One of the things that has stood out to me from the book is how choices made in the long-ago past continue to have great significance today. Just take, for example, the choice of Reverend Adam Buerkle, who decided to pick up and leave where he was living – first his native Germany and then later Michigan and Ohio – to come out here to the Grand Prairie and found a settlement. He came in search of a new life, to give his descendants a better future. Few if any of us are descended from that original group of Stuttgart settlers, but the choices they made back then continue to affect us now. The community we live in, the very identity we have, was shaped by their decisions long ago.
In today’s first reading, Abram picks up and leaves the land of his fathers and sets out for a new land. Why? Well, because like Reverend Buerkle, or any number of our ancestors, he wanted a better future for himself and his descendants. For Abram this better future was something more than just a hope or a dream. He had received a guarantee from God himself: “I will make your name great,” God tells him. Did you notice though that God promises Abram something else? Not only does he promise to bless him; he also promises to make him a blessing: “All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.” This Abram will become Abraham, “the father of many nations;” we even call him “our father in faith,” because all of us who believe in the one God in a sense are his descendants. When Abram obeyed God's command, he won God's blessing, not just for himself but for all of us as well.
Jacopo Bassano (workshop), The Departure of Abraham for Canaan (c. 1590)
In today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals to Peter, James, and John his own divinity – the divine glory that he has as God’s Son. He is more than just a prophet or a great teacher – he is the Eternal Word become Flesh, the one who has come to deal for all time with the problem of sin and death that began with Adam and Eve. In Jesus, God’s relationship with humanity reaches its culmination: he is the fulfillment of the Law, symbolized by Moses, and the prophets, symbolized by Elijah. Just as Abram trusted in God and so won blessing for himself and all of his descendants, so too Jesus’s obedience to the will of his Father brings blessing upon all of humanity. In fact, the promise of blessing given to Abraham long before is fulfilled in an astounding way in Jesus – all of humanity, all of the descendants of Abraham the “father of many nations” now can become sharers in the divine glory of the Son of God. When he is transfigured upon the mountain, Jesus unveils the ultimate blessing that God wishes to give to all of us – heavenly glory, eternal life with him.
To reach that heavenly homeland though, we have to make the journey. And Jesus is clear about the road that he will take, and the road that we must follow. It is the Way of the Cross. If our reading from Matthew today had began just a few verses earlier, or continued for a few afterward, we would have seen this even more clearly. Both before and after his Transfiguration, Jesus tells his disciples that he will have to suffer and die, in order to then rise from the dead. This is the basic message of our Christian faith – a truth at once so familiar and yet also so extraordinary and strange that it deserves to be reflected on again and again. I think that’s why we have these readings today, in this Lenten season: to remind us that heavenly glory is the fate that God wishes to share with each of us, and the one way to get there is the Cross.
What does to embrace the Cross – to take it up and carry it, as the Savior did? Does that mean we too will be crucified ourselves? Well, that may not be completely out of the question, at least in some parts of the world. But it’s much more likely that for us embracing the Cross means to not shy away from suffering, as it presents itself to us. Life offers no shortage of opportunities to suffer; probably, we could all think right this moment of one particular reality in our life that causes us pain – some reality that we don’t want to accept or endure, but which we have to or we know we need to. Maybe it is illness or infirmity, old age, financial difficulties, social pressures, a moral conflict between our faith and our culture, family troubles, a disagreement with friends or coworkers, a fear or anxiety or a discontentment. Whatever it may be, suffering is no fun – it is inconvenient at best, truly heartbreaking at worst. But if we look at that fearful, painful thing as a spiritual labor – if we take it up as a cross, and seek to endure it, perhaps even to bear it with patience and joy? Then we will find new strength to carry on – a "strength that comes from God" (2 Tm 1:8b) – learning how to suffer not just for our sake but for the sake of others. We will be like Abram, who made the difficult journey from his homeland to a foreign land because he carried in his heart God's promise of blessing. We will be like Jesus, who took the weight of the Cross upon his shoulders out of love for us, because he wanted to share with us his Transfigured glory.
Jacopo Bassano, The Way to Calvary (c. 1538)
Friends, wherever the Cross presents itself to you in this Lent season, don’t shy away from it in fear. Instead, take it up in faith – and yes, even joy. Like our ancestors before us, especially our ancestors in faith, we can do what is difficult now with an eye toward a future goal – a spiritual destiny, in the end. It might just be that the cross we embrace now, this very Lent, will be the one that will finally win for us the future Resurrection – that divine legacy Jesus wishes to share with us, that heavenly homeland to which he calls us.
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