2nd Sunday Lent A - Homily 4

Homily 4 – 2011 

Jesus transfigured – face shining like the sun, even his clothes dazzling from the inner light radiating from him.  A voice from the cloud, that had the disciples falling to the ground overcome with fear.

In so many of the prayers that we use at Mass, the words Lord, almighty, everlasting, infinite, occur constantly.  Yet, later in the Gospel, the Lord, whose face shone like the sun on the mountaintop, would collapse on the ground in Gethsemani, broken, close to despair … and, then, not long afterwards, would be tortured, degraded, utterly dehumanized – dangling helplessly on a cross until he died.  And we believe that this Jesus is the revelation of God.  What does it say of God? How do we hold both truths together?

Some mornings I get out of bed and just feel, spontaneously, like thanking God.  I can drive out here on a morning like this morning, and the sheer beauty of the country has my heart singing in praise to God.  But, then, I can tune in to the TV and be confronted with the relentlessly destructive power of earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, or bushfires.  Sunday night I can sit comfortably in my chair and gaze enthralled by some of Richard Attenborough’s TV documentaries on the striking wonders of the natural world.  Yet the same Richard Attenborough, I think, cannot believe in God, a good God, precisely because of the brutality, the violence and the bloodshed so evident, indeed, so necessary, in that marvellous natural world.

If I sometimes can’t stop myself from spontaneously thanking and praising God, why do I not, at other times, if I am consistent, also shake my fist at God and curse God?

My feelings, of course, have their own life.  They come automatically.  What I think and how I choose are something different.  There, I am in some sort of control.  I am happy that the good things of this world invite me to raise my spirit to the God who is good.  They become sacraments of the presence of God, though I do not necessarily think that God has turned on a good day specifically for me – or for anyone else.  And, over time, the bad things of the world have become occasion for me to ask: How is God empowering me at this moment to respond in ways that help me to mature, to grow wiser and even to live more richly?  Jesus was never so fully human, after all, than when he hung on the cross.

In our world that obviously evolves, (and is still evolving), according to its own dynamics and laws, does God intervene, or not intervene?  To my mind, which stance would better highlight the infinite power of God? intervening, pulling the strings, as it were? or, not pulling any strings, letting things happen, but empowering us humans to grow and to mature in the midst of whatever happens to us?

We are so used to seeing the crucifix that sometimes we don’t see it.  Our faith leads us to hold that the one hanging degraded and helpless on the cross is the infinite God.  That surely challenges any instinctive, reflex, or simplistic sense of God.  The never-ending journey into Mystery continues.