Bible Text: Matthew 17:1-9 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Transfiguration 2022 | St. Peter says “we didn’t follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here he’s making a point not just about truth but about time. A myth can be true – the Greeks really did sack Troy. What marks a myth is not necessarily that it’s false, but that it’s a story handed down from one generation to another until you don’t know who came up with the story in the first place. So, for example, who came up with Odysseus’s escape from the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey? Not Homer. He heard it from others and they heard it from still others, the story goes so far back, no one knows when it began. But Peter can be no peddler of a myth, precisely because not enough time has passed. That’s the point. Peter was there. He didn’t hear the story from anyone. His grandma didn’t tell it to him. He saw the story unfold. He was an eyewitness of the transfiguration, He saw Jesus’ face shine like the sun, he heard the voice of the Father from heaven. Peter won’t allow anyone to get away with calling this a myth. If you want to say it never happened, then you’ll have to call Peter, John, and James liars. But you can’t call them mythographers or story tellers. So it goes with the resurrection and with all the history of the New Testament. These aren’t stories handed down from generation to generation for so long that everyone’s forgotten who started the story – no, they saw it and they wrote down what they saw, and they knew exactly who started the story – Jesus of Nazareth. Because He lived it and they saw it. We call that history. We call it reality.
And this is in fact what Peter and James and John saw when they witnessed the transfiguration. Reality. Things as they really are. Jesus was transfigured before them. He shone like the sun. Elijah and Moses stood there talking to him. This is a unique event, a special occasion, only for Peter and James and John. From Jesus’ perspective, nothing had changed. He is always glorious. He only hid it from men for a time on earth. He talks with Elijah and Moses anytime He wishes, because even when He walked the hills of Galilee He was with His Father in heaven and so with them. What changed was what Peter and John and James could see. They could see what was already there but had been hidden from them. The scales were removed from their eyes. But what they saw had always been in reality.
Scripture speaks to this all the time. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Because Christ is with us and we are with Him and He is with the saints who came before us. And we are surrounded also by angels. This is what Elisha tells his servant as the Syrian army envelops their city – There are more on our side than on theirs, and then he prays the Lord to open his servant’s eyes and the servant sees reality, things as they really are, that there are angels all around them and there’s no reason to be afraid. The angels were there before the servant saw them. The difference was only that the man couldn’t see them and now he could. If God so chooses, he could open our eyes now and we would see our angels, and he could open our ears and we could hear them sing the Hosanna with us. It is happening. It is reality.
Reality is reality whether we see it or not. A boy is a boy whether or not he sees it differently. Marriage is for a lifetime between one man and one woman, whether we recognize it or not. It is what it is. And Jesus is the Son of God in human flesh, all-glorious, shining like the sun by nature of the union of God with human flesh. That’s reality, even if it’s hidden to mortal eyes for a time.
But what Peter learned that day was not just what he could see with his eyes. It was what he heard with his ears. This is why he says that we have something more sure, more sure than what Peter’s eyes saw – the prophetic word, which shines like a lamp in a dark place. Because Peter learned more from what He heard that day than from what He saw. It does no good to believe that Jesus is the Son of God unless you also believe that He has come to die to wash away your sin and conquer your death and face your hell. And Peter learned that, not from seeing the brightness of Jesus’ face, but by listening to Jesus’ words, as the Father directed from heaven – This is my beloved Son – listen to Him.
Six days previous, Peter had given the great confession, the confession on which Jesus would build His Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus asked him, but who do you say that I am, and Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered Him, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is heaven. But then Jesus went on and he told Peter and he told them all, for the first time clearly without any parable, without any figure of speech, what He had come to do. This was the great turning point, the day he turned his face and set it like flint toward Jerusalem. He told them that he would go to the holy city and suffer many things from the chief priests and be handed over to the gentiles and be mocked and tortured and killed and on the third day rise again. And when Jesus told them this, Peter took him aside and rebuked him, said, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall never happen to you.” And then came the famously shocking words of Jesus to the man whom he had just seconds before called blessed, “Get behind me Satan,” he said, “You are an offense to me. For you are not mindful of the things of God but of the things of man.”
