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"Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, Lent is a time for deserts just as much as mountain tops--for the lessons to be learned from exile in dry and parched places, and those from theophany received in the high mist of cloud and vast vista. Jesus does many marvels on mountainsides that have shaped the very foundations of our life and self-understanding as stumbling disciples and as wounded communities of faith. Jesus gives us The Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5.1) and prayer (Matt 14.23), cures and feeds the 4,000 (Matt 15.29-38), is transfigured (Matt 17.1-9), names his twelve apostles (Luke 6.12-16), and gives the Eleven the final commission to preach to and baptize the nations (Matt 28.16-20). All that we must do to be faithful is shown to us from the mountainsides and matured in our Lenten desert journey with each cycle of the year. In the journey of Jesus and his inner circle to the top of the mountain remembered this day we see and hear, not the solitary encounter of Moses with Yahweh revealing the end of the bondage of the Hebrews or the insertion into human history of the Ten Commandments, nor even of Isaiah's prophetic vision of the Mountain of God, this Zion, upon which the Temple will be given its foundation. Rather, we are sharers in the revelation of the Beloved Son in our midst and the Fathers' new and only command, "Listen to him." Like Peter, and the brothers James and John, we encounter this profound revelation of truth as the inner circle of the Lord, his disciples, his Body in the world: "Lord, it is good that we are here." Some of us would like to be like Peter, tempted to stay and hold on to the fleeting glory and be practical about it, building monuments to the facts. Yet we know that we must come down from the mountain and walk the journey towards an unwelcoming Jerusalem in the days ahead - with no one to tell of the glory we have seen until the journey is complete. We don't have the privilege of tent making for the glory of God - we have done that far too much in the history of the Western Christian world. We do however have the ministry of reconciliation that comes from listening to the Lord as we are commanded and knowing the touch of the Lord that is our strength - to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, touch the outcast, care for the lonely, encourage the discouraged and indeed, change the very systems of oppression that divide us from the "least of our sisters and brothers" down the pew, across the street, in the depths of Africa or any inner city we choose. St. Francis of Assisi challenged his followers over eight centuries ago in their formation as brothers with the poor, "Let it be your privilege to have no privilege." We have no privilege as the inner circle of the Lord's disciples when confronted with the violence of poverty and death-dealing systems that keep our sisters and brothers beyond human dignity and the right to the means of life itself. Nor do we as the Church or as a nation have the privilege of blinding ourselves to the poverty of our insecurity, foreign policy, ideologies of war in the face of the ideologies of terror, or even the global capitalism of have and have nots. If we truly listen to the Lord and to the admonishment of St. Francis then we must turn our perceptions and attitudes up-side-down and inside-out. In taking on this Lenten journey, there is no in between for any of us. If we do indeed pray with passion for the touch of the Lord in our lives then we must pray too just as passionately for the grace to follow him down that mountain into the heart of the human condition and endure the temptations of privilege - listening to the sacred invitation to surrender our very selves for the sake of the life of the other. Why else would it be penitential or fitting to fast, pray or give alms from our substance and not our excess - if not to be drawn outside ourselves into another? If not to recognize in our privileged stations in life a different and irreconcilable hunger and thirst for justice named as mine and yours and ours - because we can do no other? We are the poor, each in our own way. We live with the violence of poverty and sadly count ourselves blessed if we are numb to it - just for awhile until we get ourselves together and not feel so poor ourselves. How much we need the lessons of the mountaintop and the desert exile. For exile entails the expulsion of the chosen ones from comfortable and often exalted positions in society. We are thrust into a barren place where we cannot but abandon our former knowledge of this world - rather learning humility and faith, the transcendent nature of the sacred, initiated into the mysteries of the long awaited Promised Land. We count the temptations of Jesus in his desert as our own and yet blind ourselves to the consequences we embrace as a result. How much we need to pray for the deliverance from the test. We endure the chaos of the deserts and take them for granted just so we cannot listen or even see what lay before us. How much we need to feel the touch of the Lord who brings us back to a radical faithfulness that is our best humanity: "Rise and do not be afraid." We are the poor and we have not been reconciled to what is true and unavoidable. In all truth we cannot control, bend or bury by our privileges: "Beloved: Bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God. He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Tim 1.8b-10) |
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The Rev. V. Paul Ojibway, S.A.