Sermon Notes — February 15, 2026
Luke 9:28-36 (CEB)
The Transfiguration
February 15, 2026
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
In our worship planning meeting two weeks ago, it hit me. For the last four weeks our worship and preaching have been shaped by the idea of the Beloved Community. If you haven’t been here for that and you’d like to know more, you can go to our Facebook page or YouTube channel and experience those worship services. The Sunday before we started that series was Baptism of the Lord Sunday, where we read the story of Jesus’s baptism, with particular focus on God’s voice from heaven that claimed Jesus as God’s beloved son.
But it wasn’t until our worship planning meeting that I remembered that the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration, the story that Jeff just read for us, is also a story of belovedness, which means that our worship series on the Beloved Community has been bookended by two stories, each with a voice from heaven in which God claims Jesus as his beloved.
Terry said, “Well, sure. I thought you planned it that way.” And while I appreciate the credit that Terry would have liked to give me, I will confess that I did not do that on purpose, and instead I will pass that credit on to the Holy Spirit who is always piecing things together in ways that we can’t always see.
So I am grateful that we have one more week for reflection on belovedness – Jesus’s belovedness, our belovedness, and the belovedness of all creation – as we make our way into the Season of Lent.
And before we go further, let’s talk a little about Lent.
Our Lenten worship and preaching series is called
Tell Me Something Good (Jonatas, show the sermon series graphic here)
If you automatically heard Rufus and Chaka Khan in your head you are not alone. I had grand visions of somehow making it possible for that to be our theme song, but as it turns out the only lyrics in the song appropriate for church are those words…Tell me something good and maybe the following line…Tell me that you love me.
But I digress. Each week we are going to focus on some aspect of the good news. You’ll notice that the central visual is a tree, because we aren’t just going to hear the good news, we are going to ground ourselves in the good news. We are going to let the good news be our foundation and our roots. We are going to allow the Holy Spirit to grow us up from those roots during this season.
Lent doesn’t often feel like good news – for some of us Lent feels like an unnecessary reminder of our limitations and our sin and our need to repent. And while repentance is at the heart of the Lenten season, it seems to me that we can also focus on good news.
You have probably already seen them, but there are daily devotional cards on a table in the narthex specific to this sermon series. Feel free to take one, and if we run out there’s a place for you to sign up to get a set, and we’ll have those for you either on Ash Wednesday or next Sunday. Each day has a reflection and a prayer. There’s also a guide for praying the Prayer of Examen, if that’s a spiritual discipline that you’d like to try during Lent. All of those resources are for you as we enter into this season of grounding ourselves in good news.
But today we are traveling to the mountaintop with Jesus and Peter and James and John for a few profound moments.
Will you pray with me and for me?
On the church calendar, the last Sunday before Lent begins is always Transfiguration Sunday. As the church’s liturgical calendar was being created and modified over the centuries, there seemed to be something important in this particular story that needed to be told and heard before the Season of Lent began. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story, but since we’ve been poking around in Luke for a while I thought we’d use his version of the story.
So pull out your Bibles and we’re kind of going to pick up where we left off last week. Last week we started with the story of Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth and ended with the story of Jesus giving his power and authority to his disciples and then sending them out to cure the sick and preach the good news. So flip to Luke 9, where that story was. We’re going to hit the high points of Luke 9.
Immediately after the story from last week comes the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes, and after that story comes the story of Jesus asking the disciples who the people say that he is. That’s probably a familiar story, but if it’s not it’s right there in verse 18. Jesus asks the disciples who the people are saying that he is and then he asks the disciples who they think he is and then Peter says “You’re the Messiah.”
Then things get awkward. Peter says, “You’re the Messiah,” and then Jesus starts talking about dying. He talks about how he – the Son of Man – is going to be executed and then raised from the dead after three days. And then he doubles down. He says that anyone who wants to be his disciple has to deny themselves and take up their cross, and follow him and be willing to give up their lives as well.
Now imagine being one of the disciples in this scenario – let’s say you’re James. No one ever asks us to imagine being James, right? Imagine being Peter, that’s what we always hear. No, imagine being James.
Jesus gave you his power and authority to go out and cure sick people and preach that the kingdom of heaven is near – the world as it should be is not far off. And you come back and you tell Jesus about all the things you did. If you had your misgivings about Jesus before, they are all gone, because he really did give you the power to do everything that you had seen him do. And then you see him feed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish, and then Peter rightly identifies Jesus as God’s Messiah.
And you’re feeling warm and fuzzy, and you’re pinching yourself because look at all of this. How did you end up part of all this?
And then, bam, right in the middle of all your feel-good feelings, Jesus drops this bomb.
I am going to die, and if you follow me you need to be ready to die too.
Mental and emotional whiplash. It made sense a few minutes ago and now it makes no sense at all. This man can do anything, but he’s going to die. And if you keep following him, you might die, too.
Do you feel that dissonance? That sense that none of this adds up?
