Dare

The story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his only son, Isaac, is one mean story and I hope to God Abraham was just hallucinating all this or that he was just a child of his time, a time and culture which might have treated the sacrifice of first borns and first harvests as par for the course. I hope to God God isn’t as whimsical or as demanding as he is in this story.

We are moving towards mean week. That week, otherwise called holy, is the week we remember our meanness to the innocent and beloved One of God. It is one mean story and I hope to God we can be forgiven enough for not knowing (or refusing to know) what we were doing on Calvary. I hope to God God isn’t as vengeful or as blind as we are in this story.

All three readings today, the second Sunday of Lent, are meant to be stitched together. As one piece, they reveal to us a powerful and gracious twist in the way sacrifice figures in our redemption.

In the first reading, we hear of God putting “Abraham to the test”, daring him to offer up his only son as a holocaust to heaven. We do not have the details but Abraham must have agonized long enough before calling the dare.

In the end, we know who blinked. God blinked, he gave in, he relented.

Fast forward to the third reading, the Gospel story of the transfiguration. There is a lot of dazzle in this story and for once there are no cryptic parables or passages to decipher. To their delight, the disciples are given a ringside view of Jesus in the company of Moses (of the Law) and Elijah (of the prophets). If they had doubts before about this “rabbi”, this experience on the mountain was telling them at last all that they needed and wanted to know. The point of the transfiguration story is simple:

“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

This rabbi of the Law, this prophet of the Kingdom, this Jesus on the cross is none other than your Son, O God, your beloved, “your only one, whom you love.”

There in that revelation of identity, in words reminiscent of how dear Isaac was to Abraham, we see the costly twist in the mystery of our redemption.

For on Calvary, we took on God and we put God to the test, daring him to make good on his covenant to set us free and save us. We dared him to take us back to paradise. And he not only gave us the law and the prophets to show us the way home; he gave us his only Son. He offered us his only Son.

And we could not believe our eyes that God would do such a thing. It was as a dare that we took him up on this offer. We dared him to offer this Son of his as a holocaust to the idols we are wont to worship. We do not have the details but God must have agonized long enough before calling the dare. If heaven was silent that day of Good Friday, all of heaven must have been praying (as with Abraham appealing all the way up the mountain) that we would in the end relent.

In the end, we know we did not blink. We did not give in. We did not relent.

And so it is, we are told, that by his wounds, the wounds of God’s only One, we are healed; by this one Sacrifice, his total self-emptying, we live. St Paul tells it straight to us in his words to the Romans (the second reading) today:

“Brothers and sisters: If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?”

Ponder deeply these words that need no further deciphering. If God did not spare even his very own, what more is there for him to withhold? How can we continue believing in a tentative, whimsical, and vengeful God? How can we go on living in fear or indifference, believing in a God who takes back or equalizes, a God whose love is limited by death?

If God can be so total in emptying himself for love of us, so too are we dared to give up the venom and the hate, the meanness with which we disfigure and crucify one another without end. In Christ, we are all brothers and sisters, children of a beneficent and merciful God. In Christ, God sees our face, the face of God’s very own and beloved.

In Christ, we see the very face of God. On the cross, we see love unrelenting, daring to go to the very end.

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Fr. Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ is President of the Ateneo de Manila University.  For feedback on this column, email [email protected]