Transformation

Feast of the Transfiguration

Cycle B

It really depends upon your point of view, doesn’t it?

Have you ever had your life changed because you suddenly saw things a bit differently? Many times we get caught up in the ordinary of our everyday lives and miss the truth of what’s going on around us.

Steven Covey of Franklin Covey fame and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People tells of an experience he had on a New York subway one Sunday morning. He says that people were sitting quietly. Some were reading newspapers, some were dozing, others were simply contemplating with their eyes closed. It was a rather peaceful, calm scene. At one stop a man and his children entered the car. The children were soon yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people’s newspapers. It was all very disturbing and yet the father just sat there next to him and did nothing. It was not difficult to feel irritated. Steve could not believe the man could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild and do nothing about it. It was easy to see that everyone else in the car was annoyed as well. So finally, with what he thought was admirable restraint and patience, Steve said to the man, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little bit more?” The man lifted his gaze as if coming out of a dream and said, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.”

Steve says, “Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? Suddenly I saw things differently. Because I saw differently, I felt differently. I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior. My heart was filled with this man’s pain. Feelings of compassion and sympathy flowed freely. ‘Your wife just died? Oh, I’m so sorry! Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?’”

That was Steven Covey’s moment of transfiguration, a moment of revelation that sustained him in a difficult situation. Peter, James and John had the vision of Jesus’ transfiguration to sustain them during the difficult times to come. The next time Jesus took the three of them off with him by themselves was in the Garden of Gethsemanie. But what about us? After all, we could put up with an awful lot if we had a remembered moment of glory to sustain us, a clear indication of who Jesus really is, some sign that when it was all over, everything would be all right. What’s our transfiguration moment?

To be transformed is to be changed. To be transfigured is to see things differently, as they really are. Peter couldn’t see clearly up there on the mountain. But over time, with a lot of prayer, pondering, suffering and preaching the good news, he came to see Jesus for who he really is. Jesus didn’t change. Peter’s understanding did. Because he saw differently, he felt differently, and because he felt differently, he behaved differently.

And how Peter had changed from the time of this gospel account until he wrote his letters decades later! In the gospel, he’s really scared. He falls down to the ground in fear, and says some pretty silly things. He didn’t really know what to say, he didn’t understand what was happening before him.

The Peter we hear in his second letter is very different. Gone is the simple fisherman from Capernaum. Gone is the rough man unsure of himself. He is calm, confident, and collected. He is no longer the frightened disciple, he has become the leader. He has been bringing others to knowledge of Jesus, and he is reassuring them that his message is true. Something happened to him, and James and John as well, after they saw Jesus differently, after they saw him for who he truly is, that changed the very direction of their lives.

And if you thought it scared Peter to see Jesus as he really was, how do you think it made him feel as he himself was transfigured? It can be frightening to learn who you really are, who you are called to be for the world. Peter had come to know what it means to be truly human. To be truly human is to be like God. And Peter saw what that God was doing. He was teaching, preaching, working tirelessly to bring the gospel to the people. Desperate to have his children truly know him for who he was. He was putting his life on the line daily, and he finally lost that life in a horrible way.

Is that what was in store for Peter if he lived out his true humanity? Is that what’s in store for all of us? Peter didn’t know. But he, James and John had a decision to make. They could take their newfound knowledge of Jesus and continue to follow him, or they could go away, back to their livelihoods. Or worse yet, they could drift off to the fringes of his followers, simply tagging along without taking on any of the responsibilities of discipleship.

On a more ordinary note, Steven Covey also had a choice to make that Sunday morning. He could have hid in his embarrassment and just sat there and said nothing, done nothing. He could have gone on with his life without reaching out to a family in pain, but he chose to try to comfort them instead. We don’t know how the story ends, what happened to that man and his children, whether they were able to cope with their loss. But we do know that that incident changed Steve Covey so much so that he remembers it and recounts it over and over again. It transfigured him.

We all have the same decision to make. Sooner or later we’ll be hit with the realization of who Jesus really is in our lives, and we’ll have to decide what to do next. That realization might be found in a passage of scripture, it may be found here at Mass, or during a serious illness or family crisis. It may be a simple acceptance that grows out of many years of quietly walking with the Lord. But our lives will transfigured. And we can either continue in our old ways of living, we can drift off to the fringes of the community without taking on the added responsibilities that discipleship brings, or we can embrace those responsibilities and reach out to others as the Master did.

Unbelievable

1^st Sunday of Lent

Cycle B

Gn 9:8-15

1Pt 3:18-22

Mk1:12-15

Have you ever thought of what the odds are against you being here?

Harvard Law School blogger Ali Binazir produced a “probability chart” a couple of months ago contemplating this very question. In the chart, Binazir calculates just how improbable it was that the right sperm from your father hooked up with the right egg produced by your mother. By his estimate, it’s about one chance in 400 quadrillion. And that’s not all. To even get to that stage, all of your ancestors, going all the way back to the beginning of life on earth, had to survive to reproductive age. Multiplying the string of probabilities together, he concludes that the odds of your existence are an astronomical one in 10^2,685.000. That’s a ten with two million six hundred eighty-five thousand zeros after it. Enough zeros to fill 11 250-page books.

