Psalm 10 cries out to God, "Why do you stand afar and pay no heed in times of trouble? Arrogant scoundrels pursue the poor ... The wicked boast of their greed ... their affairs always succeed!" 

How many God-loving people feel that way today? Victims of wars, the hungry whose aid is disappearing, and so many others echo the psalmist's cry, "The helpless are crushed ... Rise up, Lord! Do not forget the poor!" 

In the end, the psalmist expresses faith and hope, saying, "But you do see; you take note of misery and sorrow ... To you the helpless can entrust their cause." 

This psalm, which feels so appropriate right now, could have been inspired by our reading from Exodus. Moses encountered God in an unquenchable, nondestructive fire, and God, expressing divine passion, said, "I have witnessed the affliction of my people ... have heard their cry ... I know well what they are suffering." 

Today, many people doubt that.

Today's readings take us into the heart of what causes many to be atheists or skeptical about the existence of a good God. While Jesus was freely journeying toward his ultimate confrontation with evil (Luke 9:51), people questioned him about sin and suffering. Aghast and titillated by hearing about how Pontius Pilate had not only slaughtered a group of worshippers but then mixed their blood with the temple sacrifices, they asked the implicit question, "What had those people done that God allowed them to perish in that way?" 

Apparently, they believed that God protects the good, that those who live in safety and enjoy health and wealth are blessed by God. Those who suffer must somehow deserve it. 

Even Paul seems to accept that theory when he says of the people in the desert, "God was not pleased ... for they were struck down in the desert." Note: Paul does not say, "God punished them by letting them perish." Paul said that their behavior was not pleasing to God — leaving open the possibility that their waywardness itself both displeased God and led to their demise. 

Jesus then took the question one step further, citing the accident of a tower that collapsed and killed 18 people. Would God have allowed such things to happen if the victims were innocent? 

By placing this incident in the context of Jesus' journey toward Jerusalem, Luke frames it as an introduction to the mystery of Jesus' coming suffering at the hands of ignorant and evil people with power. 

How could people understand the death of those who perished in the temple or were crushed by the falling tower? Were they abandoned by God? 

Jesus tells the crowd, "If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did." What kind of "repentance" is Jesus calling for? 

Repentance, metanoia, is not about penance; it describes a change of mindset. Jesus preached metanoia to encourage people to open their eyes to perceive God's love active among them, the ways God was reigning in their midst.

The belief that God punishes sinners with disaster assumes that we earn our salvation, that God will care for us to the extent that we are good. That might feel fine to the healthy wealthy (as long as they stay that way), but it reflects nothing of the situation of Jesus on the cross or of martyrs like Peter and Paul, St. Óscar Romero or the "holy innocents."

It seems that rather than shielding the good from evil (one of the traps with which Satan tempted Jesus), God suffers with the suffering. God told Moses, "I see my people's suffering, I hear their cry against injustice." Because God saw, heard and knew intimately what they suffered, God sent Moses to save the people. 

Jesus claimed that he too represented God: "The Spirit has anointed me to proclaim liberty to captives." God's saving action doesn't fly down from the clouds, it comes through people the Spirit moves and empowers to act in the name of the God of life, the God who is love. 

What do these readings offer us as we reach the halfway stage of our Lenten journey? First, they warn us against judging others, reminding us that nobody deserves the life God gives us and that God is never the source of suffering. 

They tell us that God is not far, precisely because we who see suffering are commissioned to act like Moses and to know, like Jesus, that the Spirit of God empowers us to act in God's name. If we believe that, we're preaching the Gospel by living in metanoia. 

Last week, we watched the very human Jesus in conflict with the powers of evil. This week, we see his glory as Son of God. In both cases, Jesus exhibits the epitome of what humanity is created to be. We are creatures who can, and therefore must, decide if we are going to participate in God's all-loving plan for the world or seek satisfaction in what can never fulfill us and usually harms others and creation.

The story of God and Abraham begins with the invitation to wonder at the immensity of God's grand plans for humankind. "Look at the stars! They are nothing compared to what I want to give you!" 

For Abraham, the sign that God was fulfilling the promise came through descendants and a homeland. But these were only a symbol of God's desire to give. All of creation is the ground on which humanity is invited to join in the unity that is God.

Today, we hear Luke's version of the Transfiguration. Matthew and Mark tell the same story, each with their own emphases. While all three evangelists recount the experience on the mountain, Luke places it in the context of prayer, saying that, while praying, Jesus' whole appearance changed. In prayer, Jesus appeared as who he truly was and manifested how, through his relationship with the Father, he participated in the glory of God. 

This revelation felt like the culmination of all that the disciples needed to know about Jesus. They saw Jesus with Moses, who represented the law and covenant, and with Elijah, who symbolized the prophetic tradition that continually called the people to behave in ways that moved them more deeply into being God's own. 

For Peter, that was all they would ever need to see. He was ready to set up tents so that they could dwell joyfully in that presence forever. 

Then, a cloud came over them, a cloud representing the haziness of what they thought they knew, the incompleteness of what their eyes, minds and hearts were able to take in. From that cloud came an echo of what the heavenly voice proclaimed at Jesus' baptism (Luke 3:21-22): "This is my chosen Son, listen to him." 

The command, "Listen," defined their role as disciples. After Jesus returned to his normal appearance, they spent the night together on the mountain and then returned to a world full of need for faith and healing.

Paul's message to the Philippians puts a particular focus on both of the other readings. God told Abraham, "Look at the heavens." Paul says: "Our citizenship is in heaven." Paul sees Abraham's land of promise as a foretaste of eternal life in union with God and all creation. Paul believed that everything was involved in a process of becoming, a process of slowly evolving into more than just an image of God but into total union in and with God (Romans 8:22).

Paul goes on to teach that we, too, will be transformed and share Christ's glorified existence: unlimited in space, time, with the ability to receive all in love, and, most importantly, sharing Christ's union with and in God. For Paul, transfiguration is the destiny of everything.

Jesus led the disciples down the mountain because these teachings are not just nice theories. The disciples descended from their ecstatic experience into a hurting world. They needed to remember that God's promise to Abraham wasn't fulfilled in an instant, but rather through a long pilgrimage that involved both him and his descendants. 

Paul warns his readers to not allow their own desires to become their god. He exhorts them to stand firm, imitating people whose lives manifest what it means to be Gospel people. Just as we and they are in the process of growing in union with God, like them, we are also responsible to carry on Jesus' mission in our own world of hurt.

The transfiguration was not just a personal experience for Jesus, nor simply something to astound the disciples. The transfiguration is the overture to the resurrection of the firstborn of creation. And the firstborn is just that, the initial instance of where everything is going in God's good time.

The disciples who witnessed the Transfiguration and Resurrection slowly grasped the fact that those experiences portrayed their own destiny, the fulfillment of life in God. 

In these first two weeks of Lent, we've begun a new stage of our Holy Year pilgrimage. We've seen human frailty and the glory of what humanity can become. The temptations initiated Jesus' journey to the passion and resurrection, the definitive revelation that evil possesses no lasting power. 

The Transfiguration bids us to enjoy resurrection life, the glory that is and is to come. Christ welcomes us to join him on the journey of bringing healing and hope to our hurting world.