This is my beloved Son, with whom
                                      I am well pleased
                                Homily on Mathew 17:1- 9
 
                   One day Jesus, Moses and an elderly gentleman were out playing golf.  They started off on the first hole, which was a tough par 4 with a long carry over water—maybe 200 yards—right off the tee.
 
          Moses teed off first, and didn’t hit much of a drive, so his ball wasn’t going to carry over the water.  But before it landed, Moses raised his arms, and the water parted, and the ball bounced on dry land and ended up on the fairway 10 yards past the lake.
 
          Jesus teed off next and he didn’t hit a very good drive either.  Just as His ball was about to land in the lake, Jesus spoke and the water became very still and hard, and the ball bounced off it like it hit cement and went flying past Moses’ ball another 20 yards down the fairway.
 
          Finally the elderly gentleman teed off.  He hit a huge slice into a bunch of pine trees, where the ball bounced around on the branches like a pin ball, and finally it hit a branch and went straight up into the air.  An eagle, which had been sitting in the trees, flew up and caught the ball, and flew with it straight down the fairway.  About 30 yards from the green, the eagle dropped the ball, and it landed right on a sprinkler head at just the right angle to send it straight on to the middle of the green.
 
          Moses turned to Jesus and said:  “If your Dad keeps showing off like that, we’re leaving him home next time.”
 
          Today’s Gospel reading, the reading about the Transfiguration, gives us an interaction between Jesus and His Father as well, certainly more accurate than my little story, and one that we might reflect on for just a bit.
 
          The context is that Jesus, Perter, James and John have gone up to the top of a high mountain by themselves.  When they are there, Jesus is transfigured before them, and His face shines like the sun, and His clothes become white as light. Moses and Elijah appear, and Peter speaks to them.
 
          While Peter is still speaking, a bright cloud appears and from the cloud a voice—the voice of God the Father—speaks, saying: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.”
 
          We hear that voice—the voice of God the Father—one other time in the Gospels, and God the Father says the same thing—“This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased”—again to Jesus and to those around Him.
 
          Who can tell me when God speaks these words that other time?  If you guys can’t tell me, I’m going to ask Fr. Mark, because I’m sure he knows.
 
          It is at Jesus’ baptism, when Jesus comes out of the Jordan River.  We read these words, or the substantial equivalent, spoken by God the Father in both Mark’s Gospel and Mathew’s Gospel.
 
          So these words must be pretty important—“this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  Why?
 
          Well, I’m sure there are lots of reasons, but I can think of two.  I think they’re important because they tell us something very significant about the nature of God, and because they also tell us something very important about our own human nature, as lived by Jesus.
 
          First, what do these words tell us about God?
 
          It seems to me that these words from God the Father tell us that God is a Being who has emotions, emotions that might be very human in some important ways.  God says that His Son is “beloved”—that He loves Jesus.  And God says that He is “pleased” by Jesus—that God takes pleasure in His child, His child who is also human like us.
 
                    So often we’re tempted to think of God as this machine-like being, the great watchmaker in the sky who sets up the universe and then steps back to watch it operate, removed from and indifferent to how things play out.  The “unmoved mover” some people say. 
 
          And it is hard—maybe impossible—to love a God like that, a God who doesn’t care about us, who is distant and indifferent.  Today’s Gospel reminds us that we do not have a God who doesn’t care.  We have a God who loves and enjoys Jesus and, who loves and enjoys us as Jesus’ adoptive brothers and sisters. 
 
          Like Jesus, we are God’s “beloved” and always will be- -come what may. 
 
          I mentioned a second point, and that is what these words from God—“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased—what these words tell us about Jesus and, because Jesus shared our humanity, about us.
 
          I think we realize what is going on here, and thus what this statement from God is doing, if we ask ourselves why God bothers to speak these words.  Doesn’t Jesus already know who He is—that He is the Son, beloved by the Father?
 
          Of course Jesus knows that, and yet God speaks these words and only these words—twice—in such a way that others hear them, of course, but most directly Jesus hears them.  God could have picked lots of other times and circumstances to tell Jesus’ followers who Jesus is, when Jesus wasn’t around or couldn’t hear, but God chooses two times when the one most certain to hear what God is saying is Jesus Himself.
 
          Why?
 
         
          Let’s remember that  the two times when God speaks these words in public for Jesus and those with Him to hear are times when Jesus is about to face severe testing.  The first time—at His baptism—is right before Jesus goes into the desert to fast for 40 days and be tempted directly by the devil. 
 
          And today when God speaks, Jesus is on His way to be crucified.  We know that is on Jesus’ mind because at the end of today’s passage Jesus refers to the time when He will be raised from the dead.
 
          God speaks these words to encourage Jesus.  Maybe it isn’t quite right to say that Jesus “needs” encouragement, but it certainly is part of Jesus relationship with the Father to be encouraged, just as giving and receiving encouragement should be part of all human relationships. That’s worth remembering because it can be so hard for us to do.
 
          As a child of the ‘50’s and 60’s, I look back at my parents, particularly my father, and I can’t say I ever recall hearing him say that he loved me.  I knew he did, of course, but people just didn’t talk that way. 
 
And to some extent that’s still true today.  For many of us, it is much easier for us to be judgmental and critical, to find fault, than to express our love, especially when it comes to adult children and, for dads, adult male children.
 
          And Lent can play into that, because it seems like in Lent we so often focus on what is wrong, on our sins and shortcomings, on our failures to love rather than on how much we love.
 
          So let me give you a Lenten challenge, especially for those of us who, like me, have already seen our Lenten resolutions go by the boards.  Here it is:  for the rest of Lent make it your job to do what we hear God do today—tell someone that they are your “beloved”—that you love them—and that you are very happy being with them. At least one person, every day.
 
          Because it can be tough out there, and, like Jesus, we need love and support from others to bear our burdens.  And if we do that, if we help others by sharing with them our love for them, I think we’ll find as well that God is also well pleased with us.