Homily for Second Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2018

     In today’s liturgy of the Word invites us to climb two mountains, Mt. Moriah and Mt. Tabor.  We remember Abraham and Isaac, Peter, James and John; two encounters with God.  The first seems dark, even sinister, the second glorious.  In fact, they are both glorious.

The first trek up the mountain by Abraham, off to sacrifice his only son Isaac seems dark and foreboding.  Many of Abraham's neighbors believed in gods that demanded sacrifice, even child sacrifice. Abraham probably felt, "well, this god is no different."  But by entering into the suffering, Abraham discovers a god of healing and new life who has absolute concern for suffering people.

Peter, James and John suffered from darkness, not understanding who Jesus really was.  So, off to the mountain they go, and there, in an instant of insight they really SEE Jesus - for a single moment Jesus captured their full and undivided attention, lifting them out of their suffering and darkness.  It doesn’t last long.  Peter wants to name it to nail it down, hold on to it forever — and poof it disappears.  .

The the first Noble truth of Buddhism is “all life is suffering.”  That seems depressing and we go to great lengths to avoid this truth.  We want Easter, but not the passion and death that leads to Easter.  This does not mean that our destiny is suffering.  All of Buddhist practice of meditation is to overcome suffering; and the Christian path that Jesus shows us is to overcome suffering.  Jesus shows us the way through, not around whatever suffering we are going through.  The problem is that we want a superhero God who will just zap away our suffering.  This is what Peter wanted when he tried to stay on the mountain only to be taken back down and among the suffering people.

We Catholics love to name the problem, name the sin.  It happens in confession all the time and many people get frustrated because they are naming the same sin, the same problem for years at a time with no results.  We expect magic, the magic priest or the magic box to just zap it all way. But that isn’t how it works.  We are always focused on the problem, the sin, but sin isn’t the problem — suffering is.

To heal suffering we must enter into it.  We must embrace it before we can begin to heal it.  The question is not what sins have I committed but rather how am I suffering that is causing me to act in this way.  I could name the fact that I was an alcoholic long before I every got sober; I just decided that I was going to be the best alcoholic the world has ever known.  It is only when I surrendered to my suffering, embraced it  and sought out a power greater than myself could the healing begin.  Cancer survivors are heroic because they have gone into battle with the suffering.  Oncologists are heroic because they are motivated by the suffering and not just the symptoms.  Firefighters are heroic because they go to the root cause and don’t simply treat the symptoms. As is said prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The question to ask, not only of ourselves, but of our society is not what sins are people committing but how are all these people suffering.  It seems to be the one question that no one is asking.  We want quick and easy answers but there aren’t any.  As individuals and as a society we need to do some very deep and serious soul work; we need to go in and heal the suffering before anything on the surface will change.  We need to lean how to suffer together so that together we can be healed into new life.  Sin is not the problem — suffering is.