Into the Cloud

Sunday, February 14, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 9:28-45

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

50 weeks ago, it was Transfiguration Sunday, 2020. Do you remember the service that day?

I suspect you do not. A lot has happened in our lives and world in the last 50 weeks and it is difficult to remember a specific worship service, so I understand if you do not remember it.

But I do. Maybe it is a pastor thing but I remember it clearly.

It is a vivid memory for me because it was one of the last Sundays we worshipped in the sanctuary and it was an extraordinary service. There was a guest organist and worship leader. The senior choir had a special rehearsal leading up to the service because of all the music they sang that day. There was a lot of singing. The message of the whole morning was uplifting, inspiring.

It was without question, the most meaningful Transfiguration Sunday I have ever experienced in 35 years of ministry.

It felt to me like we were on the mountaintop that morning and we saw Jesus in all his glory, transfigured before us. Little did we know how much our world would change in two short weeks.

This morning, almost one year later, I cannot help but think about the contrast from Transfiguration 2020 to 2021.

I am preaching to pews, an empty sanctuary. The organ is silent, your voices are silent, and the silence is deafening.

Transfiguration means a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state.

It is the transfigured Jesus that captures out attention this Sunday. The scriptures tell us, while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.

The change is dramatic and is seen by his disciples who accompany him up to that mountain top. This magnificent vision, his appearance full of wonder and mystery. It is Jesus in all his glory.

It is the Jesus I imagine we will see when we pass from death to new life.

It feels like transfiguration is a glimpse of what resurrection will look like.

Something beyond our earthly imaginations.

Peter, James, and John are caught up in this vision and then, in an instant, it changes.

A cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.

Terrified. They were terrified as they entered the cloud.

We do not pay attention to this verse when we hear the story. We get all caught up in the grandeur of the moment and we do not seem to notice what happens next. Perhaps we do not want to notice what happens next. What changed for them? Why do they feel this way?

A cloud came. It overshadowed them. They were terrified.

That is what these past 50 weeks has felt like. A cloud came. It overshadowed us. It feels like some sort of terror has slowly seeped into our souls.

Like a rudderless boat that has slipped off it’s mooring and drifted into deep and stormy waters, far from land, we find ourselves in a cloud.

We cannot see clearly. Our sense of direction is gone. We can no longer see the beginning or the end.

A cloud came and overshadowed them.

It is so easy to remember the mountaintop. The sun is brightly shining. Children are in school. People are working. Churches full of people. Rush hour is real. Faces are covered with emotional masks, not real masks.

Then a cloud came and overshadowed us. The fear is real. The loss is real. The change is real.

I believe God is trying to teach us something on the mount of transfiguration. The glory of Jesus and the identity of Jesus is part of it. An important part. But there is more.

The cloud that overshadows is also important. Like Peter, James and John, we may feel the terror of the cloud and we understand the blindness a cloud can bring to our lives.

But there is also something more, much more.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

Once more God speaks out of the cloud.

The voice speaks words of hope and promise and direction. This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him.

There have been and continue to be many voices speaking to us out of the cloud in these challenging times.

What voice are you listening to?
What voice speaks the loudest?
What voice speaks the clearest?

“[1]Clouds teach us to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith.”

Peter, James, and John had to come down from that mountain top experience with Jesus and keep walking by faith. It was not easy for them. They stumbled, a lot. They did not understand what Jesus was doing and they really did not understand who he was.

He kept telling them he must go to Jerusalem and be killed but they did not understand. Like so many other times they failed to grasp the fullness of his mission and identity. The Messiah must die for the sin of the world. Out of his death comes new life.

The voice, out of the cloud says, this is my son, the chosen; listen to him. So simple yet so hard.

It is not unusual for us to say that challenges, trials, and clouds are sent into our lives to teach us something. We have all experienced this and I have heard many people talk about what we have learned about ourselves over these past 50 weeks.

But maybe the clouds are sent into our lives in order for us to unlearn something.

To unlearn all our preconceived ideas and notions of who God is and how God is supposed to act.

To unlearn our habit of walking by sight instead of by faith so that we can hear more clearly the voice that is speaking to us out of the clouds.

To unlearn our unhealthy reliance on ourselves rather than placing our lives and our trust in the one whose brightness shines through the clouds.

What is it you need to unlearn in order for you to walk by faith?

Transfiguration teaches us that clouds are not something to fear but they are the presence of God in our lives.

Transfiguration teaches us to listen carefully to the voice speaking to us out of the cloud.

It is in the clouds where we learn to walk, to live, and to breath by faith.

That voice out of the clouds is speaking to you and me right now; this is my son, my chosen; listen to him.

Listen to him. Follow him. Give your life to him.

He will take you from death to life. Ever and always.

Thanks be to God. Amen

[1] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest; July 29

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Into the Cloud

Sunday, February 14, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 9:28-45

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

About Augustana

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Into the Cloud

Sunday, February 14, 2021 Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 9:28-45

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, February 14, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson