LUKE 9:28–36
Texas State Fair, 1963. A big place and a big night for a wide-eyed eight-year-old boy whose week peaked out at the Dairy Queen on Saturday. The sights and lights of the midway left me quoting Dorothy, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The carnival rumbled with excitement. Roller coasters. Ferris wheels. Candied apples, cotton candy, and the Cotton Bowl. And, most of all, the voices.
“Step right up and try your luck!”
“This way, young man. Three shots for a dollar.”
“Come on, fellow. Win your mom a teddy bear.”
Odysseus and his men never heard sweeter sirens. Do I cut the cards with the lanky fellow at the stand-up booth? Or heed the call of the hefty lady and heave a ball at the dairy bottles? The guy in the top hat and tails dares me to explore the haunted house. “Come in. What’s wrong? Afraid?”
A gauntlet of barkers—each taking his turn. Dad had warned me about them. He knew the way of the midway. I can’t recall his exact instructions, but I remember the impact. I stuck next to him, my little hand lost in his big one. And every time I heard the voices, I turned to his face. He gave either protection or permission. A roll of the eyes meant “Move on.” He smelled a huckster. A smile and a nod said, “Go on—no harm here.”
My father helped me handle the voices.
Could you use a little help yourself? When it comes to faith, you likely could. Ever feel as if you are walking through a religious midway?
The Torah sends you to Moses. The Koran sends you to Muhammad. Buddhists invite you to meditate; spiritists, to levitate. A palm reader wants your hand. The TV evangelist wants your money. One neighbor consults her stars. Another reads the cards. The agnostic believes no one can know. The hedonist doesn’t care to know. Atheists believe there is nothing to know.
“Step right up. Try my witchcraft.”
“Psssst! Over here. Interested in some New Age channels?”
“Hey, you! Ever tried Scientology?”
What do you do? Where’s a person to go? Mecca? Salt Lake City? Rome? Therapy? Aromatherapy?
Oh, the voices.
“Father, help me out! Please, modulate one and relegate the others.” If that’s your prayer, then Luke 9 is your chapter—the day God isolated the authoritative voice of history and declared, “Listen to him.”
It’s the first scene of the final act in the earthly life of Christ. Jesus has taken three followers on a prayer retreat.
“He took along Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while He was praying, the appearance of His face became different, and His clothing became white and gleaming” (Luke 9:28–29).
Oh, to have heard that prayer. What words so lifted Christ that his face was altered? Did he see his home? Hear his home?
As a college sophomore, I took a summer job far from home. Too far. My courage melted with each mile I drove. One night I was so homesick I thought my bones would melt. But my parents were traveling, and cell phones were uninvented. Though I knew no one would answer, I called home anyway. Not once or twice, but half a dozen times. The familiar ring of the home phone brought comfort.
Maybe Jesus needed comfort. Knowing that his road home will pass through Calvary, he puts in a call. God is quick to answer. “And behold, two men were talking with Him; and they were Moses and Elijah” (v. 30).
The two were perfect comfort givers. Moses understood tough journeys. Elijah could relate to an unusual exit. So Jesus and Moses and Elijah discuss “His departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (v. 31).
Peter, James, and John, meanwhile, take a good nap.
All at once they woke up and saw how glorious Jesus was. They also saw the two men who were with him.
Moses and Elijah were about to leave, when Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” But Peter did not know what he was talking about. (vv. 32–33 CEV)
What would we do without Peter? The guy has no idea what he is saying, but that doesn’t keep him from speaking. He has no clue what he is doing but offers to do it anyway. This is his idea: three monuments for the three heroes. Great plan? Not in God’s book. Even as Peter is speaking, God starts clearing his throat.
While he was saying this, a cloud formed and began to over-shadow them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him!” (vv. 34–35)
Peter’s error is not that he spoke, but that he spoke heresy. Three monuments would equate Moses and Elijah with Jesus. No one shares the platform with Christ. God comes with the suddenness of a blue norther and leaves Peter gulping. “This is My Son.” Not “a son” as if he were clumped in with the rest of us. Not “the best son” as if he were valedictorian of the human race. Jesus is, according to God, “My Son, My Chosen One,” absolutely unique and unlike anyone else.1 So:
“Listen to Him!”
In the synoptic Gospels, God speaks only twice—at the baptism and then here at the Transfiguration. In both cases he begins with “This is My beloved Son.” But at the river he concludes with affirmation: “in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17 NKJV). On the hill he concludes with clarification: “Listen to Him.”
He does not command, “Listen to them.” He could have. Has a more austere group ever assembled? Moses, the lawgiver. Elijah, the prophet. Peter, the Pentecost preacher. James, the apostle. John, the gospel writer and revelator. The Bible’s first and final authors in one place. (Talk about a writers’ conference!) God could have said, “These are my priceless servants; listen to them.”
But he doesn’t. Whereas Moses and Elijah comfort Christ, God crowns Christ. “Listen to Him . . .” The definitive voice in the universe is Jesus. He is not one among many voices; he is the One Voice over all voices.
You cross a line with that claim. Many people recoil at such a distinction. Call Jesus godly, godlike, God inspired. Call him “a voice” but not “the voice”; a good man but not God-man.
But good man is precisely the terminology we cannot use. A good man would not say what he said or claim what he claimed. A liar would. Or a God would. Call him anything in between, and you have a dilemma. No one believed that Jesus was equal with God more than Jesus did.
His followers worshiped him, and he didn’t tell them to stop.
Peter and Thomas and Martha called him the Son of God, and he didn’t tell them they were wrong.
At his own death trial, his accusers asked, “‘Are You the Son of God, then?’ And He said to them, ‘Yes, I am’” (Luke 22:70).
His purpose, in his words, was to “give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28 NIV).
According to Jesus, no one could kill him. Speaking of his life, he said, “I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18).
Could he speak with more aplomb than he did in John 14:9? “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
And could words be more blasphemous than John 8:58? “Before Abraham was, I AM” (NKJV). The claim infuriated the Jews. “They picked up stones to throw at Him” (v. 59). Why? Because only God is the great I AM. And in calling himself I AM, Christ was equating himself with God. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).
Make no mistake, Jesus saw himself as God. He leaves us with two options. Accept him as God, or reject him as a megalomaniac. There is no third alternative.
Oh, but we try to create one. Suppose I did the same? Suppose you came across me standing on the side of the road. I can go north or south. You ask me which way I’m going. My reply? “I’m going sorth.”
Thinking you didn’t hear correctly, you ask me to repeat the answer.
“I’m going sorth. I can’t choose between north and south, so I’m going both. I’m going sorth.”
“You can’t do that,” you reply. “You have to choose.”
“Okay,” I concede, “I’ll head nouth.”
“Nouth is not an option!” you insist. “It’s either north or south. One way or the other. To the right or to the left. When it comes to this road, you gotta pick.”
When it comes to Christ, you’ve got to do the same. Call him crazy, or crown him as king. Dismiss him as a fraud, or declare him to be God. Walk away from him, or bow before him, but don’t play games with him. Don’t call him a great man. Don’t list him among decent folk. Don’t clump him with Moses, Elijah, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Muhammad, or Confucius. He didn’t leave that option. He is either God or godless. Heaven sent or hell born. All hope or all hype. But nothing in between.
C. S. Lewis summarized it classically when he wrote:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. . . . You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.2
Jesus won’t be diminished. Besides, do you want him to be? Don’t you need a distinctive voice in your noisy world? Of course you do. Don’t walk the midway alone. Keep your hand in his and your eyes on him, and when he speaks:
“Listen to him.”