Most
biblical scholars agree that the New Testament book of Second Peter was not written
by Peter. Near the end of it there is a
reference to “all the letters of Paul” that implies not only that those writings
have been gathered into a collection, but that they also have achieved the
status of Holy Scripture. Which are
things that did not take place until long after the Apostle Peter was
dead. For this and for other reasons, the
general consensus is that this was the last book of the Bible to be written,
and dates from well into the 2nd Century.
Taking
that into account, it seems strange that this morning’s reading from Second
Peter stakes such a strong claim to being eyewitness testimony. “We were not just passing on clever myths
that someone made up,” it says, “when we told you about the power of Jesus and
his coming. We saw his glory with our
own eyes. We heard the voice of God with
our own ears when it said, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am
well-pleased.’ We were there with Jesus
on the mountaintop.”
So
was the person who wrote these words lying?
Was he putting forward what some today might call “alternative facts?” Well, the simple answer is “yes.” But as with most things pertaining to the
Bible, the simple answer isn’t really satisfactory. It only opens the door to a lot more
questions. And there is ongoing, robust academic
debate about all sorts of historical problems related to the authorship of
Second Peter and other New Testament books that seem to have been written under
the names of people who did not in fact write them.
But
for me as a preacher those historical-critical problems, though worth thinking
about, are less important than the questions about what the texts themselves
are trying to say. And the way I see it,
even if this author knew that his audience understood perfectly well that he
was not the Apostle Peter, he wrote it as if it’s what Peter would say in the present
circumstances if he were here.
If
you read Second Peter as a whole, you’ll see that its context is an argument
with other religious teachers. And the beef
it has with those teachers is that they seem to have relaxed any tension
between being a Christian and just kind of going with the flow of business as
usual in the world as we know it. They
are teaching that the conventional world is not going to change much, for the better
or the worse, so the point of religion is to accommodate you successfully to
the world: to looking out for number one, and getting rich, and doing whatever it
is that seems like it will make you feel good at the moment.
But
if Peter were here, he wouldn’t stand for this.
He would say that God has called us to expect more from life than that. He would tell us that, in fact, God has
promised to radically transform the world as we know it, and to transform us along
with it, so that we become sharers in the very nature of Godself.
And Peter
would remind us that our faith in these promises is grounded in concrete
historical experience. Certain people
got to see and hear for themselves, in a real time and a real place, what we
will be like when God transforms us. They
were able to do this because they were disciples of Jesus. In his presence, they caught a vision of what
the world really is and what God really means for it to be, and how a person
speaks and acts who really understands the difference and wants the world and
God’s purpose to be reconciled.
The author
of Second Peter could have chosen any of the well-known Gospel stories to make
a case for the unique authority that comes from having been there as an
eyewitness. But he chose the one we read
from Matthew today, the story of the Transfiguration. And I think this is because it’s the one
episode in the gospels that focuses entirely on a few disciples and a transient
revelatory moment in their experience of Jesus.
Jesus himself doesn’t do anything
remarkable in the story. It is Peter,
James, and John who see him talking to Moses and Elijah. It is they who see the vision of his face
transfigured and shining like the sun.
It is they who are enveloped in the cloud of light and who hear the heavenly
voice. It is they who fall down on their
faces like dead men, and then lift up their eyes to see no one but Jesus alone.
And
as they are going down the mountain to rejoin the rest of his disciples, Jesus tells
them not to speak of it until after he has risen from the dead. So the whole thing kind of feels like a
dream, like a shamanic journey to another world, and we have only the word of
Peter, James, and John to tell us that it really happened. And that might be the whole point. Because it is of such rare material that we
often must construct our faith.
In a
lifetime we may have only a few fleeting glimpses of the glory that God intends
for us, a precious handful of moments on the mountaintop. Or we may feel as if we’ve never been there,
and depend on the testimony of hardier souls to tell us what it’s like. And yet such moments, even second-hand,
impress on us such a radically-different vision of reality, that they haunt us. The longing they awaken for a greater
significance to our lives, the discontent with a shallow materialistic existence
they leave behind, often have to be enough—enough to sustain us through long
periods of just going through the religious motions, wondering if it’s all a
sham.
Second
Peter tells us that this is actually providential. It helps us avoid mistaking the lamp we have
been given to guide us on the path for the glorious dawn toward which we are going. And it teaches us to measure the worth of our
mountaintop experiences by the lives we live every day down here in the
suburbs. Which is also goes for our efforts
at religious discipline.
At
the Zen temple we used to have seven- or ten day meditation intensives called sesshin, which is Japanese for “gathering
the mind.” During sesshin we would sit upwards of twelve or thirteen periods a day of
silent meditation, interspersed with walking meditation and services of
chanting and prostrations. We would eat in
silence at our seats in the meditation hall.
Except for a daily sermon and an optional brief, private conversation
with one of the teachers, there was no talking.
There was no reading or writing during the breaks after meals.
I
can still vividly remember certain moments that occurred twenty-five years ago during
sesshin, moments in which exactly nothing
happened. You could say they were moments
on the mountaintop. But our teachers
used to tell us that the point of sesshin
is to realize that your whole life is sesshin. And
we could say something like that about the Christian season of Lent. The point of Lent is to realize that your
whole life is Lent.
During
these forty days every spring we intensify our effort to pay attention, to let
go of what is not essential, to purify our bodies and minds, to take less and
pray more, and remember those whose needs are more pressing than our own. But our purpose is not simply to “get through
Lent” and move on, but to remember some basic spiritual truths to carry with us
throughout the remainder of the year. We
do not approach Lent like convicted criminals being marched into prison to
serve our time. We come as those
returning to the valley from the mountaintop, as those who have seen the glory
of God’s beloved Son, who have felt his healing touch, and heard him say to us,
“Get up; do not be afraid.”
If
we come to Lent seeking silence, it is because we know there are some things
for which words are inadequate. If we
come for instruction, it is because we’ve heard the voice that tells us to
listen to God’s beloved. If we come to
repent, it is because we have seen the glory for which we are created, and
which we have stubbornly refused. If we
come praying and fasting for justice, it is because we know that another world
is possible.
