2nd Sunday of
Lent
Cycle C
Saint Margaret Parish
February 24, 2013 9:30 and 11am
Rothschild Mansion
There
is a story that back in the nineteenth century, some tourists were passing by
the famous mansion of the Rothschild family in London.
These
tourists noted that on one end of the mansion, the cornices and exterior wall
were unfinished. They wondered why this
was so since the Rothschilds were one of the wealthiest families in Europe.
The
explanation is interesting. Lord
Rothschild explained that he was an orthodox Jew and according to Orthodox
tradition, the house of every Jew was to have some part left unfinished.
Why? To bear witness that the occupant of the
house is like Abraham, in a sense unfinished, a person on a journey with no
lasting home on this earth.
Life as Circle
That
practice helps us to appreciate today’s Scripture readings.
It
helps us to realize that we are all on a journey. About ten years ago, I read a book entitled The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill.
Cahill
states that up until the time of Abraham, ancient peoples viewed life as a
circle. They believed that what had happened
in the past would happen again in a continuous circle.
They
also believed that everything was determined by heavenly powers. And so, our task was to meditate on the
ceaseless, circular flow of life.
We
were to do this until we came to peace with this and with our own death as part
of that great circle. Now, as I said,
that was the ancient view of life, but one of the gifts of the Jews was that
Abraham changed this way of thinking.
Life as Journey
The
background to today’s first reading is that Abraham has listened to God’s call
and set out to an unknown land.
He
sets out on a journey and ever since then the way to look at human life is as a
journey. This change of outlook now
means that there is much more to life than the past simply repeating itself.
Now
there is the possibility of a different future and we have responsibility for
creating it. The Old Testament also
reveals that this journey is not just from one country to another, as it was
for Abraham and Moses.
It
is not just an outer journey, a journey outside me. Instead, it is primarily an inner journey, a
journey to our inner self where we can find God.
It
is a journey of becoming one with God and becoming more and more like God. In the long run, it is a journey back to God.
A Journey with No Tents
This
understanding carries right over into Christianity.
The
gospels consistently show Jesus on a journey to Jerusalem. They also call us to see our lives as a
journey and they add an important caution about this.
The
caution is that we have to resist the temptation to pitch our tents, in other
words, to stay put. In today’s gospel, Jesus
will not let Peter do this because he knows that there is still a lot of the
journey ahead and a lot of work to do.
The
question is: how might we find ourselves pitching our tents today? We might be doing this when we say things
like: “This is the way I’ve always done
it.”
Or,
“This is the way I learned it and have always
understood it.” Statements like
these might be saying that we are closing ourselves off to looking at things differently
or doing things differently.
For
example, we can pitch our tents in the understanding of ourselves. Maybe we just turn off any comment that calls
us to examine our attitude or way of speaking about certain persons or groups
of people.
We
can also pitch our tents in the understanding of our faith. Maybe we resist understanding faith as
primarily a relationship with God that is to grow and deepen – a living
relationship instead of just a static list of truths.
The
point is that like Peter in the gospel, we need to resist the temptation of
pitching our tents. This is what the
Season of Lent that calls us to do – to keep growing, to keep on the journey of
life.
