Only Our Silence
2 Peter 1:16-21
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.
So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
In one of Cormac McCarthy’s two new novels, The Passenger, the main character, Bobby, is recounting the strange letters he received over the years from his deceased sister. In one letter to her, he asks if she believes in an afterlife—she says possibly, but then says, “God [is] not interested in our theology but only in our silence.” This line really moved me when I was reading the book, and it came to mind in thinking of today’s passage on this mystical and miraculous Transfiguration Sunday.
You might remember that over the past couple weeks in our exploration through the beginnings of the gospel of Matthew that Jesus was expanding on and flipping laws and belief systems, both religious and political; he was often defending himself against the scribes and the Pharisees, and against others who thought he was being blasphemous or just dead-wrong. Well, we have a similar sort of defensive stance going on in today’s passage, but under very different circumstances. We’ve moved forward decades— not only has Jesus long since died and risen and gone to the heavens, but we’re actually at the point now in which most of the original church founders, church leaders have died. So we’re really in a brand new world here—a world where people are trying to make sense out of this still fledgling belief system without their mentors, and even more importantly, without those who were eyewitnesses to the glory of the life of Jesus. So the author of 2 Peter is trying to argue with several different lines of philosophical and theological thought here— the main one in this case probably being the Epicureans.
Now I’m not a philosophy scholar, so take my very surface-level explanation of Epicureanism with a grain of salt— but from what I understand, Epicureans were not superstitious; they did not believe in all-knowing gods, they did not believe in divine intervention, and while some claim that they’re hedonistic since they believe seeking pleasure over pain to be the ultimate goal in life, their version of this was actually pretty modest—they simply believed in a simple life free of suffering—this mean a life avoiding politics, religion, competition, etc. So they looked upon this new Jesus-movement as just very complicated, very difficult, and they really thought it was just nonsense—it was truly everything the Epicureans were against. They were especially confounded by this idea of the second coming, which is actually understandable—I think many of us struggle with this ourselves, and many of the time thought Jesus’ return would be imminent—but in this case decades had already passed, Jesus still wasn’t back and the oppressive Roman Empire was still in full swing. So to some, Jesus followers looked kind of foolish. It was thought that they were living this difficult life of suffering and oppression for no real reason.
But it wasn’t just the Epicureans Peter was arguing against. He was also speaking to Jesus followers who had been led astray now that these new factions were breaking off now that the original church leaders who had really held everything together had passed away. And this is because being a Jesus follower was hard! Especially in this time when it wasn’t this dominant religion, especially in this time when it was still so new and misunderstood. It was easy to be led astray by some version of this belief system that seemed easier. It was also easy to take advantage of this new time by attempting to use this belief system for your own benefit—by consciously being a false prophet.
While our religion is obviously no longer new, it is often still deeply misunderstood, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes maliciously and willfully. At the beginning of this passage, when Peter says, “…we do not follow cleverly devised myths…” he’s likely not referring to myth the way we think of it today with Greek or Roman or Norse mythology; myth in this case likely means false prophesy or lies. He’s trying to convince his detractors and his confused followers that that all that he’s preaching, and all the Jesus preached, and the life Jesus lived was indeed real. He uses the Transfiguration—when Jesus went to the mountain with Peter, James, and John and revealed himself, in a shocking display of dazzling white light, to truly be both human and divine as his reasoning—this glorious eyewitness account by multiple people. Unfortunately those people have since died and so this argument is, to me at least, pretty flawed.
But then Peter says to use this story of the Transfiguration as a “lamp shining in a dark place.” What he’s saying here is to always be attentive to the Love and the truth that Jesus brings. Always let that hope be our guiding light in a broken world. I think this was especially poignant in the time when today’s scripture was written—a time when that light is getting obscured, more difficult to see, to keep track of. If we’re not remembering the promise Jesus brought—the promise of an earth as it is in heaven—then we will lose our way. We’ll lose sight of that lamp and we’ll be floundering, looking for something to fill that void in our lives. In fact, a few years ago, I remember reading a very depressing, to me, at least, article about how now that church attendance and affiliation with organized religion continues to dwindle, work out corporations like CrossFit or SoulCycle have replaced organized religion for millennials and zoomers. Apparently one of SoulCycle’s mottos was “Come for the body, stay for the breakthrough.” After all, you’re chasing that workout endorphin high, right? And I guess, in theory, you can find a community in workout groups and classes like this, but in the long run, it’s only helping the individual. It’s not looking to make any systemic change in the world, it’s not looking to change the lives of the oppressed. I mean, not to mention the fact that the exorbitant costs of these kinds of activities actively exclude the struggling, the poor.
