There
used to be a show on British tv called Crackerjack. It was a game show, with kids as the
contestants. After every question, the
kid would get a prize no matter whether they answered right or wrong. There were only two catches: firstly, the
prizes would marvelous, getting better with each passing question, if they
answered correctly; if they answered wrongly, they’d get a pretty boring prize,
often a cabbage. Catch two: they had to
hold all of their prizes in their arms.
Drop one, and their time on the show was over. I don’t think anyone ever got any of the most
coveted prizes, because by the time they became available, they were too busy
clutching earlier gifts to be able to receive the gifts they really longed for.
There’s
a parable here for the spiritual life.
Now, like any image, it falls short.
In the Crackerjack show, the producers were both the ones giving
the prizes and insisting that the contestants cling to what they already
had. They were testing the contestants
to entertain their audience, and limit their prize money liability. God has nothing but gifts to give, and there
is no limit to His generosity. He does
test us – Abraham’s experience confirms – that but not for His or anyone else’
entertainment. And it’s not Him who bids
us cling. That’s us. That’s how we restrict ourselves. He wants to lead us out of that, to give us
untold gifts, and to give the greatest gift: the strength, the virtue, to drop
whatever token we cling to and take his outstretched hand; his loving, wounded
hand that counts every hair on our heads.
But we
cling. We’ve inherited that, that’s what
original sin is, the sin we have from our origin, though it’s not how God made
us. We moved from a posture of trust and
harmony in the garden of Eden, to grasping, to clinging. We lost our faith that God would provide, and
we took. And our hands are stuck in that
posture of grasping, of clinging, of clinging, above all, to the illusion that
we can fend for ourselves, that we can take God’s place as provider. And sometimes, we grasp after things that are
actually bad for us. But, more often,
it’s subtler than that. We experience
just and even holy delight and thanksgiving at the good things God gives us,
the here-and-now signs of His care. But
then our addiction to grasping takes over and we can’t let go.
St.
Peter was no less captured by this than anyone else. In fact, the greatness of the gifts he was
given may have increased the temptation.
Here he is, he’s given all to follow Jesus, he’s embraced real hardship,
he’s seen his Lord whom he loves face opposition and ridicule, and now he gets
to see his brilliance shining forth. He
sees Jesus in his supernatural habitat.
His intuitive realization that this is the Christ, the Messiah of God,
is confirmed and then some. He views
heavenly glory, and marvels at how he has been invited to this meeting of
heaven and earth. It’s an amazing
experience. So, he tries to grasp
it. His joy that God has provided this
experience fails to nourish faith that God will provide, and becomes an
occasion to grasp, to cling, to try to preserve this for all time. It’s time to build tents, to keep this moment
alive. It’s a natural instinct, the
story behind the founding of every other shrine in the Greco-Roman world: a god
revealed themselves, and so we built this shrine. Peter even knows his Jewish heritage well enough
to suggest tents as an homage to God’s tent of meeting.
But
God always has more to give. The place
of meeting is not to be a tent anymore: but the world. The veil of the temple was to split in
two. But Peter couldn’t know that yet,
it hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t happen
till Jesus had mounted his cross. Then,
Peter would be able to stop grasping. Or
not just then, in fact he’d scatter at that moment, but once he’d seen
resurrection. Then, then he’d know that
his vocation was not to build tents on a mountain, but a church on earth. By stopping trying to grasp this one
brilliant encounter with divine glory, he would open his hand to be able to
meet it again and again and be sanctified by it.
Our
Holy Cross Constitutions, in the chapter on the Cross, tell us of how we find
that glory in these words: “Resurrection for us is a daily event. We have stood
watch with persons dying in peace; we have witnessed wonderful reconciliations;
we have known the forgiveness of those who misuse their neighbor; we have seen
heartbreak and defeat lead to a transformed life; we have heard the conscience
of an entire church stir; we have marveled at the insurrection of justice.”
What
gifts there are for those who don’t grasp, for those who know that to lose even
their life, is to gain it. Abraham knew
that. Abraham knew that God would
provide. God wouldn’t let him sacrifice
his son, but Abraham knew that God always surprises us with life, that God’s
promise of an heir would be made good on, even without Isaac. It’s not that Abraham didn’t love Isaac, the
text makes very clear how much he did.
It’s that his trust in God’s providing, God’s providence, was even
stronger. We’re certainly not called to
love our families any less than we do.
But our trust that God will provide… God calls us to make that even
stronger, so nothing is grasped, and hands are open for gift, as He provides
ever more.
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