David, as a model of faith and a precursor, a prototype of the Messiah, also illustrates how faith is a basis for hope. The two are really inseparable because faith not only believes in the goodness of God, in God's world, in people, But it believes also in the goodness of God in the promise. And so it leaps immediately toward the future. It is a goodness that is and a goodness that will be. You recall that saying of Dag Hammarskjöld, for all that has been, thanks. To all that will be, yes. I would add a little nuance to that and say, to all that has been, thanks if possible, and if not, forgiveness.

[01:07]

And then you're liberated to turn to the future and say, yes. It's impossible to deal with the future and to see the promise of the future if one is still, you know, stuck in the past. with unresolved problems and unforgiven hurts, makes it impossible to turn wholeheartedly toward the future. So forgiveness and gratitude are the two ways to deal with the past. In Hebrews, I mentioned that we have what seems to be a definition of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Of course, substance is a very poor translation for hypostasis, even though literally it means substance, substantia. But it means that in the basic original sense of that which stands under, that which forms the basis of.

[02:14]

And so faith is that solid, firm foundation on which one can stand and hope, can stand and look toward the future. It is the elencus, the argument of things not seen. Not a logical argument, but the argument here is a summary of a thousand Again, it's the rumor of angels, the hints of transcendence. Hope is that assurance, that solid assurance that comes from being sensitized to that cloud of witnesses, to that mass, that ton of feathers which tells us about the presence of God and reality of the promise.

[03:21]

And hope reminds us that our home is not high above the earth. It's a Greek understanding of heaven as someplace high above this veil of tears. Heaven then becomes only an escape from something evil. No, the world is not evil. It's a wonderful place with challenges and problems and evil to be overcome. on a journey that leads to heaven which is at the end of time, to heaven which is at the end of the journey. And this journey to heaven takes us through the desert. The journey of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land was a paradigm, a model, for the journey of every believer from the liberation that comes from discovering the gift of God, the love of God, discovering love and goodness in all forms and ultimately in God.

[04:36]

From that liberation, that euphoria, that honeymoon expressed in Psalm 115, 116, the mountains sleep like lambs, somewhere around there. He mountains, you know, chides the mountains for not remembering to be pontifical like David, you know. David should have been. They says, well, we have no choice but to dance and leap. I used to tell my students that, you know, we ought to have some sheep out here on the yard beside the classroom. So I take you out and see the spring lambs and see how they jump straight up in the air. They're so full of vitality, you have an advantage here. And that's the exuberance and the euphoria that comes from being liberated, from discovering that you are loved, that you are chosen. However, they went from there into the desert.

[05:41]

Then came the testing, the journey, the lifetime, the honeymoon ends, reality sets in. And it wasn't long before they were clamoring to go back to Egypt. What did they like about Egypt? Its regularity. You could count on having meals at regular times. Out here in the desert, we don't know what's going to happen. Even prison can be attractive, because there you have no responsibility. You get three square meals a day, and complain, rattle your tin cup on the bars as much as you like. They hankered to return to Egypt for the leeks and the onions and the garlic and the cucumbers and the melons, especially the leeks and the onions and the garlic, the seasoning.

[06:45]

That's what you miss when you leave home and go to a boarding school. They don't know how to season the food like my mother did. The end result is you put very little in, and you're expected to add some later if you wish. But it's not the same to add it later as to cook it with the food. I've lived in institutional cooking for many, many, many years. It's not bad, but it's not the same. My mother used to make us oatmeal. She just took the salt in her hand like that, felt it, and then threw it in. She didn't have to measure it. Came out perfect every time. I was so enthralled by this text that I knew about onions and garlic. I didn't know about leeks, so I started raising leeks in my garden, which was one of my therapies, to have a garden. Raising leeks, a wonderful vegetable to get to know.

