If you want to know more about the chemicals spilled in the train wreck in Ohio, or the war in Ukraine, or the recent earthquake in Turkey, you can read about these stories from a paper or your go-to news source and you’ll have a better understanding of what happened. Facebook would certainly offer up any number of takes on the latest news and you might occasionally find someone expressing an opinion on Twitter. You could also watch your favorite anchor on the evening news if you want to be brought up to speed on what’s going on locally. Any of these sources would provide information and details to provide you with a general understanding of whatever storyline you’re following.
But there is one source that intrigues us more than a journalist covering the details of the story, or an anchor regurgitating what by that point is usually old news, or the often extreme and outlandish opinions or conspiracy theories of random strangers on social media: eyewitness testimony. With all of the media available to us today, it is as easy as it has ever been to search a little bit until we discover the story as told by someone who experienced it or witnessed it. We want the firsthand details. We want to know if the general news reports are accurate or if someone who was actually there is able to correct any inaccuracies or provide the missing details from firsthand experience. So the stories that tend to grab our attention most are the stories told by the people who were actually there.
We have just that in the words of Peter. The Gospel of Matthew covers the general story about what happened on top of that mountain and who was there, even mentioning Peter by name. However, we also have the account from Peter in his own words. Peter wishes to complement the Transfiguration accounts in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, by providing his first-hand perspective as one who was actually there. He explains, “we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (v.16).
Let’s stop and ask ourselves, “so what?” We understand that Peter was there with Jesus and James and John on that mountain and that he witnessed the Transfiguration. We get that he is making the point that he was an eyewitness. But why? Why is Peter emphasizing this point?
It helps to understand why Peter was writing this letter and to give a little attention to the verses that precede. Peter was writing to Christians during a time of pretty intense persecution. The Christian faith was not warmly welcomed in the world at that time. Believers might have had possessions or homes taken from them, been imprisoned, or even put to death. Peter wanted to encourage them to stay the course and remember who they were and where they were headed. Christians facing persecution needed such reminders.
One could argue that although the pendulum has swung the other way, Christians are just as in need of these reminders today. Persecution may not be a daily concern, but something just as dangerous is: passivity.
While we aren’t facing the threat of persecution as they did when Peter wrote, we are facing a pandemic of passivity as Christians. The world is happening to us instead of us happening to the world. We are getting sucked in by mindless entertainment that slowly drains any meaningful activity from our lives hour by hour, day by day. We are trading in critical thinking for thoughtless, mind-numbing, worthless video clips and tidbits that add no real virtue or value to our lives. Far from being persecuted, we are instead enjoying the highest standard of living, comforts, and luxuries that soften and spoil us into idleness and indifference. No, not persecution, but passivity plagues us. And the great risk from all of this is that we’re slowly allowing all of it to steer us off course, to distract us from the one thing that matters.
Peter has an urgent warning for us: pay attention! No, this is not a “pay attention so you don’t miss an important plot twist in your show” warning; rather, this is a “pay attention so that you don’t allow a slowly fading faith to fall asleep at the wheel in a tragic head-on collision that kills your soul.” Wake up! Snap out of it! Christ’s kingdom is at stake, and so is your soul.
The opening verses of the chapter showcase how Peter sets the tone and encourages believers to take action, to be active in their faith, and to grow more and more in putting it into action. “make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” (v. 5-9).
See the activity and the humming and buzzing of a Christian getting after it? In Peter’s straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is manner, he says that if you pursue these things, they will “keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v.8). But there is even greater incentive for staying the course, for paying attention: those who fail to do these things risk “forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins” (v.9). Passivity is a slow and steady path to indifference, which segues into forgetfulness, and ends up in a place where my sins – and more importantly they’re forgiveness – are no longer a concern.
But if any of this is to happen, then it must come from the source. We must go back to Jesus and be reminded and reassured that Jesus is who he claimed to be and who they believe him to be: the Son of God and their Savior. So where does Peter take us to get us to pay attention? The Mount of Transfiguration, where his eyewitness testimony serves both to support the accounts recorded in the Gospels, as well as lay the foundation for us today in terms of where we want to be focused as we pay attention.
Peter already reminded us that he was an eyewitness on top of the mountain. And what exactly, was so profound about what he saw? Just something that only belongs to One: glory. In reference to Jesus, Peter wrote, “He 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’” (v.17). Did you hear it? The glory of the Son was acknowledged by the glorious Father.
What makes this striking is that God made it quite clear in the Old Testament that his glory was his alone. It was not to be shared with or directed to anyone other than himself. Through the words of the prophet Isaiah, God communicated, “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols” (Is. 42:8). The God who said he would not yield his glory or praise to anyone else is the God whose voice Peter hear first-hand and what did he yielding his glory and praise to Jesus! What does that confirm for the disciples and for us about Jesus? He is in fact the almighty and glorious God we needed to come and carry out our salvation.
Friends, Peter is giving us what we need for our passivity: Jesus. That mountain top experience reiterated and reinforced for anyone who had either at that point doubted or who would doubt when they would witness this same Jesus brutally beaten and hammered to a cross: his weakness did not indicate that he was anything less than the God in flesh who had been born in Bethlehem. He was God who came to die so that death might die, sin would lose its power to condemn, and Satan would be dealt defeat.
And if the One transfigured on the mountain was truly that Savior, then Peter wants to build off of that to the point he really wants to drive home: pay attention! If that was God in the flesh, then pay attention! To what, exactly? “We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it…” (v.19). Pay attention to the words of the prophets, which are the Word of God. Pay attention to the Bible, focusing on it “as to a light shining in a dark place” (v.19).
Does that kind of focus sound passive? Does it sound indifferent? Does it sound disinterested? Hardly! It sounds like the kind of focus that filters out every other distraction and zeros in on one thing. It sounds like the kind of focus that is not willing to let anything else capture its attention. Nothing. It is willing to pay attention, as if life depends on it… because it does.