The Transfiguration on Mount Moriah – 2nd Sunday of Lent – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; February 25th 2024

There are passages in Scripture that shock our sensibilities.

For example, there were some things tolerated in the Old Testament because of the hardness of heart (cf. Mt 19:8) consequent on human sin. Such were certain practices that disfigured the truth and purity of marriage. Because Jesus came to free us from sin and give us grace to live in true righteousness, these things are no longer allowed.

Then there are unique passages like today’s 1^st reading to which our instinctive response is, “How could God have commanded that? It is so cruel.” If we approach these passages, in a spirit of faith, accepting them as the word of God, we can find great light and come to a greater understanding of who God is and who we are. For often, what seems to us as so cruel is because we think of God as though he were no more than a very powerful man.

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. That certainly seems cruel, and we rightly condemn past civilizations, like the Aztecs, that practiced human sacrifice. Nevertheless, before we assume the moral high ground with all the arrogance of modernity, today the barbaric crime of abortion dispenses with all religious pretense. This would have probably even horrified the Aztecs.

In any case, one modern explanation of today’s reading is that God did not really command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but that Abraham was misguided, thinking that God had commanded it. Then, when God put a stop to the sacrifice, he taught thereby the evil of human sacrifice.

This interpretation, however, does not do justice to the word of God, which is very clear: God said, ‘Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.’ God spoke with great clarity to Abraham and Abraham clearly understood that it was God speaking to him. The certainty and clarity of the communication is vital. If there had been the least doubt in Abraham’s mind about God’s command, his action would indeed have been an horrific crime against his son, and a terrible sacrilege, imputing to God such a command.

Then, given there was no doubt about the command, how could God command such a thing?

A good starting point is to consider the expression “playing God”. This expression is rightly used to condemn certain human actions because they exceed the scope of any possible human authority, wisdom, and knowledge. No one has the right to experiment on human embryos or fashion human life in the laboratory, as is done through IVF. This is “playing God.” Nor does one human being have the authority to dispose of innocent human life, as though it belonged to him. This is “playing God.” Yet, when we use the expression “playing God” to condemn such actions, we imply that God does have the authority, wisdom, and knowledge to make such judgments. It is wrong for man to “play God” but surely, we must allow God to act as God. Indeed, we are obliged to acknowledge that God, and God alone, is truly the master of life and death.

Thou hast the power over life and death; thou dost lead men down to Hades and back again. A man in his wickedness kills another, but he cannot bring back the departed spirit, nor set free the imprisoned soul. (Wis 16:13-14)

God has that right, and he also has the right to employ men in its fulfillment.

Yet, there is something else involved here. When St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of God’s justice, he points out that while, strictly speaking, God owes nothing to his creatures, he owes it to himself to fulfill the order he has established in his creation. (cf. ST Ia q.21a1 ad 3) That means, among other things, that he owes it to himself not to act in an arbitrary fashion, according to a mere whim or caprice.

Adam and Eve were created in the beginning, in a state of original justice, which included the gift of immortality. Given the condition of original justice, it would have been capricious of God, unjust to himself, were he to take the life of any human being. Alas, Adam and Eve did not persevere in their original justice. Adam rebelled against God, thereby forfeiting his life and the life of all his descendants. Since the time of Adam, we all enter the world under a sentence of death, so to speak. So it is that the Psalmist declares: To thee, O God, all flesh shall come on account of sins. (Ps 65[64]:2-3)

When we speak of God as the master of life and death, we are acknowledging the basic debt we owe him on account of sin and recognizing that it belongs to God to determine when and how that debt shall be paid. All the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament contained, in the offering of the life of the animal, as a substitute for the life of man, a symbolic acknowledgement of the debt owed to God. Those animal sacrifices are no longer offered because, the Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, brought them to perfection and paid the debt through sacrifice of himself, once for all, upon the Cross. The offering of the Holy Eucharist proclaims that debt as having been paid to the full on our behalf, though, in order to benefit from the payment, we must each make our own contribution.

Still, there is even more involved here, because God did not demand that Abraham sacrifice himself – we would have found that more acceptable – but his innocent son. We think, among other things, “Poor Isaac. He will not have the opportunity to grow to be an adult, get married, have children. He will miss out on so many possibilities in life, so many experiences. And he has no choice in the matter.”

“He has no choice in the matter.” We are very individualistic and, in our individualism, very “pro-choice”.

