30.06 | Cost & Glory
Luke 9:28-50
‘Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.’
Luke 9:28
About eight days after these sayings.
There’s a strange similarity, and a quirky difference, between the story that is known as ‘the Transfiguration,’ in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s Gospels.
All three note that what happened on that mountain came right after Jesus talked about His death, resurrection, and the invitation to ‘take up your cross and follow.’
And all three count the days in between.
For Matthew and Mark, they count six days.
Luke counts ‘about eight.’
This doesn’t get scholars in too much of a pickle. Luke’s ‘about’ gives some wriggle room, and Luke was probably including the day at either end, whereas Matthew and Mark may have just been counting forward the days. We’re essentially talking one week later.
However, what is clear is that, in all of their minds, what happens on this mountain is directly connected in some way to what Jesus has just said.
Cross. Resurrection.
Take up your cross. Transfiguration.
There’s a flow and link, that has deeply to do with the Christian walk.
On the one hand, the words of suffering, pain, death, and cost.
And on the other, we have Jesus on a mountainside—visibly transformed in His features and this radiant brilliance—with these two biblical greats of the past standing and talking with Him. The mountaintop—as is often the case in both Testaments—is presented as an intersection point between heaven and earth. Moses (as representative of the Law) and Elijah (as representative of the prophets) are two of the figures in the Old Testament who were taken directly into heaven at the end of their earthly lives. This is an unprecedented, extraordinary moment, where heaven meets the earth and Jesus is revealed for the true Lord and King of all humankind. And it is dazzling.
One story is to do with the cost of following; the other is to do with the revelation of glory.
Both stories stretch our understanding. Both stretch us from a pedestrian spirituality of banal emotions—cost reduced to mild inconvenience and glory to faux joy. These stories stretch us to a more radical polarity—with the radical theology of suffering and cost and laying it all down at one end, and the shining vision of the King of all kings at the other.
Eight days.
Cost, and glory.
But, it seems, the link between the two is so significant. Because there is a deep link between the Church that walks the way of cost, and the Church that gains insight into glory.
John Wimber, the pioneer of the Vineyard movement, once said, “The economy of God's kingdom is quite simple: every new step in the kingdom will cost us everything we have gained to date.”
Cost, and glory.
This speaks into our moments. It speaks into our moments of cost: when the pursuit of Jesus looks more like losing than winning; when following feels hard; when we give until it hurts and wonder what we’ve got left in the tank for following Him tomorrow. It speaks into such moments, because cost is connected to glory, and the comfort abandoned in this moment is walked in earnest hope of inbreaking glory in the next.
And it speaks to our moments on the mountaintop too. Because the Lord of the mountaintop doesn’t invite us to build houses there, but to return to the towns of the suffering and the demonic, the faithless and the twisted. Revelations of His glory compel His people back into the places of pain, that the glory of His shining face may invade the places of the greatest cost.
Reflect:
What feels like cost right now? Ask Him to ready you in this for inbreaking glory.
What feels like glory right now? Where might He be leading you to take this into places of cost?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
You are the King of the Cross;
Help me to live more abandoned,
And to give more fully,
To let go of my grasping for control, popularity, ego, and fear.
And as I walk this path,
In your footsteps,
Dear Lord,
Would you prepare me for an increase
Of revelations of glory.
And Lord Jesus,
You are the King of the mountaintop;
Grant me vision of your shining goodness,
That I may be compelled,
In great love,
To carry this knowledge of your light, your goodness, your face,
To the places of pain that I see.
Lord Jesus,
Unto cost and unto glory,
I follow,
And dear Lord,
May I know the comfort of your steady voice
Every step of the way.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Isaiah 30-32 | Psalm 79