Religion - just like stew - can be either thick or thin, and in all the Scripture lessons appointed for this Second Sunday of Lent, we see the living God revealing thick religion to his people.
During the mystical experience described in today’s first lesson from Genesis, Abram enters an everlasting alliance with the one true God through a covenant which begins in terrifying darkness and is sealed with fire and blood. And in the second lesson, Saint Paul writes to the Philippians of people who were once thought to have been Christians but who were later revealed by their false beliefs and bad behavior to be enemies of the cross of Christ.
Finally, in Saint Luke’s Gospel the Lord Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about his suffering and death soon to come in Jerusalem, and as they speak, Christ’s divine glory shines through his human nature. Then the voice of God the Father thunders in the glory cloud, as it did at Christ’s Baptism, to confirm that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of the living God. This is the same divine voice which called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, which instructed Moses from the burning bush, and which whispered to Elijah in his cave.
Judaism and Christianity are both thick religions, and there is no way to reduce them to wisdom traditions or codes of conduct which exist without blood and fire, smoke and oath, sacrifice and sacrament. But to most people thick religion is too demanding, not a little bit frightening, often maddeningly strange, usually confounding, and almost always annoying, so we never stop trying to thin out the stew to make it more palatable.
But if from the stew of religion we remove moral absolutes, supernatural interventions in history, and demands for life-changing commitments to revealed truth, then what is left over is not true religion at all. What remains is just moralistic therapeutic deism, and friends, that is mighty thin gruel.
It turns out that thin Christianity isn’t real Christianity at all, but it does play Christianity on TV, and in the faculty lounges of our universities, and all too often in the management offices of once Christian institutions where on the menu now is found only the thinnest pottage of the Church reduced to a social services agency or an NGO with candles and incense.
And at that point, why would anyone bother with the ritual window dressing of something that has no more transcendent purpose or transformative power than can be found in tourist travel or digital entertainment, let alone in the ephemeral euphoria of recreational drugs and sexual experimentation?
And that is the point at which large numbers of people stop worshipping the living God and begin to say that they are spiritual rather than religious. They stitch together a patchwork quilt of personal identity from political opinions, professional options, sexual desires, economic choices, lifestyle preferences, and individual tastes, and then they call their bespoke quilt spirituality and wrap themselves in it to keep warm in the cold winds of reality.
But, friends, such a construction isn’t even the thinnest stew of real spirituality. That is simply idolatry, and the little godling at the center of such foolishness is only my puny Self pretending that what I regard as “my personal truth” is actually the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
It is fine, of course, for the kids go to the attic from time to time and try on their parents old clothes and pretend to be adults at work in the world, just so long as the children always remember who and where they are. But if the play-acting is mistaken for reality, then the illusion of amusement becomes a delusion of idolatry.
And when that happens with actual adults in the world, the truth of the Word of God is rejected in the name of personal autonomy and authenticity. And then we worship the god of Self rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Mighty thin gruel indeed.
That sort of delusion apparently led astray some of the Christians in Philippi, and so the Apostle Paul wrote in the hope of keeping others faithful to the Gospel he had preached among them. Just before the text of our second lesson today, Paul writes that
“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8-11)
Friends, that is thick religion, but not everyone is willing to imitate Saint Paul in his radical conversion, deep fidelity, joyful discipleship, and courageous evangelism. So Paul describes the difference between thick and thin religion by writing in today’s second lesson that “many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. Therefore … stand firm in the Lord.” (Philippians 3:18-4:1)
Stand firm in the Lord. When we experience temptation to do something we know to be wrong or to consent to something we know to be false, we must stand firm in the Lord with the strength that comes only by grace from trust in Christ and the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
And whatever hardships we must endure to remain faithful in this way, we can be sustained by the sure and certain hope of sharing one day in the glory of the Risen Lord. The saints will have transfigured bodies which will be beyond suffering and pain, sickness and decay of any kind because they will be like the glorious body of the Lord Jesus Christ, a glory glimpsed by Peter, James, and John forty days before Christ’s crucifixion.
Scripture does not name the mountain of that miracle, though tradition identifies it as Mount Tabor in Galilee. And Scripture does not specify that the Transfiguration was forty days before Good Friday, though ancient tradition places it there as a bookend to the forty days between Christ’s Baptism and the beginning of his public ministry. But Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us of this event near the end of Christ’s public ministry, and it is unmistakably part of thick religion.
As he did so often, Jesus went to a remote place to pray, and this time he took three of the Twelve with him, the same inner circle who would be with him in the Garden of Gethsemane during his agony between the Last Supper and his arrest. Like Abram falling into a trance at the approach of the living God, the three apostles were overcome by sleep, and when they awoke in the presence of the glory cloud, Peter, James, and John were (like Abram) terrified.
Remember, the lion Aslan is good but he is not tame or safe, and nothing is made holy just because we want it. Anyone who thinks he can approach the living God on his own terms and without reverential fear should understand that everything unholy will be utterly consumed and destroyed in the presence of the Holy One of Israel. And that, too, is part of thick religion.
Peter, James, and John had lived and travelled for three years with the rabbi from Nazareth, so they knew him intimately as a man. But they had also glimpsed signs of his divine nature through his mastery over the created world, and just before they ascended the mountain of the Transfiguration, Simon had confessed Jesus to be the Messiah or Christ of God.
Then on Mount Tabor the Lord Jesus was joined by Moses and Elijah and was transfigured before them not by an exterior light shining on him but by his own divine glory shining out from within him. Scripture testifies that the glory of God is often revealed by light which, according to Genesis, was made at the beginning, as in: Let there be light.
But this Tabor light is nothing created by God; it is, rather, the uncreated radiance of unbounded divine glory which belongs by nature to God the Son and Word who is Light from Light. And on that mountain, the Word made flesh spoke to his servants Moses and Elijah in preparation for his exodus, meaning his suffering, death, and Resurrection - his coming Passover in Jerusalem.
For Peter, James, and John the Transfiguration on Tabor was a glimpse of the glory to be revealed by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And when, beginning at Pentecost, the Apostles proclaimed the Resurrection to the world, countless Gentile believers would be added to the children of Israel by grace through faith, hope, and love so that the descendants of Abraham should be as numerous as the stars in the sky, each one radiating light in praise of the glory of God.
Saint Paul wrote that he would gladly lose all things and share in the sufferings of Christ if only he could share in the Resurrection of Christ and experience the transformation of his body after the pattern of Christ’s risen and glorified body, and that is precisely the gift offered by the Lord Jesus to those who surrender in the obedience of faith to his Gospel.
That is the very essence of thick religion, and that is why we stand firm in the Lord, resisting the temptation to thin out the stew of divine revelation to make it more palatable in a time of cynicism, skepticism, and relativism.
So, friends, let’s have done with thin religion. No matter what hardships we must endure or what sacrifices we must make, let us listen always to the voice of God the Father in Holy Scripture, a voice that teaches us to hear and heed the eternal word of his divine Son, the Messiah and Savior of the world, the Word made flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily for 16 March 2025, the Third Sunday of Lent.
Fr Jay Scott Newman