II Peter 1:16-21 deals with the reliability of the apostolic witness.
II Peter 1:16-18 has the theme of the transfiguration of Jesus guaranteeing the return of Jesus. 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths (like Gnostics) when we made known to you the power and (second) coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, It seems doubts about last events have arisen. But we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. The witness countering others who devise myths. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. He connects the transfiguration with the events with Mount Sinai.
The author assumes detailed knowledge of the transfiguration story. The author also assumes that the reality of the transfiguration story lends credibility to the notion of the second coming. The return of Christ has its root in this historical event. The denial of the second coming is an attack on the majesty and glory the Father gave to Jesus. It seems strange that he does not point to the resurrection here, rather than viewing the Transfiguration as more important.[1] He also finds it noteworthy the prophetic word through Moses and Elijah acquired genuine relevance for those who had their origin in the appearance of Jesus. The appearance of Jesus found its confirmation in the character of a prophetic word pointing to the future and became an indispensable light on their path. The disciples did not come down the mountain as innovators, but in the company with the ancient witnesses, accredited by the fulfillment of the long-prepared history of the covenant. In that company, they moved afresh to meet the coming Lord. Thus, to many today, the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is a fable, but for this author, the eyewitness account saves it from being such.[2]
God is in the ordinary relationships and experiences of life. Often, God is there more than we know.
Yet, we all need special showings of grace. They rise up like majestic mountains. They become pools of refreshing spring water. Such experiences can change our view of life. They can change the way we live our lives. We might think of them as peak experiences, as mountaintop experiences, or even as conversion and new birth. Such experiences can change the way we read the bible. They can change the way we experience Christian fellowship. They can change the way we view our life in the world. We often do not have them because we do not take the time from the busy course of our lives to stop, to look, and to listen. If we do, we may find that we see our relationship Jesus anew. We may well recognize that the most important decision we make in our lives is what we will do with Jesus, and what we allow Jesus to do with us. What matters is that we live our daily lives in fellowship with Jesus. When we have heard his voice and responded to his call, we can then place our hand in his, and walk with him in the journey of life. We are not alone.
I want to commend the experience at the top of the mountain that changes our lives. Sometimes, we need to disengage from our regular, daily involvement in life. We active persons may find it hard to stop, look, and listen. We may find it difficult to quit doing, and just stand there. Most of our lives are quite common and ordinary. In fact, how many of us remember what happened yesterday, last week, or even last year. Many of our days blur together in a sameness that can even become boring to us. I want to challenge us to refuse to become used to the ordinary. You see, I suspect that most of us can also look back to experiences we have had that stand out, almost like a mountain, that have changed our lives. I want us to look at such mountains in our lives today. These experiences can alter our perspective on life. If they take hold, they can change the way we live. It may be that the experience on the mountaintop will change your life, not just for the moment, but also for the rest of your life. “We ourselves heard this voice from heaven.” Are we ready to hear that voice?
Now, why should we value such mountaintop experiences in our lives?
First, we need genuinely Life-changing experiences. Is that not what conversion is to be? Our lives become far more about Jesus, and therefore, we look at ourselves and at world differently. Life is no longer simply about what we want, but about what Christ wants. When you have had an experience that genuinely changes your life, it is so difficult to put into words. It is as if we encounter a wall in our language; we reach the limits of what words can convey. Even when we listen to someone else sharing a life-changing experience, all we can do is listen and be grateful.
I am not one whom an event will usually have that impact. Maybe it is the German in me. Maybe it is just the fact of being from Minnesota. When I look back upon some of the mountain tops in my life, what I find are clusters of experiences and relationships. My mother making sure that her five children were in church and youth group was a mountain top in my life. That decision by her became an invitation to place Christ at the center of my life. The relationship with several Christian professors became part of another mountaintop in my college and Seminary life.
