2 Peter

While struggling with this question as a church songwriter, I came up with six guidelines.

Nowadays, if we hear the word "holy" outside church, it’s usually in the expression “holier than thou.” The phrase is reserved for pompous religious know-it-alls who think they’re better at Christianity than everyone else. The title fits individuals who desperately need to re-read what the Bible says about humility.

Holiness is a murky word.

The Transfiguration has a hundred sermons in it. But to me the most touching element is the subplot.

I grew up in Southern Baptist congregations. By the time I left high school I knew the four steps to salvation and the meaning of Jesus’ sacrificial death as a substitutionary atonement for my sins. I could articulate this understanding of salvation in clear and simple terms. Within the metanarrative of evangelical Christianity it made perfect sense and was logically coherent.

Then my fundamentalism began to unravel. 

While Christian scholars have long questioned body-soul dualism, it remains common in church circles. This may finally be changing.

I’m less inclined that some commentators are to condemn Peter.

Mercy is not what we’re about, and I suspect we don’t want our God to be about it, either.

The vagaries of the calendar and the cycles of the moon bring in an early Lent and Easter this year, and so the transfiguration has come early too, cutting short the season of Sundays after Epiphany. Unexpectedly, we find ourselves back up on the mountain with Jesus. We were just there to hear him describing those who populate the kingdom of heaven. Now he returns, not with all the disciples this time, but only the insider troika of Peter, James and John.