<\/p>\n
Guess what?\u00a0 Our citizenship is in heaven, not on earth!\u00a0 That\u2019s what St. Paul is telling us this morning.<\/p>\n
Does it feel like that to you?\u00a0 Or are you one of those people that Paul is talking about whose minds are occupied with the things of this world?\u00a0 Now I\u2019m not talking about right now this morning.\u00a0 All of you are here this morning to worship the Lord.\u00a0 But what about when you leave here in 45 minutes or so and for all of next week?\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to focus on the Lord then, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 There\u2019s the kids and the job and the yard and the house payment and the shopping and the laundry and soccer practice and heaven knows what all else.\u00a0 These are all things of this world; they are not about our heavenly citizenship.\u00a0 So, how can we focus on citizenship in heaven in the midst of all that?<\/p>\n
Well, let\u2019s take Abram as an example.\u00a0 He was prosperous in the Land of Ur- a great property owner.\u00a0 He was involved in running a large household and many things of this world.\u00a0 Yet Abram took the time to reflect on his life, and listen to the urgings of the Lord.\u00a0 And the Lord told him to pull up stakes and go to a land he would show him.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even tell him where that was till he got there.\u00a0 And then, the passage this morning describes what happened after Abram arrived there.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Abram went through a process of centering his life on the Lord in parallel with living in this world.\u00a0 The fact is that Abram believed there was a Lord, listened to the voice of the Lord in his life; and was open to what the Lord said. \u00a0In other words he trusted the Lord, even when it was difficult.\u00a0 Abram left a life of comfort and control to embrace the perceived will of the Lord.\u00a0 And he was obedient even in the face of uncertainty.\u00a0 In a word, Abram had faith and lived in faith, but that was not without its consequences.\u00a0 Indeed, the move from the land of Ur was painful and involved a lot of self-sacrifices.\u00a0 Because of his faith and obedience, though, God made a covenant with Abram down to the thousandth generation, one in which he promised his faithful descendants the promised land.\u00a0 And that promised land symbolizes life in the heavenly kingdom.\u00a0 In other words, Abram was focused on being a citizen of heaven.<\/p>\n
This morning\u2019s Gospel is all about the transfiguration.\u00a0 And the transfiguration is filled with symbology. \u00a0Jesus takes on the appearance of his glorified body- symbolic of what citizenship in heaven will be like.\u00a0 He is seen with Moses and Elijah, also in their glorified bodies. \u00a0Jesus spoke to them about his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem- his exodus- in other words, the voluntary uprooting he would experience from the relatively comfortable life he had been living, nd acceptance of the cross, suffering and death.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what he was talking to Moses and Elijah about.<\/p>\n
Now the Apostles were just spellbound by all that.\u00a0 They wanted to stay there and experience more of the glorified Christ.\u00a0 But what happens?\u00a0 The Father envelops them with the shadow of a cloud and speaks to them plainly: \u201cThis is my chosen Son, listen to him.\u201d\u00a0 Listen to him.\u00a0 We know that the Gospel goes on to tell how Jesus told the disciples that he would be handed over to the authorities, suffer greatly, die, and then, and only then, be raised from the dead.\u00a0 It was as if the Father was saying to the Apostles: \u201cListen guys, if you want the glorified state you just saw, listen to my son.\u00a0 He will tell you what you need to do.\u201d\u00a0 The trouble was, it wasn\u2019t what they wanted to hear because just after the Father spoke from the cloud, Jesus told them the truth of his suffering and death.\u00a0 They were incredulous and confused.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not what we want to hear either.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to listen to God tell us we need to move out of our comfort zone.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to hear that life is anything other than the plate we currently have, and we certainly don\u2019t want to hear about the suffering greatly and take up our cross part.\u00a0 But we have got to face the reality that life is a continual conversion process, and that conversion process is the one that Abram experienced.\u00a0 Lent is the ideal time to pull back and follow Abram\u2019s example.\u00a0 We have to believe that God is calling us; we have to step back and listen to God; we have to follow his voice even in uncertainty and trust that he will lead us to the promised land; and we have to do all of that while living in this world.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, few of us are called to give everything up and move away, like Abram.\u00a0 Rather, we are called to other kinds of conversion.\u00a0 These calls are the nagging feelings we have when we take the time to pray and reflect that something is wrong in our lives- something with our spouse; some evil influence from our neighbors or friends; some constant temptation we yield to like food, sex, laziness, whatever.<\/p>\n
Lent is the time to get in tune with the voice of the Lord.\u00a0 Now is the time to listen to the Lord tell us \u201cNo, follow me instead\u201d whenever we have those nagging feelings that something is wrong.\u00a0 Because, all of us really do want to be citizens of heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Second Sunday of Lent Gen 15: 5-12, 17-18;Phil 3: 17 \u2013 4: 1; Lk 9: 28b-36 Dc. Larry Brockman Guess what?\u00a0 Our citizenship is in heaven, not on earth!\u00a0 That\u2019s what St. Paul is telling us this morning. Does it feel like that to you?\u00a0 Or are you one of those people that Paul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[195,194],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}