2 Peter 1:16-25 (New International Reader’s Version)
16 We told you about the time our Lord Jesus Christ came with power. But we didn’t make up stories when we told you about it. With our own eyes we saw him in all his majesty. 17 God the Father gave him honor and glory. The voice of the Majestic Glory came to him. It said, "This is my Son, and I love him. I am very pleased with him."(Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35) 18 We ourselves heard the voice that came from heaven. We were with him on the sacred mountain.
19 The word of the prophets is made more certain. We have that word. You must pay attention to it. It is like a light shining in a dark place. It will shine until the day Jesus comes. Then the Morning Star will rise in your hearts.
20 Above all, here is what you must understand. No prophecy in Scripture ever came from a prophet’s own understanding. 21 It never came simply because a prophet wanted it to. Instead, the Holy Spirit guided the prophets as they spoke. So prophecy comes from God.
The temporary Sunday School teacher was struggling to open a combination lock on the supply cabinet. She had been told the combination, but couldn’t quite remember it.
She went to the pastor’s study and asked for help. The pastor came into the room and began to turn the dial.
After the first two numbers he paused and stared blankly for a moment.
Finally he looked serenely heavenward and his lips moved silently.
Then he looked back at the lock, and quickly turned to the final number, and opened the lock.
The teacher was amazed. "I’m in awe at your faith, pastor," she said.
"It’s really nothing," he answered. "The number is on a piece of tape on the ceiling."
Sometimes we have to dig into things a bit before we understand what is going on.
Peter raises that question for us today. How do we know? Here we are proclaiming a message that seems fantastic. We even call this message miraculous. People ask us how they are supposed to believe such a thing. Do they have to leave their intellects and rationality at the door? Or is the message that we proclaim consistent with rational thought, even if it is grounded in something beyond the bounds of our science?
Peter is asked that question. He is living in the context of life-threatening persecution. The passage immediately before our text for today has Peter thinking about his own death. He is telling us what gives him the courage to risk his life for the gospel. It is an uncommon glimpse into the mind of a martyr.
This passage has even more impact when we recognize that Peter’s fears were fully justified. It is not in the New Testament, but history tells us that Peter was captured by the Romans and crucified. Tradition tells us that Peter, feeling unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus, asked to be crucified upside down. There is no question that Peter believed and lived by what he taught.
Here, in his second letter to the faithful, Peter gives us a reason for his surety. He points to the transfiguration as proof of the gospel. I don’t know about you, but that strikes me as a bit odd. Peter was a witness to the resurrection.
Let me read a passage from I Corinthians for you. Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth is actually older than any of the four gospels. And here, we are reading, not something that Paul wrote himself, but something that was an established and formalized teaching of the church - Something that Paul himself had been taught soon after he came to faith. Listen to his words.
I Cor 15: 3-7. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
This early confession of the church speaks clearly about a special appearance of the risen Christ to Peter, before Christ appears to the apostles as a group. Strangely, though this appearance had to be well known in the church, it is never described in the gospels. More than that, Peter himself doesn’t mention it here. Wouldn’t you? If the risen Christ had made a special and particular appearance to you, isn’t that the experience that you would point to as proof of the gospel. Peter never describes this appearance in either of his letters and nothing is known about it beyond what is said in that early church confession. Maybe that experience was just too personal for Peter to relate to others.
But I think that there are other reasons why Peter was drawn to the transfiguration as that crucial moment that encapsulated the proof of the gospel.
The transfiguration was a shared experience. If you are trying to prove something, it is always good to have a couple of witnesses. In the case of the transfiguration, James and John were present and had the same experience. Under Jewish Law, two or three witnesses were required for something to hold up in court. Peter is making an almost legal appeal.
But more than that, consider who appeared with Jesus on that mountain. First we have Moses. Not only is Moses a hero of the faith, but he is the giver of the Law. Different Jewish groups accepted different books as constituting their sacred writings, but all of them placed the Torah – the Law – the Books of Moses as the most sacred of all. It is the Law of Moses that establishes the covenant between God and the people of Israel. One of the common Jewish charges against Christianity is that the Christian teachings subvert and set aside the Law of God. How could God be the author of lawlessness? How could God break His own covenant? Moses’ presence at the transfiguration is a divine assurance that the message of Christ is a fulfillment, not an annulment of the Law. Law creates a standard and grace raises the bar. The Law says “don’t kill” and grace says “don’t hate.” The Law says “don’t commit adultery” and grace responds “don’t lust.” The Law focuses on the wrongs that you must not do and grace focuses on how you must live, the positive things that you must do, in order to be a citizen of the kingdom of God.
