Climax is not quiet. Grain trucks downshift on Highway 75 at five in the morning. In harvest, the combines hum all day and into the night — and the sugar beet harvesters run at 2 AM in the field right outside your window, headlights cutting across your bedroom ceiling. In winter, the plows come before dawn, scraping the road so hard the whole house shakes. And the wind. The wind doesn’t care what season it is. It blows through July and January with the same deafening indifference. You learn to sleep through it. You learn to talk over it. You learn to live inside the noise.

But there’s another kind of noise you can’t sleep through. The kind that runs in your own head. The voice that says you’re not doing enough. The phone buzzing before your feet hit the floor. The opinions at the coffee shop, the scroll that never ends, the news cycle that won’t let you breathe. Everybody has something to say. And after a while, you can’t tell the important voices from the background hum. It all blurs together.

Two thousand years ago, three fishermen stood on a mountain and heard a voice cut through everything. Not a louder voice. Not an angrier voice. A voice from a cloud — a bright cloud — that said one thing: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matthew 17:5).

Here’s what I want you to see: the Transfiguration is not mainly about light. It’s about a voice. And the voice says: stop building. Stop managing. Stop listening to everything else. Listen to him. Because what he says is the only thing that will hold when every other sound fades.

Booth-Builders

“Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Matthew 17:4).

Peter’s problem is not stupidity. His problem is that he’s talking when he should be listening. He sees the glory of God — the face of Jesus shining like the sun, clothes blazing white as light — and his first instinct is to organize it. Manage it. Build something around it. Three tents. One for Jesus, one for Moses, one for Elijah. As if all three belong on the same shelf. As if the Son of God needs Peter’s construction project.

Notice what happens next: “He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them” (v. 5). Still speaking. God cut Peter off mid-sentence. The Father did not wait for Peter to finish his proposal. The voice from the cloud came while Peter was still talking.

That’s the Law at work. God does not wait for us to finish our religious projects before he speaks.

We are all booth-builders. Every one of us. We build structures around our spiritual experiences — our traditions, our theological systems, our comfortable routines — and then we treat them as if they stand alongside Jesus. Jesus and our politics. Jesus and our moral record. Jesus and our favorite way of doing church. We give Jesus a tent, but we give equal tents to everything else we trust.

And we talk. We talk constantly. We talk over the sermon to plan our week. We talk over the Scripture reading to manage our to-do list. We talk over the absolution because we’ve already decided whether we believe it or not. We fill every silence with our own voice — and then we wonder why we can’t hear his.

The Old Testament word for “glory” is כָּבוֹד — kavod. It comes from a root meaning “heavy, weighty.” When God’s glory settled on Mount Sinai, it was not shimmer. It was not a glow. It was weight. Exodus tells us plainly: “The appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel” (Exodus 24:17). A fire that eats. That is what the Hebrew says — אֵשׁ אֹכֶלֶת, esh okelet, a fire that devours. God’s presence is not a mood. It is not a feeling you get at a worship concert. It is a fact with mass. And the proper response to that kind of weight is not to start building — it is to fall on your face.

Which is exactly what the disciples did. “When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified” (Matthew 17:6).

So would you. So would I. That’s where the Law leaves us — face-down, undone, in the dirt. The God whose kavod settled on Sinai like devouring fire has shown up again on this mountain, and the men closest to Jesus cannot bear it.

But the text doesn’t end there.

Rise, and Have No Fear

“But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear’” (Matthew 17:7).

This is Matthew’s detail. Mark doesn’t have it. Luke doesn’t have it. Only Matthew records what happened next — and it changes everything. Three verbs. Three acts of grace. Each one matters.

He came. The terrified disciples are face-down in the dirt. They cannot come to Jesus. So he comes to them. This is the entire Gospel in a single movement — not our ascent to God, but God’s descent to us. The same God whose glory settled on Sinai like devouring fire now crosses the distance in the other direction. He walks to where they are.