The string is very thin indeed. There’s the probability of one particular boy meeting one particular girl, then the chance that they actually talk to one another, then the chances of that turning into another meeting, then that meeting turning into a long term relationship, one that lasted long enough to result in offspring. The chances of your parents’ meeting resulting in marriage and kids is about 1 in 2000. The combined probability of all those events occurring is around 1 in 40 million.

When you get into the math of that one specific sperm with half your name on it hitting that one egg with half your name on it you come up with odds of 1 in 400 quadrillion. The right sperm also had to meet the right egg to create your grandparents. Otherwise they’d be different people, and so would their children, who would then have had children who were similar to you but not quite you.

This is also true of your grandparents’ parents, and their grandparents, and so on till the beginning of human time. If even once the wrong sperm met the wrong egg, you would not be sitting here daydreaming and wondering when I will get to the point.

Now multiply that by the billions of souls that have inhabited the earth and it blows your mind. Never mind the improbability that a planet could evolve out of the entire universe that could sustain life, not to mention intelligent life, and it’s time to quit.

So, you’re pretty special, aren’t you? You are not random. God willed you into being. Unbelievable. Even though the odds were stacked against you, God has known you since before you were conceived. He knew who you were going to be before he created Adam and Eve. He knew how much you would love him and how much you would turn from him, yet he willed you into existence anyway. Unbelievable. And the Good News is that he came down from heaven to redeem you, and he knew he would do so before he created the universe.

That’s pretty good news.

Yet that good news itself is unbelievable. Not because it is impossible but because we find it to be improbable. If it’s hard to believe in the improbability of our own existence it is even harder to believe that God would care so much for us. Why does he care that much for such insignificant creatures? What have we done to deserve this? But then again, why wouldn’t He; it took a lot of work to get you here.

Jesus says today to repent and believe the Good News. That good news is that the kingdom of God is at hand. God is here, now, in this place, and He’s here just for you. Throughout all of time the plan has been in place. And that plan is for you to be with him. All we have to do is turn from the things that keep us from accepting his love.

Repent and believe in the gospel. The two things go together.

We don’t need to repent in order to be worthy of the gospel; the gospel is what it is no matter what we do. We need to repent in order to believe in it. When we sin we are cut off from God and we feel unworthy of His love. Sin is like a wall that encloses us so that we feel completely worthless. Sin blinds us to the mercy of the gospel. How could the good news be for me since I am such a loser? I can never seem to get it right. I keep falling back on my old ways. We need to repent because then we will be in right relationship with God and the gospel will make sense to us. Repentance opens our eyes to the wonderfulness of God’s plan for us.

God has raised us up to the level of his equal, in a way. We know that we will never be equal to God, but he chooses to treat us that way. We hear today that God made a covenant with Noah and his descendants that he would never send another flood to destroy life on earth. We hear that word “covenant” at every Mass, yet I don’t think we truly understand what it means. We have lots of contracts today, but not many covenants. A covenant is not just an agreement, not just a contract. A contract usually is made between unequal parties, with the purpose of protecting the parties in case something bad happens. A covenant is much more. First, it is made between equals, and it is much more open-ended. It is simple. You do this and I will do that. That is why we call marriage a covenant. Because it is between equals and doesn’t try to guard against any eventuality. It is open-ended and both parties promise to be faithful to the covenant upon pain of serious consequences.

When God made a covenant with Noah, he raised Noah and his descendants to the level of equals. That covenant was renewed with Moses, then with King David and the Israelites, then finally in Jesus the covenant was made eternal. No more would it have to be renewed because it is forever. Whenever a covenant was made the parties would kill an offering of a lamb or a bull or whatever, then they would cut the carcass in half and walk between the two pieces, signifying that if either one broke the covenant that is what would happen to him. With Jesus no offering was needed because He himself was the final perfect sacrifice.

Repent and believe. Repent so you can believe. This lent remove all the obstacles you have put up to God’s love. Your existence is not random, don’t let your lent be random. Clear the decks and be faithful to your part of the covenant. Just as a covenant has severe consequences for anyone who breaks it, it also has amazing blessings for those who keep it.

Jesus Loves Religion

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle B

Jesus Loves Religion

If I hear one more person say they’re spiritual but not religious I’m going to scream.

23-year old Jefferson Bethke posted a rap video on You Tube a couple of weeks ago entitled “Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus”. In it he makes the case that religion is destructive to the message of Jesus. He says that religion either ends in pride or despair. Pride that you have all the answers and others don’t or despair that you can never live up to all the requirements for salvation religion places upon you. He says that religion is man-centered, Jesus is God-centered. Like many people these days, he thinks that we can love Jesus without the burden of religion.

