Transfiguration, February 26, 2017
Text: 2 Peter 1:16-21
We have come out of the Epiphany Season and next Sunday we will enter the
Lenten Season. Stuck between these two seasons is a Sunday called
Transfiguration Sunday.
Transfiguration is one of those big words that sounds hard but is really easy to
understand. The word in the original language is the word from which we get our
word “metamorphosis.” At some point in their school life, every child learns that
word when they study how a caterpillar changes form in its cocoon and comes out
a beautiful butterfly. If you need a memory help for the word transfiguration,
think of the caterpillar and the butterfly. The figure of the caterpillar is changed
into the figure of the butterfly.
Not long before Palm Sunday and Jesus’ crucifixion, he took three of his disciples
up a high mountain. There Jesus’ figure was changed before their eyes. But unlike
a butterfly, the change was temporary. After a time, Jesus changed back to how he
looked before. But the change he experienced was even more dramatic than a
caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Matthew, one of the gospel writers who
recorded the event, says “he was transfigured before them. His face shone like
the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” Another gospel writer,
Mark, says, “His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the
world could bleach them.”
The disciples were seeing the same brilliance the shepherds saw when the glory of
the Lord shone around them on Christmas Eve and terrified them, the glory Saint
Paul saw when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and blinded him,
or the glory the apostle John saw when Jesus appeared to him as described in
Revelation 1 and caused John to fall down before him as if dead. For a brief time
during his earthly ministry, Jesus pulled back the outer wrap of his humility and
revealed his full glory.
Why was Jesus transfigured? Why did his glory shine out as it did? First, his
Father was strengthening Jesus for the hard and horrible suffering and death that
he would soon endure. How? By giving him a taste of the glory he would receive
when he successfully completed his suffering.
And second, it was to strengthen the disciples for the coming trial they would
have to endure when they saw Jesus, whom they knew to be the Son of God,
suffer and die before their eyes.
It is hard to say how much they thought about the transfiguration after they ran
away from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, or how much they drew strength
from it during the days when they were hiding from the Jews behind locked
doors. But the transfiguration of Jesus made a lasting impression on the three
disciples who were there. Years later, when Peter was getting old and close to
suffering martyrdom on a Romans cross, he went back to that day when he stood
with Jesus. And he used that even to strengthen himself and his readers—that’s
us—for the trials we will endure as his people.
In his second letter, the letter from which he text is taken, Peter spoke about what
God taught him on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter tells us: 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.
Peter said he was an eyewitness of the glory of Jesus. Jesus kept that glory hidden
from view, but one time Peter did see it. And what Peter saw there with his own
eyes gave him the authority to make a very important point about himself and the
message he was preaching to the Christians under his care. They could be
absolutely sure of what they heard him say about Jesus’ power no matter if the
world saw only his weakness, saw only the humble carpenter’s son, the teacher
untrained by human institutions, and the one whose life seemingly ended on a
cross as a common criminal at the hands of the Roman authorities.
We have seen him shine with the glory of God, Peter said. And when we told you
that Jesus even now is sitting at God’s right hand, Peter said, and when we told
you that someday Jesus will come back in glory to judge the wicked and take the
believers to himself in heaven and then recreate this present world—when we told
you this we were not telling you something we had made up, a cleverly invented
story to trick you into following us, or to take advantage of you, or to lure you
into giving us your money. No, we saw that Jesus was our creator, that he has the
power to preserve and shape history, that all people someday will answer to him,
and that believers will see him someday in all his glory in his eternal kingdom.
Above all, Peter wanted them to know Jesus’ power over sin and death. To lose
the sense of that power would be to loose one’s assurance of salvation. To see
Jesus as anything less than the glory of God in human form would bring him
down to the level of just another powerless human being. Peter wants his readers
to know that Jesus had defeated Satan for them. He wants us to know that Jesus,
as the Son of God, took on himself the complete burden of the sins of the world,
and as the Almighty God, Jesus paid the debt that the entire world owes for its
sins.
We live in a world filled with cleverly invented stories. As time goes on, we will
see more cleverly invented stories added to the list. Today we see even church
leaders of formerly conservative or confessional denominations spinning stories
left and right. And they are clever stories. Just how did the Bible really come into
existence? We have a story about that, they say. And what a kind and wonderful
man Jesus was! We have a story about him too. He is someone for us to imitate in
our lives, but certainly not God himself. And certainly not someone who has died
for sin. The cults have an even greater number of cleverly devised stories that
draw people away from Jesus’ glory and his place as God over all, and convince
people to find salvation, however that may be defined, on their own.
But, as Peter says in our text, he was an eyewitness of what happened on the
Mount of Transfiguration, and he was an ear witness of what God said about the
work Jesus was doing to win the world’s salvation—Peter says, “Jesus 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.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were
with him on the sacred mountain.” A vision of Jesus’ glory coupled with the
audible stamp of approval spoken by God the Father is proof that Jesus deserves
our attention and that we can confidently place our eternity in his hands.
But Peter’s eyewitness account of Jesus’ glory does not stand alone as our source
of truth. He lived in a world filled with false prophets, just like we do. In fact, in
the next chapter that comes right on the heels of our text, Peter spoke about
people who would “secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the
sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into
disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have
made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their
destruction has not been sleeping.”
People in Peter’s day, and we today, need Peter’s eyewitness account. But God
gives us even more, Peter says. He tells us about a source of truth even more
certain than his own eyewitness account of Jesus’ transfiguration. He writes, 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. Above all, you must understand
that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own
interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men
spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Of course,
Peter is talking about the Holy Scriptures. In his day this included the Old
Testament writings, but the writings of the New Testament apostles and their coworkers would soon be added to it.
Scripture had the same rock solid authenticity as Peter’s eyewitness account of
what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration. In fact, Peter tells his readers,
you have not seen what I saw. You might say to yourself, “If I had seen what
Peter saw, I would never had any doubt about my faith in Jesus.” We might think
the same. But Peter is telling us, “You have something that carries an even greater
weight of evidence, something that is even more certain than my account of what
I saw at Jesus’ Transfiguration, as important as that is. You have the Word of the
prophets, made more certain. Other translations for “more certain” are “firm,”
“binding,” and “sure.”
The prophetic writings were not the result of the prophets’ personal
“interpretation.” Coming up with the content of Scripture was not a joint effort
between the prophet and the Holy Spirit. In other words, the prophets did not put
their own spin on various spiritual questions, or write down some ideas God told
them to put in their own words. They wrote as they were “carried along by the
Holy Spirit.” No cleverly invented stories here either.
The glory of Jesus’ transfiguration was a time when the light of his presence
shown around Peter, convincing Peter that Jesus was the Son of God. But Peter
tells us that the words of Scripture are no different. They are “a light shining in a
dark place.” They are God’s words, and they proclaim the glory of God even
more clearly than Jesus’ transfiguration, which was merely a vision of glory. They
do this by spelling out the meaning of God’s glory in even greater detail. And
there is another way the glory of Scripture outshines the glory of the
Transfiguration. Peter and the others wanted the glory of Jesus to continue, but it
didn’t. The glory shining in Scripture never fades away. We have it to read
whenever we want.
We do well to pay attention to the Scriptures, whether in the Old Testament or in
the New. God’s Word is our light shining in a dark place. It guides our way
through this life with its many temptations and with its minefields of cleverly
invented stories. God’s Word is our light, and its glory will guide us until the day
dawns, that is, the day of Jesus’ second coming, the day when the morning star,
which is Jesus himself, rises in our hearts and fills us with joy. At that point we
live with him in the full and eternal vision that Peter got a glimpse of on
Transfiguration Day.