross. The only way to the goal line is down a long hard field filled with mean opponents and lots of hard knocks. That’s what it means for the salvation Jesus’ accomplished to be a “departure.”

So what should we do? We’re not in a scrimmage. Our opponents are not pushovers. Getting anywhere spiritually is a constant struggle. It’s tempting to give up, to go look for a different game to play. Maybe find a church where He’s always “Touchdown Jesus,” and they’ve forgotten how He got there. But I don’t believe you want to do that. You want to follow the Living Word, the great Lord of truth, whose true word to us is that if we follow, if we carry our own cross, if we stay in the game, He will bring us across the goal line.

In the meantime, we keep playing. We take direction from Jesus our Quarterback. We come together to learn the plays and receive our assignments in the game plan. The end of the text says that a cloud came over that mountain top. In that cloud they heard a voice which told them simply, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice was done and the cloud was gone, there they were with Jesus, just Jesus.

That’s the huddle we aim for when we come here to worship on Sunday morning. It’s that huddle we try to create in a Sunday School class, in a home fellowship, in our Singers’ practice, in a prayer group. It’s anytime we sit down with others and read the Word, pray over it, and listen. We do exactly what Peter, James and John were told. “Listen to him!” Listen to Jesus. Listen together, in a huddle, whether it’s three or thirty. Join together to hear His Word and thereby learn how to run the next play you face.

I don’t know what stretch of field you are looking down right now. I can’t quite picture which big, ugly brute of an opponent is crouching there to knock you to the ground when the ball is snapped. You know. You may be just be trying to hold position with your rebellious child for another day. You may be attempting an end run around conflict at work. You might be struggling to carry the ball through one more week of a difficult marriage. Your opponent could be physical pain that never goes away. It could be mental darkness and depression that saps all your energy. You could be bent over looking straight into the eyes of a hulking big temptation that just grins evilly at you. You could have any combination of these opponents I’ve named on the line to block you or others waiting downfield to tackle you. I don’t know. But you do. That’s why the huddle. That’s why we’re here. To hear what Jesus says through His word and through the rest of His team.

We’re here to remember how the game is really played. It’s not a clear field before us, not a stroll to the goal. So we’re here to slap each other on the back, offer encouragement and support, and even run interference for each other. Jesus calls us into a huddle, a huddle that only works when we play together, as a team. It’s in that huddle, in that team, that we find the only hope we have in this game.

As the Father said to Peter, John and James, “Listen to Him.” Listen to Him. Listen to Him. Learn His Word. Huddle around His Word and take it into your life. Moses was there. God spoke through the Law. Elijah was there. God spoke through the Prophets. Now Jesus is here and He speaks through His Son. His apostles wrote down what Jesus said. His Word is in this Book. What He says is the truth. Listen to Him.

We’re here to remember that the game can be won, and has already been won for us. Jesus stood in holy, awesome glory on that mountain. Shining in Him was all the strength and skill needed to win. After a grueling game, He stood up again in even more glory outside a little grave. And because He is alive He is here among us now. He knows how to play, so we listen to Him. And He calls us to pick up our crosses and run with them. But He runs with us and stands before us. When we do come to the end, when we do cross that line, we will see His glory. We will see the wonderful, glorious arms of Jesus, stretched up in victory and stretched out to gather us in.

Amen.