The whole modern way of thinking starts with the individual, his capacity for choice, to which a “right” is attached. That right is inherently unlimited but must in some way be limited and regulated so that men can live together. The whole way the question is framed sees the individual as what is essential and unquestionable, while the living together is seen as the “problem” to be solved. We no longer grasp that the good of the individual is found in belonging to a social reality greater than himself. Like the elder son in the parable of the prodigal son, we do not appreciate the good of being a son in the father’s house and sharing in the good of the father’s estate; we would rather have a little goat to make merry in private with our friends. (cf. Lk 15:29)

This whole way of thinking is very artificial. We enter the world, without choosing, very dependent upon our parents, who themselves are part of some larger community, people, and nation. Our very individuality, from the beginning, is part of, shaped by, and integrated into some larger human whole. For this very reason, our freedom is not unlimited – Adam and Eve, rejecting the gift, had sought the unlimited freedom that belongs only to God – but by its very nature our freedom is always shaped by and lived within the context of a world, a life, and a family that has been given to us.

Let me put the emphasis on that “given” – our very life is in the first place a gift, a gift given by God. Gratitude demands that we make good use of the gift according to the intention of the giver.

Now, we begin to see that there is something even more radical about God’s command than first appears. Isaac was not just any son; he was certainly God’s gift to Abraham, but more than a gift, the fulfillment of a promise, a promise in the first place that Abraham would have descendants who would become more numerous than the sands of the sea and the stars of the heavens. (cf. Gen 13:6; 15:5; 17:4-7) Before Isaac was born, God had promised Abraham that he would establish his covenant with him. (Gen 17:19,21) By commanding that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, God is telling Abraham, “None of this that I have given you belongs to you, rather it belongs to me. It is my project, my concern. It is my task to bring my promise to fulfillment.”

This is all very much to the point, because, many years before the birth of Isaac, at the instigation of his wife, Abraham had sought, after a fashion, to take God’s promise in his own hands, having a child not by his wife Sarah, but by her handmaid, Hagar. (cf. Gen 16) That did not lead to good results.

Now, however, that Abraham puts his trust in God and obeys him, offering Isaac as a sacrifice, he goes beyond himself and he and Isaac becoming a living parable of what God will provide. In your offspring – that is Christ – all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

Abraham the father, offers his beloved son. God, the Father, did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all. Nor was Isaac merely a passive victim in the affair. He carried the wood of the sacrifice, like Christ carried the Cross to Calvary. He asked his father about the victim for the sacrifice. To which Abraham replied, God will provide for himself the burnt offering for the sacrifice, my son. (Gen 22:8) One possible meaning of Abraham’s answer is that his own son will be the burnt offering provided by God. The narrative continues: So they went both of them together. (Gen 22:8) Their going “together” does not just mean that they were walking side by side, but that they had a single purpose. Isaac understood want was hidden in his father’s answer; he understood and accepted. Thus he did not protest or cry out, when his father tied him to the wood and raised the knife to slay him. He freely offered himself, a living parable of Christ, descended from Abraham through Isaac, who loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 5:2)

Abraham’s obedience to God’s command was an act of the will. His will was fixed upon God, in faith in the promise of God, in which Christ was included; his will was fixed upon God in love, in absolute trust, to the point of raising the knife to sacrifice his son according to God’s command. Then God has him substitute the ram, and Isaac lives. Both the dead ram and the living Isaac signify Christ, who dies upon the Cross and lives in the resurrection.

What was Isaac’s life after he was spared? He lived, but with a new life, a life that was now a second gift, after the gift of his first birth.

Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God … amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. (Jn 3:3,5)

Isaac’s new life speaks of the life of grace, given to us in baptism, a life restored, transformed, sanctified, and divinized. That is what our life should be like because in our baptism we were already sacrificed with Isaac, united to the death and resurrection of Christ. Of course, the transformation and divinization of this restored and sanctified life is a work in progress, a work that, like the grain of mustard seed, must bit by bit come to encompass, occupy, and shape every aspect of our life, such that everything we think, do, and say, is done in the name of Christ to the glory of God. (cf. 1 Cor 10:31; Eph 5:20; Col 3:17)

The hard work of meditating on the story of Abraham and Isaac, in the light of Christ, is a bit like letting Christ lead us up on a high mountain, such as the one upon which he revealed his glory to the chosen Apostles. There they saw the glory that was hidden already in his human will, penetrated with the divine, because it is the human will of the Son of God; it was the glory that would be revealed after his death and resurrection; the glory that will be manifest to all, through his body, when he comes to judge the living and the dead. It is the glory that the Father bestows upon the Son who seeks the glory of his Father. (cf. Jn 12:28, 17:1-4) It is also the glory that is meant for us, the glory contained as a seed in those who live in the grace of God and that will be given in fulness to those who follow the path of Abraham’s faith and the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ.

Adam sought to glorify himself, seeking to by like God, without God. Christ, though God, the Son of God, in truth, did not seek his own glory, but that of his Father. On the Cross, he gave himself wholly to God, as a sacrifice for us; glorified at the right hand of the Father, he still appears in this world, with his glory hidden, in the Holy Eucharist, as the sacrificial victim given wholly to God for us. Our life must become like his.

God is love, which means God is gift, eternal gift, total gift, the mutual gift of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.