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Is love transactional? Is love conditional? The ideal answer to this question would be no. Love should not be transactional or conditional, especially if that love is of God. God’s love, we say, is unconditional and un-transactional. Now let’s look at ourselves. Is human love conditional and transactional? It is hard to admit but it is. Our love is quite conditional. Our tendency to look for reasons to love someone itself shows that our human love is quite limited and in a way transactional. As a parent, you might say otherwise. But aren’t our children more loveable when they behave better, receive better grades, become more successful, and so on?
As soon as we’re born in this world, we are conditioned to certain social constructs. Our perspectives are shaped and taught in certain ways, mostly depending on the cultures we’re born into. For us rational animals, the carrot-and-stick principle is crucial. This use of a combination of reward and punishment is considered effective but is recently proven to be unhelpful to motivate someone in the business world. In one way or another, we may have used or experienced this carrot-and-stick method. We are quite unconsciously influenced by this use of a reward and punishment system even when we think about God. So here’s how this thinking process that is deeply affected by the carrot-and-stick principle goes: When I do good, I deserve to be blessed by God. When I do bad, I deserve to be punished. Or it can be the other way around: God rewards those who do good and punishes those who do bad. This is exactly the way the two sons in the gospel story think of their father. Both believe their father to be one with the carrot-and-stick. Let’s consider the younger son first. After wasting all his inheritance from the father, the younger son realizes what he has done. When he decides to return home to his father, he no longer sees himself as a son but as one of his father’s employees. In fact, this change of his status is the very first thing that he says to his father upon his return home, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” What about the older son? After his younger brother comes back home, he becomes resentful. In his expression of resentment and rage, he shows how he considers himself and his father. Let’s listen to what he has to say to his father: “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobey your command yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” In this saying of the older son, he kind of contradicts himself that while he sees himself as his father’s slave, not as his son, he expects his father to treat him like a son. Both sons treat themselves as their father’s slaves. From the father’s perspective, this is quite painful. Imagine your loved one who refuses to be loved. The two sons are not able to receive the father’s love as it is. They turn that love into a form of this carrot-and-stick. When they feel their father’s love, they think they must’ve done something worthy to receive that love. When they don’t feel it, they perceive that they must’ve done something wrong. Now, we want to honestly ask ourselves if we see God in the way that these sons do. When bad things happen to us, do we see God punishing us? When good things happen to us, is it God’s reward for all the good deeds we have done? If that’s the case, today’s gospel lesson, which is often titled as “the parable of the prodigal son and his brother,” must shock us if our understanding of God is the same as the two sons. The father of the story that Jesus describes is God. This portrait of the father is how Jesus understands God. Jesus’s God is not the kind of god who uses the carrot-and-stick method. Jesus’s God is the One who is so in love with his children whether they deserve his love or not. Does this sound unfair to you? Of course, it is unfair. Why? Because it is unconditional. It is un-transactional. This is the main reason why the older son is so furious. The father behaves not in the way he think he should. The father shouldn’t love his younger son unconditionally according to both sons. The younger son doesn’t even expect to be loved either. This distorted image of God, which we all share with the two sons, is our projected image of God based on our perception of how a god ought to be. A god should reward the good and punish the bad. And my friends, this is not the god we Christians worship. This is not the god Jesus himself worships and loves. The very fact that we have this image of the carrot-and-stick god is the very evidence of sin. What sin does to us is that it turns God into a punitive deity. Sin makes us think God is eager to judge if we don’t behave well. The one common thing that the two sons share is how their sin turns the real loving and compassionate God into a scary and judgmental accuser. (You would get my point here if you remember Satan simply means an “accuser.”) Let’s look at the father now. Some theologians like to rename today’s parable as the prodigal father, which I believe to be correct. He is prodigal literally in the sense that he spends not only all his resources but also all his love and compassion freely, recklessly, even wastefully, and extravagantly. This extravagant, abundant love is God’s love that Jesus preaches and lives out. What kind of God do we believe in? Is your god of the carrot-and-stick type? Or is your God the prodigal father? Let’s not forget this one important part of the parable. The prodigal father never says stuff like “I forgive you, my son.” He just celebrates! He sees his younger son coming back far away, which tells us he has been waiting since the day his son left home. The father is filled with compassion once he sees his son. Then he runs, hugs him, and kisses him. Don’t let sin trick you to think God is some type of IRS agency who is calculating all