At my church,(Catholic Community at Relay, Baltimore MD Mass Sunday at 10:30, c’mon down) we sometimes have lay homilists. The readings were God’s call to Abram to go to a new land and be a blessing to the nations, the opening to the first letter to Timothy, and the transfiguration of Christ in John. This was my homily:
Today’s readings are about great rewards and difficult beginnings, indeed difficult journeys.
God tells Abram to become a 70 year old refugee, leaving behind the tribe that supports him and venture out into unknown hardships in pursuit of a blessing. In the desert it is pretty easy to find the guy without a tribe, you just look for the buzzards. So I imagine it was a little uncomfortable as his kinfolk watched the crazy old guy who talks to God pack up his gear and head out into the wilderness.
The letter to Timothy asks him to “join with me in suffering” and humiliation, which is not the invitation everyone is hoping for. He is promised the blessing of God’s grace, which has existed the same through all time, but which we can only understand through Christ’s sacrifice. Which is one of those things that sounds great when your teacher says it, but later you’re not really sure it means anything. Timothy always reads to me as being written to a new pastor who is having a hard time at his first posting, struggling with an unruly church and his own doubts at the same time.
But the big show here is the transfiguration, 4 guys on the mountaintop, bright lights, booming voices, definite, miraculous confirmation that “Hey, this IS the guy!”. No problems here, right? Well except for that little part at the end about death.
In fact the transfiguration is framed by death. The incident which proceeds it in the gospel is when Jesus tells his disciples he is going to die, and Peter says “Please, no lord” and then there is that whole uncomfortable “Get behind me you Satan” thing. So it’s pretty clear that the disciples are not in a real happy place going up the mountain; they believe this guy is the messiah, he shows all the signs of holiness, he talks about redeeming Israel, yet he has told them that his mission will fail. Again, awkward.
I will feel a little bit awkward later today when I drop off lunches at the homeless shelter. It is weird being thanked for providing something that no one should be without, it feels odd to be thanked for the work that other people, all of you, did. It is uncomfortable to know that I share my zip code with people who are refugees in their own land.
C.S. Lewis was asked how much a Christian should give to charity and he replied that if your charity did not constrict you, did not make your life less comfortable, then you probably were not giving enough. A friend of mine used to say that if our Christianity does not make us uncomfortable, we should be uncomfortable with our Christianity.
During Lent we give up things, we fast and abstain, we try to, in some small way, suffer for Christ, because he suffered for us. Because at the end is that glorious reward. Warm weather for keeps. But here’s the thing, Abram’s journey goes through Sodom and Gomorrah, Hagar and Ishmael, and the sacrifice of Isaak, not easy stuff. And we all know where Peter, James, and John are headed. So as we use this Lent to reflect and examine our consciences perhaps one thing we should look for is a lack of awkwardness, a settledness of experience, a feeling that our challenges are behind us and we know what comes next. Because if we know what comes next, if we are comfortable with where we are and the road ahead, we are definitely NOT like the people we read about today.