On this day of mystery and glory Christ turns his face toward Jerusalem and all that will happen to him, there.  From Paul, we turn to listen to Peter.  Paul came to Jesus late, like “one untimely born” (1 Cor 15:8) in Paul’s own words.  Peter was there practically from the beginning of the ministry of Jesus: soon after the baptism, all along the journey to the cross, and beyond.  Peter’s testimony has power.  His testimony is reliable; it’s true.  Sure, when he speaks of things that happened, the past.  The focus of our Christian life is not exclusively on what did happen but also on what will happen.  Faith in Jesus—not just what he taught but what he did for us, on the cross—has consequences for the future.

And that’s where people, even avowed believers, can become less confident.  What I take as one of the major pillars of the Christian faith is the return of Jesus Christ.  He will return in glory, majesty, and power, and he will gather all peoples to himself, take his judgment seat, and he will judge.  That is consequential.  All human beings, and especially Christians, are answerable to God.  We are accountable to Christ.

The problem is that mostly none of us have seen anyone return from the dead.  Oh, maybe we’ve seen news reports of one person or another who was medically dead who “came back,” as they say, or we’ve read the books about their experiences.  They have staggering, thought-provoking things to tell us.  Jesus was dead long enough that his return to life was beyond human experience or expectation.  The wisdom of this world—with millennia of experience behind it—is that dead people don’t come back.  And that’s true.  And Jesus isn’t dead.  That’s true, too.

It’s not true only metaphorically.  Jesus is never dead so long as his teachings live on in his followers!  No, that’s not what we’re talking about.  There are things in the Bible that it seems advisable to understand as metaphor—a way of talking about things we haven’t known by way of things we have known.  Metaphor also helps create new associations, surprising connections.  Metaphor is a way to get strong images into our memories and hearts.

There are also things the Bible seems to expect us to take literally, not figuratively.  The way the return of Jesus from the dead is presented has qualities of first-hand accounts: the shock and disbelief, the total absence of expectation, is palpable.  They didn’t know what to make of it; they just knew it was so, because they couldn’t deny the evidence of their eyes, ears, or hands.  Some of them wanted to: it just couldn’t be true; it just couldn’t be real . . . could it?

Later, as the apostles reached more and more people who had less and less first-hand contact with Jesus, those apostles had to contend with the same doubts as we do.  There were those, inside as well as outside the church, who were adamant that these claims about a dead man coming back to judge the living and the dead were not to be understood literally, if it even could be understood, which it couldn’t, since it couldn’t be true.

Then, what else about the Jesus story couldn’t possibly be true?  Thomas Jefferson knew.  He had his own Bible, out of which he had very meticulously, methodically—scientifically, one might say—cut out whatever he deemed impossible.  What was left after his editing, more or less, were the ethical teachings of Jesus.  And that, for some believers, still seems to be enough.  All the good things Jesus said, taught.  Be a good person.  Do good.  If that’s really the essence of the teaching of Jesus, why are we here today?  And why do we even need Jesus?  There are plenty of compassionate atheists out there.

Jesus also speaks and teaches about his death and resurrection, and his return for final judgment, and those who will be set to one side and those who will be set to the other side.  Couldn’t possibly be true?  Just a metaphor?

When we catch up with him today, Peter is encountering resistance.  He responds by sharing his own eye-witness experience of the Transfiguration.  This is his response to those who are saying, in essence, that things don’t really change.  God doesn’t really act.  Sure, Jesus taught a compelling way of life but did not give us any “way to life” beyond or after this life.  And he isn’t coming back.

What Peter saw and heard convinced him that Jesus will indeed return.  Peter saw Jesus in his glory-power—oh, yes, there on the mountain of Transfiguration, certainly, but also after the resurrection, and also, I suspect, at the cross: all one glory; all one power.  Jesus in his power, reaching down to the very core of our being.  Jesus in his power is glory power, creation power, life power, the power of reconciliation, forgiveness, atonement.  Peter could not comprehend the holiness; he could only experience it and try to share his experience.  Peter was given a glimpse of the eternity of Jesus, who was and is and is to come.  Until Jesus happened to them, both Peter and Paul would have agreed that it was just all too impossible: crazy talk, wishful thinking.

