"Terms of Endearment"
Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
On February 14, 1999
(This is known as ‘The Transfiguration, and it is a passage that the church traditionally reads on this, the Sunday before the beginning of Lent).
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him! When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid. And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
Matthew 17:1-9
At least two times, God said about Jesus during his earthly ministry, “This is my Son, the Beloved. At least two times that we have record of in the gospels. One, in the baptism story that we read just a few moments ago, and the second in this story of the transfiguration that we just finished reading. In this marvelous account of a moment of glory when it became clear to these three disciples exactly who Jesus was, and what his relationship with God was like. In the passage that Kathy read at the beginning of the service from Second Peter, we hear in this letter, in this epistle attributed to the apostle Peter, his remembering the account of the Transfiguration, and citing it as evidence that he, as the author of that letter, is an eyewitness to the glorification of Jesus by God.
Did you see that? I want to share those verses with you again. He starts in the sixteenth verse of the first chapter of Second Peter: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths, (which is to suggest that some people in the community around the apostle Peter had been suggesting that the Christian faith was a series of cleverly devised myths, which is not an unusual charge and has been played from time to time across the centuries against the Christian faith). But he says, “No, it was not a cleverly devised myth that I was sharing with you when I made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but rather we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. (He is suggesting that he saw it himself). “For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice (speaking of this incident from the Transfiguration) was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory (the full presence of the Glory of God), 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.
Have you ever had a moment like that? A moment when Glory was clear to you and your faith was very, very sure? Because you were seeing something, perhaps a miracle in your own life, some sign of God’s providence and presence that was so very clear for you that you felt as if you were an eyewitness to the Glory of the presence of God. What the author of Peter says you do with an experience like that is that you pay attention to it like a lamp shining in a dark place. You hold up that experience (the gospels sometimes use the phrase ‘You lay it up in your heart.’). Like a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star (speaking of Jesus Christ) rises in your heart. That’s what you do with an experience of Glory like that.
Apparently that is what Peter did with that experience of the Transfiguration, because here in this letter, the community remembers that Peter remembered that experience and cited it as evidence of his own eyewitness knowledge of the Glory of God in Jesus Christ. There must have been times when they doubted it, at the crucifixion and in the absences of Jesus after his ascension. “Did we just make it up? they may have said. “Did we imagine it? Is it something we projected ourselves? But Peter remembers this Transfiguration experience. “No, I was there. I saw it! And it is a sign to him of the truth of it. “This is my Son, the Beloved.
Beloved. I love that word, beloved. It’s just a fine, rich, wonderful word. How fine this language is! Where else do you hear that term? Beloved. Does anybody around you use that language? Beloved. You know, I’ve heard that a lot this week. I have a Mario Lanzo (is that the right name?) CD. I’ve been playing it as I always do the week before Valentine’s Day. (I guess he’s a baritone or a bass? A tenor? I knew that. I said that just to give the tenors in the back a rise.) But on the CD, he has a song called, “This is My Beloved. I’m sure some of you have heard it before. I like to listen to it as he sings about his beloved.
The other place I have sometimes heard that word, that language, is in the old liturgy of the wedding ceremony. Now at most weddings, seeking to make the language contemporary and relevant, I will begin by saying “Dear Friends, we are gathered together…. But the old liturgy begins with “Dearly Beloved, you and I are gathered together…. as if the congregation is beloved, speaking for all of those who have gathered for the marriage ceremony, not the bride and the groom (who are hopefully beloved to each other), but the friends and family and witnesses, the eyewitnesses who are gathered there are addressed as “beloved.
Where else in the scripture is this word “beloved" used? Well you know, it’s used a hundred and fourteen times in the Bible. And the person who uses this term the most is Solomon, in the Song of Solomon. In fact, Solomon uses it twenty-six times alone, way more than any other book of the Bible. Of course, for Solomon, it means almost exclusively a term of romance. It’s a term he uses to speak about his beloved. If you listen to some of those uses that Solomon has for this word, the language is so rich and so sensuous, it’s embarrassing at times. Certainly not appropriate for the pastor to read from the pulpit. (You think I’m kidding?)
But Solomon is just about the only one who uses the word in the Bible in that kind of romantic association. Everybody else uses it as the pastor uses it with the ancient wedding liturgy, speaking of the kinship and the ties that bind us together as a family. For example, the prophet Daniel uses the word in the tenth chapter in the nineteenth verse. He said, “Do not fear, beloved, for you are safe. Be strong and courageous. We find it used also in the gospel of Matthew, not just in this baptism story, and not just in the Transfiguration story, but in one other place, where Matthew quotes the Old Testament: “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. We find that in the twelfth chapter, verse fifteen. In Matthew, the only person who is called “Beloved" is Jesus Christ. But in the rest of the Bible, you are called “Beloved" also. You, who are a part of the family of God. Again and again, the epistle writers refer to the church that they are writing as “beloved", as they call for the church and exhort the church to follow the examples of Jesus Christ. For example, in Ephesians 5:1, “Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Or in Philippians, the thirteenth verse of the third chapter: “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead… Paul speaks to his Beloved there.
Beloved. It isn’t just lover language in the kind of language used between a bride and a groom, but it is something more. It’s something else. I might use this language about a child. I think of my children as beloved. In fact, I think of all of the children of this church as beloved, beloved to this church. I know they are because of the way the church treats them, with the time and the money and the energy the church places towards them. I might use this language about a group, a particular Bible study class or a fellowship group with whom I’ve had long personal associations. I might call them beloved. And even as we stand and begin a wedding with the language, “Dearly Beloved", there are many times when I have stood to begin a funeral, and seeing the friends and family gathered there, have wanted to call them “Dearly Beloved".