The second figure appearing with Jesus was Elijah. As Moses represented the Law, Elijah here represents the prophetic witness. The transfiguration is a divine assurance that the Messiah who was proclaimed by the prophets is Jesus the Christ. People, preachers in particular, will often attempt to count up all of the prophecies of the Messiah that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Often, these prophecies will number into the hundreds or even the thousands. There is certainly truth in what these preachers are saying, Jesus is the Messiah of prophecy, but I think that they make a mistake in their efforts. This just isn’t a numbers game. If I were to say to one person, “Jesus fulfilled at least three hundred different prophecies” is that person going to more impressed than if I were to say “Jesus fulfilled more than 250 prophecies”? I don’t think so. Worse, when your goal is just to mount up numbers, you include more and more passages where the references are obscure or indirect or out of context. When the goal is just piling up numbers, we end up including items that are less persuasive and we damage our credibility. It is far better to show how Jesus clearly fulfilled a few very specific prophecies that clearly refer to the Messiah.
One of those extremely clear prophetic passages is found in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. I have a story to tell you about that. While this passage in Isaiah was written several hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the original has long sense been lost. Prior to the 1947, the oldest copy of the book of Isaiah that existed was produced sometime around the year one thousand. The references to the crucifixion, a method of execution that was not practiced in the time of Isaiah, are so clear, that critical scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century concluded that the text of Isaiah must have been corrupted. They theorized that sometime during the copying and recopying of the book some Christian, or some Christian influenced Jew, must have altered the original wording to make it conform to the events surrounding Jesus death. No serious scholar makes that claim today. In 1947, a copy of Isaiah that predates Jesus was discovered. Guess what. Isaiah 53 said then what Isaiah 53 says today. There had been no corruption, the text was the text.
I would much prefer to point to a couple of very powerful texts to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish yearning for a Messiah. It is far better to look at instantly persuasive passages than it is to get sucked into a discussion of minutia. To my mind, the most powerful in this regard are Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22.
Peter points to the transfiguration because of the witnesses, because it represented Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, but there was one more powerful reason. Like Jesus’ Baptism, but unlike any of the recorded resurrection appearances, God Himself bears witness in a clear and unmistakable way. The voice of God is heard saying, “This is my son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased.” For Peter, a witness to this event, God himself becomes the witness beyond other witnesses. There can now be no argument.
All of this is well and good. I am sure that the transfiguration held deep personal meaning to Peter and it may have even been viewed that way by the churches where Peter taught, but the truth is that it is not nearly as persuasive to us. I have never heard someone say, “I would believe in this whole Jesus thing if I knew that the transfiguration was true.” Today, the transfiguration doesn’t make it onto people’s radar. Instead, they want to know if the resurrection is true. If you were called on to make the case, if you were asked to explain how you know that the resurrection is true, what evidence would you give? Is it simply a matter of faith, or worse, a matter of opinion?
Here is a quick overview of the reasons that I believe in the Resurrection of Christ.
First, there really is no dispute about the empty tomb. From the very earliest accounts, the fact that the tomb is empty goes without question. The earliest opponents of Christianity never suggest that Jesus is still in the grave, but they provide other possibilities for why the body might be missing. Some say that the disciples stole the body. Others say that Jesus was not really dead when he was placed in the tomb. Within a few weeks after the crucifixion, the Apostles were openly preaching about the resurrection, and they were preaching in Jerusalem, the same place where Jesus had been crucified and buried. There were plenty of folks there who would have known exactly where the body had been buried and who had every reason to want to produce it to refute the Christian message. The only explanation for not producing the body was that there was no body there. The empty tomb is a historical fact. The debate is over how the tomb came to be empty.
There is a widely held misconception that the accounts of the resurrection came long after the fact, and so the resurrection could be nothing more than a legend that developed over time. This misconception developed out of a study of the gospels. Modern scholarship sees Mark as the first of the gospels to be written, and while it includes the empty tomb, there are no resurrection appearances. The same scholarship dates the other gospels more than 40 years after the events with the order being Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Matthew records one appearance with the bulk of the resurrection stories being told by Luke and John.
There are several very excellent scholars who dispute this conventional wisdom, and I personally hold to a different order and a different dating, but that is a topic for a class sometime, not for a sermon. Even if you accept the order and dating that is generally accepted, this provides absolutely no evidence that the accounts of the resurrection developed over time. What is ignored is that the gospels are not the earliest accounts of the resurrection. Earlier, we read from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. That letter dates from around 55 AD, earlier than the usual date for Mark. Paul mentions five separate resurrection appearance, in addition to the appearance of Christ to Paul himself on the Damascus Road. More than that, the appearances are listed in a formalized confession of faith that was taught to Paul as a new believer. Clearly that confession can be reliably dated to within a few years of Jesus death and was in use at the church in Jerusalem. These events did not take place in some long ago age or in some far away place, as is generally the case with legends. These claims were made at a time and in a place where they could be easily verified or refuted. The confession even points to the fact that there are living witnesses who can be asked. Not just here in Corinthians, but throughout the earliest writings and teachings of the church, the resurrection plays a central role in the proclamation of the gospel. The resurrection is not a legend, it is the truth or it is a deliberate fraud, but it is not a legend.
