Why is Our Faith Like a Jigsaw Puzzle?

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Lent

Given at St. Jude, March 16, 2025

By Deacon Ken Steponaitis

Readings: 2nd Sunday of Lent - Cycle C

I find it interesting that the Church thinks it is important that during Lent we read such mysterious stories as the ones we read today. It’s like these stories don’t fit with Lent. The stories of Abram and floating fire pot and torch of fire between split carcasses of animals and Jesus transfigured and glowing, doesn’t fit into the nature of things. They just don’t seem to connect with our everyday lives. We might even question the reality of these stories.

As I thought about this for some reason, Jigsaw puzzles came to mind probably because

during Lent our family shuts off the TV and puts together jigsaw puzzles. We haven’t started one this lent, yet, but there are about 6 or 7 boxes of 1000 piece Jigsaw puzzles waiting to be opened. Instead of the TV, we find our dining room table to be a kind of gathering place where at times we sit around the puzzle trying to get the pieces to fit.

What I’ve come to find out is that jigsaw puzzles are very much a metaphor for our faith life and life in general. We are satisfied when we find a piece that neatly fits into place, and we are even more satisfied when we have the puzzle solved.

If there are pieces to our lives that don’t fit, we set those pieces aside and move on the to the next piece. But maybe sometime later, we rediscover that piece and maybe because there are other pieces to the puzzle that have found their place, or maybe because we see that old piece with a new perspective by twisting it and turning it, we finally get it to fit.

There are times after revisiting a piece we might even try forcing it into a place it doesn’t belong, not trusting that it belongs somewhere else. And there are other times we search for a piece, can’t find it and think, maybe the puzzle is defective, that the piece is missing, not trusting that all the pieces we need are available, but we just haven’t found them yet. So, let’s look at the stories we read today from that perspective and see how they might relate to Lent and our lives; how these pieces of the puzzle fit in our faith life.

In the story Abraham, who at this point is still Abram, God has told him he must go to a place that is unknown and essentially become the patriarch of a new community, a new nation. God wants to set aside this new nation, teach them the ways of the one true God, and then have them go out to the rest of the world and present God to all of humanity.

In today’s first reading, God speaks to Abram in a vision and tells him not to be afraid. Just trust in me and your reward will be great. But Abram argues with God. He doesn’t see how this puzzle piece fits in his life. How is it possible that he and his wife Sarai can have any kind of nation if at 75 years for Abram and 65 years for Sarai they don’t have a child? So, God is making a promise, a covenant, in the way they would have done it back then. They would take animals, split them in two, representing each party in the covenant, cook them walk between the carcasses and that would seal the covenant. And to explain this God gives Abram a kind of picture of how it will look when his puzzle is complete. Kind of like how we use the picture on the cover of the puzzle box to know how the puzzle is supposed look. He may not know how this will all come together, but when the puzzle is finished God tells Abram that somehow, he and his wife Sarai (Sarah) will have a child at their old age even though it goes against everything we know about biology and aging. And, from that child will come descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

I don’t know about you, but imagining having descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky is hard to conceive. And I suppose it would be possible, over time, for the descendants of Abram to amount to what God promised. But Abraham and Sarah were called by God when he was 75 and she was 65, and they still had no children. It took 25 years more for their son Isaac to be born! Do you think they saw how that piece of the puzzle fit into their lives? If you read the rest of Abraham’s and Sarah’s story, you will see how much they agonized over how this would happen.

Isn’t it odd, too, that they trusted enough in God to go to a place that was a far distance from their homeland, to pick up and leave their community to start a new one, yet they questioned God about how they could bear a son at their old age?

I don’t know about you, but I know it happens in my life that there are some things I trust in my faith and other things I question and am skeptical about. There are pieces to our faith puzzle that are just difficult to figure out.

It takes times like Lent for us to quiet ourselves, pick up that piece, twist it, and turn it, and try to fit it into our worldly understanding. But still, sometimes, even then, we just can’t figure it out.

In our Gospel, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain because Jesus, like the Lord did for Abram, wants to show the disciples the completed puzzle of Jesus’ purpose in this world. It’s almost like they were time traveling into the future of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. Furthermore, the story of the transfiguration is a look forward to what we have been promised.

There are pieces in Jesus’ story that just make no sense to the apostles. Jesus has just told them, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”

Imagine you are walking around with Jesus; you’re coming to know Him. At the same time, you have this worldview that goes something like this … people who do the will of God are favored by God and have a good life without any difficulties … an easy life. Conversely, those who don’t keep the law of God, those who are sinful, are the ones punished through afflictions like terminal illnesses, famine, or death.

