Friends Run and Smith Creek Church of the Brethren
February 10, 2013
“The Glory in His Bosom
That Transfigures You and Me”
2 Peter 1:16-21
Scripture Text
16 We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.
19 And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (The Holy Bible: New International Version, 2 Peter 1:16-21 . ©1984 International Bible Society. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996).
Sermon Text
Life is filled with strange twists and turns which are not always easy to understand. As people live their lives from infancy through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood through death, few, if any ever end their lives in the way that they thought they would.
Some young girls dream of being married and working at home as full time mothers and housewives.
Others dream of careers in which they will be successful, earning a decent living while helping their husbands to provide for their families.
Still others want nothing to do with men or children.
On the other side of the fence, some young boys may dream of being president, or being wealthy by the age of 30, or maybe even just being the preacher of an old country church.
While other boys dream of families with lots of children.
Still others want nothing to do with what many of us would consider to be a normal life.
Nevertheless, when the time comes to die, I doubt that many men or women as they take their last breaths say to themselves, my life has been perfect, I have achieved all of my dreams, I have no regrets.
As an example, I doubt that as a boy, John Brown would ever have imagined that during his 59th year of life, he would be hanged for treason against the United States.
But the twists and turns of life led him do die such a death.
You see, John Brown, was an abolitionist in the years prior to the American Civil War. He wasn’t born an abolitionist, but his life made him into one.
John Brown’s father was a strict Calvinist minister who believed, like many Brethren believed, that slavery was a sin.
At the age of 12, John found himself working with a man who owned a 12 year old slave. The man treated John very well, but he regularly beat the slave boy with a shovel.
When he was 33, John attended the funeral of Elijah Lovejoy, the publisher of an anti-slavery newspaper, who was gunned down in the street by a mob of pro-slavery men.
During the funeral, John rose and vowed that he would end slavery once and for all.
When he was 54, John moved to Kansas where he tried to get the residents of the Kansas territory to vote to become a free state instead of a slave state. He was a major player in the mini-civil war which broke out in the Kansas territory. He even personally ordered the murder of five pro-slavery settlers.
At age 57, John Brown attacked two pro-slavery homesteads in Missouri. He liberated eleven slaves and saw them safely to freedom in Canada.
Six months before his 60th birthday, John led a group of 14 white men and four slaves to attack the federal arsenal at Harpers’ Ferry, in what was then, Virginia.
They held ten hostages for three days before Col. Robert E. Lee led a group of Marines against the arsenal and captured John Brown and his men.
Some thought that John Brown was a crazy man. Others thought that he was a national hero. Doubtless, by today’s standards, John Brown would have been known as a terrorist.
Finally, his violent life was ended when his neck was snapped at the end of a rope in Charles Town.
Yet, by the time of his execution, John Brown had become a martyr to the cause of the abolition of slavery. (The American Experience: John Brown’s Holy War. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/) Some even claim that his raid was a direct cause of the Civil War.
Across the country, people immortalized him in song:
John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave.
John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave.
John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave.
But his soul is marching on! (Traditional American tune, "John Brown's Body.")
The song was so popular that Union soldiers often sang it as an unofficial anthem while they marched across the country during the raids and battles of the Civil War.
Although born 19 years after John Brown, Julia Ward Howe also fought against slavery, but in a different way. Like John, Julia was an abolitionist. But instead of using violence to end slavery, she used her pen. Julia Ward Howe published poetry, plays, and many articles in which she condemned slavery and called for its abolition.
In 1861, after visiting a Union Army camp, her good friend, Rev. James Freeman Clark, challenged her to write a poem set to the tune of John Brown’s Body, but which would have more uplifting words.
Julia met Rev. Clark’s challenge. The resulting poem was first published in the February 1862 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. (Women’s History: Julia Ward Howe, http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_howe_julia_ward.htm)
I doubt that Julia would have ever guessed that her poem would become perhaps the best-known Civil War song of the Union Army, that it would become a well-loved American patriotic anthem, or that it would still be sung in churches 150 years after she wrote it.