Isn’t there another alternative? Couldn’t these folks have been hallucinating? Couldn’t this have been some sort of vision or mystical experience? Even today people regularly report have visions of the risen Christ. Couldn’t all of the experiences have been like that? No, that option isn’t open to us. There was at least one appearance to an unbeliever. James, the brother of Jesus, did not accept Jesus as Messiah. Shortly after the crucifixion, this James became one of the leaders of the church at Jerusalem. We are never told how that James went from unbeliever to leader, but we do know that James is said to have met the resurrected Christ. We also know that James was so certain of his faith that he refused to recant when he was arrested by the Sanhedrin and he was stoned to death for that refusal.
Remember the historical fact that the tomb was empty. Visions don’t move bodies. Either the resurrection is true or the body was stolen to perpetuate a deliberate hoax. There is no middle ground. In addition, the appearance accounts themselves go out of their way to assure us that this was no visionary experience.
So how do we know that it wasn’t what Peter calls a “cleverly invented story.” There have been books written on the subject, here are a few of the highlights.
The fact that the tomb was empty was first discovered by a group of women who went to apply spices to Jesus body. If the disciples were making up a lie, is this the story that they would tell? Under Jewish Law, women were not allowed to serve as witnesses in court because they were thought to be unreliable. If the disciples were trying to make something up, why would they place women in this critical role? Wouldn’t it have been better to say that Peter or some other Apostle found the empty tomb? Better yet, why not say that the empty tomb was discovered by Joseph of Aramathea, a prominent citizen of Jerusalem, or Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish High Court. If you where making up the story, couldn’t you make it more convincing? Think again about that Corinthian passage that we read earlier. Did you notice anything missing? The role of women in the story is so much of a scandal that they are totally absent in Paul’s version.
There is still more evidence. It is certainly true that people will die for a false belief. I am sure that the highjackers on 9/11 believed that they were doing the will of Allah and were willing to die because of that belief. Unfortunately, hardly a week goes by without our hearing about another suicide bomber. The fact that people are willing to die for something does not mean that it must be true. So when I report to you that every one of the Apostles suffered for the sake of the gospel, when I tell you that most of them gave up their lives for the cause, that alone is not proof that the cause is true. The Apostles could just have been fanatics, couldn’t they?
While it is true that some people will give up their lives for a false belief, I doubt that anyone would be willing to give up their lives for a belief that they know to be false. The inescapable conclusion is that the Apostles actually believed in the message that they proclaimed. There is no way that the Apostles could have perpetrated some sort of hoax, and then given up their lives for what they knew to be untrue.
Remember who the Apostles were. We are talking about fishermen, a tax collector, and some common folk. This group had never been characterized by great initiative or leadership. The crowds came for Jesus, not the Apostles. When Jesus was arrested, the Apostles went underground for several weeks. Suddenly they appear filled with boldness and proclaiming a message that placed their lives at risk. No hoax made that transformation. Something real happened.
There are books worth of evidence that the story of Jesus life, his crucifixion, and his resurrection are absolutely true. I have only hit the highlights. But I have a confession to make. I believe in the truth of the resurrection, but not for any of the reasons that I have given today. I believe in it for the same reason that I believe most things in my life. I believe in the resurrected Christ because I have felt the touch of his love. It is this personal experience that persuades me more than any argument ever could. The problem is that my experience is my experience, and it will never be as meaningful to you as it is to me. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the same Christ who reached into depth of my soul and brought me into a relationship with God stands ready to touch you as well. You can’t participate in my experience, but you can have your own. I won’t promise blinding lights or thunder claps, but I do promise a loving and caring savior who will make himself know to all who honestly seek him. It isn’t a clever story. It is the simple truth.
So if our faith is based primarily on our own experience with Christ, why does any of this matter? It matters because it is up to us to share the good news about the risen Christ with others. We no longer live in a culture that shares the same view of the world as we do. While scripture and church tradition have value to us, they mean little to most of those whom we meet. When you take the risk of sharing your faith with your neighbor, you need to be prepared with an answer. It is good to be able to talk about the history and the documents, but it the end, that will not be what convinces them. The key will be what they see in you. If your life reflects an inner joy. If you are at peace when others are in turmoil. If you live a life characterized by the love of God. They will see that, and will want what you have. They will trust your words.
As Peter said,
19 The word of the prophets is made more certain. We have that word. You must pay attention to it. It is like a light shining in a dark place. It will shine until the day Jesus comes. Then the Morning Star will rise in your hearts.
