Not Myths, but Spirit Led

The second letter of Peter is almost unanimously considered to be pseudonymous, that is, it was written by someone other than Peter. (Many consider first Peter to be pseudonymous also.) There are many reasons for this decision. One of them is that the early church fathers did not seem to know of its existence since none of them quote from it. Although, they may have known about it but did not quote from it because they didn’t consider it to have been written by Peter. The earliest mention of second Peter is by Eusibius (ca. A. D. 325) who placed it in his New Testament but stated it was not written by Peter. Another reason to doubt that it was written by Peter is that the style is different than that of first Peter. The first scholars to consider that this letter should be included in the Bible were Athanasius and Augustine in the fourth century, though, like Eusibius, they did not consider it to have been written by Peter. They included it because it was already used in many churches, and its message needed to be heard.

The writer of the letter wrote to the church and not to one community, fighting two heresies that may have been circulating in the whole church at the time. The first is that the belief that Jesus would come again was false. It is not difficult to see how this happened. It was 100 years or more from the time Jesus rose from the dead that this letter was written. If he had not come in that amount of time, then he probably was not going to return. The other, more insidious heresy was a corruption of Paul’s teaching on freedom: they believed that you were free to do anything you wanted because you were saved by Christ’s death and resurrection. (The fancy name for that is antinomianism; from the Greek meaning against (anti) the law (nomous).) Those beliefs were the “cleverly devised myths” in our reading for today. The writer of Peter is stressing that, as Paul said, yes you are free, but free to live as God called you. Christ did not free you so that you can live a wild, licentious life-style but to live a life free to share the love of God.

Today we celebrate the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain. This, for Matthew, was to remind us that the old covenant, made through Moses, and the new covenant, made by Jesus, were one and the same. That is, they are God’s gift to us to show us how to live our lives as God’s children. While the world calls us to individualism and, in the end, selfishness, God calls us into community. While the world tells you that the most important person in the world is you, God tells us that it is the poor, hungry, imprisoned, and refugee, and God calls us to share our gifts with them. While others claim that their community is only those people who look and think like them, God calls us into the community that knows no boundaries. 

I am not telling you something that I have not said before or that you don’t already know, though we all need to be reminded of this many times. The world devises clever myths to entice us away from the love of God – usually for someone’s profit – and we often fall for them. But then Jesus comes to us with forgiveness and another chance. That is the power of love. While the world calls you to despise, distrust, and even hate others, Jesus calls you to love them. While the world calls you to live in selfish desire, Jesus calls you to a life of sharing. Instead of being trapped by the myths of the world we are free to share the love of God since we know that, no matter where we find ourselves or whatever happens to us, we are the Lord’s and we are led by the spirit through all of life: the good times and bad, through sadness and joy, through life and death. So, discard all those cleverly devised myths of the world and let the Spirit lead you into a life of sharing God’s love with all.