It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of a group known as “The Beloved", isn’t it? It’s a source of comfort and a source of care and a source of strength.
Do you think that God is revealing something to us here about his relationship to Jesus Christ, when he calls Jesus “Beloved"? What special names do you have for people? I can’t find a place in the gospels where God calls Jesus, “Jesus". In fact, it seems that the preferred term from God is “Beloved". What special names do you have for people?
When I was in a church in Roanoke, there was a retired master sergeant. He was a block of a man, both in his character and in his disposition. He was about the shape of this baptismal font. He was one tough man, and he took great pride in it. He dressed tough, he acted tough, and he talked tough. He had a daughter in that congregation, and she was one tough woman. She was an adult psychiatric nurse. The acorn didn’t fall very fall from the tree. I remember being over at their home for dinner once, and in the course of the dinner, she went to get dessert and he wanted her to let the entree stay on the table for a minute. He said, “Pumpkin, leave that there for a minute." It brought me to a dead halt. I stayed motionless there at the table for about thirty seconds, my mind trying to process what I had just heard. But I am sure he said it. “Pumpkin," he said, “leave that there for a moment." And I knew he wasn’t talking to me. It gave me a whole new vista on her, and a whole new vista on him. I went home and I thought about him calling her “Pumpkin" and what that term meant for them. I knew that if I ever saw her out in the community and called her “Pumpkin" she would deck me right then. But she not only tolerated his saying it, but she seemed to delight in it.
What does it mean that we don’t want other people to call us by those special names, that we save them for particular usage. So God calls Jesus “Beloved". We are rightfully suspect when people use terms of endearment when there is not an authentic intimacy, whether it be people who say they are Christians and call us “Brother", with a kind of sudden familiarity that makes us a little nervous (although that is a wonderful term that Christians ought to be able to use with each other – “Brother" and “Sister"). Or whether it’s the used car salesman who calls us “Friend", with the kind of immediacy that makes us put our hand on the wallet. We know when people are using terms of endearment with sincerity and when they aren’t.
Why didn’t God call him “Jesus"? Do you think it’s a sign of the special care and relationship between these two and the Trinity? God refers to him as “Son" at times, and here the term “son" seems not just a subordinate term, but a kind of elevation, to me, raising Jesus up into a special relationship with God. Peter says that we were eyewitnesses of this event on the mountain. And not only that, we were earwitnesses, because when he goes to talk about what he saw, he instead describes what he heard. “We heard God call Jesus ‘My Beloved". The community remembers the name. We were earwitnesses of what? Of this tenderness. I don’t see how you could describe it as anything else. “We were earwitnesses of this tenderness, for he received honor and glory from God in the tender relationship, when that voice was conveyed to him by the majestic Lord. That voice, there on the mountain, in the moment of Majestic Glory, confirming and authenticating that there existed between God and this Jesus a tender relationship of the deepest familial associations. “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
It means a great deal to me as I reflect on it, that the Majesty of God, there on the mountain in the Transfiguration, is made most clear in the intimacy of this loving relationship. And we hear the thunder and we see the light on the mountain, but we remember a voice that said in that most holy moment, “Beloved". And I wonder if it was something of feeling that relationship, of knowing that kind of intimacy in the family circle, because Jesus called God “Father", “Abba", using the term of intimacy in return. At least at one point in his ministry, Jesus turns to a woman dispossessed and hurting and not a part of his biological family (that we have any evidence of), and he calls her “Daughter", taking the same love that Jesus experienced in being called “Beloved" by God and turning it towards the children of God, the people of God, that he found here on this earth. He called his disciples “Friends" and drew them into the circle as well.
I can find in the gospels just one other place where this term “beloved" is used. And it’s not used in Matthew, but rather it is used in Mark and Luke. It’s a parable. It’s the parable of the father and the son who have some tenant farmers. Do you remember the story? You can find it in the twentieth chapter of Luke. This father and son who have these tenant farmers find that the tenant farmers are not being good stewards of the land. They are not good renters. They tear it up, mess it up, and really trash the place. And on several different occasions they have sent messages to the tenant farmers telling them, “You must be better stewards. We are not going to be able to tolerate this. You must be better caretakers of what we have entrusted to you. Finally the time comes when the father says, “That’s it. I’ve had enough of these tenant folks. I’m going to throw them out of there. And the son says to the father, “No, wait. You know, I really think I know these people. I have been able to develop something of a working relationship with them. Let me go and visit them and I will tell them myself. So the son does go, perhaps on a Saturday night, and finds the tenant farmers cutting up and perhaps drinking too much and not really in the place they should be. When the beloved son comes around the corner, they take him and they kill him. They knife him. And they bury him in a shallow grave. In that parable, it is the beloved son that the father sends.
Three days later, the good news of the gospel is that when the father comes looking for him and finds him, his beloved, who had been treated this way, he raises him up into new life so those who have faith him might be raised also.
We are earwitnesses. We have seen this Glory by hearing the tenderness of this relationship. Who is your beloved? Who is your chosen in whom your soul delights? Can we find someone today whom we can call “Beloved", and by that, be meaning to make them feel more secure of their beloved identity in the family of God? Is this work called “evangelism"? This work of finding someone in our circle who does not know they are beloved, or who doesn’t believe it, and finding a way to share that Good News with them.
This last thought: If you are looking for that person who doesn’t know that they are beloved of God, don’t be surprised if, when you start looking, you discover that it’s yourself. And if it is, remember that the Bible says that Jesus called you “Friends". Jesus called you “my Friends". Jesus said that God, who loves the Beloved, loves you as well. And this is what you do with news like that: You take it up into your heart and you hold it there so that it will be like a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises.
