2 Peter 1:16-21
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is the celebration of the Transfiguration. And we read this story from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John. And while he's on the top of the mountain, his face starts to glow, his clothes glow bright white, and Moses and Elijah appear there. Peter does his Peter thing where he says something silly. And all of a sudden, the cloud shows up. And a voice says, This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And the most important words of the whole story, listen to him. Everything else is leading up to that moment in this story.
Everything else is to show who Jesus is and what's going on, and that we are to listen to him to his word, and to his teaching. And that is why our lectionary people chose shows the reading from Second Peter that I'm going to preach about today, where it says, For we did not follow cleverly devised myth when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
Peter is very concerned here, that his readers understand that this is not a story they made up. Not only that, but the church was always very concerned that this story was one that was seen by many, many witnesses.
Because Jesus did not do things privately. Sure, there are some stories where he meets with his disciples, or even this one on the top of the mountain where there's only a few witnesses. But most of Jesus's life, including his death, and resurrection, happened in public. And the church always wanted people to know that when he would preach when he would teach, he would go from town to town. And it would say that many people would come, be healed, and hear His voice. And the apostles themselves, follow Jesus through this whole ministry, from the day that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River all the way up until the day he ascended into heaven in front of a crowd. And even in Scripture, they are certain to tell us that there were witnesses. St. Paul writes about this in first Corinthians chapter 15, when he says, For I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to surface, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some fallen asleep.
Now, St. Paul doesn't just tell us how many people were there just for the fun of it. What he's telling us is there were 500 people that saw Jesus alive after he died, and then ascend into heaven. And all you have to do is go ask them.
Most of them are still alive. They'll tell you the truth. Jesus did his thing, publicly. And there were plenty of witnesses. John says something similar. In John chapter 21. He writes about the gospel that he had just written in this book when he says, this is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things. And we know that his testimony is true. What he's saying is,
I'm the character right here. I saw all this. Listen to me, I was there.
Similarly, in Acts chapter one, when Judas leaves the apostles, they know they need to have one more. So they say, so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John Not until the day when he was taken up from us. One of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.
So what did they do when they needed a 12? Apostle? They said, let's choose someone who saw it all. And they had enough that there was more than one of them. So they did we even have a record of when one of the disciples of John Polycarp wrote a letter to the Virgin Mary, and it goes something like this. Hey, Mary, you're John is telling me a lot of crazy stuff about your son Jesus isn't really true. And she writes back and says, yep, listen to him.
The church was always concerned about because we know that Jesus is not a mythical character. He isn't some first century version of a dee dee comics, Superman.
It truly live. It truly died. And he truly rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. And the amazing thing about this is that he did it all in public witness.
This is different from the major religions of the world. One of the growing religions in the United States are Mormon. Do you know how that religion was founded?
Joseph Smith was by himself when the Prophet Moroni appeared to him in a vision and told him where to find a whole bunch of golden tablets, buried underground. Now, fortunately, this prophet told Joseph Smith that no one was allowed to see them until after he had translated them.
So he goes, and he piles them up and puts them in a box. And he translates them by using a seer stone that he looks into. It speaks the words to someone who then writes it down.
No one was allowed to touch them or see them.
Later, after it had been translated, he obtained testimony from 11 witnesses, before he was forced to give them back to the Prophet Moroni.
Basically, you have to trust Joseph Smith. Buddha Similarily, spread his philosophy, basically, because he reflected on life and thought he did a good job. And so he shared his private reflection with the rest of the world. And other people liked it too.
Basically, you had to trust him, that he was right.
Islam is similar. The Prophet Muhammad had a vision of the supposedly Angel Gabriel, who decided to share God's words directly to Muhammad. And then he would go to the scribes and repeat them. And those words became the Koran.
Basically, you had to trust that Muhammad was just as pure as could be. That he was right. It's the opposite in Christianity. You don't have to trust Peter that he was extra specially good. Because if Peter came out and said something that was wrong, there were 500 witnesses who could say No, Peter, that wasn't right. I was there.
