2 Peter 1:16-21
I love a good story. Sometimes, they are stories I write; usually, they are stories I read or watch or hear. At any rate, there is something about a good story, and when I am in the middle of one there is a serious anticipation, an eagerness that drives me to follow it to its conclusion. If I'm reading, this usually means I'm carry a book around while I'm making dinner, sneaking a couple pages in between stirs or flips. If I'm watching, it means my laundry gets folded with a little more promptness than usual. If I'm writing, well, usually that means I'm neglecting something to get it done - sitting at my computer type type typing out whatever the tale is, carrying it around at home, taking the opportunity of lunch breaks or quiet evenings to churn it out.
The important thing about a story is the structure. Introduction, conflict, rising action, falling action, conclusion. Let's do one together: this morning, you woke up. It was a lovely day, and the weather was just that perfect mix to get you on your feet. You started out the door, but - what's this? No key! Perplexed, you checked all the usual places: pockets, bag. Pat pat pat. No! You turn, spinning slowly, checking the ground, the door, the front stairs. Could that be it... but no. You push back in the house - thank God you didn't lock the handle! - and cast your eyes about. Left, right, up, down. Kitchen, sofa, bed. Keys are always stored in the bowl, but - nothing. Time is passing, you are going to be late! Look, look, look! Finally, and a little too late, you realize - the key has been in your hand the whole time! Relief floods over you - what you had never lost is found, and what you had needed the most was right there alongside the whole time. Door open, door closed - locked this time - and it is high time to face the day.
For us, we live in the midst of God's story. It is a long one - the whole of time, from before it was until it will no longer be - and yet so often it seems like the story has an infinity of small parts, little micro-stories that we live into and enjoy - or, if not always enjoy, experience.
At the risk of covering a second passage this week, the Transfiguration barely registers as a story at all. In the context of the gospel it is a blip in the midst of Jesus' discussions of his own death and resurrection - he rebukes Peter at the end of Matthew 16, and 17:22 is "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands..." As stories go, it's a little out there, even for Matthew: there's this very brief separation of Jesus and the three apostles, then suddenly Jesus is changed, then suddenly Elijah and Moses are there*, then Peter starts talking as he does, then God talks, then everyone falls down and Jesus, restored to normalcy, gets them up and bids the three not talk about it.
Curious, then, that the author of Peter picks this moment to recount. I recently wrote a will and had some of these same thoughts. What is the last thing I want to tell my children? To what can they cling in my absence? How can I remind them of the beauty and peace of Christ, and speak a little bit of that into their own lives? The author of second Peter picked this story, the strange and magical story of the Transfiguration.
To be clear, the author clearly agrees that this story is a bit... let's say, out there. "Cleverly devised myths" indeed; I'm pretty sure that any of you reading this could come up with a better story. Jesus coming in power, floating up the hill; dominating the elder prophets somehow; Peter keeping his mouth shut - so many ways this story could have been improved, at least from the perspective of this worldly author. And yet, it is the simple truth and absurdity of this story, packed as it is in the parentheses of the greater miracle, that gives it such a unique power. It is not that great a story, it does not bring salvation, it does not set fathers against their children and it does not bring mankind into a right relationship with God - but for the author of second Peter, it was the story that his readers needed to hear, in this moment of his final letter.
And that story, to be clear, was not really about the transfiguration, the shiny Jesus. It was not about Elijah or Moses, or the huts that weren't built, or blabby Peter who didn't know what to say. It was the voice of God, speaking from Heaven, shocking the three apostles to the ground and writing into their memories the eternal divinity of Christ. In the midst of the craziness of his world and theirs, the author begs his listeners to remember at last the voice of God: "'This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
In the West we have this idea of a relationship with Jesus, an approachable God, a God we are instructed to call Father. But for this author there is a fear, too, that we would do well to recall; the awesome and frightening existence of infinite power and majesty and purity, existing outside of time and space, whose presence is known in life and death and weather and terror. And to suddenly hear the voice of this: yielding absolute terror - what other emotion could cover it! Only Jesus could have brought them back from this place, and indeed only Jesus did. How much more impacting, to hear that message, the message of both the baptism and the transfiguration.
I want to put some kind of call to action here, but the author of second Peter has already given it. Remember: this one thing, dwell in it. God, the one power around the universe, sent his son Jesus, and with Jesus he is well pleased. It impacted Peter, and James, and John, and the Twelve, and Paul, and the others; what should it do to us, who have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding and reminding us of this most complex and most simple truth. Fall in fear, and rise up in the arms of Christ.