Friends
Peace be with you.
As some of you know, the series The Chosen has been released in theaters. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the first three episodes and this past Thursday I watched the next three. If you haven’t watched any of this season and intend to do so, don’t worry. I’m not going to give away any of the plot but I will talk about a couple of feelings I’ve had that I don’t think will have any effect when you watch it. One of the challenges they face is trying to integrate all four gospels into a singular story without needing to add details that are not present in the gospels. I feel like the director, Dallas Jenkins, balances this pretty well by delving deep into the meaning of words and asking himself what may have caused something down the road. One of the feelings I find myself constantly having throughout all four seasons of the show is a constant skepticism as to if this character said something because they will say something else later on or if this act is foreshadowing something else. Yet there is another challenging feeling that I feel like they take on very hard in episodes three, four, and five that is also present in the gospel and first reading.
In the first reading, we hear a story that probably seems kind of confusing. If you’re like me, you may have tuned out the entire reading and only started paying attention during the gospel because, let’s face it, most of the time I only preach on the gospel. As a preamble, you need to know that it was a common practice to sacrifice your first born son for some of the tribal nations surrounding the Israelites. This was done, in part, as a thanksgiving offering for the gift of a son to carry on his father’s familial responsibilities and as a show of trust that more sons would be born to the couple to carry on those duties. Sons were valuable in tribal societies because they could hunt for food, build houses, as well as waging war so there were fewer of them, in general, when it came to propagating the species. Sacrificing a child probably seems rather barbaric and, I’ll admit, I’m trying to use language that some of my little friends may not understand for a reason. The Jews were the first not to offer this sacrifice but to offer an animal instead. It was the first reading by which they decided to do this. Had it ended differently, had the one true God called Abraham to offer his son Isaac, they would have followed all their neighbors in this barbaric practice. But, instead, at the last possible moment, God halted the hand of Abraham and told him to sacrifice a sheep instead. He even gave Abraham the sheep to slaughter. That’s why, on February Second of each year, the Feast of the Presentation, the Bible says in the Gospel of Luke that Mary and Joseph brought a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons to the Temple to be sacrificed, because Jesus was Mary and Joseph’s first born son. It also tells us that they were too poor to afford a sheep, by the way, since they could only afford some inexpensive birds.
We, Christians, believe there is deeper symbolism to this as well. We believe the animal sacrifice that replaced child sacrifice was itself temporary and symbolic. At Mass, I say “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the World…” We believe the sacrifice of Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice that ended the need for the Temple Mount sacrifice. The reason Jesus tells Peter, James, and John not to tell the others what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration is because it would only make sense when his own sacrifice was completed. Jesus’ transfigured glory could only make sense after his brutal death on the cross. It’s like Jesus is trying to show them the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel even before they’ve entered the tunnel. He’s trying to give them resurrected, glorified hope before they’re hopeless. I think it’s also why Peter didn’t get it, because he hadn’t experienced the death of his friend yet.
As I was watching the Chosen, there were a couple of really sad scenes. Again, I’m not going into detail but I found myself questioning if they needed to be that bleak or that dark. And it reminded me of how pedestrian we can make the crucifixion. A few years ago, when the Passion of the Christ came out, I talked to a few priests who weren’t going because they felt it was too dark. They wanted the upbeat crucifixion in Godspell, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or Jesus of Nazareth.
The challenge is that Christianity isn’t always upbeat. Sacrifice isn’t always upbeat. I get concerned because I worry that we’ve made Christianity too much like a pithy pop song. We’ve become a church of the Middle Class or a church of comfort. I get concerned because we are a church born from a sacrifice that has more martyrs today than ever before in history and prioritizing comfort is hardly preparation for belonging to that kind of church. I get concerned because Christianity without sacrifice is not worth belonging to. It’s too boring.
But I get it. I like comfort as much as the next guy. I don’t like to feel sad. Who would? I’m not saying we should look forward to the sadness of the crucifixion like a sadist.
Nonetheless, lent is a time for us to put aside some comfort to get a small sense of what Jesus went through. If you’re like me, you’ve probably messed up on your acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving at this point. You may have eaten between meals or not had a quarter to put in the jar after you said a bad word or not set aside the hour for prayer. You may even have messed up a couple of times and are starting to wonder if you should just give up. Please don’t. Take the mulligan and start again. It’s okay. Start today. Who cares that you’re not going to get the gold star sticker for forty days of fasting? The only day that matters is today. That’s all we have anyway. That’s the point of the transfiguration. There may be sadness and suffering in our lives but Jesus is the light at the end of the tunnel, he is our transfiguration. We may have to sacrifice before we get to experience the glory of the resurrection but that’s why we sacrifice today, because Christianity isn’t always happy or pretty or easy or comfortable. But it is worth it because, in the end, we get to share in his transfigured glory.