In my first appointment as a United Methodist Church pastor, I struggled with whether God wanted me to continue as pastor. I can point to a couple events that were significant to me. When I attended my first Walk to Emmaus, God addressed me in a way that made me at peace. When I was at Vincennes Community UMC, I attended a promise keeper convention for pastors in Atlanta. The event brought together many denominations. It brought 42,000 pastors together. I became acquainted with the music of Michael Caird. I heard Max Lucado speak of the need to tear down walls between Roman Catholic and Protestant, a courageous talk in that setting. Attempting to heal the division of the races, they invited black pastors to come forward and receive the love and prayers of the pastors gathered. The movie, Passion of the Christ was powerful for me, portraying for me the extent to which love can go to bring salvation.
Second, instead of being frustrated with others, Be the revival . . . Be the church. One of the speakers at the pastor’s convention said, “I do not want to wait for revival. I want to be the revival that is coming. I do not want to go to church. I want to be the church.” Many church buildings have a beauty to them. People who attend justly feel some pride. However, if after people come to the building, people do not meet God personally, it will have been for nothing. Many congregations are places where people can form good friendships. As lonely as many people are, congregations provide an important place for people to find others to join them in the journey of life. However, if after the fellowship and friendship, people do not meet God, what good was it all? Many congregations have praiseworthy worship. However, if people do not meet God, it has all been for nothing.
I want to encourage you to not be afraid of going to the mountain with Jesus. When these disciples did so, they heard God’s voice. It was not wonderful music or great preaching. It was God. There can be a lasting value to such experiences. The Bible often has people meeting God on the mountain. Among the Hebrew people, the mountain was where Abraham received a new revelation of what God was about when he was with his son, Isaac. Moses went to the mountain and came down with the Ten Commandments. Elijah went there and heard the “still, small voice” of God. Now, the disciples go to the mountain with Jesus, and they hear the voice of God. These were not ordinary experiences. They stood out in bold relief.
Third, I offer one caution concerning the mountain. The Christian tradition is right. We cannot live on the mountain. We will need to live our lives day to day. God is also in the daily, ordinary experiences of life.
Charles Spurgeon has a wonderful sermon on this passage. In his translation, the text concludes in v. 8 with the statement that they saw no one, “save Jesus only.” The wonderful experience the disciples had on that mountain would be worthless if it did not lead to daily fellowship with “Jesus only,” a fellowship that ought to mark the Christian life. They went up the mountain with Jesus only. They went back down the mountain with Jesus only. Jesus is all they needed. He speculates that there were four options in this text. First, that they would see only themselves. In that case, they would have gone down the mountain to face the world with no divine companionship. Second, they might see Moses only. Too many Christians do so, seeing the Christian life as nothing but law and duty. The third alternative that might have happened to the disciples, they might have seen Elijah only. In such a case, with such a leader, they would have gone down from the mount, they would have commanded the fire to come down and consume the Pharisees. However, all this power for vengeance would have been a poor exchange for the gracious presence of Jesus, the Friend of sinners. "They saw no man, save Jesus only." When our Christianity is most vital, it is most full of Christ. Moreover, when it is most practical, it always gets nearest to Jesus.[3]
It can be easy to get frustrated with our own growth, or with the growth of others, or with the growth of the church. In Zorba the Greek, (120-121) the author tells of one morning discovering a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. He waited a while, but it was too long appearing, and he was impatient. He bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. He warmed it as quickly as he could and the miracle began to happen before his eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the butterfly started slowly crawling out. Imagine his horror when he saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, he tried to help it with his breath. In vain. It needed to hatch out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. His breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately A few seconds later, it died in the palm of his hand. Are we getting frustrated because we do not mature quite fast enough? Do we want our children to grow up quicker? Do we want changes in our spouse? Do we want the church to move along quicker?
If such experiences on the mountain are real, they will go with us throughout life. Ernest Hemingway once wrote a book about his early days as a writer in Paris. He titled the book, A Moveable Feast. If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. I do not know about Paris. Yet, I do know what he means. There are experiences that can become “a moveable feast.” It may have been to the ocean, to the mountains, at a retreat, or visiting another country. We carry that experience around with us.
