Second Sunday of Lent Homily

Denali Mountain

Peter wanting to build three tents is often seen in a negative light. As I reflect on it with the idea that Matthew is writing to a Jewish Christian community, a tent has a symbolic meaning. When we read the story of the wandering in the desert of the People of Israel, after the giving of the Law, God commands that the ark be made and placed in the Tent of Meeting. Here God dwelled among his people. He guided them. He walked with them. He was present to them. God’s presence was often seen as a cloud and fire over the place where the ark was kept.

Jesus is the new Law and the embodiment of the very presence of God. He is God. In the prologue of John’s Gospel, we are told that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” or “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us” in the Greek. Like the apostles, we can forget this. When we forget who Jesus is, then like them we become afraid, hopeless, and lost. The apostles who knew Jesus the best struggled with this, especially when he begins to tell them that “he will suffer and die on the Cross.”  Like Moses led the people through the Red Sea, so Jesus leads us through the waters of death into the Promised Land of God’s eternal presence. He destroyed sin and death by His life-giving Death and Resurrection.

We need this message so much today. We are all hungry for God and His glory. For so many of us, we have gotten pulled into the negativity and the pessimism of the world today. Jesus calls us to something new by showing us who He is truly is. We have forgotten he is in charge. God will transform us by His Lifegiving presence. He travels with us every moment of our lives. Even if we think we are alone, we are not. Fear can paralyze us. Our ego can trap us into building tents of our views, and we angrily condemn those who do not agree. We all try to build permanent temples and forget that God did not want a Temple. Once we our temple is built, we fool ourselves into thinking we can capture God there and God will have to do what we want.

Lent is our time to destroy the temples of our selfishness, hard hearts, fear and doubt, and our sins and remember the we are a people on the journey to the Kingdom of God. We have nothing permanent in this world, no church, no country, no possession, nothing. Remember the words we used to put the ashes on your head this Ash Wednesday:  Remember, you are dust and unto dust you shall return.” If we can accept this, then joy, peace and the love of God floods us with all His gifts. A tent can expand easily; brick and mortar cannot.

So, in this second week of Lent, let us confront the desire to never change and the false idols of our life. May we rejoice in the presence of the God who travels with us up the mountains of joy and in the valleys of darkness and the high places of our joys. Let us follow the Holy Cross to our eternal home.