God is Not Done

God is Not Done

 Sunday Scriptures from the  Narrative Lectionary

Psalm 36:5-10

Luke 9:28-45

Jesus, Luke tells us in verse 28, takes Peter and John and James up a mountain to pray.

Those three guys were probably anticipating another time of prayer like many others that would have proceeded it. But this time it was different.

While Jesus was praying his face changed, his clothes became dazzling white. Imagine! Maybe they were rubbing their eyes trying to figure out if what they were seeing was actually happening, the change in Jesus, the dazzling white, when more complexity is added into their experience as Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus and talk with him about his exodus – his departure.

Questions had been asked earlier about who Jesus was (v. 18) and some had said he was Moses and others had said he was Elijah, but clearly as he is standing here with these two, he is neither. Rather, Jesus is the one who “will bring in God’s preferred future,” as Old Testament scholar Rolf Jacobson says. Jesus is the Messiah.

But as all of this unusual activity unfolds before them, Peter, John and James are struggling with heavy eyelids! They seem to be just watching, observing, taking it in as they struggled to stay awake, their drowsiness further complicating their processing of what was happening here in this high place. The conversation between Jesus, Moses and Elijah may have also been confusing. What did they mean about exodus? What did they mean about what he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem?

Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake . . .

Just as they were about to leave, Peter gets an idea. He wants to build tents, one for each of them to contain them there – to preserve the moment. To preserve the glory of God. As he’s spilling out the plans he has a cloud overshadows them and Peter gets shushed. “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” comes the voice as the disciples trembled in the cloud.

And then, there was only Jesus. The dazzling was no longer. The cloud dissipated. Moses and Elijah were no longer there. The glory moment was gone.

And they head down the mountain where the disciples epically fail to cast out a demon from a young boy whose father is desperate to save him, requiring Jesus to intervene. And he does. “And all were astounded at the greatness of God,” Luke says (v. 43). This was another glory moment -far different from the mountaintop but revealing. Here was the one who will bring in God’s preferred future.

In the New Testament understanding there is a sense of time as the future coming into the present. The future hasn’t arrived, and yet, in Jesus, God’s preferred future arrived, and so in and through him, and in moments which reveal God’s glory, that good future – God’s future – is revealed to us in glimpses. The vision of God’s future grasps us.

New Testament Scholar Craig Koester says about this future, What is the future that calls us? Why keep moving through struggle and the ordinary?



We move, we struggle, we believe, because God is not done yet.

We need a vision of where God is going to claim us.

There are lots of human fashioned images of the future that call to us, tug on us even demand our loyalty. But our hope is not found in a human-led future. Nor a human-visioned future. Nor a shiny idol idolatrously claiming to be Lord.

Rather, in God’s future. That is where hope and life are found.

When the from-here-to-there seems overwhelming, take heart. Jesus is bringing in God’s future.

And from him to us, it is coming. Come, Lord Jesus, come. We are waiting for you.

Thanks be to God.