your deeds. Don’t let sin turn the loving and compassionate God into Satan the accuser. Don’t let guilt and shame get in your way to God who runs to you, hugs you, and kisses you. Guilt and shame do not change us. They don’t help us stop sinning. They indeed make us repeat our sins over and over again and trick us to believe our identity as slaves, not as God’s beloved children. But God’s unconditional love, on the other hand, transforms us. If you somehow are repeating what you’ve been doing over and over again, that means you might suffer from guilt and shame without changing the way you think of God. That god who you believe requires your guilt and shame is not the prodigal father. When you think of God after you sin (just in case, I know you wouldn’t!), think of the prodigal father. Prepare yourself to be greeted, hugged, and kissed. You are what God celebrates! This is exactly why Saint Paul talks about regarding no one from a human point of view. Do not regard God from a human point of view that is based on the carrot-and-stick principle. Wonder why God would celebrate you and the younger son who return? The answer is simple. God is in love with you helplessly. God just loves you so much to the point he looks rather silly and prodigal. Every Sunday Eucharist is our return to the prodigal father. It is not you who runs to God. It is God who runs to you, being filled with compassion. God hugs you and kisses you. God celebrates your return. Hugging and kissing are not good enough for God to express that unconditional love. God gives God’s very own self in Jesus Christ. God gives his body and blood to feed us, nourish us, to celebrate our reconciliation. My friends, this is the love we want to bring out to the world. This is the ministry and message of reconciliation through Jesus Christ. Show yourself, your loved ones, and the world the prodigal father who is love. And we see this prodigal father incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. It is my prayer and hope that all of us can see this prodigal father running to us every time we celebrate our Sunday Eucharist. May the Holy Spirit open our hearts to see the compassionate God who celebrates our return! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. * This homily is inspired by Herbert McCabe's piece on Forgiveness in his book, Faith Within Reason (Continuum International Publishing, 2007). How many of us are familiar with Aesop’s Fables? I ask this question simply because Jesus talks about the fox and the hen. I imagine if Jesus grew up hearing the fables of Aesop as well, which is not really impossible to think about. Aesop was born earlier than Jesus about 600 years. Speaking of the fox and the hen, I like to tell you one of Aesop’s fables which I found on line (http://shortstoriesshort.com/story/the-hen-and-the-fox/):
Once a hen was pecking some grains in a field. The hen was alone in the field. Nobody was there nearby. A fox which was passing by saw the hen. The hen was quite stout. The fox wanted to eat the hen. It was hungry also. It went up to the hen and said. “My dear hen. Oh! how fine you are looking today. Your face is so beautiful. After a long period I heard your voice. Your voice is so sweet. What a wonderful sight it is to see you with your sweet voice?” The hen turned its face and saw the fox. It believed the flattery of the fox. The hen closed its eyes and started crowing loudly “Kho Kho Kho.” The moment the hen started crowing, the fox jumped on it and caught hold of it by its neck and ran into the forest. The fox was running. Some hunting dogs chased it. The fox heard the barking of the dogs and soon it ran faster with the hen still in its mouth. The hen got on idea. It said to the fox, “Oh! fox, actually the dogs are not chasing you. They want to eat me. You just stop and tell them you caught me first.” The fox believed what the hen said. It turned towards the dogs and opened its mouth to tell what the hen has told it. It was the chance for the hen to run away. It jumped out of the fox’s mouth and flew up a tree. The hunting dogs tore the fox into pieces. While I think this ending of the fable is rather too real, it’s got the point. The moral behind this fable according to this short stories website says “Cleverness saves you even in the face of death.” Now, in comparison to today’s gospel lesson, that moral doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s clear Jesus considers himself as the hen. And this hen does not use her cleverness to save herself. She not only stays in the mouth of the fox but also allows herself to be eaten and killed while gathering and protecting her brood under her wings. This fable is no longer a fable that teaches us a lesson but the gospel in which we proclaim and follow. (Off the topic, but do notice Jesus refers himself as a feminine analogy of a hen.) There are two foxes in Jesus’s version of the fable of the hen and fox. You might wonder why two. But remember who Jesus is talking to. It’s the Pharisees who are the political enemy of Herod. The Pharisees are a group of nationalists who believe that the Jewish people are the chosen people of God who only belong to the kingdom of God. Jerusalem is then the city that is supposed to rule other nations. And Jesus calls this holy city of God that the Pharisees believe only belong to the Jewish people as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” Since that’s what they believe, the Pharisees and Herod are political enemies to each other. There is absolutely no chance of them informing Herod about what Jesus said of him, especially calling him as a fox. What this tells us is the situation Jesus is forced in. He is in between the nationalists who somehow expect Jesus to be on their side and Herod and his followers who are on the side of the colonizers. It’s clear Jesus will not take any part with the Herodians. This doesn’t