The presence of God is a moveable feast. When the reality of God comes home, when we have had that mountaintop experience, we do not leave God behind. God goes with us. In fact, God leads the way. Such transforming experiences in our lives are exactly what God wants to embed in our hearts and lives.
II Peter 1:19-21 has the theme of protecting believers from false teaching through an inspired text, the Bible. The protection against false teaching involves inspired reading of the text coming from the Holy Spirit as well as Christian community. The transfiguration is a glimpse of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. They need to reject the arbitrary expositions as found in apocalyptic in favor of qualified interpreters. the prophecies themselves were not just the product of private individuals but prompted by the Holy Spirit. The text suggests that just as God has inspired scriptures, so the reading of scripture is under the guidance of the Spirit and theapostolic tradition.
19 So we have the prophetic message (λόγον)[4] more fully confirmed. The transfiguration is a glimpse of the fulfillment of scriptural prophecy. The matter of the Word seems complicated by the fact that it comes in the form of the human word of prophets and apostles. The divine Word meets us in the thick of the fog of our own intellectual life, taking on the same form as our ideas, thoughts, and convictions. Yet, the Word is a light that shines in a dark place, but it needs no explanation because it simply shines.[5] You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. They need to reject the arbitrary expositions found in apocalyptic in favor of qualified interpreters. 21 Because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. The prophecies themselves were not just the product of private individuals but prompted by the Holy Spirit. The text suggests that just as scriptures are inspired, so the reading of scripture is under the guidance of the spirit and the apostolic tradition. We allow scripture to interpret itself. We allow it to control our exposition. We need to note the role of the Holy Spirit, where this Spirit is almost the author. The Holy Spirit and the Bible have a relation in which the whole reality of the unity between finds a safeguard in a proper view of inspiration. The unity is a free act of the grace of God, and therefor for us its content is always a promise. Barth goes as far as to say that his view of inspiration is one the reader can judge considering this passage, combined with II Timothy 3:16-17.[6]
If we go into the second chapter, the author makes it clear that a concern is for false teaching that has arisen. The author believes that Scripture properly read can preserve the community of followers of Jesus from such teaching. We find a similar concern in Romans 16:17-20 for false teaching that causes dissension within the church. Another primary passage in this regard is II Timothy 3:16-17, where God inspires all scripture, making it useful for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, thereby equipping the people of God for every excellent work.
Scripture holds a special place for us today because God breathed life into it, and therefore, it becomes life to us, if we are open to receive it. Scripture is “useful” in that it teaches us positive matters we are to believe, as well as reprove and correct our belief and practice. It trains us in righteousness, so that we who belong to God may become proficient for good works.
Of course, we are not to read scripture in a casuistic way, as if it were simply a book of church law. The Pharisees tried that approach. Paul rarely appealed to a line of the Old Testament law, but he did appeal to Jesus, most famously in Philippians 2:5. Jesus provides an example of reading scripture through his elevation of the commandment to love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love the neighbor as oneself. Thus, while the Old Testament and Judaism yet today take the purity and sacrificial laws seriously, the New Testament took the purity laws, the regulations concerning clean and unclean foods, and the entire festival and sacrificial system, and interpreted them as finding their fulfillment in an unexpected way in the suffering servant, Jesus of Nazareth. Another obvious example is that to conclude Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah required a new reading of the Old Testament. Here are some other examples. Jesus and Paul redefined the people of God, recognizing the overwhelming power of the Roman Empire, and therefore did not lead others to agitate in a military way against the Empire. Jesus encouraged a form of strategic pacifism in this regard. We have Romans 13 as an example of the view of Paul toward the Empire. Even when the Empire became beastly, as we see in the Book of Revelation, the author does not recommend a futile military battle between first century Christians and the Empire. The church in the first century took the practical approach they could not effect large political changes. Yet, recognizing that the people of God must reside within the Empire, both Jesus and Paul commented on how the people of God were to act. Another example is that we have his instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, including reflections on marriage. Matthew 5 is particularly instructive, in that Jesus could say, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you.” Thus, when Jesus says love your enemies, it should make the Christian look at certain Psalms and certain part of the Old Testament in a different way than the writer intended. With Paul, we have what scholars call the household rules, such as we find in Colossians and Ephesians, his statements on marriage and divorce in I Corinthians 7, his elevation of love in I Corinthians 13, his ethical directions in Romans 12-15, and his various lists of virtue and vice, notably in Galatians 5. From the Christian view, then, the reader of the Bible has no obligation to treat every word as if each word had the same value, for we read in light of Jesus and the New Testament. For those of us who value the Bible, it requires some discipline to learn to read the Old Testament in such a way that it finds genuine fulfillment considering the further revelation Christians believe they have in Jesus Christ.
