The Transfiguration of Our Lord, 02/14/2010

Sermon on Luke 9:28-36, by Richard O. Johnson

"Heavy with Sleep"

²⁸Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. ³²Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. ³³Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" - not knowing what he said. ³⁴While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. ³⁵Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen listen to him!" ³⁶When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. [Luke 9.28-39, NRSV]

"Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory. . ." This little detail of this story is given only by Luke, and it is one that captivates my own thinking. The Greek is a little ambiguous; it can mean what our translation says, that the disciples had "stayed awake"; or it could mean that they actually had fallen asleep, or were on the verge of falling asleep, but were awakened by what happened. At the very least the phrase suggests that the disciples were struggling to stay awake.

A few years ago I attended a theological conference in Minnesota. It began on a Sunday afternoon, and I took a Saturday night "red eye flight" from California to get there. Throughout the entire three day conference, there was not one single lecture during which I did not fall asleep! In spite of sleeping on at least part of the flight, in spite of sleeping pretty soundly Sunday evening, I just couldn't get my mind and body to focus on what were actually very stimulating and interesting lectures.

So often this is the case in our spiritual life, isn't it? We are asleep spiritually-or, if not quite asleep, at least our spiritual eyelids are terribly heavy. And so we miss things. We don't quite get it. We cruise along, thinking that we're doing just fine, but then something happens and we realize that we have, in fact, been asleep.

The sleep of prejudice

Sometimes our eyes are heavy with the sleep of prejudice. We have certain ideas that we're not willing to give up, or even to question, and those ideas shut out new possibilities for us. William Willimon tells the story of talking with a group of Mississippi Christians about what it means to "die with Christ." He asked them if they had any experience with that kind of death. One replied that he was once sure that the world would end if he ever had to have real human relationships with black people. Now, he said, he realized how foolish that was. Now his neighbor was black, and they had become close friends.

But I'm not just talking about racial prejudice here. So often we go merrily along with our assumptions, never bothering to consider that God might do something new with us. "We never did it that way before," we explain. As if God doing something new in our lives might be dangerous to us! A new idea comes knocking at the door of our mind or heart, and we are so sleepy with the way it has always been that we cannot hear the knock-and if we can, we dread opening the door!

The sleep of lethargy

Sometimes our eyes are heavy with the sleep of lethargy. One of the most underrated of the seven deadly sins, in my own experience, is sloth. That's not just being lazy; sloth often is disguised by frenetic activity-but it's the wrong activity. It's like the story of Mary and Martha, where Martha is busy with so many things-cooking, cleaning, playing the hostess-but she neglects the one thing needful, which is to sit at the feet of Jesus.

I suspect that most of us are like that. We have plenty of things to do, plenty of important things, and we don't think we have time to pray, to read the Scriptures, to seek the face of Christ. Or maybe we don't have the energy. The great Ignatius Loyola wrote a famous treatise called Spiritual Exercises. He begins with the observation that just as we exercise our body by running or walking, so we must exercise our soul. But like the tired three on the mountain, the journey has been kind of arduous and we'd rather snooze.

The sleep of self-centeredness

Or perhaps our eyes are heavy with the sleep of self-centeredness. We put our attention on ourselves and our needs, and not on God. When we focus on ourselves in that way, it is very difficult to see much beyond our own nose. Maybe it's the sorrows and troubles of life that weigh us down. We can't seem to see beyond this particular problem that is on our minds. And so we stew about it, and fret about it-and all the while we are missing the thing that God is doing right in front of us.

A few years ago there was an interesting movie called Smoke. It was about a tobacco shop owner, and the impact he had on the lives of his neighbors. In one amazing scene, he has a conversation with a writer whose wife has died, and who has, in his sorrow, really lost his focus. The shop owner invites the writer to his home to look at his photographs. He pulls out several albums full of pictures. The writer begins to page through them, and he realizes that every picture is exactly the same scene-a particular corner in their city neighborhood. The shop owner says, yes, he goes out every morning at 8 a.m., every day of the year, and photographs that corner. The writer shakes his head, and begins to turn the pages perfunctorily.

"You're going too fast," his friend tells him. "Slow down and look at them." "But they're all the same." "Yes," he replies, "they're all the same, but they're all different. The sun is in a different place. The lighting is different. The people are different. They're all the same, but every one is different." So the writer slows down and inspects each picture. In one, he discovers the image of his late wife. In fact, he begins to see many things that he had never noticed before. It becomes a kind of metaphor to describe his reawakening to life.

Wake from sleep!

God finds ways to wake us up. The disciples on the mountaintop, heavy with sleep, and yet suddenly there is the glory of God surrounding them. God does that to us. Perhaps that awakening actually happens in the midst of struggle. Sir Edward Elgar once heard a young singer who was technically perfect, but without any depth. "She will be great," he commented, "when something breaks her heart." Spiritual depth sometimes comes through sorrow.

Sometimes we are awakened by the wonder of life itself. I love that poem by e. e. cummings:

i thank you god for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky

and for everything which is natural, which is infinite,

which is Yes

i who have died am alive again today

now the ears of my ears awake

and now the eyes of my eyes are open

I love those lines because so often it is the simplicity and grandeur of life-the trees, the blue sky, the rain, or a child's smile or the flickering of a candle-these are things that sometimes fairly shout at us: Wake up! Pay attention! Yes! God is good!

Another way God wakes us up is found here at this Table. We call the Lord's Supper a "means of grace," by which we are saying that through this sacrament, God offers his grace to us. And that wakes us up-or it should. Every time we hear those words-"This is my Body, given for you"-it is almost as if Christ is calling our name, calling us to arise from our slumber and behold the glory of the Lord. Leave the gloomy haunts of sadness, come into the daylight's splendor, there with joy your praises render. That's what this meal means! It is the light of heavenly glory-the same heavenly glory that awakens the disciples on the mount of transfiguration.

This week we begin another Lenten journey. How will it be for you this year? Will you be like the writer in the movie-go through these weeks, thinking, "Oh, it's just the same thing, time after time, the same picture"? Or will you take time to look-to look at the glory of Christ, to notice the hunger of your own heart, to taste and see the goodness of God? Will you plead exhaustion, and just go through the motions? Or will you wake up, "shake off dull sloth and joyful rise," and pay attention to what God is showing you in this season? Let us pray that through these next weeks God will overshadow us with his grace and power, wake us up, shake us from our drowsiness, and help us and help us to see Jesus in a new way, with wide awake eyes of faith.

STS Richard O. Johnson
Peace Lutheran Church
Grass Valley, CA, USA
E-Mail: johnson@peacelutherangv.org

(top)