[07:50]

Easy to grow. Tastes delicious. It is not an onion, even though it belongs to the same general family. Leek and potato soup warm the cockles of your heart. And you can add almost anything else you want to. Never gives up. You never lose the leeks. Well, vichyssoise. It's leek and potato soup served cold with some garnish, of course. So I'm the leek man at St. Vincent. Then you dig them all winter. All you have to do is be able to get through the ice. Well, I'm not here to sell leeks, but I can understand why they would hanker after the leeks and the onions and the garlic out there in that desert. The hunger for the romanticized past. They have romanticized, oh, it was like it was when I was a child.

[08:51]

Then they heard the stories about the giants. The scouts came back and said, that land ahead is full of giants. We felt like grasshoppers beside them. We cannot go in and conquer that land. It is impossible. And they wailed all night long. What a sound that must have been. The whole people of God wailing. That's one thing I want to hear in heaven. The other thing is Esau's cry when Jacob cheated him of his inheritance. He was a big man. It must have been an incredible moan that he let out. Anyway, giants. Well, these are all intended to be symbolic metaphors for the human experience of believing, to be yearning for the illusion the illusion of the comfortable life, often an illusion of a lost childhood, and to be fearful of the giants that stand ahead.

[10:01]

It's impossible. Those giants can be many things, the fear of death, the fear of illness, can be some addiction, terrible giant, can be Anything that prevents us from being what we could be can be fear, anxiety, depression. But Joshua said, God will be with us. We have no need to fear the giants. So Joshua was chosen to lead them into the Promised Land. And God was angry at Israel. in this generation which saw what I did in Egypt and had a basis for hoping and trusting and forgot that they will wander in the desert and die. God gives us goodness in order to establish a basis for trust.

[11:06]

The opportunity to trust is inevitable. We have to remember the good things, the signs of goodness that God has established. Then in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2, magnificent passage, Chapter 12 begins with a reference to the cloud of witnesses. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. Sounds almost like Benedict. Maybe he was influenced by this. running inenarabili delexionis dulcedine, with unspeakable sweetness of love, to run the way of God's commandments, to run the race that is set before us. And here's the verse that's important.

[12:10]

Looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the pioneer, the one who went ahead. We are not asked to make a journey that Jesus has not made. And so we are not alone on the journey. The pioneer, pathfinder of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, made light, endured the cross, making light of its shame, and is seated now at the right hand of the throne of God. who for the joy that lay before him." Jesus, it says, was able to make this journey not because he looked back at accomplishments in Galilee, not because he could look back and remember the miracles and his successes, not because he got out his Galilean scrapbook

[13:23]

and read about the great things that he had done and how the crowd responded. No, he was able to make the journey because of the joy that lay before him, because he had discovered that the future was illuminated with the love of his father and that he was moving toward that. Past accomplishments can be helpful. And it is excusable if, when one is depressed or put down or overcome by some adversity, if you go back to your room and get out an old letter. Dear Father Demetrius, you are one of the nicest people I have ever met. Signed, somebody, well, I hardly remember who it was. That's excusable if you need to do that to buck up your courage a little bit.

[14:26]

But that's not the way it ought to be. We shouldn't really have to live off the scrapbook, old letters, clippings from papers. No, we should, by this time, have begun to see that our strength and courage comes from the future. not from the past. For the joy that lay before him, he made light of the cross, despising its shame. The cross was nothing. Oh, it was hard there for a while, but I knew it was going to end. I knew what lay beyond it. Not with human knowledge, but in faith and hope. Our attitude toward the future, more than anything else, will govern how we appear and how we live in the present.

[15:32]

If the future is primarily threat, I cannot be happy in the present. If the future is danger, something dark, negative, something to be avoided at all costs, threatening, then I will, in spite of myself, I will look like one who is expecting bad things to happen. We are asked to follow Jesus, the pioneer, to learn to walk in his path. I think of the example of a child learning to walk. I'm sure you've Seeing this scene among your younger brothers and sisters and children, nieces and nephews, Daddy and Mommy decided it's time for Johnny to walk. He'd been crawling for three months.

