Day 12, Sunday, 28 February A peak experience

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Apologies for forgetting to post this yesterday

Day 12, Sunday, 28 February 

A peak experience

‘In Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is located at the very top of the pyramid, representing the need to fulfil one's individual potential. According to Maslow, peak experiences play an important role in self-actualization.’ (Wikipedia)  

Psychologist Maslow is describing an experience that stretches human potential to its limit and the intense joy resulting. In today’s reading (Genesis 22: 1-18) we learn how the original Abraham had such an experience. He was asked by God to sacrifice his son on a mountain. In some mysterious way, which I doubt we, in our time, can understand, he summoned the courage to obey. God saw he was serious in preparing to make this immense sacrifice, stopped him actually doing it and flooded him with promises; ‘all the nations of the earth shall gain blessings for themselves because you have obeyed my voice.’ We are the inheritors of those blessings.

The gospel (Mark 9:2-10) announces that God himself will sacrifice his Son. This time there will be no holding back. But the announcement, made more explicitly by Luke (9:28-36), is set in the context of a glimpse of the glory of God on the mountain.

The readings, taken together, describe a peak in human experience, a stretching of mind and heart and will that is just awesome. Here we get some idea of what human beings are capable of. Faced with challenges, sometimes seemingly impossible situations, we can say; ‘yes, I am going to do this thing. I don’t know how, but I am going to do it.’ This is the faith of Abraham, the father of Jews, Christians and Muslims. This is the faith that expresses the peak of human experience.