All of this is simply way of recognizing that the Word of God comes to us today in human words and cultural settings. It means every word of the Bible, understood in its context, may require interpretation from further revelation. Every word does not carry the same weight. It requires a careful reading, a discerning reading, and a humble reading. When we read things we do not like in the Bible, our human inclination is to say the Bible is wrong. However, it just might be that is where God is speaking to us in a challenging way. We might need to listen even more carefully.
Pastors are teachers of the Word. I am not much for developing theories of the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Such discussions typically lead the church down a dead end. More importantly, they can lead to quite unchristian behavior. Of course, the words of the Bible are to lead us to the Word, that is, Jesus Christ. We rightly give priority to the Scripture. II Peter and II Timothy give me great pause to consider that the responsibility of the pastor is to go somewhere with the Word. Every Sunday, the pastor is to help people take that journey as well. Every service of worship is an attempt to go somewhere with the Word, recognizing that the Word is not simply open to my private interpretation, but rather, open to the interpretation through a community. The community began in the around 2000 years of the period covered by Scripture itself. It continues in the 2000 years since the formation of the canon of the New Testament. We go somewhere with the Word in order to receive teaching, reproof, correction, and training, all for the purpose of leading to a good life. The Bible holds a privileged place in the communication of the church. I do not go rummaging around in other texts, as much as I may value them. I learn much from psychology, sociology, philosophy, and theology. I learn much from the newspaper. The music, prayers, and message are accountable to the Bible. I value my reading of other religious texts. However, as Bishop Willimon has said somewhere, the Christian and the Buddhist differ largely because we have listened to different stories, differing visions of the world. Of course, some Christians and some Buddhists have not listened to their core stories very well.
Pastors will often read authors who point to a quite different approach to the text than I am suggesting here. Some authors begin with the view that the Bible is violent, narrow, primitive, incomprehensible, disordered, and even weird. Dare I say it? So are you, as a reader of the text. As post-modern people, we adopt a superior attitude toward the Bible. We call the Bible sexist and patriarchal, as if we are not. We think we have risen above the Bible. We think the culture of the Bible conditions it so much that it has nothing to say to us. We do not see how our culture has conditioned us, especially as we read the Bible. Yes, part of my job as a preacher and teacher of the Bible is to make the Bible comprehensible to us as post-modern people. However, an even more important task is to help us be worthy listeners of the Word.
The Bible is about God. Most of us are scrambling around for a few crumbs that we can summarize on a bumper sticker. The Bible is about large matters, as we often hear today, things that matter most. We often come to the Bible thinking of ourselves. The Bible is first about God, and secondarily a disclosure that concerns us.
The Bible is about us. The Bible is messy, just like our lives. In fact, the Bible keeps on going with no conclusion. Like some episodes on television, “to be continued” is at the end of every story. In fact, one reason many of us love the Bible, and have spent much of our lives studying it and teaching it, is that we have a hunch that the Bible is our story as well. It keeps disclosing to us deeper levels of our lives that need the healing, liberating, and guiding presence of God.
Having said all of this about the Bible, the reader of the Bible knows that the primary issue is not a defense of the Bible, but finding ways of letting the Bible live in our lives in ways that challenge us as well as those around us. The Word trains us in righteousness and good works.
i liked this. Never saw that Peter was referring to the transfiguration. Very good take. The follow up on mountain top experiences was really a nice movement from the text to out lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much !
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