"Listen to Him!"

Image: Icon of Transfiguration; Yarslavl, Russia

About twenty-three years ago (yikes!), I was a camp counselor at Camp EWALU, near Strawberry Point, Iowa. While we weren’t hiking or swimming or reading the Bible, we played a lot of games. This was one of my favorites (and also the one with the most potential for serious injury!). Choose a camper to be blindfolded. Choose another camper to be a guide, opposite the blindfolded camper. The rest of the campers line up in two straight rows, about eight feet apart. Between them are strewn obstacles like backpacks, water bottles, sticks. The guide’s job is to lead the camper through the obstacle course while the other campers scream at the blindfolded camper to try and make him or her trip. To make it through safely, the blindfolded camper has to listen very carefully to the still, small voice of their guide.

Now, every time I facilitated this, the camper made it through fine. They were able to listen well to their guide. The lesson was clear—just as the camper needed to listen to their guide, so we all needed to cut through the noise and listen to Jesus.

When Peter, James, and John followed Jesus up the mountain, perhaps they were struggling with the noise of their own expectations. Eight days before, Peter had identified Jesus as the Messiah of God. But then Jesus explained what that meant—suffering, rejection, death, and then rising again. In addition, Jesus told them they would have to deny themselves, carry their own crosses, and follow daily. None of that was in their script. So, I can imagine it was a combination of physical, mental, and spiritual exhaustion that caused Peter, James, and John to fall asleep on the mountaintop. Was this who they had given up everything to follow? Someone who was going to die?

Imagine how stunned they were when they woke up! Orthodox icons often have Jesus encased in a blue aura, to indicate just how dazzling this appearance was. Dazzling light, Moses and Elijah, and most frightening of all, the cloud. The same cloud that was on Sinai with Moses. The same cloud that led the Israelites through the desert. The same cloud that filled Solomon’s Temple. That cloud descends while Peter is babbling away, silencing him with these words: “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

Now, in any normal story, this would be the catalyst for Peter, James, and John to begin thinking differently about what messiahship meant. After all, they saw Him glorified before their eyes. They heard the literal voice of God the Father identifying Jesus both as His Son and His Chosen One. You would think that they would listen to Jesus perfectly after such a revelation. But the truth is they have a lot of trouble with listening.

The old lying voices, exalting domination, exclusivity, and revenge, continue to whisper in the disciples’ ears as Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem. The rest of chapter 9 is a painful narrative of the disciples’ failures. In the span of a few short verses, they fail to heal an epileptic child, fail to understand that Jesus will be betrayed, get into an argument about which one is the greatest, throw a hissy fit because someone else is healing in Jesus’s name, and try to get Jesus’s permission to destroy an inhospitable Samaritan village.

But Jesus did not give up on them. And Jesus does not give up on us either. He keeps calling us back to himself, calling on us to listen.

Of course, there’s a lot of noise out there these days. Most of us have a personal distraction device in our pockets or purses. 24-hour news and social media cranks out so much outrage that it’s remarkable that there aren’t more stress-related heart attacks. Everywhere we turn, we’re slammed with propaganda trying to get us to buy this or believe that. And most of those voices are not healthy for us. They lead us far afield from mercy, forgiveness, peace, and wellbeing, using our pain, sadness, and rage for their profit.

But when we listen to Jesus, we listen to the one who offers a shalom life to all, even to a condemned rebel in his last few moments on a cross. We listen to Jesus, who didn’t come to enrich himself or rule as an earthly sovereign, but rather poured himself out completely for our sake so we could share in his divine life. Our Lord is not a domineering lord after the way of the world, but our gentle, servant Lord who takes on everything we are so we can take on everything he is. But don’t mistake this gentleness for weakness. Don’t mistake his service for subjection. Jesus shows us where true glory, power, and strength resides. He sets aside his divine privilege so that he can win humanity back without violence. In truth, he absorbs the violence of the world.

So, in the Christian life, we listen to Jesus. We hear his Word in Scripture and preaching; we receive it in bread and wine. We listen to Jesus above all the other voices that preach contempt, hate, violence, and revenge. We do this as Christians because we know that only in Jesus do we find true life, true joy, and true shalom, even in the middle of our own sufferings. The disciples only grasped that after Easter. Here at the eve of Lent, we are invited to grasp that now. Listen to him and take hold of the life that really is life. Amen.

© 2025, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit given.