Yesterday we remembered Christ's Transfiguration, where his identity as God's Son, the Christ, the Alpha and Omega, was revealed in glory and confirmed by God's own voice. Christ was joined in glory by Moses and Elijah, the great heroes of Jewish faith. Peter, James, and John witnessed this unimaginable, mountain top setting. Yesterday, my sermon focused on Peter's response, which was to lock-in the moment and linger on the mountain with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, and how that is too often our own response. We get comfortable in our faith, more resistant to change, eventually leading us to ignore or deny God's call into the future. When we hold on too tight to our comfort and convenience, our schedules and agendas, it turns to lying, doubting, making excuses, demanding justification and insisting answers to every question in advance of following Christ to a new thing. Christ followers aren't people of inertia, status quo, or rigid preservation of the past, but are always crossing thresholds into the next unknown.
Before Peter can even finish his suggestion to pitch tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, God interrupts to declare Jesus as Messiah and to listen to him. When we stand on the brink of the next thing, wherever God may be calling us, we must remember that Jesus is who he says he is, he is who God says he is, he can be trusted. We look to Jesus to determine the direction of our lives. We listen to him, not secular leaders, celebrities, politicians, or even the voice of self-preservation whining from our flesh. What we hear when we listen to him isn't like the voice of those kinds of leaders who too often use and manipulate us, but a voice with tones of love, mercy, grace, hope, healing, and compassion. Let's follow that voice to the next step, and the one after that, into the purpose for which we are created, where we will find meaning for our lives.