2.19.23 2 Peter 1:16-21
16 To be sure, we were not following cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the powerful appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father, when the voice came to him from within the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We heard this voice, which came out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.
19 We also have the completely reliable prophetic word. You do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts, 20 since we know this above all else: No prophecy of Scripture comes about from someone’s own interpretation. 21 In fact, no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Simple Words Have Deep Meaning of Light
Just prior to our text for today Peter wrote, “I know that the putting off of my tent is going to happen soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. 15 I will also make every effort so that after my departure you always have a reminder of these things.” Peter was about to die, so he wrote this letter. He especially wanted us to know about the Transfiguration.
What makes the Transfiguration so special? At first glance these words, this great revelation from heaven, might not seem to be anything very profound. “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” But then, these are the words of God the Father, whom Peter describes as the “Majestic Glory.” It’s not every day you hear God speaking from heaven. I can only think of a handful of times off the top of my head that God actually does such a thing. Whenever He does, it sounds terrifyingly powerful. So there’s that.
Even the simple can be and usually is profound when God speaks it. So let’s think about those words again. “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Now, God says we are His children too. We are God’s children because He created us. We are also God’s children spiritual through adoption in our baptism. So God says the same thing to us. But there is something special here that the Father is pointing out about THIS one. He speaks it personally from heaven. Also, we understand from other Scripture that this is unique. According to John, He was with God in the beginning. He actually IS God. So this Son, standing on the top of the Mt. of Transfiguration, isn’t just any son. He’s not created. He’s God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten of the Father from eternity. Sound familiar?
That’s not all that makes Him special. “This is my Son, whom I love.” What’s so special about this? You see parents loving their children all the time. Come to a preschool Christmas program, and you see the love just ooze from people watching their children and grandchildren sing. We hear this all the time about God. God is love. God so loved the world. In reality, this isn’t natural at all. There’s no reason a holy God should love anything about it. Why would God love us when He says we are born in sin and our best of works are corrupted and filthy? Yet God says He loves the world from a GRACIOUS love, that’s not dependent on who we are. He loves because that’s who He is. And He loves by giving His Son to die for us. His love for us is based on grace and sacrifice, on Jesus. But God’s love of THIS Son is not based on mercy. It’s not contingent on the death of another Son. It’s not merciful. It’s well deserved.
How do we know this? with him I am well pleased. “Well pleased” means that God glories in the Son. He delights in Him. Think about watching your favorite player play a game or musician play an instrument. They aren’t playing out of tune. They aren’t missing plays. They are poetry in motion. You enjoy watching them do their craft. It brings you joy. That’s what Jesus did for the Father. He was poetry in motion to the Father. He was well pleased with Him. Compare that to us again. Who are we? We are like the grade school band concert or basketball game. You love your kids, but that band still needs a lot of work. The band director must be a saint! Some of the kids don’t know how to dribble yet. They don’t listen to the coach. People aren’t buying tickets to watch these kids play if they aren’t friends of family. That’s how we perform this thing called life. Try as we might, it’s mediocre at best, tainted with sin and failure. (Yet God enjoys it when it’s done in faith! The only reason God smiles is by grace and out of a merciful love.) Not with Jesus. He’s doing everything the Father calls Him to do perfectly. Here is how God designed humanity to be. Here is how God envisioned love. As Isaiah 42 says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.”
This is important for us to hear before we head into Lent. We need to hear it so we don’t misinterpret what is happening to Jesus. The Father has NO PROBLEM with the Son. He’s not going to die because God is angry with HIM. He is going to die because God is angry with US and what WE have done with our lives. The ONLY reason Jesus is going to die a miserable death on the cross is FOR US and for OUR salvation. Yes, the Father sends His perfect Son to the cross for US, so we can delight in Him too.
There was a woman at a nursing home who recently told me that she received a vision of Jesus. She said that she saw Jesus’ face. I couldn’t refute what she said, because she was the only one who saw it. I didn’t really need to. She was happy about it, but it didn’t really do any good for me. It made her happy, so I was happy for her. But that did nothing for me. I didn’t see it. Maybe we would be tempted to feel that way about the Transfiguration. That’s good for Peter, James, and John, but it doesn’t mean that much to me.
Don’t treat it so glibly! The Transfiguration is different. Peter saw Jesus become as bright as the sun! He was clearly DIVINE, as His divinity beamed from within. But Peter doesn’t even mention that. He is focused on the WORDS that were spoken, words that were repeated for you and me. These aren’t the only words Peter writes down either. His words are more than just HIS words, they are the Holy Spirit’s. The Holy Spirit wanted to make sure that we heard what happened. Peter wrote that, “No prophecy of Scripture comes about from someone’s own interpretation. In fact, no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Peter doesn’t want us to underestimate the POWER of the written Word. When people are more and more regularly proclaiming to have their own visions, he wants us to go back to the Word. He wrote, “We also have the completely reliable prophetic word. You do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts.” (And here’s our final connection to Epiphany, right? The Morning Star rises in us when we pay attention to the Word!)