You may be thinking, well this is all very interesting Thomas, but what has does this have to do with the scripture from 2 Peter which you read us this morning.
It is the story of a transfiguration. Julia Ward Howe took a song about a terrorist and transfigured it into a song about God’s triumph over evil.
I am sure that there were more than a few eyebrows raised this morning when you looked in the bulletin and saw that we were going to sing Julia Ward Howe’s song, now popularly known as the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Indeed, there are some parts of the country where people still hate this song because of its association with the Civil War.
But if you took the time to carefully read all the verses of the song, you would see that it has much less to do with the War of Northern Aggression than it has to do with the battle in which God will ultimately triumph to bring eternal peace in a new heaven and new earth.
Similarly, in today’s scripture text Peter, is writing about being an eyewitness to Jesus’ glory as Jesus was transfigured before Peter’s eyes on a mountaintop.
The Greek word which is used in the gospels for what Peter witnessed is metamorphothe. A literal translation of this word would mean to change form.
In other words, they saw him in the same glorious form that he had in heaven before he came to earth. The same form that he took again after he rose from the grave. No wonder the women and the other disciples who had not witnessed this miraculous change could not recognize Jesus after he rose from the dead.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating things about this story is that it is not the only tale of someone changing form or being transformed by the power of God.
Elijah was caught up in a whirlwind and whisked off directly into heaven without dying.
After seeing God’s backside, when Moses came back down the mountain, he had to wear a veil on his face because his face glowed–just because he had been exposed to God’s glory.
Peter said, we haven’t just made up clever stories or myths. We were eyewitnesses. We saw Jesus’ glory with our own eyes. No doubt there was a power to his words which compelled the early church to consider their own encounters with the risen Lord.
Last month, when I first looked at this passage, the Lord showed me that like Peter, I am an eyewitness to a transfiguration, too.
You see, one day, Jesus transfigured me. No, I didn’t physically change forms. But I did change spiritually. And one day, God willing, I will physically transform into my flawless spiritual body. The body that will never know pain, or suffering, or death.
Even now, each day, I pray, that the Lord will continue to change me, to re-create me in His own image. So that I, like Moses can reflect His glory.
No one could question Moses, or Elijah, or Peter after their experience of transfiguration. In fact, Julia Ward Howe’s song says it best in what was originally the fifth stanza:
In the beauty of the lilies,
Christ was born across the sea;
With a glory in His bosom,
That transfigures you and me. (Julia Ward Howe, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory")
If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior and Lord, then you have been transfigured, as well.
Doubtless, if you have been a believer for very long, you have witnessed the powerful transfiguring power of God at work in the lives of others around you.
Have you seen an otherwise hopeless life or situation turned around?
Have you seen a miraculous, inexplicable healing?
Have you, yourself, been changed either physically or spiritually, or both because of an encounter or relationship with Christ?
One cannot meet Christ and not be tranfigured. One cannot have a relationship with Jesus and not be changed.
So the only question that remains is what will you do with the transfiguration which you have witnessed.
Will you, like John Brown, let the violence of your own history continue to control your life; or will you, like Julia Ward Howe, let God transfigure something ugly and violent into something beautiful?
Will you keep your own eyewitness account to yourself, or will you, like Peter use the transfiguration to which you have been an eyewitness transform others around you?
In 1979, contemporary worship leader and song writer Don Moen wrote an incredible sixth verse to Julia Ward Howe’s original poem.
I can almost hear the trumpet’s sound
The Lord’s return is near
But there’s still so many people lost
Somehow they’ve got to hear,
Lord, please give me one more hour,
One more day, just one more year.
With your truth, we’re marching on . . . (Words by Don Moen ©1988 Integrity’s Hosanna Music.)
We will sing it today as part of our closing hymn. As we stand together, may this historic, yet new hymn speak to us anew about Jesus’ transfiguring power and of the mission which each of us has as eyewitnesses to it.