[16:36]

And so one of them takes Johnny and says, go across the room now to Daddy. Johnny starts out, and in the first couple of steps he looks back for encouragement. Go ahead, you're doing fine. And then at that critical moment, he suddenly looks forward. puts his hands out and runs, well, wobbles toward the other parrot. I think something like that must happen in our lives. We look back for encouragement, but at a certain critical moment we begin to look ahead, to look forward, toward the illuminated horizon, toward the joy that God has placed before us. I don't think we can say our faith is really victorious in our lives until this begins to happen. This turning point in the ministry of Jesus occurred, I think, at his transfiguration.

[17:47]

This critical moment where Jesus began to move toward the future, to run toward the future, began at the Transfiguration. I think it's a shame that so many scholars have copied Bultmann, who looked upon the Transfiguration as a displaced resurrection story. Good Lord! Resurrection story that somehow got confused and they got it in the middle of the ministry. not to be taken very seriously. It's something that was put in there afterwards and has no significance for the life and ministry of Jesus, historically speaking. I can't believe that that is the case. So I have, you know, worked a great deal at this transfiguration. I searched through different commentaries. I found a German, Paul Gechter, in his commentary on Matthew, who

[18:51]

agreed with me, at least I found him after I had come to this conclusion. And the whole thing boils down to whether the light, the illumination of Jesus in the Transfiguration was a light that came down from heaven or came from the resurrection from outside of Jesus and fell upon him for the benefit of the disciples, or whether the light came from within him, primarily for his own benefit. And the disciples hardly knew what it meant and didn't really understand it until afterwards. They knew that something special had happened, but they weren't really quite sure what it was. But to say that the Transfiguration, which is prominent in all three synoptic Gospels, and is located in each case midway through the ministry of Jesus, and becomes a kind of significant turning point so that it marks the end of the Galilean ministry and the beginning of the Judean ministry, or in Luke, part of the journey that continues, to say that that is only

[20:16]

a failed attempt on the part of the Father to reassure the disciples, because they were not reassured. They didn't really understand it. And Peter, who was supposed to be reassured, denied the Master shortly after that. No, I think it's much more than that. In the Galilean ministry, Jesus acted out the implications of his baptism. He had been affirmed into sonship. He had become the first fruits of the new creation symbolized by the dove-like figure. And the nature of the new creation was this powerful affirmation of God's love now felt in him and the immediate consequence for him was to declare what he had experienced, that the kingdom has come, the new age has dawned.

[21:29]

That is what he experienced in baptism. So he went out and every one of his sermons in the Galilean ministry could have been entitled, The Coming of the Kingdom. In many different ways, he says the Kingdom of God is at hand. And then, even more important, he symbolized and represented this coming of the Kingdom by doing the works of new creation, by delivering from bondage, by delivering the blind and the lame, and the deaf, and the mute, and the possessed. And I think above all, the paralytics. There's hardly any miracle in the Galilean ministry that is more revealing than the curing of paralytics.

[22:35]

Because paralytics are people whose muscles are not absent, but they're useless. They're frozen. And creation, the original idea of creation was liberating being from nothingness. It was a great act of liberation. Let there be light, let there be order, let there be goodness to deliver being from nothingness, from chaos, from the empty and the void, from the formless, from the meaningless to create meaning. Jesus does symbolic actions of the new creation, the new liberation. He calmed the storm, symbolizing the calming of chaos. He came to bring peace, to release from bondage.

[23:40]

Good news to the captives. All of these were symbolic, never meant to be the real salvation. They were only metaphors for it or hints of the real salvation. All those people that Jesus cured got sick and died. Those people he raised from the dead, I feel especially sorry for them. They had to go through it again. poor devils, how would you like to die twice?" No, this was not the remedy. This was only a foreshadowing. And he was very, very careful. They would not think this was the remedy. And in spite of his best efforts, they still thought it was so. They wanted him to be the miracle worker. And that would be the end, the messiah, the popular messiah. I think Jesus pretty early on in his own human consciousness, we know so little about the human consciousness of Jesus, how it developed.

