SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT 

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18 | Philippians 3:17—4:1 | Luke 9:28b-36

Oh God, who have commanded us to listen to your Beloved Son, be pleased, we pray, to nourish us inwardly by your word that, with spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Last Sunday we listened to the image in the gospel, and it was all about Jesus the man, the human facing the reality of his work to reveal to the human race who he is and who his Father is in him.  He went through temptations.  His human nature was resisting what it was that he was going to be called to do, and each time the devil tempted him, he showed something in him that was no match at all for the temptations that were before him.  He knew in his heart who he was and what he was there for.  It’s a beautiful image of who we’re called to be, someone who knows what we are and what we’re here for, and so traditionally, this second Sunday of Lent, which we have today to contemplate is the transfiguration, Jesus taking his disciples, not all of them but three, Peter, James and John, who he must have thought were able to deal with what he was about to show them, took them to a place where he manifested who he was.  He was light, an incredible light, which to me is all about the work of God, through Jesus, of enlightening us as to who we are, but let’s look at this full set of readings, because that’s what always is there to enhance our understanding of the core gospel that’s presented.  

And so what I’d like to do is talk for a minute about the whole salvation history, which I love talking about, because when I was growing up as a Catholic, we never ever heard homilies on the Old Testament.  Rarely we did.  There would be certain feasts where it was common to hear a story from the Old Testament, especially during Holy Week, but generally the preaching was always on the gospels and the epistles.  But since Vatican 2, 55 years ago or so, it was changed, and it was that now we preach every Sunday on the Old Testament.  So the fact that I’ve had 50 years of that has opened my heart to the way in which the two are so intricately entwined.  You can’t really understand the New Testament without the Old Testament.  And one of the things that’s interesting about what we learn from the Old Testament, it’s not just filled with theology, who God is, but it’s loaded with anthropological truth, who human beings are and how we’ve evolved.  So I want to start with that image. 

You know the story of Adam and Eve obviously.  Adam and Eve revealed something about human nature, that we’re not really that comfortable being in a place of effortless existence.  It’s interesting to me that, when Adam and Eve were in that garden and everything was perfect and there was no struggle and everything, it seems that there was something inside of them gnawing at them that wanted something more.  And when they were tempted to try something on their own that wasn’t really being offered to them at that time by God, they chose it, and they were easily — easily seduced.  It’s interesting that we’re most open to seduction if the person who’s seducing us knows that what he’s asking us to do we really want to do.  And so the devil knew that human beings like an autonomy.  They don’t want to be just cared for.  They want to be engaged in their work.  They want to produce something on their own.  I’ve always felt that story was misunderstood when it sounded like God was so upset with them that he cast them out to punish them, but when you look at the story deeply, it’s clear that they left because they resisted the life that God had given them there.  When they left, God sewed clothes together and sent them to the earth and said, “It’s going to be difficult.  It’s going to be a hard, hard, difficult process to live that life on that planet, but if that’s what you choose, go.  Go and do it.” 

And that period of time, from the Adam and Eve story to, let’s say, the call of Abraham is interesting in the scriptures, because that period of time, which some claim was maybe 1,000 years — maybe it was more, but there’s almost nothing told to us about that, except for two things.  One, that the first children of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, were so competitive that one, Cain, killed his brother, Abel.  When you think about that, here’s the first two human beings born on the earth, and what are they?  One’s a murderer.  And so it says something about human nature, and then you go on.  And the next major thing in that period of time was when God looked at the creation that he had made, and he said he saw nothing but darkness in their hearts, and he said, “I want to destroy all of them.  I want to start over again.  I made a mistake.  I should never have created human beings.”  What is that other than a story about the longing in God that human beings not be corrupt, that they not harm one another, that they live a different kind of life than, let’s say, their lowest animal nature?  And so that story is so beautiful, the story of Noah, because what it is, it’s God looking at human beings at their worst and saying, “You know what?  There is something I can see in someone,” which is in everyone, a spark, something about goodness in them that he wants to build upon.  So there’s something in human nature that is designed to be selfless and self-giving and nurturing, like the God who created us.  And living on this planet is part of our process of entering into that work and believing in it and doing it.  

So we have then at that point in this story is that God is going to give the human race a second chance, so to speak, and so we have the call of Abraham.  His name was Abram before it was changed to Abraham, and what’s interesting about this story, and it’s so like something in the gospel that I want to point out, is I want you to listen to the story again with your imagination and see that this is the human race, Abraham or Abram, being invited to go on a journey, not knowing where it is but somehow being told that, “If you take this journey with me, if you allow me into your life to be a guide to you, we’re going to take — I’m going to take you to a place, a land flowing with milk and honey.  And it’s going to be a place that’s going to nurture you and feed you and give you life and teach you things.”  And when he’s saying all that, it’s so beautiful, because he’s saying it in a way to Abram, asking Abram to trust him to do this.  He doesn’t explain how long it’s going to take or where it is.  He just said, “Come with me on this journey.”  