It must have struck a chord because it received over ten million hits in one week. As of this morning there have been over 17 million hits. Of those who commented, five times more agreed with Jefferson than disagreed. I’m not going to get into a lengthly refutation of his position here. You can check out his video yourself, and if you like you can buy one of his t-shirts. But I am interested in the response he received, because I have been hearing people take similar positions for a long time now, especially among our young people, and it is disturbing.

People like Jesus, or who they think Jesus is. They like his nice teachings, all about loving your neighbor, feeding the poor, let the little children come to me. Jesus is welcoming, loving, and approachable. Following this image of Jesus is easy, because there really are no challenges in doing so. We all think we’re good people. We all try to love our neighbor, give to the less fortunate, and think we love God. It’s the religion part that we don’t like, because sometimes religion can be challenging.

I think one reason people feel this way is that they have no real understanding of what religion is. Jefferson Bethke has it exactly backwards. Religion is not man- centered, it’s God-centered, and Jesus is not God-centered, he’s man-centered. Religion is God-centered because it focuses us on the Almighty, and yes, God does place certain requirements on us. If Jesus wasn’t man-centered than why would he have bothered to come down here in the first place to suffer and die for us?

We are all given faith as a gift to some degree or other. In fact, if God did not give us faith we would have no way of believing there even is a God. Religion is the way we put that faith into action. Archbishop Timothy Dolan from New York said in his blog this week, “We Catholics have always believed that God chooses us and gives us the supernatural gift of faith. It’s not that we decide our faith. You bet, we freely decide how firmly and generously we will live out our faith, but we are “born into” a Church. Faith is a gift from God given us on the day of our baptism into His Church.” As Christians we all are called to not just believe but to act upon that belief.

Action. That’s the part about Jesus people are uncomfortable with. We don’t hear them talking much about the challenging teachings of Jesus. “I have not come to bring peace but division.” “Father will be pit against son and son against father.” “They will hate you and persecute you because of me.” “If you are my disciple you must take up your cross daily and follow me.” Jesus said that if you follow him you will be hated, despised, persecuted, and even killed, just as he was. If you don’t believe this is true, post something about abortion on Facebook and see the comments. Religion is hated because it causes us to actually live the faith we profess in Jesus. The image some people have of Jesus is too easy. Religion can be hard.

You cannot separate Jesus from the Church. You cannot separate the Church from Jesus. Last Wednesday we celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. You may remember the story. Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest the Christians there and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial. On the way he was startled by a bright light that knocked him to the ground and blinded him. He heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, sir? Saul asked. “I am Jesus, who you are persecuting.” Jesus didn’t say, “I am Jesus, whose followers you are persecuting.” He said, “you are persecuting me.” Jesus also told Simon Peter, “You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church.” He said, “I will not leave you orphans”, and “I will be with you until the end of the age”.

He promised to send the Holy Spirit upon his church so that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. He lives on in his church. We are Jesus to the world today. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus by yourself. He left a group of people behind to spread his good news, not individuals. Saying you love Jesus outside the community is very self-centered, not God-centered. It is exactly within religion that we are able to know and love Jesus. How else could we learn about him? By ourselves? Without it you get some really weird ideas and post them on You Tube.

St. Mark says today, “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. A new teaching with authority.” What were the scribes teaching? The Law of Moses, which had been handed down to them through the centuries. Moses was a great prophet, but he was not the author of his teachings. In Deuteronomy today God tells Moses that he will send another prophet in his place, one with authority. Jesus was that prophet. Jesus is the author of the teaching, and so of course he had the authority to preach it. Author and authority have the same root.

Say you wanted to take a college course on a subject. Would you just go into the classroom and be handed a textbook to read, or would it better to have someone teach it to you, too? And would it be even better if the professor had actually written the textbook? Of course it would. Then why do people think they can simply sit down with the Bible and learn about how to live as a disciple? Why not go to someone with authority, someone who actually wrote the book? Jesus said he would be present in his church for all time. We don’t make this stuff up on our own. We believe that when we hand on the teachings of the apostles accurately we cannot make a mistake. Our teaching has authority, because we are guided by the Holy Spirit.

Sounds conceited? Actually, it’s the opposite. We remove ourselves from the equation. We don’t make changes here or there on a whim. We humbly follow the apostolic teachings without deviation because we know that we are not the author.

We don’t like authority. It smacks of rules and regulations. We don’t like to be told what to do. But that’s not how Jesus taught. His authority was not about sticking to the law. He did not simply repeat what Moses said and demand that his disciples stick to the letter of the law. He had certainty and confidence in the truth of what he was saying because he is that truth. We can all claim authority in our own areas of expertise. We are Jesus’ area of expertise. He knows the subject of us so intimately because he authored us. And so of course he would teach with authority. That’s the authority he endowed his apostles with. That’s the authority the Church has taught with for two thousand years. That is the authority he has endowed us with today.