From what posture might we best encounter God?
In Genesis, the Lord
takes Abram outside and invites him
to look to the stars as a measure of the number of descendents he will bear,
descendents who will take possession of a land alien to Abram at some future time.
Abram has no evidence that what God promises will come to pass, yet he
puts his trust in the Lord, accepting the new covenant offered by God in spite
of the deep darkness that first
enfolds him. Abram thus enters into right relationship with God, and will
henceforth live from God's promise; his posture is one of absolute faith in the
Lord. Psalm 27 likewise tells of an
encounter of complete trust: the
psalmist sees God as his goal, the purpose of his life; his heart tells him
that God is what he needs. Like Abram
and the psalmist, our hearts drive us to encounter God from a posture of trust,
knowing that God will illumine our existence:
The Lord is my light and my
salvation.
In Luke's version of the Transfiguration, Peter's posture is
not as well grounded as that of Abram or the psalmist. Confronted with the presence of Moses and
Elijah on the mountain with Jesus, Peter wants to hold on to old traditions,
building tents for the prophets as his ancestors would have done. Instead, God intervenes, pointing him to a
new posture: Listen to him, God tells Peter.
In other words, stay open, stay firm,
and trust. Only after Jesus' death and rising will
Peter come to a full understanding of this experience on the mountain; only
then will he come to understand the cross
of Christ of which Paul speaks to the Philippians; only once he embraces
that cross will Peter know, as we might one day know, the transformation of our
lowly body into one glorified like that of Christ.
To stand firm in the
Lord is to encounter Jesus from a posture of openness and trust, with faith
in God's promise of salvation. It is, in
short, a posture of love, calling us to absolute faith in God's power, a power grounded in God's love
for humanity and his willingness to send his Son to die for us on the cross,
arms open, embracing the world.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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