NO EASY ESCAPE ^_[1]

WHEN THEY came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.  [Gen 22:9-10]

AND AFTER six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them.  [Mk 9:2-3] 

DARK AND FORBIDDING TRUTH 

1.  Both stories are about encounters with God. Both encounters take place upon mountain tops. The Hebrew people believed that God could be found in high, remote places. One ancient Hebrew name for God is El Shaddai, meaning God of the Mountains or God the Almighty.^[2] At the heart of these experiences is the evocative human emotion of awe and wonder, that is to say, the human person's mysterious participation in the angels' fear of the Lord. We tremble before the presence of the God of the Mountains, not necessarily because we succumb to human fear, but rather we tremble from an awareness of our insignificance and contingency. Both stories are about obedience. Both are about love. For us today, both add to our knowledge of God but do not necessarily provide us reassuring answers to disturbing questions. The Abraham-Isaac story is primitive. It is dark and forbidding. The near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham is distressing to parents who love their children. How could a father raise a dagger over the heart of his beloved son? Isaac was Abrahams only child and conceived in his old age. Why does the sacred account omit any reference to Abrahams emotions? Perhaps we gloss over this story because we have heard it many times. Possibly we resign ourselves to the fact that men, unlike women, are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the incidents of violence in the world. God does not ask Sarah to sacrifice her only son. How would Sarah have responded if God had asked her to sacrifice Isaac  (Heb. Laughter)  as a test of her faith? In any event, realizing what lies ahead, we grieve for this stooped old man, journeying in the company of his inquisitive young son, who bears a load of firewood on his youthful shoulders. That Abraham lied to Isaac and his servants is the only clue Sacred Scripture offers to interpret his emotions. The old man could not bring himself to reveal the awful truth of his promise to God that he would sacrifice his beloved son. There are many other troubling issues raised by the aqedah  (Heb. binding)  of Isaac. The Genesis story reiterates that God loved Abraham as Abraham loved Isaac. Although this testimony of filial love may be reassuring to us, the dark and forbidding face of El Shaddai is not. Abrahams God, who knows all things, most especially the vagaries of the human heart, forces Abraham to prove his fidelity. Abraham's obedience and devotion were not enough. One could actually infer from this powerful story that authentic love demands the traumatizing of ones beloved. Yet the forbearance of God is a far more powerful expression of his Divine Attributes than even his wrath. God's forgiveness is more powerful than anyone's accusation. God promises Abraham a reward that he will never live to see. After Isaacs life is spared, God offers Abraham a prophetic glimpse of the future. Abraham is to be the "father of many nations"  [Rom 4:17-18], the father of a people numerous as the stars or the grains of sand on the seashore. Yet, this disclosure is not new. God already promised Abraham as much on the occasion of his circumcision and the change of his name.  

SACRIFICE OF INNOCENCE 

2.  The experience of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration is an encounter with the God of Light. A wondrous and breathtaking ambience pervades the event. Even so, there are some puzzling questions. If Jesus Christ possessed the fullness of divinity, why did he need this celestial affirmation experience? Further, why were not all twelve disciples present, especially the beloved disciple whom tradition names as John?  When compared with the fearful and heart-stopping theophanies of God in the forty years of Israel's desert sojourn, the supernatural events of Our Lord's epiphany are quite restrained. The disciples see a light, a cloud, and hear a voice. These elements are almost generic. For example, St. Paul's encounter with God on the road to Damascus shares these major elements. Stricken by the light and judgment of Christ, Paul's human powers fail. His blind eyes mirror his darkened conscience.  [cf. Acts 9:1-9]  Curiously, Christ himself downplays the significance of the transfiguration event, compelling the disciples to silence. Although this epiphany was for them, they were not to talk about it. Nevertheless, both stories offer important insights with respect to our understanding of God and ourselves. No matter how compelling these contradictions and troubling aspects are, they are not the point, nor will they ever be resolved to our intellectual and emotional satisfaction. We must start with the assumption that these apparently flawed stories are going to teach us fundamental truths about God and ourselves. In other words, the inspired origin of these stories is to be found in the truths they tell, less in the gaps or discrepancies which beguile our imaginations. What does the story of Abraham and Isaac teach us? The brutality of the story confronts us with hard spiritual truths from which we have no easy escape into ambiguity or indifference. They remind us of the shocking power of the forces of darkness, forces that thankfully are beyond our full comprehension, let alone our grasp. As St. Paul wrote to the churches at Ephesus:  "We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."  [Eph 6:12]  No greater evidence is required to prove the existence of the forces of evil than what is happening to the worlds children. We live in a world that is astonishingly indifferent and wantonly hostile to children. Children are often the first to be sacrificed to slavery, violence, sexual abuse, drugs, and broken families. Not infrequently will parents bind their children and place them on the altar of their own compulsions and selfishness. Authentic love in the family is often overpowered by consumerism which advocates false and brittle substitutes. Reminiscent of the young Isaac, the children of today are bound to the sacrifice of their innocence, their legitimate future, and even their very lives. Increasingly, we hear God told me to do it as a justification for selfishness, bizarre behavior, even horrific crimes. The story of Abraham and Isaac was to be an object lesson for the primitive, warring Israelite people. It remains a brutal reminder to us that our relationship to and with God must be more important than any of our human relationships. At some point in life, every Christian must accept the reality that God comes first. God has priority. God cannot be second to anything or anyone. Our filial bond to God is more vital than that of husband and wife, parent and child, or friend and friend. Human relationships are like the six days of creation and the six stone jars of water.  [cf. Gen 2:1-3; Jn 2:6-11]  They are not perfected, they are not fulfilled, until they have been offered to God and consecrated by God. By setting to rights our relationship to God, we allow our human relationships to be perfected and fruitful. In the ultimate test of endurance, the bonds of the perfected family of faith will prevail over those of worldly or even blood attachments.  

MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIFE 

3.  Note well that the God who commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son restrains him from carrying out violence against Isaac. Moreover, God bestows the blessing of immortality upon Abraham through a multitude of descendents. God's witness and beneficence is clearly intended for all generations and peoples to follow. God's message is clear: Make me first in your life at all times, and I will bless you and your children. I will deliver your children from the hands of the Evil One. Your children will be rescued from the tyranny of their captors and their suffering healed. The story of Abraham and Isaac teaches us that we are a small, although vital, part of God's vast plan of salvation. God promises Abraham more than he will realize in his own lifetime. Abraham accepts service to God, and in doing so, he will leave a fitting legacy in the service of God's divine plan. In other words, Abraham invested his resources, his heart, and his life for a promise that would come to pass only after his death. To understand this is to submit our own spiritual maturity to the test. Ever-growing in the knowledge of God, we accept the stark reality that some things are more important than life, even our own lives. Spiritually speaking, we would do well to realize that like Abraham, we owe a debt to the future, that is, to the part of God's plan that will not be fulfilled in our lifetime. Our custody of a small part of this plan is not a portion which we are to consume in the privacy of our own little world. Rather, it is a part of a larger patrimony. It is to recognize that the salvation of the larger world is at stake, beginning with the spiritual maturation of our own children and our children's children. Within the story of Jesus' transfiguration, hard spiritual truths emerge. They should not be obscured by the apparently pleasant aspects of the story. The paschal mystery is a journey from the tyranny of darkness to the communion of light. The affirmation experience was for the ultimate benefit of the disciples, who would face their gravest personal trials in the hour of Jesus' binding on the Mount of Calvary, and whose spirituality would be tested almost beyond endurance when they were confronted with his resurrection from the dead. Objectively speaking, our generation knows very little more about God than did the ancient Hebrews. While advancing very little in acquiring direct knowledge of God, our spiritual and doctrinal understanding of such things as the Holy Trinity, God the Father as Abba  (Heb. father), Jesus the Christ as fully man and fully God, nevertheless has deepened enormously. But we cannot escape the hard reality, that for all this, Jesus the Christ did not reveal himself fully to us in the human domain, nor has he fully revealed God the Father in the heavenly realm. No human being has ever seen the unveiled glory of God. We have only a glimpse of God through the revelation of Sacred Scripture, the teaching of the Paraclete, and the experiences of the people of God. Christ, through the Spirit, has given us an understanding of God through himself not direct apprehension or knowledge of God. What Christ has revealed is the nature of the Father's plan of salvation, that the Son is the unsurpassed instrument of this design, and what our part is to be when we accept it. And this is enough for us by which we may obtain the wreath of victory. In the end, its not ones limited knowledge of God which will make the difference. It is far more important that we set aside our complacent assumptions about God and trust in Christ to lead us to Him-Who-Terrifies-Us, confident that we will inherit the defining love and holiness of the Father-Son relationship, thereby empowering us to enter decisively into the divine filiation of the Holy Trinity. St. Paul recognized this abiding truth when he wrote, "the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see."  [1Tim 6:15-16]  Christ's human face tells us something about the face of God, but Jesus' face was not itself the face of God. Christ's divine nature tells us something about God's nature, but it was not itself the full measure of God's divine person.  On the Mount of Transfiguration, the eyes of the three apostles obtained only a glimpse of Jesus' true divinity, his relationship to the Father, the Father's Being, and of the resurrection. Peter actually may have missed the importance of the experience at the very moment it took place. Withdrawing from the intensity of the transfiguration event, he foolishly declares his intention to carry out his own activity, that of building three booths or shrines to honor Moses, Elijah and Christ. The three disciples experience God the Father through the mediation of cloud and voice.

