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St. Elizabeth Seton Virtual Parish

Breaking Open the Word

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In the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, we see Jesus leading Peter, James and John up a high mountain. When they arrive, Jesus is transfigured before them. His face shines like the sun and his clothes become white as light. Moses and Elijah appear with Christ. There is important symbolism in this passage. The high mountain is symbolic of heaven and an encounter with the divine. Moses represents the law and Elijah represents the prophets. We are beginning to reach the summit of God’s plan of salvation. Christ, he whom Elijah and others had prophesied about and whose laws Moses wrote about, is being fully revealed for who he is – God Himself. The fullness of the divinity of Christ is manifested. There can be no doubt anymore. The voice from heaven is clear, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.”

Peter wants to stay on the top of the high mountain, to experience Christ in the fullness of his glory, and asks if he should make three tents. However, they must come down from the mountain, back to ordinary life. This is necessary for the fullness of God’s glory, for the culmination of His plan of salvation is by way of the cross. Jesus now must set his sights on Jerusalem and His passion, death and resurrection.

March 1 - 2nd Sunday of Lent

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The setting of our gospel is when Jesus leaves Judea and returns to Galilee, after the Pharisees get nervous because Jesus had baptized more people than John the Baptist. Judea is south of Galilee and in order to get to Galilee, He had to pass through Samaria…an area not friendly to Jews. Jesus could have taken the route most Jews used to get from Judea to Galilee, which was to cross the Jordan River and go around Samaria to get to Galilee…not Jesus, He had work to do.

As Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman, He heads straight into acting counter to the Mosaic Law by engaging the woman in conversation and then having the audacity to share a drinking vessel with her. Samaritans were from the remnants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by the Assyrians. By the time this gospel encounter occurs, the Samaritans had intermingled with the pagans both in family and culturally, picking up some of the pagan traditions.

Jesus tells the woman that He can provide “living water”, living water was understood to be water that was moving and fresher than the stagnant water in the well. The woman wants this water of which Jesus speaks for two reasons, it is fresher, and she would not have to come to the well by herself each day. Because she had so many husbands, she was an outcast in the town.

Jesus then engages the woman in a discussion around worship. The hill on which this was taking place was Gerizim, a place where a temple was built by the Samaritans in the 4th century BC as a rival to Jerusalem. Their discussion ends with Jesus telling her that He is the Messiah. With that revelation, the woman drops her jar of water and runs back to town to spread the word.

A woman’s word was not valued or trusted unless a man would back it up. Jesus is invited to stay with them…another big no-no for Jews. Jesus takes the time to teach them and many came to believe.

March 8 - 3rd Sunday of Lent

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This is a story filled with a lot of people and action within a small space. The presence of Jesus and His disciples always results in a large crowd. There is a beggar born blind, his neighbors and people who know him, and many Pharisees. It takes place in a small area, inside and outside the temple and at a pool of water.
What follows is more than a healing miracle. The story unfolds like a courtroom drama where neighbors, religious leaders, and even the man’s parents are questioned, and the tension is high. Each group reacts differently to what has happened. Some people didn't want to get involved, some were indifferent, some celebrate, others doubt, and the religious authorities resist the possibility that God could work outside their expectations. However, one man stood up and declared their belief in Jesus and His healing miracle. By the end of the chapter, the man who was once blind sees clearly, while those who believed they understood God reveal their own spiritual blindness.

In Jesus’ time the Jews thought that sickness and disabilities were a sign of God’s punishment for sin, even passed down from parents to their children. On seeing the blind man His disciples asked about it, and Jesus clarified that his blindness was not due to sin but for the glory of God. Jesus moves the conversation away from speculation about the past and toward the possibility of transformation now. In a world quick to label people by their brokenness, Jesus sees a life that can reveal God’s glory.

The man blind from birth would not had the advantage of schooling and training in scripture, but he had the grace of wisdom. He went head to head with his neighbors and the scholarly Pharisees. They said Jesus was a sinner, and the blind man refuted that charge. What is interesting is that the Pharisees followed Jesus closely, they had seen His works, and yet they told the blind man “We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this man (Jesus) we do not know where He comes from.” And the formerly blind man replied “Well this is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet He opened my eyes.” Then he says “If this man were not from God he could do nothing.”