And that's what makes Peters speech in Pentecost, so powerful. Jesus didn't do his thing in private. Because when Peter gets up, filled with the Holy Spirit, and he talks about everything that Jesus did, he tells them, he was established by miracles in front of you, you saw him, and then you killed him. And we saw him come back from the dead. And they knew it because they were there. They heard the news. They knew that this Prophet Jesus had died. And then they heard the story of the witnesses, and it caught them straight to the heart.
So they would turn and follow Jesus. And so receive the same promise that we received, that Jesus died and rose to give us eternal life. Now, one of the challenges facing the church today is not so much the claims of other religions, but also the things that we think about Jesus and often teach within our churches. It is pretty common among our churches. To say that the beliefs that you have are your own and personal and nobody really can tell you about them. I know this, because there's a book called soul searching that came out in 2005. That includes a number of interviews of Christians, and other various religious people who go to church all the time and say that their religion is very important. Who don't think there is anything true about God? There was a girl, they witnessed a Jehovah's Witness girl who had a friend who switched religions for time in the last year. And when the interviewers asked her about this, they said, she said, Well, it's whatever floats her boat. There was another person that they interviewed. They asked about people who had a different view of God than that person. And the interviewee said, I wouldn't say anything. It's their opinion, I have my own opinion. The interviewer goes, Are you right? I don't know. I have no idea. Is there a right or wrong answer when it comes to God?
There is no right answer. Why not? There isn't a wrong answer. Because it's God, you can't prove. It's just what you believe. Basically, for many people, the idea of God is up to you. It doesn't really matter what you believe. It just matters that you believe or that you're doing something.
These statements reminds me of an exercise that I did when I was young. In elementary school, maybe you had to do that, too. I got a worksheet that was filled with statements. And my job was to decide whether they were Fact or opinion. The idea was, that fact is something that we had shared knowledge, everybody could know it. Nobody, nobody could argue with it. And the other one is opinion, which means that everybody can have a different opinion and still be right. So it gets statements like this.
Broccoli tastes good. Opinion. Water is
made up of hydrogen and oxygen. That's a fact. It is good to help people opinion, water boils at 212 degrees.
The implication of this simple exercise is that the only things that are knowable. The only things that have a real truth claim are things that you can weigh, or measure, or take apart.
Things that you can sign
everything else is up to you. In fact, everything else doesn't matter. Which is why you can believe whatever you want about God.
But the Bible tells us something very different.
The Bible tells us that the truth claims that we make based on the witnesses are life and death. That Jesus truly came that he truly die, the truly rose, he ascended into heaven, and he is really and truly coming back on the last day. And when he does that, all who believe in Him will be raised to eternal life.
And all those who do not raise to eternal punishment.
And that's a big deal. Peter wants us to know that we are making real, true claims about reality. Not something that is made up or up to you that there is really something there that Jesus was truly here that he truly died for you. He truly rose for you. And he has given you the words to follow
as he says, and we have a prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention to as the lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises.
This true prophetic word began with Jesus. And the witnesses tell us that Jesus during His ministry told the disciples and He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.
Now it's easy to make that prediction. Lots of people have made lots of predictions that didn't come true.
But Jesus did. He went to Jerusalem, he was rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders, he went to a cross and he died. And after three days, he rose from the dead. I don't know about you, but if someone does that, I'm gonna listen to him.
And that's what Peter did. Peter was so sure of this, this thing that happened of the story, he witnessed that he was a part of that he would offer up his own life, and supportive. Nobody dies for a cleverly devised myth. If Peter had come up with some nice story, to hopefully get everybody to follow him and give him money, do you think he would have been crucified upside down on a cross for it? I don't. But he went to Rome.
And he died. He died because he knows there is the truth that Jesus is coming, that he will raise you from the dead, and that it's real. If it's just up to us, then that matters. That means nothing. If it's just up to us, and whatever you believe nothing we do here makes any sense. When you come forward to the altar, you're not taking Christ's Body and Blood, you're just taken whatever. Just kind of right in line, you receive no forgiveness, you receive no salvation, but because trite Christ really and truly came. What we do here means everlasting life. That when you eat Christ's body and drink his blood, you get real forgiveness and eternal life delivered to you.
This is why we are so sure why we are so true and why people have suffered or even death to pay attention to this prophetic word.
In Jesus name
Transcribed by https://otter.ai