Deacon Cornell’s Homily

All three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, use the Transfiguration story to make a connection between the glory of the risen Christ and the death of Jesus on the cross. All three of the Gospels put the Transfiguration about a week after Jesus first tries to explain to the disciples that the journey they are on will end in his death at the hands of the leaders in Jerusalem. And then as they are coming down from the mountain, Jesus urges Peter, James, and John to keep quiet about what they have seen until after the Resurrection, because there is no way to fully understand the glory without understanding his death on the cross. Throughout the Gospels, and especially in Mark's gospel, Jesus often tells those who have witnessed his power to keep quiet about it. The evangelists use this to remind us that we really can't understand who Jesus is, and who we are called to be, by just looking at his miracles or the vision of the transfiguration. We must also understand his self emptying in his suffering and death.

This link between glory and suffering goes both ways. In the midst of pain and suffering, we sometimes need a vision of what is beyond that suffering to sustain us. Many of the commentaries state that Jesus shared the Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John so that they would be able to weather the darkness of the crucifixion. I suggest that there is more to it than that. After all Peter and James still ran away from the garden of Gesthemani, and all of them, even John, shut themselves up in fear after Jesus was killed. I suggest that it was Jesus who humanly needed the vision of the glory of his relationship with the Father to sustain him in his coming suffering.

It is not that Christians are masochists, looking for pain so that they can achieve glory. First of all, anyone who has lived for even a short time knows that you don't have to go looking for pain or suffering. They find us just fine by themselves. More importantly, no matter how much suffering and pain we go through, it doesn't earn us glory. That glory is a complete gift from God that cannot be earned. And the suffering and pain is really not the point; what allows us to receive these wonderful blessings from God is our giving ourselves over completely to God's plan.

Our salvation history is full of stories of people who achieve glory only after wholeheartedly responding to God’s call. Our first reading is one of these stories. Abraham does not even hold back his precious son Isaac, trusting that somehow God will fulfill his promise to bless Abraham with countless descendents through Isaac. And we sit here as the spiritual descendents of Abraham, 4000 years later, as testimony to God's fulfillment of that promise. The ultimate example of giving oneself to God is Jesus. Jesus gives everything, even his human life to death on a cross, and so God raises him so that he sits at God's right hand in heaven.

There is something about our human nature that keeps us from fully committing ourselves to God. Instead we try what C. S. Lewis called the taxpayer approach to faith. This is where we citizens pay our taxes but hope we will have enough left over so that we can do what we want. In fact, we go to great lengths to make sure that we pay the minimum tax so that we maximize what is left over. While this may be a sound approach for taxes, it is a strategy that is sure to fail in our faith. The big difference between paying taxes and having faith is that our reward in faith is not having something left over from the fruits of our labors. Our reward in faith is pure gift from God. It is not our works but God, through his Son Jesus, who glorifies us. We can’t earn that no matter how hard we try or how much we suffer. But the good news is that the graciousness of God is boundless.

But like the apostles, we are sometimes so overcome by the trouble in which we find ourselves that we don’t even see the glimpses of glory that God offers us in our own lives. The transfiguration story reminds us that we are not fundamentally a people of suffering and pain. Even in the midst of Lent, we are primarily an Alleluia people. Lent is a time to renew ourselves, to strip away the selfishness and self-centeredness so that we can completely surrender ourselves to God's plan, trusting fully that God will fulfill his promise to us that we will share in the glory of the risen Chrst, that God will transfigure us to become dazzling lights that drive out some of the darkness of our world, and we will say with Peter, "It is good that we are here."

homily index