Some Thoughts on the Second Sunday of Lent: The Transfiguration

The readings for this Sunday are dramatic to say the least, and they are many layered as well. There is so much meaning that I can’t hope to unpack very much that is in them. So I’ll just comment on a couple of points that I think are critical.

First, with respect to Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac: it is a strange story to say the least. Human sacrifice was common in the pagan religions of the Middle East. In fact, a book I read a few years ago asserted that the origins of our practice of capital punishment have little to do with deterrence of crime or punishment of criminals. The practice comes from the pagan notion of a spirit world that becomes seriously out of balance and can only be made right again by an extreme act like a human sacrifice. Our attachment to the practice is the residue of ancient pagan beliefs.

I think at least a part of the significance of this story about Abraham is that it begins as if the God who would establish the Abraham’s descendants as the chosen people, guide them out of Egypt, give them the Law, and establish them in the Promised Land were just the same as the imaginary, anthropomorphic gods that formed the center of pagan worship – bruised, needy, wounded, and sometimes hateful beings. But the story ends with a new kind of relationship between God and humanity, a relationship in which God steps forward and takes the initiative to make things right with us. God puts our world in order; we don’t put God’s world in order.
There is some dispute about where the mountain of Moriah referred to in the story actually was. Some say it was the mountain in Jerusalem where the temple would be built about 1,000 years after Abraham. Others maintain that it was the somewhat higher nearby mountain later called Golgotha. Just as Isaac, a totally innocent victim carried up the hill a heavy burden of wood, the wood on which he was to be sacrificed, Jesus carried up the hill a heavy burden of wood, the wood on which he would be sacrificed. But in Jesus’ case, it wasn’t a human sacrifice to appease an angry god, but God in the second person of the Holy Trinity sacrificing himself to guide us to eternal salvation, taking the initiative, reaching out, loving us more that we could ever imagine.
Walking up that mountain must have been the darkest time ever for Abraham. His son’s life meant more to him than his own. All his hopes and dreams were embodied in that boy. But his willingness to give everything to God led to a new life for him, for his descendants, and ultimately for all of us.

Peter, James, and John were in something like the same position. The events of tonight’s Gospel reading follow by six days Jesus’ first revelation to the Apostles that he would soon suffer and die. Not only that, he had warned his followers that each of them was called to pick up their own cross and follow him. Peter was so upset by Jesus’ words that he actually rebuked Jesus. Jesus had called Peter "Satan" and pushed him away.

We don’t know for sure what Peter and the other Apostles had in mind when they left everything behind to follow Jesus. Some of them apparently thought they would be important in a new a glorious earthly kingdom that they expected Jesus to establish. If they had any such fantasies, they were rudely destroyed now. They had left everything behind to follow Jesus. It turned out that following Jesus meant taking the path to the cross, to crucifixion and death. But they followed him anyway. And the day described in our reading, their sacrifice led to glimpse of the reality that underlay Jesus and his ministry. They saw Moses, their ancestor in faith who had brought the law down from Mount Sinai, and they saw Elijah, the prophet who never died, whom God carried off in a flaming chariot, the prophet whom Jewish legend said would return when God was ready to make everything right in our world. They saw Jesus, not merely as the human they had come to know, but as the shining Son of the Father. And they heard the voice of God.
None of this could have happened if they hadn’t made the sacrifices they had made. They wouldn’t have been there on that mountain. They would have given up and left Jesus long ago. They would still have had minds and hearts so attached to things of this world that they could not have been open to what God wanted to tell them, to what God wanted to do in their lives, to the work of the world’s salvation that God wanted them to take part in.

Lent is supposed to prepare us to experience God. We don’t give things up because we love discomfort or because we think that God wants to see us suffer. We give things up because we have to get them under control. They are blocking our vision. They are smothering our souls. We give things up because we want to go to the mountaintop, and all these bad habits and worldly attachments are weighing us down.

