Luke 9:28-36
“Where to Pray”
February 15, 2015 - Transfiguration Sunday

         You might think the simple answer to “Where should we pray?” matches our simple answers to “When should we pray?” and “For whom should we pray?” So just like we said that we should pray all the time and for everyone, we should pray everywhere. But Scripture does not contain any simple direction for the place of prayer quite like it does for the time and subjects of our prayers. It’s not a bad idea to think we should pray everywhere, but the Bible identifies specific sorts of places to pray.

         We read Luke’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration this morning, rather than Mark which is the Gospel for this church year, because only Luke mentions Jesus’ reason for heading up the mountain with Peter, James and John. He went to pray. It wasn’t just a nice hike like our typical Eugene jaunts up Spencer Butte or Mt. Pisgah or even one of the Sisters. It was a climb with a specific spiritual purpose, to find a place to pray.

         Why a mountain top? Mountain tops are neat places. If you climb rather than drive up or ride a helicopter, then it takes some effort that makes you feel pretty special just because you got there. The views are often spectacular. Looking out on the green Willamette Valley from high up inspires natural praise for our Creator.

         But Jesus and His disciples did not climb the Mount of Transfiguration for the exercise or for the view, at least not for the view of the country below. None of the Gospel writers tell us which mountain they climbed, although Matthew and Mark tell us it was “high.” The point was not how far and what landmarks they could see from there. It was what they saw and experienced there.

         They went up there to get away from the crowds and the calls for miracles and all the everyday distractions of their life as traveling preachers and teachers. Unless it’s Spencer Butte on Memorial Day weekend, mountain tops are isolated, quiet, out of the way places where you can focus your thoughts, where you can pray. The first lesson here about the place of prayer is that where we pray is away.

         Look at the life of Jesus and you will see Him constantly following that practice of getting away to pray, separating Himself from His work, from the general public, and praying in set apart, out of the way places. That’s how His ministry began. After His baptism, the Holy Spirit led Him out into the wilderness, away from everyone else, where He prayed and fasted and prepared for His mission.

         It didn’t need to be a mountain top. It just needed to be quiet and apart. After talking about the crowds that gathered around Jesus to be healed, Luke 5:16 says that “he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.” Sometimes it was just out in undeveloped countryside. Sometimes it was up a mountain. At the end of His life on earth it was in a still, deserted garden.

         You might take this habit of Jesus praying in isolation and put it together with what He said in our Ash Wednesday Gospel reading from Matthew 6:6, “whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret,” and conclude that the place to pray should always be somewhere alone and isolated and apart from everyone else.

         Yes, Jesus was often alone when He prayed, but at key points, like that prayer in the garden and in our Gospel reading today, Jesus had others with Him. He prayed with a small group gathered around Him to support Him in prayer. At times, like when He raised Lazarus from the dead, He prayed out loud in front of a bunch of people. That point about praying alone in your room was to avoid the hypocrisy of turning prayer into a show, not to command us to never pray with other people.

         As we said early in this series on prayer, we see the first Christians often and regularly praying together. We see this over and over in the book of Acts, starting in chapter 1 verse 14, where we are told that the male disciples met together with the women disciples, “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” Acts 2:42 says that the first gatherings of Christian “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

         The fact that Acts 2:42 says “the prayers” makes it pretty clear that those original Christians were, as I said a few weeks ago, following the Jewish practice of praying together at set times of the day. They even still went and joined in the prayers at the Temple, as we see in Acts 3:1 when Peter and John go “up to the temple at the hour of prayer.”

         To pray away, away from ordinary life and distractions, can mean praying alone, but it can also mean praying together, in places set apart for prayer, like the Temple was, like every Christian church is meant to be. Jesus said furiously that God’s house is to be a house of prayer. And the basic Christian understanding of who we are as the Church is that we are now God’s house, God’s temple. Wherever we gather to worship ought to become a house of prayer.

         It’s still apart, still away that we pray in the best and most complete way. Yes, yes, yes, we can pray anytime and everywhere. Pray before you get on the freeway. Pray before you pick up the pencil and start that test. Pray as you go into the doctor’s office. Pray as you try to find a gentle answer to that annoying co-worker. But then look at the example of Jesus going away into the desert and up mountains, look at those early Christians gathering away in an upper room, and make it a practice to also go away to pray.

         That’s one big reason we are gathered here in this church building, why we all made the effort to get up, get dressed and walk or drive or bike here this morning. We came away from everyday life and worries to be here and pray and to encourage each other to pray.

         We need to pray away but we cannot always do it privately and alone. A recent Barna poll shows that 47% of senior pastors believe that at least some people experience their faith exclusively through the Internet. That’s probably true but it’s not good. If Jesus needed friends gathered around Him in prayer, then so do you and I. That’s why we are here now. It’s why Mom’s in Prayer groups gather here on Thursday and Friday. It’s why our men’s group shows up here on Friday morning. It’s why a fellowship group goes to the Willock’s home on Friday evenings. It’s why our Church Council is going to travel up the McKenzie to another church for our retreat this Saturday. We come away together to pray just like Jesus’ and His disciples.

         Wednesday night you are invited to come away for another time of prayer as we observe Ash Wednesday. Then each Wednesday following in Lent Trudy Kutz will offer an opportunity to come together and pray. I hope many of you will join her.

