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Homily:
2nd Sunday of Lent – Cycle B
For most of us, I would guess, the word holocaust is associated with the
horrific events during World War II in which an attempt was made to eradicate
the entire Jewish population from the European continent. Although, technically speaking, this was not
really a holocaust, but rather an
attempt at genocide (a term
indicating the complete eradication of a race of people), using the term holocaust to describe it is actually
quite fitting. You see, a holocaust is a
form of ritual sacrifice in which the offering is completely burned up. In this type of sacrifice, there is nothing
that is held back. To describe the
attempted genocide of the Jews in World War II as a holocaust, therefore, is to
describe how thoroughly complete its perpetrators intended it to be: if all had
gone according to their intentions, then there would not have been one Jewish
person left in the world. Holocaust,
therefore, aptly describes the gravity of these events.
In our first reading today from the Book of Genesis we hear
how God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac and to “offer him up as a
holocaust”. Even without knowledge of
what a holocaust is, its association with those horrific events of World War II
should give anyone in this church pause to think about what a horrific thing it
was that God was asking Abraham to do. Perhaps
even more shocking, however, is that Abraham readily obeys this command of God,
taking his son willingly to the high place that God would point out to them in
order to murder him and then, essentially, to cremate him. I mean, how was this even possible? If I had to guess, I’d say that it was
because Abraham had learned not only to hear God’s voice, but rather how to
listen to him, as well.
Although we can sometimes use these words interchangeably,
I think that there is an important difference between hearing and
listening. We can hear something without
necessarily listening to it. It drives
me crazy sometimes to visit my mom and dad because when they’re awake there is
almost always a TV on, in spite of the fact that half of the time no one is watching
it. “I just have it on for noise”, my
mom will say, “I’m not really listening to it.”
In other words, she could hear it, but she wasn’t listening. (On the
flipside, one of my favorite ways to get her goat is to respond like this when
she is trying to tell me something that she thinks is important, but that I
don’t really want to hear: I’ll say, “What? Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you
because I’m not listening.”) Hearing, it
seems, is something passive: something that happens when sounds enter a
properly functioning ear. Listening, on
the other hand, seems to be something active: an intentional hearing in which
the sounds that one hears are consciously acknowledged.
For Abraham to be able to respond to God’s command he had
to have been listening to him. In other
words, he had to have heard God’s voice many times so as to recognize it
clearly in order to have responded so readily to God when he gave him this
horrific command. And from the moment of
that command, I imagine that Abraham must have been intently listening for
God’s voice to come to him again, perhaps this time with a command to stop the
sacrifice before it was completed. How
else could Abraham have stopped so abruptly, knife in hand and ready to slaughter
his son, if he wasn’t continually listening for God’s voice? We are quick to commend Abraham for his
obedience to God by being willing to sacrifice his son at God’s command, but
how often do we commend Abraham for his obedience to God when God commanded him
to stop at the moment when the sacrifice was about to take place? If he had stopped listening, Isaac would have
died. Abraham listened, however, and for
that he was given abundant blessings.
In our Gospel reading today, we heard Mark’s account of the
Transfiguration, in which Jesus allowed the hidden glory of his divinity to
shine forth outwardly in the presence of his “inner circle” of disciples,
Peter, James and John. Then, the cloud
of God’s presence descended upon them and God’s voice was heard in the midst of
the cloud saying: “This is my beloved Son.
Listen to him.” Listen
to him. Interesting that the Father
chose to use the word listen. He could have used any number of words. For example, he could have said: “This is my
beloved Son. Imitate him”, but he didn’t.
He said listen. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, it is not
enough for us merely to hear Jesus.
Rather, we must also listen. It
begins with hearing, of course, and so the first question that we need to ask
ourselves is “Can I hear him?” In other
words, “Is my world so full of noise that I couldn’t hear Jesus’ voice, even if
I wanted to?” If the answer is “yes”
then congratulations because you have an opportunity to have the most incredible
Lent of your life: the only way you can go is up! If the answer is “no” and the reality of your
life is that Jesus’ voice is just one of many that you hear day in and day out,
then you have to ask yourself this question: “Will I listen to him?” Perhaps for
most of us this is the question that we have to face this day. If so, then our Lenten practices can help us
say “yes” to listen to Jesus.
By fasting, we begin to turn off the noise generated both
in the world around us and in our own hearts: for when we fast from material
things, we also calm the passions in our hearts that can keep us from
listening. This, of course, leads into
prayer: in which we intentionally listen for God speaking to us. Then, in giving alms, we listen for the
Lord’s voice speaking to us in the voices of the “least of these”: the poor
with whom he identified himself in the famous chapter from Matthew’s Gospel.
My brothers and sisters, during Lent, God calls us to renew
our commitment to make our lives a holocaust to him: a holy sacrifice in which
nothing is held back for ourselves. He
is not asking for a senseless abandonment—it would have been incredibly sinful
for Abraham to choose for himself to make a holocaust of his son—rather, God is
asking for a trusting response from one who listens to him: a response like
Abraham made when he did not withhold his son and like Jesus made when he did
not withhold his own life. Let us,
therefore, pray for the faith to listen, like Abraham did, and for his courage
to act, so that we, too, might see and
share in the glory of God—the transfigured glory of Jesus that we will soon
encounter here, veiled in the form of bread and wine.
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