21st Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 25A(Lev. 19.1-2, 15-18; Ps. 1; 1 Thess. 2.1-8; Mt. 22.34-46)6/27/2018 I would like to start with a riddle. What three words are said too much, yet never enough? (Please don't google.) The answer is “I love you.” I think this riddle speaks a volume about our culture. Love is said too much, yet people have a hard time that they actually loved. This rather subjective experience brings up the issue of our culture. Are we living in a culture of forgiveness, mercy, and love or a culture of fear, anxiety, and judgment?
This issue of love is crucial to us Christians. If you’re familiar with Rite I, today’s gospel reading is always proclaimed in the beginning of the service, which begins with, “Hear what our Lord Jesus saith…” It is mentioned every Sunday because the most essential teaching of Christianity is love. And it is also the most difficult and troubling one to follow. It is the ultimate goal that we Christians strives for. So who are we called to love? God and our neighbors. And there’s a third party we are called to love, that is ourselves. We love God, others, and ourselves, which forms a trinity of love. This trinity of love is so connected to one another that we cannot exclude any one party. If we say we love God, that means we love our neighbor. And if we say we love our neighbor, that presupposes we love ourselves. In other words, if we say we love God and don’t care about our neighbor, that means we neither love God nor ourselves. Today, I would like to reflect more on loving ourselves simply because it is always easy to start something with ourselves. Some of you might know that I work as a hospital chaplain. It is my full-time ministry during the week. I deal with death and dying every day. Some people think I’m the Grim Reaper when I show up. This is not the only thing I do in the hospital. I lead a spirituality group for patients with psychiatric illnesses. One of the group norms is this: “There’s no attacking in this group.” Patients seem a bit nervous when I say this norm as if we’re going to argue with each other on this subject matter of spirituality. And I explain what this norm is about in one sentence. I say, “No attacking in this group, which means you cannot attack yourself.” This seems to surprise my patients and bring some fresh perspective to them. This reaction might demonstrate a widely spread phenomenon of self-attack in our society. We attack ourselves without even recognizing we’re doing it. We are so hard on ourselves. We are mean to ourselves. We choke our neck so often that we don’t even know we’re doing it as if our choking hands around the neck is some kind of scarf we casually wear! I believe Jesus’ commandment of loving our neighbor as ourselves calls all of us to reflect on how we love ourselves. I’m not talking about self-pity or narcissistic way of loving oneself. I’m talking about accepting ourselves, our whole selves, some good parts as well as some imperfect parts. We can very well self-reflect as a way to learn to accept and love ourselves. This can be done through spiritual direction or psychotherapy. Another way to do so is to look at others, other human beings. They reflect how we look at ourselves. They are a mirror that reflects how we see ourselves. When we see others, what do we think about them? How do we look at them? In one way or another, do we think that we’re superior to others? Or do we think that we’re inferior to others? The former way of looking at myself better than others is pride which leads to a kind of “supremacism.” This belief says we are not just important but are more important than others. We all know that we are currently suffering from this spiritual disease in our society. Speaking from my personal experience, I find myself comparing to this person. I tell myself, “I’m smarter, stronger, socially more influential, spiritually deeper than this person.” Then I think to myself, “Wait a minute. Just because of all that, I think I’m better? This is wrong. No way!” On the other hand, the other way of looking at myself inferior to others is not humility. It is rather a false humility. We might even degrade and devalue good things we have. We internalize false messages and images about ourselves that we are never good enough and we are always less important than others. This internalization of a false humility might lead to shame and unnecessary guilt. Again, speaking from my personal experience, I look at another person, telling myself, “That person is so much better than me. He is smarter, stronger, lighter, better looking, better educated.” But then I think to myself, “Wait a minute. Just because of all that, I think I’m no better? This is wrong. No way!” When we are so caught up in this unhealthy spiritual and psychological dynamics of looking at oneself of better or worse than the other, we know we can never truly accept and love ourselves. This is against the Christian teaching of humanity that everyone is created equal in the image of God. For this reason alone, we are no better or less than others. In God’s eyes, we are all loveable. And because God loves us unconditionally, only because of this reason, we must accept and love ourselves even though we might not want to. There are at least two things we can practically do in order to beat this unhealthy inner dynamics of looking at oneself better or less, which will eventually help us love ourselves, others, and God. The first thing is humility. According to the Jesuit priest, Dean Brackley, “...humility means recognizing that I have no greater dignity than anybody else, including the drunk down the street. So I demand no privileges. Humility means identifying with those whom the world deems unimportant. It means solidarity.” (The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola, p. 84) A true humility beats a false humility that considers others more important than ourselves. No matter what masks you earn to wear, you are as important as others but no better or no less in the eyes of God. The other thing, which I consider most essential, is that we must remember that there’s always God who never gives up on loving us and entire humanity. Back to our lessons today, particularly both the 1st lesson and the gospel reading talk about love. There’s a pattern in both lessons. God talks about loving our neighbor as ourselves and then declares, “I am the Lord.” Jesus in the gospel reading tells the Pharisees loving God and neighbor as ourselves and reveals his true identity the Messiah as the Lord. This pattern of teaching the Israelites and Pharisees to love and proclaiming the divine identity carries an implicit message that says, “I'm telling you to love your neighbor as yourself because I the Lord God will do what I teach you to do.” And this actualization, this embodiment of the greatest commandment is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God eternally and unconditionally accepts us as who we are and loves us as who we are. When this love of God in Christ is felt and experienced through the Holy Spirit, when this love of God in Christ grounds and centers our whole being through the Holy Spirit, we can truly accept both our good and imperfect parts and love ourselves. And we can also see others as who they are, as our brothers and sisters created in the image of God and love them as ourselves. The Eucharist which we receive today is the sacrament of the divine love in which Jesus Christ gives himself as food and drink for the life of the world. As we take his Body and drink his Blood, we not only receive that divine love in us but also give ourselves to be shared with others. St. Paul in his letters to the Thessalonians confesses, “...we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.” May this confession of St. Paul be ours! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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