Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 | Ps 116 | Rom 8:31b-34 | Mk 9:2-10
Has God ever done something unexpected in your life? Or does God only act in the ways that you hope or want? If today’s readings are any indication of how God works in the lives of those who follow him, then a God who only meets our expectations is not God at all.
We all have a tendency to curate our understanding and image of God. We stick to Bible passages that describe the God we want and avoid those passages that bother or challenge us. We cling to what appeals to our desires and surround ourselves with messages that confirm our preconceptions. We often do this with those with which we choose to associate, or even aspects of Church teaching. But what does it mean to pursue a God that we did not invent? How would our lives be changed if we actually let God be God? What would be demanded of us? How might our lives be disrupted?
Today’s readings reveal a God of surprises, a God who acts in ways that his followers do not understand. And yet, they trust and follow, and their lives are forever changed. Abraham has already witnessed the life-changing power of God through the birth of his son. Advanced in age, he and his wife Sarah could not have children, which meant that Abraham’s lineage would end. God intervened, thus promising that generations would follow.
But soon after, God told Abraham, at the age of one hundred, to leave everything and move to an unknown land. That was certainly a God that Abraham could not have made up or imagined. Now, God tells Abraham to sacrifice the same son that he was given. Imagine Abraham the sleepless night before: confused and frightened, pained and tortured. How could God demand such sacrifice after giving such a gift? Yet Abraham is faithful. He climbs the mountain, prepared to do the unimaginable until God reveals God’s self as a demander, not of sacrifice, but of fidelity.
In the gospel, Jesus goes up another mountain with three of his closest companions, where God reveals Jesus’ identity as his Son and Jesus’ role in salvation history. This leaves the three disciples terrified but without any doubt that they are part of something much larger—something in communion with Moses and Elijah. God breaks into the world in a new way, and their lives will never be the same.
Today, you and I are the inheritors of these surprises. God did not just act then on those holy mountains. This same God calls us to the trust of Abraham and the glory of the Transfiguration. But unlike Abraham, knife raised, or Peter, James, and John, baffled and terrified, we know how the story ends. God’s own Son will be sacrificed on another holy mountain, and this will become the path of both his glory and ours.
Like Abraham, Jesus, and the disciples, we must first travel the way. We cannot skip the intermediate steps, avoiding our Calvary or Mount Moriah, nor can we remain always on Mount Tabor in the safety of our tents. We are called to obey the God that made us, not the God we create in our limited imaginations. We are called to walk through our desert times, all the while believing in life. We are asked to go beyond the boundaries we have established, to risk all in order to be saved, to love those who seem unlovable, to do the works of God in the world and find in the end that we have followed the path to glory. This, my brothers and sisters, is our active pursuit of a God, not imagined as we might, but as a God of surprises.