| The Ordeal |
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In February we finish up a cycle of Ordinary Time with an observance of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The disciples were given the opportunity to see Jesus in all of his glory. They saw him with Moses and Elijah. It was Moses, the giver of the Law who was given a glimpse of God’s glory from a cleft in a rock. It was Elijah, the chief of the Prophets who encountered God in the sound of sheer silence. The presence of Moses and Elijah was not only to provide comfort to Jesus before his tremendous ordeal, but to serve as a witness that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
Three days after we celebrate the Transfiguration we observe Ash Wednesday and remember how our Lord was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit and was tempted by Satan.
Last month we remembered how we are called to renounce evil in all of its forms. An ancient version of the service expressed it this way, ”Do you renounce Satan and all his angels and all their pomp and glory?“ In the 1928 Prayer Book it asks, Do you “renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same...?” This is what Jesus did in the wilderness. He renounced Satan. He rejected anything and everything he had to offer.
Some time ago, I mentioned in a sermon how Original Sin was like the flow of a mighty river. It is so easy to “go with the flow.” Indeed, you don’t have to do anything and you may not even notice that you are being led by the flow. As hard as it would be to stand against the flow of a mighty river, so it is when we stand against the flow of sin in our lives. The Apostle Paul reminds us repeatedly that this is our natural inclination. To do nothing is to follow it, to “go with the flow!”
The ordeal Jesus faces then is to resist this natural inclination, to embrace the fullness of his humanity without embracing its bent to sin. We glimpse his glory through his humanity. Our doctrine of the Incarnation reminds us that Jesus divine glory shines through the humility of his humanity. He is the fulfillment of the humanity for which we have all been created. Because Jesus becomes the first fully human being as God designed humanity he fulfills all things and we now have the opportunity to share in his divine glory. Hear these words from the Apostle Peter...
May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. (2 Peter 1:2-4, NRSV) |
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