TRUTH OF LIGHT AND LOVE 

4.  The story teaches us that normative and even extraordinary human encounters with God will always be clouded or obscured until the coming of Christ in glory. Like Moses hidden in the cleft of the rock  [cf. Ex 33:18-23], God must shield his mortal creatures from the consuming fire  [cf. Heb 12:29]  of his unveiled glory. Mark's gospel highlights the disciples persistent ignorance of the most important spiritual truths, especially the resurrection. Yet Jesus never abandons them. Our Lord knows their good intentions, and for their part, they sacrifice much to be with him. All human experiences are clouded, not only because of God's forbearance in revealing the fullness of his divine being, but even more so because of our human imperfections and finitude. Nevertheless, God wills that our clouded experiences are to be the norm of divine-human interaction in this life. Further, our relationship with God must be always characterized by hunger, for we will never be able to have enough of God in this life. Jesus spent much time in the desert praying and in fellowship with the Father. Following our Saviour's example, our spiritual life will be spent in the desert of our longing. This should not cause undue distress, however, for: "without having seen him (Christ), you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls."  [1Pet 1:8-9]  Both stories teach us that awe is a proper attitude or posture before God. Whether on the mountain of sacrifice or transfiguration, we humbly bow to an authority infinitely greater than our own. We kneel down and we pray:  Lord, You created me. I did not create You. You are not subject to my will. I am subject to Your will. How am I to please You? Awe is the profound acceptance of our own weakness and mortality while bending our knee and acknowledging the power of the God of Mountains. We may never see how God ultimately fulfills his divine plan or realize how he answers our prayers. We have no other viable choice than to believe and submit.  We need to accept the necessity, even the paradox, of being prepared for that which we cannot anticipate. Those who have trivialized God by their persistent indifference or by assuming God to be a mere appendage of their own human will, are going to be stirred from their spiritual slumber with a shocking intensity. They will be unprepared for the God of the Mountains, the Most Holy, the Almighty. We would be wise to experience our awe of God in frequent meditation and prayer so that we will not be consumed by our own human fears when we meet God face-to-face, perhaps in this life, and certainly in the next. We should be profoundly respectful of God who has the authority to accuse and condemn:  "Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe."  [Heb 12:28]  At heart, both of these flawed stories announce the truth of light and love. The conflict between Abrahams love of Isaac and his duty to God was resolved by Abraham's steadfast faith in God. Because Abraham obeyed God, he merited limitless blessings. By pleasing God the Father in every way, Jesus Christ the Son merited recognition. As heirs to the covenants of Abraham and Christ, we inherit both blessing and recognition and are freed decisively from our dread of the future. Both stories evidence that God is personal, involved, and relational with his human creatures. Our intense, powerful encounters with God are usually brief. Every faithful disciple of the Lord is given the opportunity to experience God in a singular, definitive way, not once, but many times in life. After having delighted in a personal epiphany of the Lord, it is necessary that we return to the ordinary beauty of life. Following the example of Christ who cautioned his disciples to silence, and Mary who pondered the words of the angel Gabriel in her heart, we need time to reflect in solitude on the meaning and purpose of God's work in our lives. As we worship God in the Holy Eucharist, I invite you to humbly kneel before the Lord truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. Let your hearts and souls be filled with awe before the transcendent power of the Holy Spirit Who will, at this very altar, recognize and bless the Son in the Father's name. In the Eucharistic act of sublime recognition and blessing, the Holy Spirit will transform the modest gifts of bread and wine into the living flesh and blood of our Saviour. As we receive this saving gift of Christ's presence within our very persons, let us meditate upon the truth that our encounter with Christ in the Holy Eucharist infinitely surpasses the mountain top in nobility and grace.