Friends
Peace be with you.
There’s a scene in the 1985 movie Clue that I thought about as I was preparing this homily. If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s a secular comedy that is probably more for kids 12 and above because of some suggestive humor. It’s based on the board game in that all the characters are either in the board game or logically related to a mansion, like a cook, a butler, and a maid. The movie begins with the characters all discovering their host, a man named Mr. Body, has been blackmailing them for crimes they’ve committed. In the course of the movie, Mr. Body and other ancillary characters are killed, leaving the main six characters to search the house for clues. At one point, after several frantically funny scenes, as Colonel Mustard and Ms. Scarlett are locked in a room screaming to be let out, the maid, named Yvette, runs with the revolver to shoot the lock. She accidentally trips, shooting the rope holding up a chandelier and then, gets her bearings, and shoots the lock to the door in which they are trapped. Colonel Mustard comes out frantically shouting “Why are you shooting at us? You could have killed us, we could have been killed. I just can’t take any more scares” and for a brief moment it feels like everything is starting to calm down right as the chandelier falls to the ground shattering into a million pieces and causing everyone to start to scream again.
The first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis are a manual for how the world got to be the way it is. God makes things good and human beings break them. God gives us life and an order to the world and creates us in complementarity to each other as man and woman and the first thing that happens is man and woman find a way to use the complementarity against each other. They discover there’s this whole other moral concept they weren’t supposed to know called evil. They were only supposed to know good. So, God sends them eastward, gives them better clothes than leaves, and starts to pick up the pieces. However, then Adam and Eve’s children, Cain and Abel, introduce murder into human history. Then the angels, spiritual entities intended to be unseen helpers to people, turn on each other and some of them decide to create a hybrid human angel species called the Nephilim. And just when you think it can’t get any worse, God decides he’s going to send a flood on the world and start over. However, there’s one family, Noah’s family, that seems worth keeping so he wipes everyone else off the planet and enters into a covenant with Noah’s family. You’d think that would be where things start to get better. But they don’t. Instead, like the chandelier falling from the ceiling, Noah’s descendants decide they’re going to build a tower to heaven and God disperses them throughout the world and confuses their speech so they won’t get that idea again. And it’s only at this point that God decides that he’s going to work with one guy, one family, Abram’s, to see if things go better. And they do.
Similarly, in the gospel, seven days before the Transfiguration, Jesus had gone on excursion with his Apostles to Cesearea Phillippi and asked them who people say that he is. Some say Elijah, or the prophets. It’s Simon Peter who says that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the most high. Peter gets the keys to the kingdom and is the rock of the papacy for the church. Then, right after, Jesus starts talking about how he’s going to go to Jerusalem to be condemned and tortured and die on the cross. Peter’s response is to take him aside and rebuke Jesus leading to Jesus calling him Satan and demanding Peter get behind him. We hear nothing about what happened for the next six days. Presumably, Jesus and the apostles went home and, being men, refused to talk about what happened at Casarea Phillippi because the apostles were upset that Peter got the answer right, Peter is mad because Jesus called him Satan, and Jesus is disappointed at everyone’s lack of faith. For seven days they stew on this and then Jesus appears out of nowhere and says, “Hey, Peter, James, John, let’s go pray on that mountain.” For, this inner circle of the apostles Jesus had cultivated, they’ve probably been stewing about what they should have said or what they can do to fix things. They’re probably thinking they’re going to get some quiet time with Jesus and get another chance to react. Instead, again like that chandelier falling, they look over and Jesus’ face and clothes are pure white and two ancient figures, Moses and Elijah, are standing next to him. And then a voice comes down from heaven saying “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased, Listen to him”. And what was supposed to be a quiet, reflective time to put all the conflict they had in Cesarea Phillippi to rest is upended as Peter, James, and John are laying on the ground afraid.
There are three endings to the movie Clue but they all start after the chandelier has fallen. It marks a turning point in the movie where things actually get better because someone takes charge. Similarly in the first reading, Abram’s going to let the one true God be in charge of his life and move him into the holy land. For Peter, James, and John, the Transfiguration is a turning point in the formation they needed to be the leaders of the early church in the wake of the death of Jesus, even if they're still going to smash a few chandeliers after this. It may have taken an extraordinary event, a chandelier smash, a scattering of the nations, or a frightening transfiguration, for the change to take place but it was all a part of the plan, in the case of Clue it was the filmmaker’s plan but in the case of the first reading and gospel, it is God’s plan.
When we started Lent a week and a half ago, we may have entered into spiritual practices that we knew would help us grow closer to Christ. There may be a moment when, if we follow through, it will mean tension with family, friends, coworkers, or even the way we perceive ourselves. For example, if we know we have trouble with alcohol and need to stop drinking but we also know our friends will make fun of us or pressure us into drinking if we stop, it may seem difficult to decide not to hang out with them or to be willing to take the abuse. We may even ask ourselves if that’s how we want to live the rest of our lives: as boringly sober. We may have even tried to stop before and failed so we feel like we’re just meant to be trapped in the life we know God doesn’t want for us. Even if you’re late to the start, allow this lent to be the chandelier dropping moment, a moment of transfiguration where Jesus promises us blessings instead of the curses we so often feel. Invite him to change our hearts and be willing to follow wherever he leads, even if it seems like a change you don’t think you can do. Can you allow Jesus to lead you away from sin so you can be faithful to the Gospel?
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