A homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 5, 2023
Gn 12:1-4a, 2 Tm 1:8b-10, Mt 17:1-9
Years ago, when I was on a religious retreat, our main speaker became deeply theological and clearly logical on the significance of the voice from the clouds as chronicled in today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew.
Addressing the Apostles on the mountain with Jesus, the voice of God said:
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
Our discussion leader at the retreat reminded us that, as baptized children of God, we have become siblings of the transfigured, glorious Jesus, and we were anointed priests, prophets and monarchs just as he was.
So, the speaker asked us, shouldn’t that mean God is well pleased with us, too? Or at least that God wants to be?
Hmmm…
OK, but how do we get there? How do we know what God wants us to do and wants us to be?
God did give us the Ten Commandments, but they’re loaded heavily with “Thou shalt not.” And it takes a bit of work to look at those and figure out, if we’re shalt not doing bad stuff, then what good things shalt we be doing?
Fortunately for us, Jesus simplified the Ten into Two: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
Aha.
A life plan. We should listen to it. We must listen: God said so. It’s right there in the Gospel.
The popular refrain reminds us that “God don’t make no junk.” Our Scriptures and traditions since time immemorial tell us that God created us in his image and likeness. Anyone who ever has greeted us with “Namaste” was paying respect to the divine spark within us. (It doesn’t mean “Go in peace, yoga is over.”)
We are not junk; far from it. Not a single one of us who lives now, ever lived or ever will live could possibly be junk. No way.
We each are unique, with mortal bodies and immortal souls full of unique gifts from God, talents and skills and creativity that should never be hidden under a bushel basket, which themselves are pretty hard to find these days.
No one else will ever be us, living our lives in our times in our places, each of us experiencing our corner of the world in our unique way.
For this, we are thankful, to the cores of our beings.
And I’ve long believed that the best way to show gratitude for a gift is to use it and take care of it.
Shine up the bicycle and oil its chain. Never leave it out in the rain or in the middle of the driveway. Go for a ride often, even daily if possible.
Massage mink oil into the baseball glove and shape the pocket in the webbing. Play catch with a friend and snag high fly balls in the championship game.
Tune the guitar or piano and practice and play.
Sharpen our listening skills and spend time with someone who needs to unburden.
And ever so much more, all according to who we are. Every random act of kindness paid forward gives God a good reason to be pleased with us.
By dazzling us through the Transfiguration, God reinforces to us easily amazed humans that every word spoken by the Word himself keeps us on the right path and draws us closer to our eternal rewards while we improve Creation and make better the lives of our fellow spiritual pilgrims. Our Lenten journey doubly reinforces this.
We know what we need to do, each in our own way, each with our unique gifts of words or actions or both. We want God to be pleased with us.
And God wants to be, too.
