Second Sunday of Lent C 2022
The Gospels contain a strange
spiritual wisdom. It puts the end of the story in the middle.
We need to be alert to wisdom
that is strange sometime. For example, someone
the other day it’s not good to talk about your troubles. 80% of people don’t care and the other 20%
are glad you are having them. Not true
for parishioners of St. Joseph’s.
What the apostles experienced
in this beautiful Transfiguration experience was like the end of the story
appearing in the middle. Why? The apostles needed their faith to be strengthened
to have a faith and hope in accepting their Savior as one who was going to be
crucified in his journey to resurrection and new life. The apostles had balked
at the future Jesus was insisting upon.
The privilege of witnessing Jesus’ Transfiguration was for the purpose
of confirming Jesus as someone to whom they must listen to. They have, as of yet, not understood the
mission of Jesus. They must open
themselves up to what Jesus is saying about his suffering, death, and
resurrection.
The Transfiguration shows us
that evil does not win in the end. The
message is that our lives are not governed by chance; rather we stand under the
continual providence of God.
We are now experiencing the
massive and reckless and violent Russian invasion of Ukraine. This war demonstrates the worst of humanity
showing no regard for the dignity and sacredness of the lives of the Ukrainian
people.
But we deeply believe that
sin and evil are not the final word in human lives. The Transfiguration shows us that evil does
not win in the end. We stand under the
continual providence of a loving God. Faith can move mountains, not to mention a
stupid war.
The Transfiguration takes
place on the road to Jerusalem and the road to Easter. To understand the grace of the
Transfiguration involves some risky listening on our part. The Transfiguration is an epiphany of Jesus’
glory – a glimpse of the resurrection.
In going up the mountain, Peter, James, and John saws the transfigured
Lord to strengthen their faith for the days ahead.
As the apostles experienced
the transfigured glory of Jesus, Peter says: “Lord, it is good that we are
here.” While he was still speaking.
Behold, then from a cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with
whom I am well pleased, listen to him.”
To this point, the apostles
have been unable to understand Jesus’ predictions about his upcoming suffering,
death, and resurrection. They have not listened. In fact, there was no need to listen because
they already knew what they wanted the Savior to be like – a successful,
prestigious, powerful Messiah. Now the
voice of God commands them to listen.
It’s easier to listen to the
Lord on the mountaintop when the blessings of life are very apparent. It is more difficult to listen when we come
down from the mountain and are in the midst of the valley of loneliness, of fear
and of anxiety.
The apostles were given the
vision of the transfigured Lord to overcome their resistance to listening to
Jesus in moments of suffering. Knowing
they would soon go down to mountain and journey to Jerusalem and experience His
suffering and death, Jesus wanted his apostles to experience a moment of
revelation to sustain them and to make sense of the suffering that was to come.
The grace of Transfiguration
is to see the other side of the mountain when one is buried in the cross and suffering
of the moment. The grace of
Transfiguration is we are able to see differently. We are able to be hopeful when there seems to
be no hope. We seek to look at the
circumstances of our life with a third eye, a seeing that enables us to know
Jesus is present to us as Lord and Savior.
The real action of
discipleship is not just on the mountaintop but in the upcoming events of death
and resurrection in Jerusalem. As we
pray over this Transfiguration Gospel, know that the message for us is not just
the identity of Jesus in his transfigured glory but it is a story for us to
reflect on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. In the words of the Father: Listen to him. As with the first disciples, we need to let
go of old notions of discipleship that get in the way of listening to the
message of Jesus. We need to accept the
cross in our own lives and to trust more fully in God’s plan for our lives.
Are we good listeners? Do others know us as good listeners? Are we able to listen to the voice of God
when things aren’t going as we planned?
Do we hear the cry of God’s
poor? Are we responsive to the needs of
people locally and around the world?
From the first Scripture
reading in the Book of Genesis: “The Lord said to Abram: ‘Go forth from the land
of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will
bless you.’”
What was asked of Abram sets
the stage for us to reflect on our own cost of discipleship. The detachment that was asked of Abram is
this: Abram is commanded to leave his
country, his kinfolk, and finally his father’s house, that is, what we would
call his entire support system, material and psychological, the whole deal, and
depend on God alone.
Does this not challenge us to
reflect on our cost of discipleship during this Lenten season? Lent’s call to stark honesty compels us to
ask if our discipleship of Jesus is too comfortable. Our Lenten conversion process requires some
measure of detachment from self-centeredness and attachment to values and
priorities and preferences that may be countercultural.
The call of Abram who was
later named Abraham was to leave home and settle in a foreign land. God asked and so Abram went. He had trust and hope. How do we respond when God asks us to move
beyond our comfort zone and to more fully trust in the plan of God for us? If our call to discipleship is any way
similar to God’s call of Abram, we will need to revisit our old wisdom. In some way, the Lord asks of you and the
Lord asks of me to let go of some of my comfort zone and to trust more fully in
God’s plan for us.
Jesus’ message is that his
disciples must be willing to join Him in His passion and death. The disciples had difficulty hearing this
reality. We too have difficulty
listening to Jesus when our discipleship involves dealing with the crosses of
life – the cross of sickness, the cross of the death of a loved one, the cross
of coping with a relationship that has gone wrong, the cross of coping with the
insanity of war.
May God give us the gift of
trusting in His love for us even when things are not going as we planned.
No comments:
Post a Comment