Sermon for Second Sunday of lent Year C
February 28th 2010
Fr. Tim Kelly
Scripture, Luke 8: 28-36 (Transfiguration of Christ)
You all know that I have often told you that any text must be read in the context in which it occurs. Luke’s telling of the transfiguration gains greatly from first reading the verses before today’s reading.
“Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they have seen the Kingdom of Heaven.” Luke 9:27
Gospel
(About eight days after he said this) Luke 9:28a
After eight days, After eight days. We the Christian Church are on our way up to Jerusalem. Forty days on a dusty road, just as we spend forty years, maybe sixty, maybe even eighty or more years on a dusty road of life. Forty days looking for the great city, Jerusalem.
Soon Christ will ride a small donkey into Jerusalem and the fickle crowds will greet him with palm branches shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David.” That is the first day of the Passion Week. In fact we call it Passion Sunday. It is Day One of the week of Salvation. But it is also Day One of Salvation History. This holy week, the only week in history with eight days is a microcosm of the world’s story. This, in one week is the world from creation to the great banquet. Thus in one week we walk from the entrance gate of God’s city, perhaps our birth through anticipation, passion, betrayal, suffering, fear and confusion to where God will greet the brothers and sisters of his Son Jesus and he will invite us to sit with Him to eat the rich banquet which he has prepared for us. It is as if we have to get from the gates of the city to the great palace of God, where he laid out the banquet for us. After forty days in the cold, we are finally there, eight more and we will sit at the table on Mt. Zion. The eighth day is the Day of Resurrection, the day when human beings join God in his heaven through the resurrection of Christ.
In the Gospel of Luke, Peter James and John are taken up to a mountain to pray. This happens on the Eighth Day, the day of glory and salvation. There he is transfigured – metamorphasized – in front of their eyes. He is transformed. He is transfigured.
“While he was praying his face changed in appearance
and his clothing became dazzling white.”
When does this transfiguration take place? On the eighth day. On the eighth day. These three men see Jesus and yet he does not look like what they have seen all along. His face is the face of glory. His clothes shine with glory. These men recognize the glory and it is strange to them. So strange that a bewildered Peter suggests that they all stay where they are inside the glory. It is so good that the bewildered Peter does not want this to end.
Later in the same Gospel two men along the road to Emmaus on the eighth day. They have known Jesus, a prophet great in word and deed, a man who might have come to save Israel. Then He came among them and they did not know him for a while. Then he sat down at the table with them, he broke the bread, and he was glorified in front of their eyes. This is the kernel of Eighth Day theology, of today’s Gospel story, that on the eighth day we shall all see God, like Peter James and John, like the two men at Emmaus. The scriptures say that their eyes were opened and they recognized him in the breaking of bread.
The eighth day is the day when Jesus Christ comes out of Hell and is glorified by his Father. His face shines like the sun and he is in his glory. Just like on the mountain in today’s reading, where the disciples saw his glory and they believed. Thesemen in today’s gospel stood in the outer room of heaven. “The men who shall not die until they have seen the Kingdom of God.” What have they seen? What have they experienced there on the mountain? They have seen “two men (were) conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.” They have seen the inside of heaven.
For us Catholics, this is the real paruosia, the real apocalypse, the true End times. The world ends in eating bread and drinking wine at God’s table. The fate of mankind is not fire and brimstone, monstrous demons devouring and terrifying the nations. This is the end of the world, not a sad Day of Wrath, but a meal where Jesus brings food to the table and feeds the ones who sit there. For the meal, the Grapes of Wrath are taken out from where they were stored and they are trampled underfoot so that a sweet wine feeds God’s beloved. All will be well, all will be well for those who love the Lord. The journey with each other through the 40 days of life, ends with a banquet where God presides, and where there are no strangers, where Lazarus is poor no more. All this on the eighth Day.