Peter was not big on writing letters. He certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Paul, whose pen never seemed to stop, sending letters all over Asia, explaining, encouraging, correcting. But of course being under house arrest made letter writing the best way to keep in touch with all the churches Paul had planted, or at least visited. Peter had been really impressed, too, by the way Paul had explained the implications of what Jesus had taught and done, and how it was supposed to work out in practice. No one would have thought, back in the early days when they were still arguing over whether or not Gentile Christians had to be circumcised, that Paul would be the greatest teacher of them all. Peter had been content to leave that side of things to Paul, while he traveled around to the different churches in person, preaching, witnessing, telling of his own personal experience traveling with Jesus, and what had happened when Jesus was crucified and then rose again. There was really nothing better, after all, than eye-witness accounts.
But Peter had been hearing some disturbing news from his own correspondents, and he certainly couldn’t leave Rome now, not with the imminent threat from the Emperor Nero. It was pretty certain that there was going to be some sort of crackdown on the Roman church any day now. So even though he knew he’d be one of the first ones the authorities would come for when the time came, he had run from danger once too often already. There was only one thing to do, and that was to write a letter.
He dipped his quill in the ink and paused to organize his thoughts.
“Why did the same issues keep cropping up?” he wondered. It was easier in some ways back in Jerusalem where the big problem was to get the Jewish brothers to eat with Gentiles. Well, all right, Peter admitted that even with the vision the Lord had sent him, showing that God had made all foods clean, he had backslid a few times himself. It was hard to break the attitudes of a lifetime, and when almost all of the brothers were Jewish it hadn’t seemed like all that big a deal.
But here in Rome - and throughout most of Asia and Greece and North Africa most of Jesus’ followers had come out of a Gentile background, and the problems were completely different.
They weren’t under law, but under grace, some were teaching. If they didn’t have to obey the Jewish teaching about clean and unclean foods, why did they have to follow Jewish moral standards? And since it was obvious that Jesus wasn’t coming back as soon as everybody had expected, why should they have to worry about judgment day, anyway? That was probably just another invention to keep the people in line. If following Jesus meant love and freedom, then surely they were free to love whomever they liked!
Peter sighed and picked up his pen again. Maybe freedom from the law was the right way to preach to the Jews, but it had certainly left the leadership with a problem about how to deal with the pagans. It looked like he was going to have to go back to the basics. OK, so the high moral standards looked difficult to people accustomed to the “anything goes” that the pagans were used to. Peter could see how they might think so at the beginning, when they were first learning about the gospel. But now they had no excuse! Peter began to write:
“Jesus has miraculously given us all the power we could possibly need in order to live a life pleasing to God. He called us to reflect his own glory, his own goodness. His promises are for people who want to escape from corruption, not just to escape from punishment! If you don’t take advantage of his gifts, and go on letting yourselves become corrupted by lust like the people around you, you won’t be able to participate in his divine nature! You won’t even begin to experience the power he has waiting for you unless you build goodness and knowledge and self-control on top of your faith. Don’t throw away the potential you have to do great things for Jesus! If you keep on doing the same old things you had to be forgiven for and cleansed of at the beginning, you’ll never get anywhere, and particularly you won’t make it into the kingdom of God.”
“Am I being too harsh?” Peter wondered. After all, everyone sinned and needed forgiveness, even after they met Jesus. No one knew that better than he did. But still, if people didn’t really want to be free from sin, if all they wanted was to be free from the consequences of their sin, he didn’t think they’d really understood what salvation was all about.
They hadn’t seen Jesus clearly enough, that was all. Or they had forgotten. You wouldn’t think that anyone who had seen Jesus could possibly forget, but it could happen. It had happened to him, after all. Peter sometimes thought that Jesus had chosen him to lead the church just because he had made every mistake in the book himself and could tell people from personal experience what it was like to completely blow it, to be so ashamed of having disappointed the Lord that you thought you’d never be able to show your face again.