We’re just a week and a half into Lent. We have quite a ways to go, but a week and a half is plenty of time for our resolve to weaken. Let us renew our intention to use this time well, to establish right priorities, to make right what we need to make right in our lives, to be truly ready to greet our Risen Lord on Easter Morning.

The Core of Matthew's Gospel Message

The Sunday readings for the middle of this summer have been from a special part of Matthew’s Gospel. As it turns out the whole Gospel of Matthew is organized around a core message, and the readings from three summer Sundays comprise that core.
At the center of Matthew’s Gospel is a set of parables that Jesus presents to his followers to teach them about the Kingdom of God. Remember that the Hebrew people had been looking forward to the Messiah who would bring to reality the Kingdom of God on earth for almost 2,000 years when Jesus was born. Many expected it to be a military kingdom. They expected the Messiah to raise a great army that would throw off the hated Roman occupiers and re-establish the Kingdom of Israel as a mighty world power.

Jesus needed to teach his followers that the reality of God’s kingdom was much different than that. That’s what these parables are about. Let’s review what Jesus has to say:
The first parable is about a sower planting seeds. Some seeds fall on good ground, but many do not. Many people God invites into the kingdom are so dried up and hard that the seeds of the kingdom can never even start to grow in them. Some accept the invitation with enthusiasm at first, but their soil is shallow. There is no staying power. The life that springs up in them withers and dies. But some people are persistent and let that life grow in them and yield a bountiful harvest.

The second parable is about a field planted with good seed, but weeds spring up among the valuable plants. Why doesn’t the farmer (God) pull up and destroy the weeds? Because the good crop could be harmed. In particular, some of us who are behaving like weeds may turn to God in time. The presence of weeds in the kingdom is not a sign of God’s weakness, nor does it mean that God is not ultimately just. The presence of evil in our world is a sign of God’s loving patience with us, giving us second and third and fourth chances to turn away from evil and become the good people we were meant to be when God planted the good seed.

The third and fourth parables come as a pair – one with special relevance for men, and one with special relevance for women. Men, who are the ones spending their days working out in the fields, know that a tiny mustard seed isn’t very impressive. But when you let it grow, it becomes a shrub big enough for birds to build their nests in. Women, who make bread for the family, know that the yeast that you put into a batch of bread doesn’t look like much, but it makes a huge difference. Without the yeast, the dough is just a lump. With the yeast, the dough rises and becomes beautiful, aromatic and tasty. The Kingdom of God is in this world, but won’t seem like much at this point unless you are wise enough to not be fooled by appearances. The Kingdom of God is at work. In the end, it will grow to dwarf everything else that appears important to the foolish.

The fifth and sixth parables also come as a pair. The Kingdom of God is like a treasure that someone finds buried in a field. The Kingdom of God is like a fabulous pearl that is worth selling everything you own to obtain. Once you understand what God is offering you as a follower of Jesus, as a citizen in God’s kingdom, you will put everything else aside. You will devote your life to what really matters and not be led astray by the silly or even evil things that the rest of the world may find valuable.

The seventh parable tells of a fishing net that has brought up a whole bunch of stuff from the ocean bottom. Some of the things are valuable, but many of them are not. The things that come up in the net must be sorted. The valuable things will be kept, but the other things will be tossed. Ultimately God’s judgment will prevail.

And finally, a word of wisdom. "[E]very scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old." In a way, the Kingdom of God has always been with us. Even the ancient people before God spoke to Moses, had a sense of good and bad, of truth and falseness. They sought God in whatever ways they were able to do so. There is much goodness in that. But Jesus has also brought something utterly new. A new relationship with God, a new way of relating to each other and a new way to think about ourselves. A new way of dealing with suffering and pain. A new meaning to life.

This teaching of Jesus is incredibly rich. I don’t have any idea how to sum it up adequately in just a few words, but Jesus telling us that the reality of God’s presence in our world is much different than most of us expect. It is easy to miss if we aren’t willing to pay attention. It is gentle and unassuming, yet it is ultimately the most powerful force in the history of our world. It provides us with great opportunity, but we choose some pretty scary outcomes if we refuse the invitation offered.