That’s just a beautiful image of who God is in your life and mine.  He’s awakened in our consciousness at some point in our life, when we’re in a place of thinking, “What am I here for?  What am I supposed to be doing?  What is life for,” and he’s there to give us this purpose and this direction.  And the thing that’s so interesting about the covenant that he makes is that, when you listen to it carefully, there’s two things that he promises to Abram.  One is posterity.  In the Old Testament, in particular the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, nothing in there talks about life after death, and so some scholars would say, “Well, that’s because in the beginning, God was not so much interested in people reaching a goal outside of this life, but he was really interested in teaching them how to live in this world.”  Whatever the reason, there isn’t anything in the Old Testament about life after death.  So if one was going to have a sense of continuing, in terms of their value in the world, they would have posterity.  They would continue to live through their sons, and Abram and Sarah did not have a son.  And so God promises a son, which is insane when you think both of them were 90 years old, but he makes a promise that doesn’t make sense to our logic.  And when he promises that, he’s saying, “That means I want you in this land of milk and honey — I want you to know that you are having an impact that is long term.”  There’s something about your life and my life that we think is just about us, but we are part of an evolutionary process of human beings.  And when we do our part, it is connected to other people, and when you grow intellectually and emotionally and when you’re enlightened with the truth, it has a contagious impact.  So what I love about this promise of Abram is — it’s a promise to every human being.  “I want to make you effective, not just get through this world and get to the other side that I promise you that, if you do what I say —” that’s an oversimplification, to say the least, but if you do the work of evolving, growing, changing, you’ll have an impact on the world.   And what the world will be because of you is more nurturing.  So the promise is — the land in those days, the land was life.  You lived off the land, and so the image that he used was he took animals of the land and laid them out as this ritual and cut them in half.  And then what was happening is that, in this ritual, Abram was being told that, “If you follow me, make this covenant with me, this life-giving environment, in which I’m going to place you, is always going to be there, but if you don’t, they will be destroyed.  You won’t have that nurturing quality to the world.”  And so the image is that you slice these animals in half, and when God passes through, as a light passes through this image of these split animals, what he’s saying is, “If you break this covenant, this will be what happens.”  It’s like the light is showing how important this covenant is to keep.  If you don’t keep it, then life is destroyed.  The life that God has given you is lost.  So the covenant made with us through Abram is, “I will make your life effective, and you will be a nurturing source for the life of the people around you.  I  promise I’ll do that.”  He’s saying that, because he knows that’s what we really need.  That’s what we want, but when that happened, he was terrified.  He went into a deep, deep darkness, and that’s what I want to talk about.

What is it, when we’re told that with God inside of us, if we surrender to him, we’ll be so effective, why is that frightening?  Why don’t we just say, “Of course, I’d love that”?  So look at the same image in the gospel, because what you see there is Jesus taking his disciples to see who Jesus really is. And he is the Word that has come into the world, the truth, and when you open your heart to it, you are enlightened, and you evolve, and you change.  And when the disciples saw Jesus there with Moses and Elijah, that was the rules and the laws and the people who judged you and condemned you if you didn’t follow them.  What was happening is that was the transfer of Old to New Testament.  No longer is God going to work with us by giving us rules and laws and punishing us.  No, he’s going to do it by enlightening us.  But when the disciples saw that and realized it, they were at first confused, but then a cloud overcame them, and they were in this place of fear and fright.  And what that means is that there’s something in us that resists this incredible promise that, if we surrender our wills, our thoughts, if we give it all over to God, that we will be transformed. 

So this season of Lent is always a time of reflection.  Where is the resistance in us to this wonderful promise of God?  And it’s all about that human, darker side where we say, “I’m in charge of myself, and I will run my life as I am able to do, and I’ll take great pleasure in having achieved it.”  We don’t achieve it on our own.  That’s the key to the promise that God has made to us.  Accept our weaknesses, accept our need for him and allow him to enter into us and get pass the fear and the confusion that that creates is the key to this whole wonderful season that asks us to reflect on this great resistance and to let it drop and let the light in.  Amen.   

Father, your wisdom, your plan for us is so clearly revealed when we take time to listen attentively to salvation history, to know that this story is our story.  So bless us with real openness to what we can be shown, and then when we see it and we open our heart to it, as the human race has done throughout history, we see the benefits, the joy and the life that flows into us.  So bless us with an open heart to not depend on ourselves solely but to depend upon ourselves with you, in you, for you, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.