Notice the Pharisees called the man a sinner because he had been born blind, yet Jesus said that was not at all true. So who is speaking the truth here, the formerly blind man, or the blind Pharisees who actually are sinners and blinded by their hatred of Jesus? If the Pharisees really knew their scripture, they would recall Isaiah 42:1-7 regarding the Messiah: “Here is my servant who I uphold… upon whom I have put my spirit… a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind.”

Note that the blind man never saw who healed him since he went blindly to the pool and then was taken to the temple; he only knew it was the man called Jesus and knew His voice. When they cast him out of the temple they did him a favor, for he got to meet his Savior who he already defended with the Pharisees and others. Jesus is always controversial: the man quickly found out what it meant to defend Jesus in the world and paid the price. We can be sure he didn’t care.

The misfortune of the man’s blindness became an opportunity for Christ to reveal the glory of God. “I came into this world that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Truth often divides people. Some of the Pharisees near him said to him, Are we also blind? Jesus said to them- “If you were blind, you would have no guilt.”

March 15 - 4th Sunday of Lent

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The Gospel of John has many differences from the three synoptic Gospels, one of which are the miracles (signs, as John calls them) described. In John, there are only 7 carefully selected miracles (each giving insights into the divinity of Jesus), and today’s gospel concerns the final and perhaps most powerful of them all - raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus and the disciples. He was the brother of Mary – the Mary of Bethany who would later anoint the feet of Jesus with oil and dry his feet with her hair (John 12:1-8). Upon hearing that Lazarus was ill, rather than immediately going to him to save him, Jesus delays going to him. Several days later, Jesus tells the disciples that Lazarus has died. That must have been shocking to the disciples – why hadn’t Jesus stopped this from happening? When they arrive in Bethany, Martha chides Jesus with the same question – why didn’t he stop this from happening? Jesus and Martha then have a remarkable conversation. Jesus says to her “I AM the resurrection and the life”, echoing the name God reveals to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). Jesus doesn’t just bring resurrection, Jesus IS resurrection. Jesus IS life itself. Martha then gives a confession rivaling Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:16), professing Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. What Martha, Mary and the disciples (and by extension us, today) find so hard to understand is that despite his power, Jesus is not here just here to take away our suffering. He is here to bring us God. To bring us salvation. He doesn’t cure everyone. Suffering is part of the human experience. Rather than taking it away, he transforms it by suffering with us. Faith does not take away our suffering. It changes what suffering can become.

Jesus then encounters Mary (sister of Lazarus) and in this, we have what must be among the most remarkable words recorded in all of scripture – “And Jesus wept”. Here we have God Himself – the one who is, the one who created our vast universe – humbling himself to experience the depths of human pain. Suffering with us. In just three words, we have one of the most profound revelations of the nature of God in the Bible.

Special emphasis is made that Lazarus was truly dead – particularly when Martha mentions that he had been dead for four days. It was a Jewish belief at the time that the three days following death were an intermediate state, where the soul hovered near the body. After three days, death was final. Jesus commands that the stone sealing his tomb be rolled away (echoing Jesus’s own resurrection) and he gives the command “Lazarus come out”. One can only wonder what it must have been like to be in the crowd and actually witness that. To actually see something utterly inconceivable - the dead raised to life. Jesus then tells his followers to “untie him and let him go” – freeing him from Satan’s power in death.

March 22 - 5th Sunday of Lent

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Each of the gospels has its own perspective representing Jesus himself and the events of the passion from a unique viewpoint. This year we read from Matthew, who follows Mark’s account rather closely with a number of unique elements added. As throughout Matthew’s gospel, we find there are several references to the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, indicating that Jesus fulfills all of Israel’s hopes and dreams. Matthew presents Jesus as a royal figure, but one who is humiliated. This is not the royal Jesus of John’s gospel, completely in control throughout his passion. Here, Jesus is a king but he is also clearly a victim.

March 29 - Palm Sunday

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