"This is my beloved Son, listen to him"
Mark 9: 2-10
The Word: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022821.cfm
This second Sunday of Lent brings to our minds a risky test that God offered to Abraham. Neither God nor Abraham knew how this would turn out in the sense that God awaited Abraham’s response to his disturbing request: “Take you son, Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and . . . offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.” This was not metaphorical language but what God was requesting of Abraham he literally meant. God requests Abraham to do what no parent would ever imagine: God was in essence asking Abraham to return to him what he had given, a son, and to offer that son as a sacrifice; to offer his life as a holocaust, a burnt offering! I find it interesting that our Jewish brothers and sisters refer to the horrifying experience of the Nazi death camps as “The Holocaust,” an offering of the innocent.
God promised the elderly Abraham and Sarah to have a
child, who was named Isaac, now pushes that answered prayer even farther. So God
risks the relationship he has built with Abraham and while he sees him as a
faithful follower, he now desires to offer him an extreme test. God calls to
Abraham by name and he immediately responds, “Here I am!” Abraham eagerly
desires to answer God’s call.
“Abraham, how faithful can you be; how far will your obedience go; how much are you willing to sacrifice for me?” All of this is implied from God in this dramatic story.
God calls, Abraham answers, God requests and Abraham does
not question nor is repulsed yet says nothing in the story. He obeys God’s
request without question. Of course it
was all a test as we hear in the first line of today’s reading. But, a risky one for God might have lost
Abraham all together over this – but he did not.
Now we naturally pull back from such an outrageous
expectation on the part of God. It flies
in the face of God’s mercy and love. In
art we often see Abraham depicted as an old man and his Isaac shown to be
nothing more than maybe ten years old.
But, in Jewish tradition Isaac is explained as around 25
– 30 yrs old. So, it makes the request
of God even more challenging. How might
Abraham sacrifice his adult son? In the Jewish view we see Isaac himself as
cooperating with God’s request. He is
willing to be offered as a sacrifice so that his will and that of his father
would be one. Isaac as well desires to obey the Lord’s command fully, as
extreme as it might be. To offer his
life out of obedience to anything that God would ask. In this moving story, both Abraham and Isaac
are presented so devoted to God, so obedient and faithful that they would give
up everything at God’s command. The story of total surrender is timely in the
Lenten season as we see its parallel in the Gospel.
In Mark the voice of another Father who offered his own Son in
sacrifice where both the Father and the Son were of the same mind is heard by the startled three disciples on the mountain where Jesus
had called them: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him.”
Abraham and Isaac foreshadow the even greater sacrifice
of Jesus on the cross who went willingly to that sacrifice and carried out his
own Father’s will for the salvation of humanity. Our second reading from Romans
reminds us: "He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us
all” compels us to believe that, as Paul states, God is truly “for us.”
In the Gospel story of the transfiguration Jesus appears
in divine glory with Moses and Elijah and prepares his Peter, James and John for
the scandal of the cross. How faithful
would they be even after seeing the full truth of who he is? We know their
loyalty and that of the other nine was indeed fragile at that time. But God did
not abandon them or the Church he had founded despite our frail attempts. He
offers mercy to us.
Both the story of Abraham and the vision of the
transfiguration of Jesus are vivid biblical events of faith and trust and an
example to us in this season of personal renewal and conversion that may test
our faith, or lack thereof. God sent his Son in our nature who sacrificed himself out of
overwhelming love for the salvation of humanity; a truth we cannot ignore.
So in Lent, prayer, fasting and offering acts of charity
towards others are the classic ways for us to prepare for the Lord’s sacrifice
but also remind us of our ultimate destiny.
That we too must sacrifice ourselves ultimately at the end of this life
and will need to let go of everything and surrender ourselves to God’s
extravagant love and mercy.
As God said to Abraham he says to us: “How much do you
love me? How much are you willing to
give to me for all that I have done for you?”
Lent may be a time to examine our own comforts and our resistance to
going beyond the expected. It might be a
time to adopt a more sacrificial lifestyle out of love for God. All of this can take a variety of forms. Although the story of Abraham and Isaac is
extreme, we can learn the fundamental lesson of our call to fidelity and
sacrifice in our Christian lives.
Our gathering at the Eucharist is the fruit of Jesus’
obedience to his Father’s will. He gave
his life for us and now offers his body and blood as our food in this journey
of life and tests our loyalty to him. May
the grace of this season overwhelm us with confidence in the word of God made
flesh as we too surrender our very selves with an Abrahamic obedience.
For after he had told the
disciples of his coming Death on the holy mountain
he manifested to them his glory,
to show, even by the testimony
of the law and the prophets,
that the Passion leads to the
glory of the Resurrection.
(Preface of 2nd Sunday of Lent)
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