On Sinai, the arrangement was the opposite. “You shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death’” (Exodus 19:12). Don’t come near. Don’t touch. Stay back. That was the old arrangement. The consuming fire kept everyone at arm’s length.

But here, the consuming fire has legs. He walks.

He touched. Physical contact. The God of devouring fire touches human skin. This is the logic of the Incarnation compressed into a gesture — God reaching us through material, physical means. Not through transcendent collective consciousness or the progressive dream of humanity evolving toward enlightenment. Not through the “be true to yourself” mantras pulled from your own heart as if feelings were revelation. Through a hand on your shoulder when you are face-down and terrified.

He spoke. And what does he say? Not a lecture. Not a theology lesson. Not a command to try harder. Two words in the Greek: egerthete — rise. Mē phobeisthe — do not fear. And here is what you need to hear: that word egerthete, “rise,” is the same word Matthew will use for Jesus’ own resurrection. “He is not here, for he has risen (ēgerthē)” (Matthew 28:6).

The word that raises the terrified disciples is the same word that declares the resurrection: ēgerthē.

His rising and your rising are bound together by the same verb. When he says “Rise,” he is not giving advice. He is doing what only the resurrection can do — lifting the dead.

And then they look up.

Jesus Only

“And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only” (Matthew 17:8).

Moses is gone. Elijah is gone. The bright cloud has lifted. The blinding light has faded. There is no one but Jesus only. The Law and the Prophets — everything Moses carried down from Sinai, everything Elijah defended with fire from heaven — all of it has done its work. It pointed to him. And Jesus says of the Law himself: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Fulfilled. Completed. Paul will later write that Christ is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4) — not its destruction, but its goal, its completion, its telos. This is the Law-Gospel framework Luther heard thundering through Scripture: the Law does its work — it convicts, it crushes, it drives us to the end of ourselves — and then it is fulfilled in Christ. It does not vanish. It is completed.

What remains is not the Pharisees’ system of law-keeping alone, isolated from mercy. What remains is not a code you can manage or a tradition you can master. What remains is a Person. And what has that Person just said? “Rise, and have no fear.”

Do you see what the Father’s voice actually did on that mountain? It was not a random announcement. It wove together three ancient threads into a single sentence:

“This is my beloved Son” — that is Psalm 2:7, the royal decree. “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” Jesus is the King the nations rage against. And the King in whom the blessed take refuge.

“With whom I am well pleased” — that is Isaiah 42:1, the Servant Song. “My chosen, in whom my soul delights.” The one who will not break a bruised reed or quench a faintly burning wick. The King is also the Servant who bleeds.

“Listen to him” — that is Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses’ own prophecy. “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers — him you shall listen to.” And here on the mountain, Moses himself is present. He hears the Father say: this is the one I promised you. Listen to him now.

King. Servant. Prophet. Three offices. Three hopes. One voice.

And here’s something remarkable about today’s date. Luther preached his last sermon on this text — Matthew 17:1-9 — on February 15, 1546. At Eisleben. Exactly 480 years ago today. Three days later, he was dead. And what was his dying message to the Church?

“None other should be preached or taught except the Son of God alone. Of Him alone it is said, ‘This is My beloved Son; listen to Him’ and no other, be he emperor, pope, or cardinal.”

Luther spent his life fighting for those words. And when doubt assailed him — and it did, often — he would cling to the voice from the cloud: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him!” Not because Luther was strong. He wasn’t. Because the voice was sure.

But “listen to him” raises an obvious question. He is not on a mountain in Palestine. Where is his voice now?

In the preached Word. Every Sunday, when the Scriptures are read and the sermon is proclaimed, Christ speaks. The Smalcald Articles are blunt about this: God deals with us “through the external Word” — not through private visions, not through inner feelings, not through the voice in your head that you hope is the Spirit. Through an audible, external, ordinary Word that enters through your ears. Even on the mountain of supreme revelation, God did not bypass the means. He spoke. Out loud. Into the air. Through a cloud.

