Service on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfsQTjlnCEw (We had technical difficulties with the Facebook feed, sorry.)

I am one of those people who thinks I can multitask. I can read and listen to music that I know the words of or don’t know the words of. I can listen to you and play on my phone. I can drive and listen to a podcast and have a conversation with someone else in my head. I can have a show on and write a sermon. Some of these are more successful than others.

But you’ve probably done the thing where when you’re driving and you’re not really sure where you’re going. But you’re getting close and you need to focus so you turn off the radio so the sound doesn’t interfere with what you’re seeing or thinking.

Attention can be hard and complicated. Jesus understood something about his attention and his focus for the number of times he would go away and pray like he did in our story today. Except this time he took three of the disciples with him. I don’t know if he knew what was about to happen or if he just wanted to give them some understanding of what he was doing, what he did in his day-to-day, and how he was preparing for what was to come next.

Our text starts 8 days after these sayings, and they weren’t what we read 8 days ago at service last week. We skipped over some of those sayings. One of those things Jesus said was that the Messiah would undergo suffering and if they wanted to be part of Team Jesus they would have to take up their cross and follow him. And surely not one of those who heard him say that understood what he meant. And what little they probably did understand sounded scary. I imagine they ignored it. Let that sit in the back of their mind is one of those metaphorical crazy things Jesus would say.

Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain to pray and they could not pay attention. Maybe they were exhausted from their walking. Maybe it was just the heat of the sun. Maybe they’d been up there longer than just a couple hours, but they couldn’t pay attention on their prayers and they could not pay attention to Jesus and they were like not enough. They’re probably doing that droopy eye thing like no, no, I’m just. I’m just resting my eyes.

So it must have seemed sudden and it must have seemed overwhelming when there was this sudden light that just seemed to exude from nowhere from Jesus and he’s standing there with two men that they instinctively knew were Moses and Elijah prophets who had been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years. Luke is the only gospel that tells us that these three prophets were talking about Jesus’ departure. His Exodus his death that was to come. I wonder if we know that because Peter, James, and John heard what they were saying.

He couldn’t focus on what they were saying. He couldn’t focus on the light. He couldn’t focus on these prophets. He shouldn’t know who they were. Couldn’t focus on this future without Jesus in it and so he offered to make them tense or booths whether they were a place to guard them from the Sun, which who knows what they. They needed that because you could probably get a sunburn from the brightness exuding from them or as a place of worship for the future or remembrance of what was happening.

I sometimes wonder if our gospel Ryder knew Peter for the amount of shade he throws right here like Peter didn’t understand because Peter never seems to understand.

Peter was overwhelmed and was trying to bring control over what he could to focus on, the one spot, while missing everything else going on.

And just in case he wasn’t sure where to focus, he heard a voice reminding him that Jesus is the beloved son of God and to listen to him. To focus their attention and listening on Jesus.

I wonder if Jesus who had been transformed who had undergone a metamorphosis on this mountaintop who had been changed. Thought that the experience on the top of the mountain would change Peter and James and John and maybe thus the rest of the 12. Maybe he thought this was going to be the thing that would let them understand everything else that he had said and would say and what was to come. It didn’t.

When they get down the mountain they find a father who is in a desperate situation with his own only son. He asked Jesus to look at his son and said he had begged Jesus’ disciples to free him of the spirit and they could not. And those things Jesus did between what we looked at last week and this week Jesus had sent the 12 disciples out empowered to heal and to cast out demons in his name. We don’t know when this man begged the disciples if it was on that first trip or well. Jesus was on the mountain or at some point in the last few minutes since he’s been back but they could not do it.

The father would tell how the spirit would suddenly come upon his son, causing him to shriek and convulse and foam at the mouth. We might have a name for that today. We might call that a seizure but when somebody has a seizure I’m not sure it’s less scary than what the disciples experienced that somebody goes from being in full control of their body to absolutely out of control.

And I wonder if in the midst of that terrible experience for the father and the son and those who were watching, they didn’t lose focus on who they were and who they followed and what they had been given what they were able to do. Maybe they were overwhelmed by the screams of the son, pleadings of the father, and the terror of the Town folks and the whaling of the son, And maybe there were others who were asking for healing that seemed easier and that they just couldn’t do anything. It all felt like too much.

They had not been transformed on the mountain, by the mission they had been sent on, not yet.

There are millions of things in every day, maybe every moment that are trying to get our attention that are clamoring for our attention. Your email has 300 unread messages that might be from the grocery store and might be the denominational office with some information you’re supposed to have and somewhere in the trash is the email with all the documents for the next board meeting. It’s likely if you haven’t been intentional about it, your phone could get hundreds of notifications all of the time from that game you downloaded to play. That’s reminding you to come back to the text message notification that is definitely buried in there somewhere and then every social media site end the app that turns your lights off at night. Why do I need that? I get notifications for the deleted podcasts. I can’t seem to turn that one off. And this is all that I have when I wake up in the morning. Everything begging my attention from the moment I get up. You know what else is begging my attention from the moment I get up the cat.

Whatever you might turn on in the morning is full of advertisements asking you to participate in a world of consumerism for the things that you need that would make your life so much better.

What draws our attention doesn’t have to be all bad.

There is a bumper sticker on one of the bulletin boards that says Jesus is coming, look busy, that maybe that’s what it’s about. Just doing something to look busy or trying to do it all. Losing focus and not listening to and prioritizing the call of Christ. That was to be the hungry clothe the naked liberate the oppressed heal the sick to do justice and love Mercy. That is how we live transformed as individuals and as a church the people who are called church.

And things can get overwhelming. Things have gotten overwhelming. The needs, the brokenness, the crying out, the desperation, the evil. I know there is more to this earth than I will ever understand or know, including, especially in the realm of the spiritual, but I don’t think there are demons, evil spirits who possess people, but I do think there is evil that tries to control others. A whole world of -isms. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, consumerism–anything that objectifies, others, or uses another. They center the self, it leads to violence, oppression, and injustice. And they can be so overwhelming. So much so that we might think we can do nothing in the face of them, that we can’t help those for whom suck evil has seized upon them.

The call to attention is to look. See the faces of those hurting. trust in your transformation. Trust in the Christ who calls all of us, so we are not alone in the mission and work of transforming the world toward love, compassion, mercy, and justice.

Listen and Look.

We are about to enter the season of Lent. It is a time to focus our attention. Some people give something up as a way of focusing on Christ. Some of a practice of fasting as a spiritual practice. Some will add something to their season of Lent, a prayer or devotional, to bring a new kind of focus to their 40 days.

We are about to turn toward Jerusalem. Our focus is shifting from how fun things have been in Galilee to some harder days in Jerusalem. Listen to where you hear Jesus in the days to come. Look for those ways of transforming the world together.