So the apostles are thinking, if Jesus is the Son of God, if he is the perfection of humanity, if he is really in with God, how can Jesus be rejected by the leaders in their faith community, be killed, and then be raised from the dead? I would think that would be a puzzle piece that doesn’t seem to fit.

And what does Jesus do? He takes them up a mountain to show them what the puzzle looks like when it's complete. And he seems to do that by scaring them half to death.

The Apostles are up on a mountain to pray, somehow, they fall asleep and wake up from the sleepy stupor (Biblically sleepiness is representative of a lack of understanding).

They see two dead men, Moses and Elijah, alive, who represent the Law and the Prophets (which are essentially the entirety of who the Israelites are to be in their lives). They see Jesus speaking to Moses and Elijah about what Jesus is to endure, and they see Jesus, whose face has now changed in appearance, and his clothing is dazzling white.

Poor Peter is so flustered and confused, he throws out some outlandish suggestion that they pitch some tents—maybe thinking this is a time to celebrate the Jewish feast of Tabernacles, or maybe because he is so amazed at the experience, he wants to stay a while. Just as Peter finishes the suggestion, a cloud comes over them and they hear the voice of the Father, saying “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” Mind blown!

These kinds of stories are all over the Bible. Stories of things happening to people that make perfect sense in the mind of God, but from our perspective as humans, we can’t make sense of them. These pieces of the puzzle don’t logically fit. And when that happens, we have a choice. We can either accept it and trust God, or we can reject it and try to get rid of the pieces, even to the point of trying to fit other pieces in their place.

These stories we read today are truly mysterious. But think about it, just about everything we hold as truths is beyond our ability to rationalize. It’s not that they are impossible. Anything is possible for God. And it’s not that they are irrational. Rather, they are supra-rational, beyond rationality. And yet, we are asked to trust in these truths of our faith.

Things like a 13, maybe 14-year-old girl who’s had no relations with a man, and who accepts that she will bear a child by the Holy Spirit, who is God. How about miraculous healings, dead men raised from the dead, or that this life is not the end; it’s only the beginning of eternal life? And what about bread and wine becoming the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ?

These are just some of the pieces of our faith that we want to make sense of. We want it because humans want finished puzzles, but sometimes we can't fit the pieces.

There is a woman to whom I bring communion twice a week, who used to live near All Saints Catholic Church in Dallas, where I used to work. She would attend mass every day and is very devout. She was moved to an assisted living facility here in Allen because of a heart condition that requires her to be monitored for all kinds of things, and she simply can’t do it on her own. She can’t walk very far, maybe 50 yards, before she gets too weak and must sit down. She is on hospice, but that does not mean her death is imminent.

She tells me all the time she doesn’t understand why God won’t take her. She thinks she is useless and has no purpose, and she thinks God is being mean to her. Not every time I go to see her, but often she asks me to take her to the highway. The reason? She doesn’t want to be here anymore, and she sees the highway as a place she can step into traffic. At the same time, she knows she must be here. She says she wants to die, and yet she spends her entire life in the room, afraid to walk for fear of falling and killing herself. She has already fallen, and short of breaking any bones, her face was a wreck for a while.

She tells me all the time she doesn’t understand why God won’t take her. She thinks herself useless and has no purpose and she thinks God is being mean to her.

She’s a very funny woman. She is very blunt with her words. She cusses up a storm and easily gets irritated with people if they are not doing what they should for her. And I hear every complaint. So, all she does is eat, sleep, watch the Game Show Network, and complain, in a very humorous way.      

Just like Abraham and Sarah, and the apostles, she’s confused and a bit distrustful. She is not fully convinced of what God has promised. She is scared that she is not forgiven for her past transgressions and doesn’t understand why God wants her to continue in this life if she has no purpose. And I can’t explain it to her, because I don’t know. I’m just there to listen. Nevertheless, she wants her puzzle to be complete, and right now, she can’t find the pieces that fit. So, pray for her.

Lent is a wonderful time to think about all those pieces in our lives that don’t seem to fit. But I think what God is showing us in these stories is that we don’t need to worry about it. We simply need to allow God to work with us and help us at least see what it looks like when it is complete. And if we leave this world with pieces missing, so long as we are in relationship with Jesus, God will complete our puzzles and bring us into His glory.

As Jesus brought his apostles up a mountain to pray, we too should pray. And maybe in those quiet times with God, He will help us to fit a few more pieces into our puzzles.