Today’s readers of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac have an advantage that Abraham didn’t have—we know how the story will turn out. For the Father of Faith, however, this was a moment of conversion to a new way of understanding God. As the text says, “God wished to try Abraham.” In that time and in that place, the gods were believed to demand human sacrifice; the supreme sacrifice was that of the first born. For Abraham, a man of faith, God’s request would not have appeared to have been all that strange, although it was a contradiction —Isaac, was after all, the child of God’s promise.

 

What was it that God was up to? It seems that this trial was intended to shape Abraham, to form in a critical way his relationship with God. God wanted Abraham to leave behind a religious faith that worshipped gods who demanded the sacrifice of sons. God is the God of life, and therefore would not accept the sacrifice of human beings. Faith and obedience to the God of Life would save Abraham’s life as well as the lives of the rest of his clan, a life that would be blessed and enlarged until it was as “numerous as the stars of the sky.”

 

In the second reading, Paul gifts us with a lovely hymn that expresses the infinite nature of the love of God for us, a love proven in God’s most precious gift of his own Son. This love frees us from those who would condemn us; this death of God’s son frees us once and for all from eternal death. With such a love in the balance, we need not fear anything; we can only celebrate a boundless hope in what is to come. We remember that, “if God is for us, who can stand against us?”

 

The Gospel text for today features Jesus’ message to his disciples of his passion and death. Jesus’ transfiguration, on the other hand, is his startling announcement that death is not the final word: that he will be the Resurrected One. One should note that the transformation of Jesus only affected his clothing, meaning that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. What changes are the moments of revelation.

 

 

Jesus invites three of the disciples to be his companions and witnesses to this experience, a sign of the importance of the community in the Christian experience. The place is “a high mountain” a privileged place for God’s revelations. The appearances of Moses and Elijah confirm the arrival of the Reign of God announced by Jesus, for the Jewish tradition taught that the presence of these two prophets would mean the beginning of the end of time. Moreover, Moses represents the Law, and Elijah the Prophets. As they leave, only Jesus remains behind, announcing thusly the end of the ancient covenant and the beginning of the new order, the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s will.

 

Before such beauty, Peter speaks for the other disciples and proposes that they all stay right there on that mountaintop. He does not seem to know what he is saying, in wanting to stay with the ancient covenant, but he certainly would like to separate the suffering of the cross from the resurrection. Peter is seeking to flee from the conflict; thus he prefers Tabor to Calvary, the mountain to Jerusalem. By all appearances the content of Jesus’ message makes little sense: the announcement that the Reign of God would be brought in through suffering and death. But these are the ways of God.

 

A Christian life, a life lived within the realities of the Reign of God, goes through these same contradictions. Don’t we all wish as does Peter, to stay on the mountaintop, to prolong the moments of felicity for as long as we can? How hard it is for us to follow Jesus to Jerusalem, to help him carry the cross. This by no means should be taken to mean that Christians were born in order to suffer. To the contrary, we are to be signs of life, and life lived in abundant hope. But it is precisely in those dark, hard moments, when we can find no meaning, no escape, no sense in life, when the doors that would lead us into the light are locked tight against us. It is in these moments when we are called to pull out the master key, that key which we call hope, so that the work of the Reign of God might continue. This master key is the voice of the Lord, whom, daily reminds us to be attentive to the voice of his beloved Son, the one who speaks to us through the poor and the needy, through the one who is abandoned, who has been wasted by life, in those who are drowning in the vast and troubling sea of consumerism, passivism and indifference.

 

After having heard God’s voice, the disciples look around and discover now that they are alone with Jesus. He is the only light that will continue to illuminate the way as they descend the mountain and continue on their way to Jerusalem. How do we survive those moments when darkness threatens to overcome our families and our communities? How do we make our way through the murkiness of a world enveloped in injustice, hatred, and violence, if not holding fast by our Light, Jesus the Christ, the one who remains faithful to God through the Passion all the way until Easter morning? The silence that Jesus demands of his disciples is a way of saying that all of these happenings that they have witnessed will only be fully understandable after the Resurrection. Only then will they speak of what they had seen and heard. A Good News indeed, one that we continue to spread, in faith and in joy, with our own words and our own lives.

 

For personal consideration:

Just how deep is my faith in the word of God? How do I react when the word of God complicates my life? Abraham did not keep back from God even his own Son. This was the measure of the commitment that the promise of life demanded of him. Am I capable of offering all to God?

 

At this point in my life am I in need of coming to a stop-- much like a visit to mount Tabor-- so that I can see how my life is being transformed, so that I might transform my own life?

 

We joyously passed through life moving toward the glorious meeting with the resurrected one. Am I willing to continue this journey allow it will pass for the cross through service for others demanding a life given for others? Or at this point what I rather stay on Mount Tabor, leaving aside the walk to Calvary?

 

For the groups consideration

 

Abraham's faith was a belief against all evidence-- would we call this blind obedience? In reality the scripture speaks of a symbol that should not be taken literally. Understanding this, how do we understand the relationship between faith and reason? Can faith at times go against commonsense?

 

The Gospel of the Transfiguration can be misunderstood if we imagine that Jesus knew, all along, what his fate would be-- that he had God's knowledge of where his life would lead him, that his own life was simply a matter of going through the motions. What did Jesus understand on Mount Tabor?

 

Abraham is not “our” father in faith-- he is the father of three faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim. Why then is it so hard for these three faiths to get along? Indeed what is the relationship in my own community with the Jews and the Muslims in my own city?

 

For the Prayer of the Faithful:

 

For the Church, that in the midst of a world filled with anguish, we always be a sign of hope capable of transforming human existence, Let us pray to the Lord.

 

For all people, that we might find meaning in our lives working to build a new world, let us pray to the Lord.

 

For all those who suffer injustice, oppression and loneliness, that they might find sisters and brothers who change that reality with a helping hand, let us pray to the Lord.

 

For the uncommitted that they might discover the urgency of the need to love, let us pray to the Lord.

 

For our community that we might always be faithful to Jesus, the one whom the Father resurrected from the dead, that we might be strong in the hope of one day meeting this Christ face-to-face in glory, let us pray to the Lord

 

Let us pray

 O God our Father, you who had invited us to listen to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ; open our hearts so that we might know how to receive your word with tenderness and trust, that we know how to put it to work so that we might one day be able to participate in the fullness of the happiness of your glory. We asked this in the name of Jesus Christ, our brother and your beloved Son, Amen.