Listen to Him!

 This is the text of the sermon I gave at Northshore United Church of Christ on Sunday, March 2, 2025. I have two earlier and rather different drafts of that sermon. I may post them here also.

Listen to Him!

For

Northshore United Church of Christ, Woodinville, Washington

March 2, 2025

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Guest Pastor

 

Scripture: Luke 9:28-36

 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

We’ve all heard it, haven’t we: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” That’s Acts 16:31 in its King James Version form. We find the same idea in the most quoted verse in the Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Also the King James Version wording. Conservative Christians ask: “When were you saved?” By that they mean “When did you first believe that Jesus was your Lord and Savior?” The Christian tradition in which we stand has asserted and insisted on the necessity of believing in Jesus as the way to salvation for a very long time.

Today is Transfiguration Sunday. We just heard Luke’s version of the Transfiguration story, and it is a strange story indeed. In it Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain. Moses and Elijah come to talk with him, and he becomes dazzling white. The three disciples are quite understandably a bit freaked out. It doesn’t get better for them when a voice from a cloud says: “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.” Peter wants them all to stay up on the mountain, but Jesus apparently doesn’t think that suggestion is even worth responding to. Jesus and the three disciples come back down the mountain.

It's easy enough to get captivated by the part of this story in which Jesus becomes dazzling white and talks to Moses, who represents the law, and Elijah, who represents the prophets. The story is called the Transfiguration, which, of course, refers to that bit about Jesus becoming dazzling white. There is, however, another part of this story that has always struck me as more important than the transfiguration itself. In the story there is a voice from a cloud. The story clearly intends that we understand it to be the voice of God. Please notice what the voice does not. The voice does not say about Jesus “believe in him.” It says “listen to him.” In the story of the Transfiguration, God tells us not to believe in Jesus but to listen to Jesus.

Which, I suppose, raises an important question for us: What does “listen to Jesus” mean? I suppose it can mean a great many things, but there are two answers to that question that I want to mention this morning. One is on the level of our personal, inner relationship with God and with Jesus. I understand that you had some discussion last week about listening to God, and that is a very good thing. From the little bit I’ve heard about that discussion, I think that mostly you responded to the question of listening to Jesus at this level, which is just fine. Many of us have from time to time understood that God has spoken to us in some particular way or that we have perceived the presence of God with us in some particular way. When that happens, we really should listen to what we understand God to be saying to us. That means we must do discernment around the questions of whether what we’re hearing is really from God, and if so, what does what we’re hearing mean for our lives. That’s not necessarily easy work. It is best not to do it alone. That’s one of great gifts of a church community. In that community, you know people of faith with whom you can do that discerning. And those people, including but not limited to the church’s pastor, may be able to direct you to other resources that will help you in your discernment. May God bless you as you go about that sacred work.

Then there is a broader level of listening to Jesus and to God. It is the level of the society in which we live. It is the level of what’s going on here in our nation and what’s going on everywhere else around the world. I believe that we get our answer to what listening to Jesus means at this level initially, and primarily, from the Bible. What do we learn when we listen to God through the Bible, especially through the New Testament, and more especially from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the three gospels in which Jesus says very similar things?

Martin Luther perhaps to the contrary notwithstanding, I am sure that faith calls us to work to build the realm of God on earth. And to listen to Jesus when he calls us to inner transformation, for personal inner transformation is how Jesus wants to change the world. Also: Listen to Jesus when he condemns empire. Listen to Jesus when he says that God wants mercy not sacrifice. Listen to Jesus when he says resist wrong but do it nonviolently.

When we listen to Jesus we learn that he calls us to turn the world’s values upside down. To bless the peacemakers not the warmakers. To live nonviolently not violently. To bless the poor not the rich. To free our faith from the constraints of laws and doctrines that are supposedly required for our salvation, which they just simply are not. To structure our society so that it serves the people, all of the people, not just the wealthy and their corporations the way it does now. To stop blaming poor people for being poor but to help them get what they need for life. To end the homelessness that our society so blithely tolerates. Put simply, to make sure everyone has what they need for fullness of life to the greatest extent we can—and we can sure do a lot better at those tasks than our society does today.

Is creating the society that Jesus wants us to create an impossible dream? Maybe, but God must not think it impossible. If God did, why would God tell us to listen to Jesus? When we listen to Jesus we don’t hear an echo of the world’s ways and values. We hear a sacred conception of how life could and should be. We hear a sacred call to radical personal, inner transformation and to radical transformation of the world. Some Christians have understood that truth over the centuries, but far too many haven’t. They haven’t said listen to Jesus. They have said believe in Jesus which, frankly, is a lot easier than listening to him.

I’m not saying don’t believe in Jesus. Of course not. I believe in Jesus. I imagine that you do too. I’m saying that being truly Christian involves a lot more than believing in Jesus. It involves listening to Jesus and responding in love to what we hear for ourselves and for God’s world. Can we do it? I don’t know, but I do know this. God calls us to do it; and I know that we can do a whole lot better job of it than most Christians have done in the past and do today. So let’s listen to Jesus, shall we? Amen.