What does this mean? In popular astrology, Venus is thought of as the Morning Star. It’s not actually a star, it’s a planet. But when the sun is about to rise, the light of the sun shines on it and it looks like a star. That is a tell tale sign to those living on the darkness of the earth that light is about to shine. Things are going to warm up. In Revelation 22:16 Jesus Himself says, “I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” So when we listen to the Word of God, the light of Christ shines within us, along with all of us His forgiveness, mercy and compassion, to warm the soul with God’s grace. A sort of transfiguration happens within! He rises IN YOUR HEARTS. We have light in this world, even when things become darker and darker as we wait for Jesus to come when the Final Day dawns.
Peter says, You do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place. Don’t ignore this word! It’s important! Here’s the one place we can find true light in a dark world. It’s meant to draw your attention, like a nice fire in the middle of the night, the flames can be beautiful. God wants you to dig into the Word, pay attention to it. Envision what it was like for Peter, James, and John to be on top of that mountain, with the light beaming forth from Jesus. Envision what Peter is saying here as God Himself speaks from heaven. Think of how Jesus is still alive and ruling in the heavens. This stuff takes time to think about and contemplate. The more you dig into it, the more you can see the God of mercy, forgiveness, and compassion. You see that these aren’t just stories, these are actual historical events that happened for you and for me. Pay attention to them!
Think of how we tend to scroll through life. Look at screen after screen on the phone. Nothing can keep our attention for more than three seconds. The more you look for something to catch your eye, the more dark and bland it becomes. Life becomes a constant scroll. Even when we’re here, we have a hard time concentrating on the words we are actually singing or the words that are being spoken. When I was at conference this past weekend the church had images put up with every song. But then I was thinking about the image and not the words of the song. My mind was divided and I couldn’t concentrate. That’s why we took the words off the screen for the absolution and the blessing. I want you to stop looking at words, look at me, listen to what I’m saying to you with their simple truth very slowly. The Lord bless you, and keep you.
The devil gets us to approach people this way too, in a very shallow manner. A prostitute is nothing but a piece of flesh to the man who buys her. He doesn’t think that this young lady has a soul inside. She’s not just a piece of meat. The drug addict is a real person with real problems. He’s not just a druggy. He’s someone Jesus died for. Don’t be so shallow in your outlook. That’s what the devil wants, for you to be shallow and not go any deeper in your thought process than what the flesh wants, to forget about the soul. Life has deeper meaning!
And maybe we are tempted to do that with the Word and the sacrament too, in a sense. Sit your hour in church. Sing your songs. Concentrate on how you’re singing it, but don’t think about what you’re singing. Receive your bread and wine. Eat it. Drink it. Go back and sit down. But there’s more here! There’s body and blood here, the body and blood of God! There’s a God who came to our world and revealed His glory to us by His death and resurrection. There’s a God behind these words and promises who can open heaven to you and give you peace here and now. His angels are real. His protection is real. His forgiveness is real. He cares for you, body and soul. Pay attention to it!
Balaam was a soothsayer from the Old Testament who was able to tune-in to a demonic world and pronounce curses on people through rites and incantations in the Bible. He was tuned in to evil and was able to touch it and work with it, to his own damnation. People can be fine tuned to wickedness and be drawn to see evil spirits and darkness. But God can work the opposite way too.
When you tune into the Word, you see the deep majesty of God, along with His mercy and compassion. The Father points you to the Son. “I love Him. Listen to Him!” Hear Him speak beautiful words of forgiveness and mercy to the woman caught in adultery. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” Those are words written for you to hear too. Then the Holy Spirit can bring the light of salvation and forgiveness into your soul.
So Transfiguration, it’s not only about the vision of what Peter, James, and John SAW. He purposely wrote these things down for posterity’s sake, so that you could hear what God has to say to you yet today, and find light and salvation. You don’t have to be on a hill in Galilee to hear it and see it. You can be right here, right now, when you pay attention to the Word of Christ. Then you can see the world differently, when these revelations from God give you a different perspective, a deeper perspective, as you head into Lent. You’ll see this is God going to the cross. You’ll know WHY He’s going there, to die for your sins. You’ll know what happens at the end - that’s for you too. He lives! The Word can transfigure your thinking and enlighten you to the truth of who God is, what grace is, who Jesus is, what mercy is, and what hope is.
Keep listening. These words of God are deep. They have powerful comfort and meaning. Pay attention to Jesus, the Light Who Shines in a Dark Place. Amen.