[24:47]

I think early on he began to see that he was not going to be the popular Messiah, the one who would drive out the Romans, the miracle worker, the deus ex machina that would come in and solve all the problems. Now, in today's gospel, you recall, he worked miracles and the crowd clamored to see him. And he went into some secluded place. And the disciples came and said, what are you doing here? They were so disappointed in him. Here's your chance. The crowd is on your side. Is this not the time to raise the flag? Jesus refused it to capitalize. He goes off into hiding. And then he says, he doesn't go back to the crowd. No, let us go into some other village. He frustrated the disciples over and over again.

[25:50]

And even though the Gospels are written after the resurrection, in hindsight, we still see plenty of evidence that the disciples really didn't know what he was doing. a good part of the time. I like to fantasize, you know, if we had the diary of Peter, the diary of one of the disciples, not the Gospels written after the resurrection, but what was written at the time it was going on. We'll never have one, of course, but I suspect, here's what I think Peter's diary would look like, you know. January 10th, 28 A.D. He didn't make any sense today either. I think that would have been the most common entry. He didn't make any sense today either. Just when they thought he was making sense, he would turn aside. But they, the disciples, learned to trust him enough that they went with him in spite of everything.

[26:54]

Only Judas felt betrayed by the Master because he didn't capitalize as he should have. And Judas then turned and betrayed his master in turn. I think Jesus, as I said, began to sense that his task was not to lead the crowds against the Romans. Early on he sensed that. And then he began to notice certain things. I think there was a development in his human consciousness that he was not only gradually discovered the implications of his mission. He's a much more believable Messiah, if that is so, because that's the way we live. Only gradually do we discover the implications of our mission. I think he noticed on the fringe of the crowds, you know, the crowds, of course, are hanging on his words.

[28:02]

They agree with everything. For the first time, they hear someone that makes sense, in the sense that gives them hope, that really seems to know where they are and what they aspire to. But on the fringe of the crowd, there were the Pharisees and scribes, and they have their arms folded, and they are shaking their heads. I don't care how big an audience you address, someone in the back of the room shakes his head, you will see it. I know. Someone looked at his watch, you will see it. And so he saw that not everyone was approving. And even more than that, those who were not approving were the ones who had the power. The simple people down the front had no power. And then he heard about the death of John the Baptist. John the Baptist, the prophet.

[29:07]

God would not intervene to save his life. He was allowed to pay the prophet's price. I think that sent a shiver through Jesus when that word came to him. Am I going to be spared what happened to John the Baptist and to most of the prophets? I think he began gradually to discover that his mission was not the popular Messiah, not the miracle worker, that that was to establish his authority in the eyes of the people so that he could then tell them what he was really sent to tell them that the way to salvation is not the way that men choose, which almost always involves violence, but a new way.

[30:14]

And the new way is the subject of the Transfiguration. That is where Jesus discovered the new way. And that is why he was illuminated because discovery of something wonderful always is manifested in your face as a kind of illumination. Arthur Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has written some very good things, and one of them is on the transfiguration and the glorification of Jesus. And he says the transfiguration is like a mountain a watershed in the ministry of Jesus, so that from that height, one can look down on one side at the Galilean ministry, which has now ended, and on the other side, one looks down upon the Judean ministry and the passion, and beyond that, the resurrection, the watershed.