His mind wandered back to that day when Jesus had taken him - along with James and John - up on the mountain. They didn’t have a clue what was going to happen, they never did. But when they got to the top and Jesus turned and looked at them, framed against the blue Galilean sky, he began to glow, to shine as though a lamp had been lit inside him. His ordinary, rough unbleached woolen robe was blinding white, it hurt to look at it; their hearts began to pound and time seemed to stop. And as they looked two figures appeared beside him, and somehow they recognized them as Moses and Elijah. Peter could tell they were speaking but couldn’t make out the words, it was like a rush of sound inside his head, and he heard his own voice saying something stupid, as usual. "Lord, what an awesome experience! Do you want me to build booths here for the three of you? One for each of you?“ And as he babbled on, hardly knowing what he was saying the light grew into a - a sort of huge bubble enveloping all three of them - and a great voice that seemed to come from all around him, or maybe inside him, said “This is my Son, my heart’s delight. Pay attention to what he says.” As he heard this Peter fell flat on his face on the ground. Afterwards he realized that John and James had done the same thing. The light and the voice seemed slowly to dissolve, and he felt Jesus hand, and heard his voice, saying, “It’s all right, don’t be afraid, you can get up now.” Dizzy, he opened his eyes and stood, and Jesus was all alone, looking just as he always had, a little amused, and very tender.
Speechless still, the three followed Jesus as he turned and started back down the mountain. About halfway down, as they were beginning to think clearly again, Jesus turned and stopped them. “Don’t tell anyone what you saw here,” he said. “At least, not until I have returned from death.”
Jesus had told them, Peter thought. He had told them over and over and over what to expect. And yet when the moment of crisis came, when they really needed courage, when he should have held on to the vision, it had gone completely out of his mind. That’s why Jesus took us up there in the first place, he thought, so we would have something to hang on to when the going got tough. But did we remember? No, we didn’t.
Peter dipped his pen back in the ink and started on a new section. “They’re no weaker than I am,” he told himself. “But what will they do when there isn’t anyone around who saw Jesus with his own eyes? How can I make it clear to them how important it is to keep their eyes on Jesus as he is, pure and holy and good, not on some shoddy counterfeit?”
“I’m not making this up, you know,” Peter wrote. “I’m not writing this because I have nothing better to do, in fact since I don’t have much longer to live there are any number of things I could be doing instead. But as long as I am still here I will go on reminding you, with all the urgency I can bring to bear, that living for Jesus means pursuing righteousness, it means clean and holy living, it means seeing him as clearly as possible and longing to be as much like him as possible.”
“I know you’re disappointed that Jesus hasn’t come back yet. But he didn’t leave us a timetable! The Father didn’t give him a timetable! What he did tell us was that we shouldn’t spend all of our time worrying about when, but always to be ready.
"And no, I’m not making this up to look and sound important, or to keep you under my thumb! I don’t need that, as I told you I’ll be one of the first ones to go when the persecution begins, as it surely will any day now. If a man’s last words mean anything, listen to mine! We saw him with our own eyes, James and John and I. We saw him being transformed into a vision of heavenly light even before he was crucified, up on a mountain on the way from Galilee to Judea, and we heard the very voice of God tell us to listen to Jesus, tell us that he was pleased with him. I cannot stress this enough. Do not listen to any voice that tries to turn you away from the pure light of Jesus. Anyone who tries to turn you away from that vision of holiness and power which we saw isn’t leading you into light and freedom but back into the darkness of captivity. If anyone tries to twist the words of Jesus into anything other than the way he explained it to us, who were eyewitnesses of his majesty, that person is making it up, not us. The prophecies we have given to you, the visions that we have described to you, they are gifts from the Holy Spirit, not human inventions. If you believe anything about Jesus at all, you must listen to all of the truth, not part of it.
"The proof of what I am saying to you is that anyone who follows Jesus will shine in the darkness, against the backdrop of the corruption of the world, in an unmistakable way. Remember the proverb, “Without a vision, the people will perish?” [Pr 29:18] This is the vision you need to keep before you all the time. ! The vision we saw wasn’t just for us, it was for you, so that you may not only have light in the darkness, but be light for others as well! Keep your eyes on Jesus. Only if you keep that vision clearly in front of you will you be able to follow him where he has gone, but if you do, I promise you that everything he promised, everything I have told you about will be yours."