And like in Peter’s time, we’re not just up against those kind of self-serving philosophies. We’re also up against those who have taken Christianity and twisted it into something oppressive and cruel, or, less maliciously, something shallow and self-serving. Some of you might be aware of that new splashy “He Gets Us” ad campaign made extra-famous (or infamous) thanks to their two-million dollar Super Bowl ads. The group behind these ads is trying to rebrand Jesus—which, honestly, just saying rebrand and Jesus together feels gross. But the first ad I saw from this campaign was about Jesus being a refugee, and I was like, “okay… this seems like it’s… not bad?” But I find the rest of the ads to just be so shallow, I find that they’re not really saying much, and considering all the vitriol and criticism coming from both sides of the religious and political spectrums, it does seem to have really missed the mark. The one that drove me extra crazy was a slogan that read “Jesus was fed up with politics, too.” And this vague, apolitical statement makes it seem like Jesus wasn’t picking sides, that he was some kind of neutral figure doing a brand new thing. And he was indeed doing a brand new thing—but Jesus was always on the side of the oppressed. He was always engaging in politics because he had no choice. In fact, those who didn’t engage in politics were more in line with the Epicureans. They specifically advised against getting involved in politics because it would lead to the types of frustrations and preoccupations that would prevent them from living the simple, pain-free lives they strove for. And you know, it’s ironic that one of the biggest donors to this one-billion dollar campaign is the founder of Hobby Lobby who has a very public history of funding causes aimed at taking away the rights of our queer siblings as well as the rights of women.
One critique from a conservative radio talk show host that I actually very much agree with stated, “I honestly think the biggest issue is: You want to share Jesus with an unchurched crowd, that amount of money on TV ads is probably not the way to do it.”
And this all brings me back to the beginning of the sermon— “God is not interested in our theology only in our silence.” Peter writes that “no prophesy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation…” which is sort of a hard pill to swallow these days, thousands and thousands of years after these words were transcribed and translated hundreds of times over. We can’t really avoid some level of interpretation. But what we need to focus on is attentiveness and intention. Removed so far from those formative first days of Christianity, it’s easy to lose sight of the basis for our faith. And in a world in which people choose cultish group workouts over church groups, a world where people spend millions of TV ads instead of on the poor, it gets harder to see that light in the darkness.
And so, “God is not interested in our theology but only in our silence.” This, to me, is not saying that God wants us to sit down and shut up— it’s saying that we need to create that intentional space to see the light in the darkness, when we quiet the world around us for a time and really think about what our faith calls us to do, that’s when we can feel the Holy Spirit. As Peter writes, “…no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” We can only be moved by the Holy Spirit when we making the space for silence. When we stop, for a minute, trying to scream into the void about who has it right and who has it wrong, and really stop and think about the hope and the promise that we have in Jesus, in his humanity, in his divinity. And maybe we can remember that after the Transfiguration occurred, and the disciples who were present wanted to build shrines to honor the occasion and scream it from the rooftops, Jesus told his disciples, for fear of his actions and what he was trying to change would be obscured by this miraculous event, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Because remember, Jesus was all about backing up your faith with actions—with actions of lifting up the poor, clothing the naked, welcoming the foreigner. It makes sense to me that God wouldn’t be interested in our theology; God is interested in what we do with our theology, with our faith. God is interested in how we live our lives, in how we give to other people, in how we work to change and mend this broken world.
Lent begins this Wednesday. We will remember that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. We will remember that our humbles lives on this earth are fleeting, and we will use silence and prayer to feel that Holy Spirit working in and through us to discern what we will do with our faith to be closer to God, and therefore closer to one another. God is not interested in our theology, but in our silence— and in what we do with what we discover in that sacred silence. Amen.
