Deacon Michael’s Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent - March 4-5, 2023

The readings for this Sunday on which this homily is based can be found HERE

This week’s Gospel and last week’s could be known as the “Tale of Two Mountains”.

Characteristic of Lent, last week’s Gospel had Jesus in the desert for forty days being tempted by the devil

…with the last temptation taking pace on a very high mountaintop

…one that Christians have traditionally recalled in the Holy Land at a rather large hill rising over the town of Jericho at the southern end of the Jordan valley near the Dead Sea

…close by the stoney and sun baked desert known as the Jordanian wilderness.

Tradition places both John the Baptist's ministry and Jesus' temptation in this barren and formidable place.

In this week’s Gospel Jesus journeys to another mountaintop, not alone…but with his closest disciples Peter, James and John.

Christian tradition places this scene at Mount Tabor which is in north, in Lower Galilee, overlooking the verdant Jezreel Valley

…compared to the desert this is a land where things grow.

The climate is more moderate and pleasant, Mediterranean, much like southern California.

This picturesque setting was for these disciples made even more wondrous

…as they are enveloped in a mysterious mystical encounter with a transfigured Jesus

…along with the Hebrew prophets Moses and Elijah

…Moses who had received the law from God on Mount Sinai

…and the master prophet Elijah who had been taken up to the heavens in a chariot of fire in the 2nd Book of Kings

…whose return some Jews saw in Christ himself.

Jesus' appearance is changed, his face like the sun and his clothes like light,

…recalling the encounter of Moses with the burning bush on Sinai

…a bush that was on fire but not consumed, signifying the presence of God.

Here the Transfigured Lord provides a foreshadowing of the later appearances of His resurrected  body to those same disciples and others

…familiar but utterly changed, already in a new “transfigured” mode of existence

…all of this anticipating our own resurrection from the dead and the life of the world to come.

Our tradition holds that Christ became one like us, that we might become partakers in this divine nature, and here we see its promise. 

Looking back on it all, in this Transfiguration Peter, James and John will get an idea of what Jesus was alluding to when he tells them on the night before he died

…that where he was going, they…and so we…may one day be.

So we have these two mountains.

…the Mount of Temptation where we are right now, and where Jesus confronted what we confront

…the Mount of Transfiguration, where we one day hope to be sharing in his triumph over sin and death.

Our lives are a journey between these two Mounts,

…not the two hour Holy Land bus ride, but the journey from birth into life and into eternity.

It is said that on a journey we should always keep the end, the destination, in mind

…and here the Transfiguration reminds us of the one that is held out to us.

Called by God Abraham dropped everything and embarked on out into the unknown based what others may have seen as a whim

…with no real compass to show the way out into the unknown.

We have been called as well, by Christ…

…to follow him

…and we have been offered and shown much more than Abraham to help us on our way.

We have the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord to inspire us

…we have his teachings in our ears

…and his example in our eyes

…showing us the way.

This path is the way we are to live here and now, on the journey in real time between the two mountains, as we put one foot in front of the other.

Our earliest ancestors in the faith, before the were known as Christians, were known as followers of “The Way”

…as in journeying on the way, or the way we are living

…which in the Christian life are the same.

In John’s Gospel the Lord tells us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

This line can be a bit abstract of until you also understand that God is love

…and that Lord is the living visible reality of self-sacrificing love

…a living icon of this

…the living presentation of the unseen God.

So Jesus presents in himself the Way of sacrificial love, the Truth of sacrificial love, and the Life of sacrificial love

…which we are called to live into, in all its implications

…to be transfigured into day by day

…so that as he became one like us we might become, bit by bit, one like him, now and on into eternity.

So these Gospel readings, this tale of two mountains, on the first two Sundays of Lent remind and challenge us…

…to reflect on where we are and how we are doing

…on the ways and means of our salvation

…and what we might need to do in light of the answers.