Second Sunday of Lent: Seeking The High Places
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage
Seeking The High Places – Second Sunday of Lent Year C – Luke 9:28-36
Drama and tragedy, the epic story of scripture where the ‘high places’ are sought out for encounter and worship. These ‘high places’ of the created idols and the models we follow are always the heralds of disaster, destruction, and death. Jesus’ life unfolds on these high places, the places of the great temptation of power, prestige, and popularity.
From the heights of God’s temple in Jerusalem Jesus is presented with the temptation of power and prestige to reign as an earthly king and divine despot. From the heights of the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem Jesus is faced with the temptation to bypass his coming ordeal and suffering. Peter offers this same temptation after Jesus has just proclaimed him as the rock of the church and receives the greatest rebuke within Scripture, “get behind me Satan”.
On Mount Tabor, the high place of the Transfiguration, there is the temptation to clasp and hold on to the safety of the glory of God, but as Paul reminds us, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
These were the temptations of Jesus the Christ, our model, and ideal. These were the temptations of power and prestige that Jesus experienced at every turn, from friends and foes alike, from loved ones and doubters, from family and disciples. These are also our temptations in the ‘high places’.
The temptations that face us now as a suffering and fragmented church also follow the pattern that unfolds in the life of Jesus. Yes, it is a time for conversion and penance but is also an opportunity for renewal and transformation so that we may more truly reflect the universal Christ who is embodied in the man Jesus. This is the reflection that will always confront the powerful for their injustice and hypocrisy.
Jesus moved from the high places of popularity, power, and prestige to journey with those who are oppressed in the shadow of the abuse of power. It is ultimately the transforming power of love as it is raised upon across on the ‘high place’ of Golgotha that the final temptation is overcome. This is where we find the glory of the final transformation in the resurrection.
To listen to Jesus we are called to follow the way of Jesus who rejects absolutely the way of the high places, the way of popularity, power and prestige. Jesus rejects the call to moral superiority that searches for scapegoats and sacralises violence, domination and superiority.
The ongoing enthronement of our exclusive, male hierarchical priesthood claims to reflect the reality of God and his Son Jesus, ‘In Persona Christi Capitis’. This concept of a male God who raises only men to the ‘dignity and power of the priesthood’ distorts not only the nature of priesthood as one of sacrifice and service, but also distorts the nature of the eternal and universal Christ who is the model and exemplar of every man and woman created in the image and likeness of God.
The path ahead of us will call for suffering as it did also for Jesus. The renunciation of reserved, privileged places at the high table will not be an easy path for many. The temptation of the high places is always with us and it is only by choosing solidarity with those who are excluded and dis-empowered in the footsteps of Jesus that we find God’s presence. This is the way of vulnerable, expansive, inclusive, and redemptive love.
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