“Give and Gifts Will Be Given to You” by Rev. Paul Berghout
Monday of the Second Week in Lent
Piety
“O LORD, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers, for having sinned against you. But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness! Yet we rebelled against you and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God, to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.” Deuteronomy 9:8-10
“Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” Luke 6:38
Study
There was a group of mountain climbers, and one guy was on his first high climb. The climb was strenuous, but at last, they reached the top. Once it was clear that the beginner climber was at the very top, he stood straight up with arms raised and yelled victoriously, “I did it!”
At this point, a dangerously strong gust of wind nearly blew him off the mountain. The more experienced climbers had a good laugh at this, then explained that you never stand straight up at the top of a high mountain with strong wind gusts but rather you drop to your knees. And sometimes climbers crawl during their final approach to the very top.
According to Matthew (17:1-6), the disciples present at the Transfiguration in yesterday’s Gospel “fell on their faces and were filled with awe” at the light and glory of Jesus’ physical beauty.
For the Second Sunday of Lent (yesterday), we read how God tested Abraham’s faith. In the Gospel, we witness how Jesus showed his disciples his glory to prepare them for what is to come. A voice from a cloud said, “This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him.” All we need to do for the journey ahead is to listen to him.
As we go through this week, the first reading prepares us for the complementary theme in the Gospel. Today, Jesus is telling us: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful... For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
All week we will be taught by the light that Jesus radiated in his Transfiguration about the simple lessons of how we as his followers also can allow that light to overshadow our sinful selves. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
In the words of Karl Barth, Divine beauty includes both “death as well as life, fear as well as joy, what we might call the ugly as well as what we might call the beautiful.”
Suffering love is a kind of beauty that, for Von Baltazar, gives rise to a subjective experience of rapture: being transported beyond the boundaries of the self.
Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here!.” In Classical Greek, “It is beautiful that we are here!” (Mark 9:5).
Peter experienced that there is a happy ending of the human story for those who seek God. Tolkien described this hope that overturns the world’s violence and misery, replacing it with “a piercing glimpse of joy, and the heart’s desire” that has its origins in God alone.
How can we have a transfiguration and not a disfiguration caused by sin and selfishness?
The first way is through Holiness in the body. The book Love and Responsibility, written by Karol Wojtyla before he became Saint Pope John Paul II, wrote that chastity is a virtue in need of rehabilitation. He explains why by referring to “resentment” arising from a false and distorted sense of values. Such resentment lacks the objectivity of judgment and evaluation, and it has its origin in the weakness of will.
To spare ourselves the effort to obtain this value, we minimize its significance or even see it as in some way as evil, although objectivity requires us to recognize that it is good.
Secondly, the experience of God’s beauty of God draws the believer out into the community. Consider that a man testified that he had “lived on the Mount of Transfiguration” for five years. Somebody questioned him about that, and the dialogue went like this:
Inquiry (I): “How many souls have you led to Christ during this prolonged intense experience of God?” The man said, “I don’t know.”
Response (R): “Have you saved anyone from the pit of despair or the sting of death?”
I: “I can’t say that I have,” the man replied.
R: “Well, that’s not the kind of mountain top experience that makes any difference.”
I: “When we get so high that we can’t reach down to other people, there is something wrong.”
Action
At a Parish Bible Study, where the participants have a relative degree of privilege and self-sufficiency, the discussion challenged them to imitate Mary, who allowed something wildly unexpected and disruptive to captivate her. Like at the Transfiguration, she made time to listen, to be in awe, and to wonder about what God might be up to in her life.
Perhaps we should allow an opportunity to love selflessly overshadow, overtake, and transfigure us. Whether it’s welcoming someone far from home, teaching someone to read, asking for forgiveness, reminding someone she’s lovely or taking a sick neighbor a bowl of soup, let love be born in you in a new way.
I imagine that someone in this weary world will rejoice and say, “Oh! This is just the gift of love I’ve been waiting for.”
Amen.
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