[31:23]

Some scholars have pointed out that in Mark's Gospel, transfiguration occurs almost literally in the middle of the gospel. Chapter 9, verse 2, it begins. Yes, chapter 9, verse 2. And some have even taken the trouble of counting back the words from beginning and end to see if it was not literally, you know, the number of words be the same on both sides. Well, chapter 9, verse 2 is the beginning of the second eight chapters. of his 16-chapter gospel. Of course, not all the chapters are the same length. There's no doubt that it is a middle point, a midpoint, a turning point. Jesus works maybe one miracle after the Transfiguration, and that probably was due to the fact that they wanted to enclose this in two miracles about a blind man. The illumination of Jesus is in contrast or in support of the illumination of the blind man before and after the transfiguration.

[32:34]

There is a recent article by Murphy O'Connor, Jerome Murphy O'Connor, in Bible Review. It came out about a year ago, a year or so ago. And it's entitled, What Really Happened at the Transfiguration? I was very pleased to see it, because he takes literary criticism almost too far in some respects. I would not necessarily go all the way with him. But he analyzes the three versions of the Transfiguration, and his conclusion is completely in harmony with my own conviction. Transfiguration was something that happened in the consciousness of Jesus. No account of the transfiguration says that the light came from heaven. No indication in any of the texts that the light came from heaven.

[33:38]

The texts never identify the mountain. Mount Tabor is something dreamed up later on. How did they discover Mount Tabor? Well, it says six days after the questioning of the disciples in Caesarea Philippi. He took them up a high mountain, the three of them, Peter, James and John. And if you leave Caesarea Philippi and walk six days, not too fast, you come, if you go in the right direction, to Mount Tabor. But that's only one point in 360 points of the circle. It could have been Mount Hermon, the opposite direction, much, much higher mountain. But that's not important. The thing is, this is a symbolic mountain. This is a mountain where everybody has to go who follows in the steps of Jesus. And since not everyone can go to Palestine, the Holy Land, it's not given a name.

[34:46]

It's the mystical mountaintop where one discovers the true and deepest meaning of salvation, the way in which God's power works for salvation in one's own life. If that does not happen, one cannot walk face forward to the end of life. One can only back up toward it. because one will not know what is happening and not be able to greet it or to deal with it. Transfiguration is carefully prepared by the events of Caesarea Philippi. It is rare to find in the Gospel the kind of temporal reference that you have at the beginning of the transfiguration story. After six days, That's a most unusual kind of reference.

[35:51]

It can only mean that what is told here must be seen in the light of what happened six days earlier. And what happened six days earlier? Two things. Jesus questioned the disciples. It is like an examination at the end of a certain period of education. Who do men say that I am? First question, worth 33 points. The easy question, every good teacher gives the easy question first. Don't scare the students. And that was an easy question. Some say John the Baptist, or Elijah, or the prophet, or whatever. And then the big question, who do you say that I am? What is your conclusion? 66 points for that question. One point for your name. And Peter always had his hand up first. Peter's mother told him, when you're in school, put your hand up even if you don't know the answer.

[36:56]

Make a good impression and you won't often get caught. So Peter right away blurts out, you are the Messiah. Messiah. All that Peter said was what we have in Mark, not Matthew. Matthew brought stuff back from the resurrection. son of the living God. How could Peter have said that and then turn around and deny him? No, all he said was, you are the Messiah. And what he meant by Messiah was popular Messiah, come to drive out the Romans, this worldly Messiah, which was what everybody thought, really. And really, in a way, it's all they could have thought. It was not a bad answer at all. But now, Jesus is going to take them to another phase of education. And in this new education, that will be an inadequate answer. So it says, after the questioning of the disciples, it says, and he began to tell them, he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and be put to death and rise on the third day

[38:16]

And he said this plainly. Well, this was no casual observation. No, he leaned on these words. He emphasized them. They were so clear that they could not have been misunderstood. Vincent Taylor, whose commentary on Mark is still probably one of the best, a little outdated in some ways. Unfortunately, the new commentary by C.S. Mann in the Anchor Bible series is, in my opinion, a disappointment. It's interesting, and I mentioned in passing, that the Anchor Bible, of course, is probably the best commentary in English at the present time. The two best commentaries on the Gospel are by two Catholics, and the two worst commentaries are by two non-Catholics.

