There is understatement in the reading from the Book of Genesis for the Second Sunday of Lent. God tells Abraham to pack up and leave home and settle in a new land over 1,000 miles away by the best traders' route. By our reckoning nowadays, that distance isn't all that far. We could travel by air in a couple of hours or so. But there were no airplanes for Abraham to take, no paved roads to drive on, only dusty traders' routes. Barely roads.
Abraham willingly accepts the direction of God in the first reading and leaves everything to go to "a land that I will show you." How frightening that must have been. But Abraham lived a long time ago and it is not easy reconciling Abraham's travels with our own. To what can we compare it?
What was it like when you left home to go away to school or to move into your own place? Or what was it like when you perhaps got your first job and maybe moved away from home? Or went away to college? Or what did you feel when suddenly your parents said you had to find your own place to live? What was it like when you discovered you were on your own? Not all of us experience that, of course. Perhaps your transition was smooth and you found yourself on full scholarship to Harvard! But probably most of us felt some kind of fear as part of our first streak of independence.
Imagine Abraham leaving the only world he had known and striking out for some distant land to begin a new life. He might as well have been crossing an ocean for the first time. It was not likely he would ever see or hear from any of his relatives or neighbors again. The only consolation here is that in the ancient world of the Middle East in which these people lived, one traveled with one's entire family. So Abraham didn't merely strike out on his own. He had brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and who knows who else going with him.
Perhaps the fear is not unlike that of our own ancestors who left foreign lands to take opportunity in this country. What was it like to leave and to begin anew?
In today's Gospel of Matthew, Jesus takes three of his disciples to a mountaintop and he is transfigured before them. We might not think of this event in the same way as Abraham's problem, but for our faith this was a life changing event. For Peter, James, and John, this event abruptly changed their relationship with Jesus. It was an event which caused them to be afraid. What did it mean?
They see Jesus in all his glory. In reading Matthew from the beginning, this passage seems to have been misplaced here. Peter has just declared that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus predicts his passion and death and suddenly he is taking his disciples to the top of a mountain to be glorified. Afterward he goes on to heal a boy possessed by a demon. And then Jesus once again predicts his passion and death. The Gospel writer seems to have gotten the chronology wrong. It is as if he got all the facts misplaced. If I were Peter and James and John, I would feel lost, as if I had gotten into the wrong movie script. If I were Abraham I might feel as if life had played me a terribly unfunny joke. Yet Jesus reassures his disciples not to be afraid.
When we come to the season of Lent, we are always caught up in the practice of giving things up. Well, so be it. Is it possible we could think about giving up our fears? Is Lent a time for me to overcome my fear of change in my own life? Growing older? Living with life threatening illnesses? Children moving on?
Those are tall orders, of course, and giving up being afraid isn't accomplished easily. The answer for the Christian, obviously, is that we are invited to put our reliance on Jesus. It is not really even possible to give up our fear unless we can attach ourselves to Christ. But the more we try to do so, the more we may continue to fear. If we find that happening, the challenge is not to try so hard. The challenge is to let Jesus invite us out of our fear which is what he does for Peter, James, and John. The words of Jesus to "be not afraid" are as much an invitation as a command. Perhaps we can make one our Lenten practices the repetition of that prayer of Jesus.
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