2nd Sunday Lent A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2005 

At Jesus’ baptism the voice had said: This is my son, the beloved, my favour rests on him.  This time, the same voice adds: Listen to him.

Listen to what?  Jesus had just previously revealed to his disciples his pending condemnation and death in Jerusalem at the hands of the religious authorities.  Peter had argued with him for his negative thinking, and Jesus had heard in Peter’s comment the temptation of the Satan whom he had encountered in the wilderness.  Get behind me, Satan had been his reaction to Peter.  Jesus had immediately gone on to say that his disciples needed to prepare themselves for the same fate as he, for death: Take up your cross and follow me.

Matthew says nothing about how the general disciples took that news, but it seems that they went into denial – they couldn’t hear it, because Jesus came back to the same point at least two more times; and still, when eventually he was arrested, they couldn’t cope with the shock, and fled.  How do we cope with that message? Do we really listen to what he was saying? to what he was effectively choosing?

Matthew, following Mark, feels it necessary to make the issues clear: he places the story of Peter, James and John’s mountain-top experience immediately after this talk of Jesus’ death, and theirs.  The story of the Transfiguration makes it clear that Jesus is unique.  He is obviously not a helpless victim, unable to help himself.  And God’s voice from the cloud commands them to Listen!

Let’s look again at what had Jesus told them: That he would be branded as evil: as destroyer of the nation, of the faith of the people.  He would be branded as such by the official leaders and representatives of the nation, the Sanhedrin, the official governing body of elders, chief priests and scribes.  They would eliminate him to save the nation, to save the faith.  They would kill him.  Their seething communal violence would focus on him and crush him.

Jesus would let it happen, not because he was unable to stop it or to escape it.  His chosen behaviour would indeed provoke it – not for the sake of provoking it – but as the consequence of his choosing to continue acting from his own integrity.  He would not buy their accusations that he was guilty.  He would continue to protest the truth of his message and of his mission.

Why did he choose to continue his journey to Jerusalem and to death?  Because he saw that his own response was the only way to save the world.  He would absorb in his own self the violence of the world, the sin, the untruth, the fear in the hearts of people, the resistance to change, to repentance and conversion.  He would absorb it by love, by integrity, by forgiveness.  And in the process, he would show it precisely, clearly, for what it was.

Wonderful!  The catch is that he directs his disciples to do the same: to meet the violence, untruth, fear and sin of the world with integrity and love – and by so doing to break, once and for all, the mindless cycle of interpersonal violence that is the essence of sin… and that has been the constant thread of history.  Most of us, however, are not likely to face any kangaroo court.  Our encounters with violence, untruth and the sin of the world often take place much less dramatically, simply in the myriad interactions of our day: at work, at home, in the local community and in the broader stage of national and international politics (where we are the voice of public opinion and occasional voters); perhaps even in our Church communities.

We listen to the voice from the cloud: He is God’s son whom God wants us to listen to carefully.  We take God’s word to heart.  We struggle with it; we’re frightened, we’re uncertain that it will work.  So were the original disciples.  But the words continue to echo in our heads: This is my son, the beloved.  My favour rests on him.  Listen to him! 

It is on the basis of this faith that the Church is different from so many of our contemporaries.  That is why the Church is necessary to our world; why we are necessary to our world.