Growing up, I did not learn so quickly that listening to someone often meant putting into practice what they said. "Clean your room" really meant keep your clean; don't just wait until I tell you to do it. "Be nice to your brother" meant to get along with him, share with him, care about him. "Turn the TV down" meant pay attention to how what you are doing might affect others.
Listening goes beyond hearing. Listening is embracing what someone is telling you, allowing their words to shape you as well as inform you. At the mountain top where some disciples saw Jesus in a new and bright way (Jesus' transfiguration), God's voice speaks to them saying, “This is my Son, whom I dearly love. Listen to him!”And Jesus told them that he would rise from the dead, but first "suffer many things and be rejected."
Jesus was not just telling them what would happen to him. He was not simply informing them, he was telling them what it meant to be a disciple. Following Christ, indeed, is more than listening to him for information. It is more than knowing what Jesus did, it is embracing what Jesus did so that it may transform us and make us new.
For the disciples, this was a theophany: a visible manifestation of God. It occurred on a mountain top, thus, Christians have coined the phrase "mountaintop experience." But the disciples did not stay on that mountain, they had to travel back down to the valley, to the reality of human life. So did Jesus, who knew that he must face his impending rejection unto death. Jesus travels with us down into the valley, always. He will never leave us. What a Christ to listen to and follow.
See you Sunday!
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