Lent II

The Second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 22: 1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116; Romans 8: 31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

Saint Augustine said that our hearts are made for God and that we will be forever restless until we rest in God. Did you ever consider that there is also a restlessness in God for us? God is always coming toward us, being revealed, appearing before us. This mysterious occurrence of the transfiguration is one of those intense moments in which God is revealed to us through Jesus. And like many such encounters throughout scripture it is filled unexpectedly with fear, frantic activity, misdirection, and shadows.

Before the three apostles is revealed the fullness of Jesus’ divinity with the great spiritual figures of Moses and Elijah and Peter is babbling away about building tents. What’s that about? Mark even notes, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about Peter is so frightened and confused. It is fear? Does he not want to deal with this and so he misdirects?

It reminds me of people today who are with a friend and all through dinner they allow themselves to be distracted by their phone. A living person is in front of them, yet they yearn for…for a person, a bit of information, the fear of being left out or maybe they don’t even know.

Shadows cover the event – cover the three apostles or is it Jesus, Moses and Elijah who are engulfed in a semi-darkness? The text isn’t even clear. A bodiless voice and then it is over. A storm of divinity that departs as quickly as it arrived.

It reminds me of the resurrection stories we proclaim and listen to on Easter Sunday, semi-darkness in the fog of early morning, earthquakes and flashes of lightening, people running to and fro. The women are so frightened and confused that Mark records they ran from the tomb and told nothing to anyone. And there ends the Gospel of Mark…and they said nothing to anyone.

T. S. Eliot wrote that “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”* It seems humanity also cannot bear very much divinity. Suddenly the divine storm recedes. There is stillness and quiet. We look around and there is Jesus alone.

It is Elijah who encounters God’s presence not in the divine storms of wind, earthquake and fire but in the small whispering voice. It is Mary Magdalene, caught up between her frustration to find the body of Jesus and her tears of mourning, who hears her named gently spoken, “Mary.” She looks up and there is Jesus. [It is the most intimate and tender of encounters in all the scriptures.]

Humanity cannot bear very much divinity. Yet we must encounter each other, God and us, for we are both restless without each other. The spiritual life encompasses both these mysterious and overwhelming experiences of God with those that are very personal and intimate. Though the immensity and awe-filled presence of God is more often than not mediated through one-on-one encounters, a whispered voice or kind gesture, the reading and meditating on a passage from the Bible silently speaking to the soul, in a melody that resonates with the beat of our heart and becomes one within us, a glint of sun, a refreshing rain, the unexpected appearance of a friend, in bread broken and wine poured and shared, in a quiet presence over a cup of coffee, in the folding of towels, the washing of dishes, the watering of house plants, hands held…

The Prayer After Communion on this Second Sunday of Lent is revealing in this manner: “As we receive these glorious mysteries, we make thanksgiving to you, O God, for allowing us while still on earth to be partakers even now of the things of heaven.”

Eliot gives this prayer a poetic rendering in the words he places in the mouth of the martyr to be, Thomas Becket, “I have heard a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper. And I would no longer be denied…” ** Heaven comes to us, is placed in our grasp to calm our restlessness.

It is then that we can listen to the beloved Son of the Father present in the small whispering voice calling out our name. In that is hope. The call of a name, our name, means we are not alone. In this time of pandemic isolation with its Magdalene frustrations, Petrine fears, and Elijian yearnings for God, maybe the transfiguration of Jesus is simply meant to jolt us to the awareness of God’s love and desire to be with us.

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*T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton and the verse-play, Murder in the Cathedral.

**T. S. Eliot, the verse-play, Murder in the Cathedral.