Readings of the day: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10
This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
How many of us are giving up something or have ever given up something for Lent? Might this be a strange question to ask, especially in our present situation? After all, we are still in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic that keeps us and many people from being able to worship in person and receive communion. We have given up a lot, and not only in terms of worship and the sacraments, over almost a year since the first COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns began.
Yet, when we speak of giving up something, especially during Lent, do we not usually refer to giving up what may be comfortable or good for us, but that we do not really need? I, for one, have never been very good at giving something up for Lent. I usually try to think of a very small comfort to give up; even better if this is something I am able to give up beyond Lent. One year, when I was a novice, in the beginner stages of religious community life in preparation to take first vows, I decided to give up not coffee altogether—if I were to give up coffee altogether, I think I would be lethargic or miserable, or both, in the morning—but simply to give up the sizable amount of sugar I used to put into my morning coffee. That Easter Sunday, I put sugar in my coffee as I had until Lent that year, and it made my coffee far too sweet. I have never gone back to putting sugar in my coffee since then. Great, then, I thought, I would need to think of something else to give up for Lent after that!
Those of us who have given up something for Lent or are doing so this year: What kinds of things to we give up? Are they food and drink-related comforts: Junk food, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, or coffee (or simply the sugar in our coffee, maybe)…? Have any of us given up social media, like Facebook or Twitter, as I know some of my friends do during Lent? How about taking this time of Lent to master our habits: Quitting smoking, minding our language, and so on? How many of us have heard or seen Pope Francis’ list of things from which to fast and on which to feast during Lent? Pope Francis’ list is a few years old, and has been made into a convenient image on social media: Fast from or give up hurting words, anger, pessimism, worries, complaints, bitterness, selfishness, and grudges, says Pope Francis, so that we may “feast on” kind words, gratitude, patience, hope, trust in God, simplicity, prayer, compassion, and reconciliation. Finally, Pope Francis says, “Fast from words and be silent so we can listen.” Hmm… There’s another thing—wordiness—from which I know I could fast in order to listen and appreciate silence better!
Do we begin to understand, through all this, that there are many things we could fast from or give up during Lent? But what if we simply acknowledged that God is already way ahead of us in terms of giving something up? And the something, or better yet somebody, God has given up is not only a worldly comfort or something good that God did not really need. No, God gave up—for us!—his only Son so that we might have eternal life. God gave up, for us, something not only comforting yet unnecessary, but God gave up what is essential to himself. And this whole season of Lent focuses us toward our celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; our celebration in a few weeks from now of God having given up his only Son for our salvation.
God’s sacrifice of self for us; God’s having given up his Son so that we might have eternal life, which we celebrate not only through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, but every time we assemble for Mass, is foretold in Jesus’ transfiguration. Mark, whose account of Jesus’ transfiguration we hear today, clearly connects this event to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Is there not an almost overwhelming amount of detail in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration? There are many points on which we could focus in this transfiguration event: Jesus, for instance, does not take with him all his disciples or even the Twelve apostles, but only (presumably) his most trusted three apostles, Peter, James, and John, to witness the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, usually interpreted as the presence of the Law and the prophets of Jewish tradition, speak with Jesus. We have what many Biblical scholars have commented as a full making known of the one God in three distinct persons of the Trinity: Jesus, present in human form, also the divine Son of God; the Father, especially represented by the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”; and the Holy Spirit, most often connected with the cloud that overshadows the transfiguration scene.
We have Mark’s peculiar emphasis (more than Matthew or Luke, who also each feature an account of Jesus’ transfiguration) on Jesus’ order to Peter, James, and John, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Mark, though, is pithier than the other Gospels about the fear Peter, James, and John felt during the transfiguration and Jesus’ foretelling of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. Yet all the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration in our Biblical Gospels share the all-but-speechless Peter’s exclamation, “It is good for us to be here.” Peter then suggests, in all Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration, that they build three tents. This could be a hearkening back to the Ark of the Covenant tradition of the earliest tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. These ancient people of Israel were mobile, and carried the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle in which God was said to dwell among his people on earth, within a series of tents.
But allow me to suggest that the main focus of Mark’s Gospel especially, amid all Mark’s spectacular detail of the transfiguration, is on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we think of the transfiguration, Mark wants us to connect with Jesus’ sacrifice, his willing giving up of self to death on a cross, so that we might have eternal life. Jesus, through Mark, wants us to contemplate prayerfully the events of his transfiguration in light of his resurrection from the dead. We have the gift of hindsight: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a completed past event. From Peter’s, James’, and John’s standpoint in time, Jesus’ resurrection was still yet to take place, so the apostles could do no better than to be (understandably) perplexed and afraid.
But even with our gift of hindsight, is not only the transfiguration but the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus it foretells not so extraordinarily rare that, in a way, it should not only have struck fear in Peter, James, and John, but in us? The transfiguration points ahead to Jesus’ giving up of self on a cross for our salvation. There is only one other figure in the Bible (and the only one who is not God)—Abraham—who is willing to give up his only son, in this case Isaac, simply because God calls him to do so.
Like Mark’s Gospel account of Jesus transfiguration, Genesis’ account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is so detailed as to be troubling; as to raise more questions in us than it answers: Why would God test Abraham? Is God really that mean that he would play Abraham like that, expecting him to sacrifice Isaac only to stop him at the last moment? Here, although I think we are right to focus always on God in any Biblical event, I think Genesis invites us to focus on Abraham’s response to God; on his complete willingness to do as God asks of him, even to sacrifice his only, long-promised son, Isaac. Abraham’s willingness to give up his only son is presented as a prefiguring of God’s own complete willingness to give his only Son, Jesus Christ, up to death so that we might have eternal life.
What, then, do Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac to death, and the transfiguration, which foretells God’s giving his Son Jesus up to death for our salvation, mean for us in terms of how we live here and now? For me, how well we answer this question for ourselves amounts to how we answer a few questions related to this first one: If we make some kind of Lenten sacrifice, say giving up something for Lent, does what we have given up make us more mindful of God’s sacrifice of his only Son for us on the cross; the only sacrifice capable of gaining us eternal life? Do our sacrifices make us more mindful of God always with and for us, as St. Paul asks today in his letter to the Romans: “If God is for us, who is against us”? Do we sacrifice willingly, as God does and has for us, and without boasting or appearing gloomy, or sacrificing something because we feel we have to do so? Does our sacrifice change us; transfigure us to be more like our selfless; self-sacrificing God? If we can answer “yes” to these questions, I think we are on the right track, this Lent and in our lives of faith overall.
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