The Christian singer Jordan Feliz has a song several of you may have heard on KSBJ or elsewhere, “Jesus Is Coming Back.”  Feliz sings, “things seem to be going every which way but the right way, but something far better is on its way.  Keep Going!  We’re not going to let the mess of this world keep us from celebrating.”  Peter wants his testimony about the Transfiguration to become powerful prompting for our celebrating.

By the time of the Transfiguration, Peter was accustomed to the voice of Jesus; as Peter listened to Jesus, he came to understand he was hearing God’s truth.  On the mountain, Peter heard the voice of God.  Later, Peter, John, and James understood that Jesus took them up with him because he wanted them to have complete certainty that they had heard the voice of God, had seen the eternity of Christ, and could say, with absolute certainty, that Jesus truly was the light (Jn 1:9).

Today, we specially recall the experience of those stunned apostles: that experience of glory, light, the voice of God, truth Himself, life Himself.  If we receive the apostles’ testimony, if we make what they saw and heard part of our faith and our faithful living, we do so by the Spirit.  Like Christmas, like Easter, the Transfiguration is not just about what happened.  These events are also about what will happen.  Jesus was born to die, as are we all.  Jesus died to live, and in him, so have we, so will we.  The Son of God came among us as Jesus of Nazareth—Immanuel, God With Us—so that we might hear God’s voice, love God’s truth, and come to live in the eternity of God.  I’m only stating the obvious when I say that these are huge changes, life-altering events, in any person’s life.

Today, as we hear about and attempt to visualize the Transfiguration, Jesus is showing us part of the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise to His people.  That promise is being fulfilled even now, according to God’s plan and purpose.  When hearts are moved for Christ, when people move their living for Christ, we see God’s promise being fulfilled.  We see the reflection of the glory.

Peter reminds us that this promise is not a new promise, not at all out of character for God: for centuries, the prophets had told anyone and everyone who would listen all about it.  We don’t always know what to do with the Old Testament: all the violence, lust, blood, the meticulous rules and unappealing wrath.  If we’re going to know God even better, however, we must also keep company with the Old Testament, which is also God’s Word, and God’s Word is Christ.  We see and hear Christ all through the Old Testament, in promises of blessing and salvation, help and hope.  God isn’t always only angry in the Old Testament, not even in what He says through the prophets.

Peter exhorts those early believers to hold to “the prophetic message as something completely reliable” (1:19): like a dear friend, like your own best conscience, like the love and hope that guide us through this torn up world, this messed up life.  Peter urges them, and us, “to pay attention” to that message of the prophets “as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (1:19).  God’s Word is light: John came to see it so clearly and proclaim it powerfully, beautifully.  Jesus is the promise and the fulfillment of the promise: that’s what he was showing those three stunned disciples there on the mountain.  The promise and the fulfillment of the promise is what Peter wants to share with us, also, help us to see, receive, and believe.  The day will dawn; the morning star will rise in our hearts.  The light is on his way.

The Transfiguration is also a gift, the gift of light before the great darkness.  What darkness was greater for those faithful followers than the darkness of the days ahead, on the way up to Jerusalem—the opposition, the arguing—the darkness of the garden of betrayal, the darkness of the fortress in which Jesus awaited death, the darkness that covered the earth from Golgotha, that dark day, and the last, deepest darkness: the closed tomb?  There it all ends, as the wise world would say.  Dead is dead.  Done is done.

But that is not what we say, because we have paid attention to the completely reliable promise of God, and we recall that the tomb was empty, that third day, that Lord’s Day: the new light streaming into that darkest place of all, and the darkness powerless to overcome it.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.