So six days later Jesus shows Peter his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. And Peter is not supposed to simply look at this glory, but to listen. Jesus is talking. He’s not just shining, He’s talking. He’s talking to Moses and Elijah. And they are talking about His exodus, St. Luke tells us, they’re talking about his death. So here Peter and James and John see reality, Jesus as He really is, and Jesus as He really is talks with His saints about His death, about the shedding of His blood. This is reality. It’s what God talks about, what the angels desire to peer into, what the saints discuss in heaven, what the prophets, including Moses and Elijah, longed to see. There is no God except the God who dies for sinners in human flesh. There is no glory of God except in the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord. There is no worship of God except the worship directed to the Lamb who was slain. That’s what it means that Jesus shines with the glory of God and yet speaks of His own death.
But Peter, poor Peter, instead of listening, or maybe because he is listening and he still doesn’t want to hear this talk of Jesus suffering and dying, Peter interrupts the Son of God as he speaks with Moses and Elijah, and says exactly the wrong thing, “Let’s stay here. I’ll build a few tents.” Jesus had just been telling Moses and Elijah how he has to go to Jerusalem, has to be handed over to the Jews and then to Pilate, has to suffer and die, and then rise again, that this is His glory and the salvation of the world, the plan of God from eternity, and Peter contradicts it all, “Let’s stay here.” And this is when the Father comes in and says, “Shut up, stop talking, you confess that He is the Son of God and now you see it with your eyes. Then listen to Him.”
So we are here today to listen to Him. He is the Son of God. He is the first from the dead, the Man who fulfilled every single promise of God. The Servant of Isaiah 53, the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who has no form or comeliness, no beauty that we should desire Him, He for a brief time shows His beauty to the eyes of the three apostles, the light of God’s glory radiating from His face, His clothes whiter than any bleacher could make them, brighter than any Wyoming sun – so that they can know that the Creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty God, the One whom the sea and winds obey, the great I AM who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, the Son of God, He will suffer for them, He will meet death in their place, He will face God’s righteous anger against them, and only so will He be their beautiful Savior.
Listen to Him. He is your Savior. The light of His Law shines on your sin and reveals its darkness, its death and misery. Then He takes this sin on Himself, and the whole earth is covered with darkness as He faces your death and bears the misery of being forsaken by God. And from this cross shines the love of God that passes all understanding and removes all our darkness, all our sin, all our ignorance and hatred of God. It’s consumed with a greater light than Peter saw, as God’s eyes are turned to us in pure love and pity and mercy. The glory of His resurrection is that it is a resurrection, it is life from death, it is the conquering of death. And this is no cleverly devised myth. What the light of the transfiguration showed Peter and James and John, the light of the resurrection shows the whole world. It was not done in secret on some unnamed mountain. It was a public act, an act that compels us too to listen to Him. You see sin and you feel guilt, but Jesus says your sins are forgiven. You see bread and wine, but Jesus says Take eat this is my body, Take and drink, this is my blood for the forgiveness of your sins. You see death, but Jesus says, whoever believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live. You look around and see no spiritual world, but Jesus says, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” and, “I will send my Spirit to you,” and, “their angels are constantly looking at the face of my Father.” This is reality.
The transfiguration prepares us to see it. Yes, you will see it on the Last and Glorious Day. “And then from death awaken me that these mine eyes with joy may see, O Son of God, thy glorious face, my Savior and my Fount of grace.” But learn to see it now. To remind yourself day after day what reality is. It’s the Holy Spirit who moves in the Word of Jesus. It’s God Himself who joins Himself to the words you believe, which you do well to pay attention to, to inwardly digest them, make them the way you think. Until, St. Peter says, the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Day after day, the light of Christ dispels the darkness. If it is your own sin, Jesus forgives it. If it is doubt, Jesus’ death and resurrection are certain. If it is temptation, Jesus is your strength. If it is suffering, Jesus is your comfort. If it is cowardice, Jesus is your courage. If it is death, Jesus is your life. If it is loneliness, Jesus is with you always. If it is the lies and confusion of this world, Jesus is reality and He shows you the truth, and the truth will set you free, not to serve yourself, but to serve God and your neighbor, until that day when you join all the saints and discuss with them the Lamb who was slain, as we sing His glory forever and ever. Amen.