Eight days later Jesus takes you and Peter and John up to a mountain to pray. You and your friends are tired, and you fall asleep, but suddenly you wake up and Jesus is standing with two other men. You recognize Moses – who led your ancestors out of slavery in Egypt and gave them the law. Moses, who would climb Mt. Sinai and meet with God, and when he came down his face was glowing so brightly that he had to cover it up, otherwise the people couldn’t even look at him. And you recognize Elijah – the great prophet who met God on a mountain in a still small voice, who was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, who will come back to announce the coming of the Messiah. And you barely recognize Jesus. He has changed. His face looks different and his clothes are so bright white you can’t even look at them. It’s like looking directly at a lightning flash. And they’re talking. They’re talking like they’re old friends.
As they’re finishing their conversation Peter jumps up and says, “Wait. Don’t go! Let’s build some shelters so that we can all stay here!” But before he even gets a chance to finish, a cloud comes down and covers Jesus and Moses and Elijah, just like the cloud of God’s glory that covered Mt. Sinai while your ancestors waited for Moses, just like the cloud that filled the tabernacle with God’s glory in the wilderness. You have no idea what’s happening, and then all of a sudden you hear a voice, speaking from the cloud and it says,
This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have chosen. Listen to him!
The cloud dissipates and Jesus is standing by himself.
For once, Peter is silent, and you and John are, too. You have nothing to say. You can’t even formulate a question to ask. And no explanation will make sense of what you just saw anyway.
Two thousand and some odd years later, the question remains. What does this mean?
Skip down to verse 51. The chapter ends with these words
As the time approached when Jesus was to be taken up into heaven, he determined to go to Jerusalem.
That’s the translation that we read today, but I think there are some better ones. And by better I mean that they better convey the gravity of the situation. The Living Bible translation says
As the time drew near for his return to heaven, he moved steadily onward toward Jerusalem with an iron will.
The English Standard Version says that
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
If we sort of put these translations together we get a picture of Jesus determined to go to Jerusalem no matter what. We get the feeling that this is not a trip he particularly wants to take, but he’s going anyway because he is doing the will of God.
This is, of course, after he has twice told his disciples that when he gets to Jerusalem he’s going to be betrayed and executed, even though the fact is that he is God’s chosen Messiah, even though he is God’s beloved Son.
Luke tells this story this way because he understands the dissonance that these two statements cause –
Jesus is the Messiah, God’s chosen, God’s beloved son – AND –
Jesus is going to die.
And so Luke gives the disciples – and he gives us – this one last glimpse, this one last affirmation from heaven, this one last command – before Jesus begins his journey to his death.
No matter what happens, whether it makes sense to you or not, Jesus is my beloved, Jesus is my chosen, my child. Keep listening to him.
There are two words for us to lift up this morning from the Transfiguration story. One is to us and the other is for us.
The word that is to us is this. We will endure moments in our lives, seasons in our lives, when the temptation will come to believe that we have somehow fallen out of favor with God. That God has abandoned us or forgotten about us, or is paying attention to something or someone else and left us to our own devices. During his execution, even Jesus cries out the words of Psalm 22 – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. Although these are the only words that we hear Jesus say, the Psalm actually continues.
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.
One of the criminals hanging with him challenges him — If you really are the Son of God, save yourself and us.
God’s word to us is that, all evidence to the contrary, there is never a moment in our lives when we are not God’s beloved children, nor a moment when all of creation is not God’s beloved.
God’s word for us is this. Keep listening to Jesus. Really, the two go hand in hand. If we are to believe in the deepest places in our soul that we are God’s beloved – and that we never stop being God’s beloved – then we have to keep listening to Jesus. We have to stay connected to Jesus. We have to set aside time to be still and to be quiet so that we can hear what Jesus is saying to us. There are a lot of loud voices around us, a million distractions that will pull us one way and then another. And it takes a lot of intentionality to clear out a space in our calendar and in our heads and in our hearts just for listening to Jesus.
I have a story that witnesses to the importance of listening to Jesus that I want to share with you. Just this morning I had a notification on my phone that someone had sent me a message through Facebook messenger. It was from a pastor in our conference, someone with whom I have a casual acquaintanceship – we wave at each other at Annual Conference but have never sat down and talked together at any length. The person wrote, The Lord has been placing you on my heart and mind for the last several days. This morning, I strongly felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to reach out to you, so I wanted to be faithful and do just that. Please know that I’m praying for you today, that God will surround you with peace, strength, and encouragement in whatever this day holds. And then follows a written prayer, part of which says, Remind her that she is deeply valued, dearly loved, and never alone in Your service.
This is what happens when we really, deeply, intentionally listen to Jesus. Not only will we be able to grasp our own belovedness, but we can be a witness to the belovedness of others too. Jesus is still speaking to us. Our job is to listen. And listening implies obeying. Doing what Jesus asks us to do, whether it makes sense to us or not.
So this is my encouragement for you this morning as we enter into the Season of Lent on Wednesday – consider how you are going to practice listening to Jesus over these next several weeks. That may involve giving up an activity or something that easily distracts you and replacing it with a practice that allows you to listen. You may consider adding a practice to your routine – maybe you want to read a book of the Bible or adopt the Ignatian Prayer of Examen as a daily practice. Maybe you want to join a small group for the Season of Lent. Those begin on Thursday, and there are three to choose from and four different time slots.
Let this be a season of listening to Jesus. Let this be a season of embracing the good news that we, along with all of creation, are God’s beloved.
May it be so.
Amen.