Second Sunday of Lent

Lectionary: 25

Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.”

Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.

For a moment there were four personages: three appearing before the disciples, and another speaking. And then there was, "Jesus alone with them." 

By now we have settled into the patterns of Lent; we have chosen and begun appropriate penitential practices to suit our stations, particular needs, and responsibilities. On this Second Sunday of Lent, every year, the Church invites us to ponder the moment when Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. 

Up to this point they have seen him as a most unusual man. He seems to be a prophet announcing the approach of God's kingdom, and of "that day" which was anticipated and feared with equal measures of hope and dread. His compassionate healing of ailing human beings is an indisputable demonstration of his divine authority. His championing the lowly has won friends and antagonized both religious and civil authorities, even as he aroused the pious curiosity of everyone. They asks, "Who is this man?" 

By this time, his disciples are convinced -- and Peter has declared even before they arrived at this mountaintop -- that Jesus is the Messiah. But the Lord's immediate reply to Peter explained very little: 

He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.

If they thought they knew what the Messiah would do; if they thought they should recognize, follow, and obey the Messiah when he appeared: this prediction of suffering and death and resurrection confused them greatly. Such talk was, as Saint Paul would later write to the Corinthians, nonsense to the wise and blasphemy to the pious. 

But still they followed Jesus. They could not fathom his mission, his teaching, or his authority, and still they followed. Caught up in the Spirit which has its own hidden wisdom, they followed him as sheep follow their shepherd. They followed from revelation to revelation, and on Mount Tabor the Father spoke to them and to us, "This is my Beloved Son." 

In today's first reading, the LORD called Abraham and spoke of a beloved son: 

Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, 

and go to the land of Moriah.

There you shall offer him up as a holocaust 

on a height that I will point out to you.”

We can only imagine the agony Abraham suffered as he and the boy climbed the mountain. He'd waited a century for the gift of a son by his ancient wife, Sarah. And now the same God who'd made the promise and kept it, demanded the sacrifice -- a holocaust -- of his beloved son. 

Perhaps he'd tried to barter with the Lord as he had when the child was conceived. Although he'd lost the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, he'd saved Lot and his daughters. The patriarch would readily have offered his own life rather than the boy but God wanted more than that. God wanted wanted the man and his memory; there would be no legitimate descendant -- no heirs or heritage -- when Isaac died. It would be as if he'd never lived. 

And Abraham obeyed. 

In the Crucifixion, Christians see the death of God's only begotten son. The killing cancelled the Man who was Mary's son; his works, teachings, and principles annulled. It erased the hope that God rewards the just and punishes the wicked, for the wicked triumphed in the death of this just man. 

The promise to Abraham might remain to haunt human history but after Calvary it was little more than an empty shell, the detritus of something which should have been but wasn't. God's promises are forgotten; God's beloved people would disperse and disappear. The world's melting pots would bleach out every distinctive trait of a people: their beliefs, custom, ethos, and language. 

God was dead. 

In the death of Jesus we see that God, like Abraham, gave more than he could afford. As the blood, water, and life flowed from his body, there was nothing more to give. He did so in love for us, for no one can be saved unless God has surrendered his only begotten son, whom he loved, to death. 

As we leave the readings of Genesis and Saint Mark and continue our celebration of the Mass, and as we resume our lives following the Mass, we realize that we too, each one of us, must give far more than we want to give, more than we can afford, more than we ever dreamed of giving, for our personal salvation, and that of our loved ones.