[39:20]

Just to tell you what has happened to Catholic biblical scholarship in the last 25 or 30 years. It's amazing. Fitzmyer and Brown have two very good commentaries on Luke and John. C.S. Mann in Anglican Benedictine oblate, too. But an Anglican did Matthew together with Albright. Albright was a great scholar, but he was an archaeologist. I think he was miscast as a commentator on Matthew. And then C.S. Mann did Mark and delayed and delayed and finally came out about a year or two ago. And it's not really up to par with the other commentaries. that someone will start a new edition of the Anchor Bible and ask John Mayer to do Matthew. He's the best, I think, the best American scholar at the present time in Matthew.

[40:23]

Anyway, Vincent Taylor, in his commentary on Mark, says, in all likelihood, the only thing that Jesus said at that time Because after the Resurrection, when the Gospels were written, they filled in details at times. There's influence from the Resurrection. He maintains that all that Jesus said was, the Son of Man must suffer many things. And that later on, when they saw what that meant, to be rejected and put to death, and then raised up, those things were added. In any case, all that the disciples heard was the Son of Man must suffer many things. And so Peter took Him aside and tried to make Him take it back. You can't be serious. Please tell us that you were talking in riddles or something.

[41:32]

And Jesus said, Get behind me, Satan. which is really not quite as strong as it seems. You see, ha-satan in Hebrew means the adversary. It didn't have simply the meaning of a person, an evil person, a devil as it is now. He's saying, you are my adversary when you say things like that because you represent the thoughts of man and not of God. They're understandable, but they're human and they have to change. No, Peter, I'm serious. You must come to this new understanding, painful as it may be. Son of man must suffer many things. I think that understanding, that same kind of thing hits us when we first discover that we're not going to get stronger and younger.

[42:35]

It hits people at different times. We call it over the hill. that the future is not full of promise anymore, that I had reached the age where it's going to be somewhat downhill. And then Jesus takes them up to the mountain, Peter, James and John, and is transfigured before them. The light that illuminated Jesus came I'm convinced, from within him. It was like an aura. It was like the light you see on the face of a student who is trying to follow you in some difficult argument and then suddenly recognizes it, sees it, sees the implication. Ah, yes!

[43:37]

That's a little transfiguration. Oh, for goodness sakes! What an extraordinary way to save the world! Who would have guessed it? Moses and Elijah are there with him because this revelation of God's ultimate plan and wisdom for saving the world is the purpose of all the scriptures and Moses and Elijah represents the Law and the Prophets. And they're there for another reason, maybe even more important. They were two great mountain men of the Old Testament who themselves had mystical experiences on mountaintops. Moses on Sinai, Elijah on Carmel. So they are there with Jesus. And what is this new way to save the world, killing the giant with the sling instead of the sword, the only way really to deal with the giant.

[44:47]

It is that salvation comes through love unto sacrifice. That is what releases the power of God in any human being. Love unto sacrifice. And when Jesus understood that, he made a beeline for Jerusalem. Nothing could deter him, nothing could distract him. He went directly to Jerusalem, to the place of sacrifice, to the fulfillment of his love. to the final self-giving for the joy that lay before him. And it says, a voice from heaven was heard.

[45:53]

This is my son, which had been heard at baptism, but now something new and important is added. Listen to him. Listen to him. He is now no longer simply the one who proclaims the kingdom, and acts out its implications. He is now the one who teaches wisdom in the ultimate way. Listen to him. So, open yourself to all the goodness in life that you can. And don't reject any of it, because you will need every ounce of freedom that comes from that experience of goodness and love and affirmation. And then you turn that freedom into loving unto sacrifice and thereby allowing God's power to enter into your little human fragile person and to bring resurrection life.

[46:59]

This is the new way, the new power. And it is the primary subject of the passion story.

[47:12]

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