In Baptism. The Father’s declaration — “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” — extends to you in the water. You are in the beloved Son. The pleasure the Father takes in Christ covers you. That is not just sentiment. That is sacrament.

In the Supper. “This is my body. This is my blood.” The same Jesus who touched the terrified disciples still touches you — through bread, through wine, through physical means you can hold in your hands. He has not stopped coming. He has not stopped touching.

In Absolution. “Rise, and have no fear.” Those words are still spoken. Every time the pastor says “Your sins are forgiven,” it is the voice of the one who walked across that mountaintop to reach the men who could not lift their heads.

He has not stopped speaking. The question is whether we are listening.

Living in the Light

So what does life look like when you listen to him instead of everything else?

Start here: you do not listen to Jesus in order to become acceptable. You listen because you already are accepted. The Father has spoken. The baptism has happened. The declaration stands. Everything else flows from that — not toward it.

As a parent, you will hear a thousand voices telling you you’re failing. Social media. Other parents. Your own three-in-the-morning guilt. Listen to him: “Rise, and have no fear.” Your children do not need a perfect parent. They need one who has heard the voice from the cloud and trusts it enough to get back up in the morning.

As an employee or business owner, the economy shifts, the crop prices swing, the job feels pointless, and the routine grinds you down to nothing. Listen to him: your work is not your worth. Your baptism is your identity. The farmer who drives the combine at 2 AM in the field outside your window — God is serving Climax through those hands. That work matters. Not because it earns God’s approval, but because God has already approved the worker and now sends him out.

As a neighbor in a small town where everybody talks, the temptation is to listen to the gossip — about others, about yourself. Listen to him instead. The voice that says “beloved” outweighs every other verdict rendered at the coffee shop.

As a church member, we will be tempted to measure ourselves by the numbers — attendance, budget, programs. The Father did not say, “This is my successful church; admire it.” He said, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” A congregation of thirty that hears his voice is richer than a megachurch that has lost it.

So where do we go from here? Where does the story go from here? The Transfiguration sends the disciples down the mountain. That is the part we forget. Jesus does not build a retreat center at the summit. He leads them back to the valley — to the sick boy the other disciples couldn’t heal, to the crowds, to the second passion prediction: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day” (Matthew 17:22-23). Glory, then descent. Mountain, then valley. That is the pattern.

Listening to Jesus does not mean staying on the mountain. It means carrying his voice into Monday morning. Into the school. Into the nursing home visit. Into the argument you don’t want to have and the forgiveness you don’t want to give. The voice goes with you. It went with the disciples all the way to Jerusalem. It will go with you all the way through this week — you don’t need to see the whole journey laid out in front of you. You need the voice. And the voice is walking with you.

Conclusion

The noise hasn’t gone away. The grain trucks will downshift on Highway 75 tomorrow morning. The wind will blow. The phone will buzz. The voices in your head will start up again before your feet hit the floor.

But now you have heard another voice.

Peter heard it too. Decades after the mountain, he wrote about it: “We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). The Greek word for “morning star” is phosphoros — light-bearer. Christ is the light-bearer. His voice is a lamp in the dark. You don’t need to see the whole road. You need the lamp. And the lamp is his voice.

Four hundred years ago, Philipp Nicolai wrote a hymn the Church has never stopped singing: “O Morning Star, how fair and bright, you shine with God’s own truth and light.” Christians have sung those words through plagues. Through wars. At gravesides. They will sing them when the morning star rises for good — when the valley gives way to the mountain for the last time, when every competing voice falls silent, and the only sound left is the one that has been saying it all along: “Rise, and have no fear.”

In three days, we enter Lent. We walk toward the cross. But we do not walk blind, and we do not walk alone. We have heard the Father’s word from the cloud. We have been touched and raised by the Son.

And we carry one command into the wilderness:

Listen to him.