Homily from the Parish Priest for the Second Sunday in Lent
Scripture Readings for Year B: Genesis 22:1-18; Romans 8:31-34; Mark 9:2-10
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”. Those words pronounced to us as we received ashes just 10 days ago on Ash Wednesday – or more likely this year marked this in a different way, perhaps for our lack of physical presence making it all the more poignant - are some of the most powerful words we will hear in a Church service all year. Our mortality, our frailty, our humanity – the most concrete thing we all share. Made so much more immediate, so much more real, through the events of this last year. We will all return to dust, we will all die, this earthly life is fleeting, just a passing stage of our journey. The pandemic has surely reminded us of this truth, that each one of us is vulnerable, each one of us is not superhuman and immortal.
Lent is a sacred time to reflect on this. Most of the time I for one needed this nudge, this challenge : I could all too easily in a busy life move too quickly from one event to the next, from one meeting to another, one piece of work to another, one hill to climb, one valley to go through, but, at least if you’re like me, not giving God enough space to show me his will for my life. Ruling off one part of my life and moving on to the next without sufficient time to look back, to savour, to learn, to grow. In a strange way the pandemic has made me pause and reflect a lot more. On where I am going. On where we are going as society, as God’s image on this earth.
These disciples Peter, James, and John get it wrong too. They want to capture the Transfiguration there and then for posterity: ‘let’s build 3 tents: one for Moses, one for Elijah, one for Jesus’ but do not stop to understand what this says about their call to be disciples, to be men called to follow Christ in the here and now, and what it says about what lies ahead in the future.
But they are stopped in their tracks. It’s a dramatic command to stop and take stock – and learn… In the cloud we hear God the Father directing the party back to the whole point of this – at first sight – strange Gospel episode: ‘You’re not here to see a vision of God as you think, to try to capture it : you don’t understand: put away your tents: this is my Beloved Son: listen to him: listen to what this is about and take it to heart, you are offered an encounter with God, a relationship which you cannot capture now but which will lead you to new pastures where much will be expected of you’.
Why such a chiding? What is so very wrong with their attitude ? What is so wrong is exactly the kind of mistake we can so easily make when we hear this Gospel today: and it’s very simple: the disciples try to capture a snapshot of the divinity of Jesus. They are dazzled by athe vision of God and his Kingdom up the Mountain whereas the message of this strange event is really in the savouring of the experience for the coming down from the mountain back to the reality of human life.
It is not Jesus’ divinity in itself, Jesus being God up the mountain, which this event is all about for me, but the fact that it is this Jesus, this human being, who is revealed as God, this flesh and bone, who is about in the world below with his disciples, eating and drinking with his disciples, God with us in our world on the flat, who shows us through his life, his suffering, his cross what it is to be fully human. And in St Mark’s Gospel this will now be revealed but slowly as God gives his faithful but flawed selfish disciples that infinite freedom which only God can give out his infinite love for us. The chance to make mistakes, the chance to learn, the trust in us that a loving parent has in abundance.
Who is this God revealed in Jesus? Who is this God for me, for us? The God who calls each and every one of us to some definite service? The God who calls us to be more human and so more like him. To serve, to love, as we constantly learn and to grow. Who is God in Jesus Christ? Fully God one with the Father yes - look at the brightness, the shining light – it’s true - but now not God remaining in the cloud: rather Incarnate God for us who will not be accommodated in a tent up the mountain but who must come down from the mountain to be with his disciples and teach us. The God revealed this Second Sunday of Lent Who will go down the mountain with us to walk with us to Jerusalem, to Good Friday, and through to Easter Sunday.
So we too are invited this Lent to go up that mountain to be with Jesus in prayer but this Lent to look for for glimpses of Transfiguration in our lives, of the presence of Jesus in our lives here on the flat– in our relationships, our family, in our prayer, in how we love and serve, learn and grow to be more like him for whom, in whose image we are made. And always to have one eye on the downward path from the mountain so we can commit ourselves to be true disciples on mission with the Jesus who shows us through his suffering how to be human, the God who now and for all time is always with us and in us.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