         We come away to pray, but now we need to point out that where we pray is not where we stay. That’s also the message of our text. We laugh at how wrong Peter was in verse 33 to say they should all stay up there, living in little huts made out of branches gathered from the mountainside. But we need to apply that to ourselves. Let’s not kneel down to pray unless we are ready to get up from there and go where God sends us.

         Jesus is the example again. He prayed out in the wilderness for forty days, then came back to civilization to gather disciples, preach the good news and heal people. He went up on the mountain to pray and talk with Moses and Elijah, but look at what they spoke about in verse 31: “his departure.” Jesus prayed and then still had somewhere to go. As we remember now in the church season before us, after He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, He got up and went to the Cross to die. Let’s not think that you and I are really praying unless we are ready to rise from prayer, pick up our crosses and follow Jesus wherever He takes us.

         Those disciples who saw the glory of Jesus had to come down the mountain and discover they still had lots to learn. They came down and met that man with the demon-possessed son and found they couldn’t help him. As Mark 9:29 tells us, they needed to learn to pray still more if they were going to be able to deal with that sort of evil. But they could not learn that lesson up on the mountain, but only when they went out among other people.

         That’s another reason you cannot truly live your spiritual life on-line. You think you are in touch with the world, but you aren’t really going anywhere, aren’t really learning the lessons that going out among people teaches you. Prayer is the beginning of a journey, a journey with Jesus that will take you places you never expected.

         Forty-five years ago I knelt down by my bed to pray one night and got up believing God had called me to be a pastor. Now here I am, a long way down a road that began with prayer and that took me back and forth across the country. That’s how it’s meant to be. We don’t stay where we pray. We pray and then go where God sends us.

         Maybe that’s why so many people move away from Valley Covenant, like our friend who is here with us this morning. We pray and then get up and go. Many of us have prayed, and met Jesus and then followed Him where He led, across the country, across the world. Where you pray is not where you stay. It’s a risky business.

         Of course, getting up from prayer and going where God sends doesn’t always mean a long-distance move. You may pray and find God telling you to go across town and volunteer at a school or hospital, or just walk next door and get to know your neighbor. He may tell you to get up and go out to a Bible study group or to work a shift at the family shelter or help someone move through Love INC. Just don’t pray expecting to stay there in some holy glow. Pray expecting to get up and go.

         We pray away. We come away, apart from our busyness, our distractions, our entertainment, all our ordinary work and places, and in those away places of prayer we meet Jesus and see His glory. So we pray, but we do not stay. We realize that we cannot bottle up and hold onto whatever spiritual blessings God pours down on us in our prayers. We cannot stay there in the peace and quiet of prayer just because we like peace and quiet. No, we get up from prayer and let God lead us.

         But there’s one more thing to say. Peter’s desire to stay there on the mountain with Jesus and those prophets was not all wrong. He was experiencing something that in the end is meant to be what we all experience forever. That moment of seeing Jesus’ face shining with all His divine light of love and power is what we all hope and look for someday.

         Go back to the verse just before our text. Jesus had been telling the disciples about how He would die and rise again. He had been telling them about how they themselves would suffer persecution and even lose their lives for His sake. But then in verse 27 He told them, “truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” That’s what Peter, James and John went up that mountain to see. They saw in the face of Jesus the hope of the world, the glory of God’s kingdom in His own beloved Son. They saw where and what we were made for. They saw that where we pray is where we will be someday.

         Where we pray is where we meet our Lord, where we kneel or sit or stand and see the light of His face shining on us. Right now it is dim. Right now we don’t see very clearly or understand very well. But we pray in His presence, and into His presence is where by His grace we are headed.

         Beth and I try to talk to our daughters by Skype every week. We used to do the same with our parents by phone many years ago. It’s good. We get to hear their voices and see their faces smile at us, even if their images do freeze up now and then when the connection gets flakey. I’m so glad for the blessing of those conversations and the sight of those faces. But what we really hope for, what we really want is to see those same faces in person, not pixilated or frozen on a screen, but shining in full glory in the flesh. Skype is nice, but real face to face is better.

         Those disciples got a foretaste of the kingdom of God, which is all about being with Jesus, face to face in His presence. They saw what it would be like someday to see His face in His full glory. We get a little foretaste ourselves when we come away and pray and find our Lord near us, sense the love and smile of His face shining on us. As I said, we know we can’t stay there. We have to get up and follow Him. But if we keep on praying and then following, then we will eventually come to where we can stay, where He has come to be with us in His kingdom forever.

         Prayer is like Skype. The face of Jesus is in heaven right now. The only way we see it now is long-distance, in prayer and in His Word and at His Table. But those glimpses of Him in prayer and worship are the promise of something far better when He comes again. Then we too will see that glorious face which the disciples saw on the mountain.

         Jesus came so you and I could get there. As He told the disciples and as He talked about with Moses and Elijah, He came to die and give His live so that our sins could be forgiven and we could come freely to Him in prayer. Then He rose again so that the glory of His face could keep shining on us, could give us the true hope that like those three men, we will see the beloved face we only see dimly now.

         We pray away because that is where we can focus on Jesus. We don’t stay where we pray because Jesus is leading us on. But we know that where we pray is where we will be someday, because Jesus is there. Let’s keep meeting Jesus in prayer, following Him into the world, and being ready to meet Him in person when He returns to light our world with His glory forever.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2015 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj