Trust Walk

Homily for February 21, 2016 (2nd Sunday of Lent)
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36

When I was a high school student I took part in a retreat that featured something called a “Trust Walk.”  The retreatants were organized in pairs.  One of them would be blindfolded; and the other would lead him around the building, providing directions (“Take two steps to your left….Careful, you’re coming to a stairway….Slow down….Duck!”).  As the name implied, the journey through the retreat house demanded that one person really have faith that the other would not only guide them but also protect them from harm.  It was a powerful experience.  More than twenty years after I graduated from high school, I was asked to be part of a team preparing youth retreats; and one of the central activities was…the Trust Walk.

Our scripture readings today remind us that our season of Lent—indeed our whole lives as Christians—is a Trust Walk, the most important one we’ll ever take.  While we may not ever be blindfolded, there are still many times when we find ourselves in darkness.  Illness, struggles and questions about our faith, the death of a loved one or some other loss can put us there; and we have to work our way out of that darkness.   But mystery can also be an experience of darkness.  When we stand before forces that are more powerful than we are or experiences that we cannot understand; we are called not to flee from them or deny that they exist.  Instead we are called to accept them and deal with them.

Abram’s darkness was part of his experience of God as they were making their covenant.  On God’s orders, he took five animals and birds and split them in two.  This gesture was common in the ancient Near East. It essentially said, “May the same thing happen to whoever breaks this covenant.”   Even when his sacrifice was threatened by birds of prey or Abram found himself enveloped in a “terrifying darkness,” he stayed with his sacrifice, which was ratified by God.

In the wake of the Transfiguration, the apostles found themselves enveloped in the darkness of a cloud and confronted with a voice identifying Jesus as his Son.  They were afraid: in addition to this theophany, they also struggled to maintain their emotional and spiritual balance after he had told them that he, the Son of Man, would be persecuted by their religious leaders, crucified and then rise from the dead.  In the face of so much darkness and uncertainty Jesus urged them not to be afraid.  After all, he had the Law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah) standing with him; and he would stand with his disciples ‘til the very end…if they would stand with him.

St. Paul often struggled with different kinds of darkness, from the day that he was literally blinded by the light of Jesus on the road to Damascus to the challenges that he faced in bringing whole communities into the faith.  In our second reading, he had to confront a movement in the church at Philippi that insisted that new Christians also take on the practices of the Mosaic Law.  Paul called them “enemies of the cross” because they refused to recognize its salvific power.  Their God was their stomach and their glory was in their shame because they insisted on following the Jewish dietary laws and the practice of circumcision.  Yet even in the darkness of their apparent rejection of the gospel he preached, Paul continued to stand with the Philippians.

We live in a world in which our mortality, sin, and the mysteries of our human existence place us in darkness.  It can be a frightening experience; but it is also an opportunity to let God lead us on a Trust Walk, one that will sustain us in this life and lead us into the next in peace. +