mean he is with the Pharisees. Jesus constantly calls them a bunch of hypocrites for being self-righteous and narrow-minded as they willfully disregard the suffering of others. We know the end of this gospel fable. These two foxes do succeed in capturing and murdering the hen. To put it more accurately, Jesus allows himself to be betrayed by the nationalists to the colonizers. (Herbert McCabe, God, Christ, and Us, p. 129) He is on the way to Jerusalem, knowing what will happen to him. At this point, we should wonder what compels Jesus to go on his journey to Jerusalem that kills him. We can’t simply take his mission-driven act for granted. We can’t just say that he has no problem walking into the city that waits to kill him. Let’s recall his prayer on the Mount of Olives where he says, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42) In this prayer, he struggles with fear. His fear of death speaks, “Remove this cup from me.” But his courage speaks, “...yet, not my will but yours be done.” And let’s recall last Sunday’s gospel lesson that He is led to the wilderness in the desert, tempted by the demon as he is full of the Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Holy Spirit doesn’t get us out of troubles like magic but is actually dangerous. I’m going to borrow Fr. Herbert McCabe, a Dominican friar’s words here: “Mixing God with things [in our case, being filled with the Holy Spirit in our lives] is extremely dangers. God is an unpredictable explosive substance, and when he is around people are likely to get urt, even crucified. The best thing to do with God is to insulate him carefully inside churches, or better still, inside small groups of like-minded devout people.” (Ibid., p. 126) And (here my words) this divine explosive substance gives us the power to deal with them in the way that serves God’s will. Out of all the virtues Jesus has, what stands in this case is the virtue of courage or fortitude that goes against fear. The real courage is not getting a gun in our hands which is actually a sign of fear which paralyzes one’s reason and takes one away from the reality into a unreal fantasy. The real courage is to be real, realistic enough to face what’s happening around us rather than denying. It is about standing firm, steadfast, and persistent in the midst of all kinds of assaults. Mark Twain’s understanding of courage is right on point. He says, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.” And this virtue of courage isn’t possible without the help of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit breathes into our souls the courage to persistently and lovingly stand firm against all the struggles. My friends, how are you living your life? Is it with courage, resisting fear? Or is it fear-driven, being so afraid to live your life more fully? In the psalm we recited this morning, we hear, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” I think this concept of fearing God has a bad reputation because it incorrectly portrays the image of a punitive and scary deity. But to fear God really means to fear nothing else other than God. We only fear God, nothing and nobody else in this world. Jesus, with the virtue of courage which derives its strength from fear of God alone but nothing else, walks to the cross to save, rescue, and redeem not only the oppressed but also the oppressors. In this world that dominates us with fear, let us walk with Jesus who is the very source of courage. And whenever fear haunts you, say to yourself or those who are in fear, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It seems Ash Wednesday has unofficially become the most popular day of the year among Christians, at least in the hospital where I work. I usually give ashes to about 200 people, including patients, their families, and hospital staff. This is the only day that chaplains are so wanted and expected in every unit. I walk around the hospital and see lots of people whose foreheads are imposed with ashes on this very day. Then I feel quite troubled to see them. Why? Considering today’s gospel, I wonder if showing their foreheads imposed with ashes would be exactly what Jesus warns us about. Let me read what Jesus says in the gospel: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”
I’ve been observing this behavior of leaving ashes in the foreheads or removing them afterwards. Why would some people walk around all the day long with ashes on their foreheads? What’s the psychology behind it? Can this practice be considered practicing one’s piety before others to be seen by them? What about those who remove the ashes right after? What is their psychology? Are they too embarrassed to reveal themselves as Christians? Which party would you associate with? Well, for me, I was in the first group of not removing ashes. Then I switched my team to removing ashes in my foreheads. We cannot possibly know all the reasons behind these two behaviors. Yet, there’s something common in both cases, which is that we may be preoccupied with unessential matters, that we may be too self-focused and self-conscious. This is where Jesus’s teaching drives from. Where is your heart looking at? Where is your heart striving for? There is a word for showing off one’s piety before others to be recognized. Can you guess what it is? It’s called “vainglory.” Vainglory is one of those terms that we actually don’t use in our daily lives. Vainglory comes from this Greek term, kenodoxia. Keno means empty whereas doxia means glory. Doxia sounds much familiar to us because it is the root word for doxology. Keno may be a bit unfamiliar, yet this is used in the New Testament to depict Jesus’s act of self-emptying, kenosis. What does vainglory mean then? Simply put, the image, the look, the reputation is everything. How you look and what others think of you matter. One’s intention of doing something good is not really to serve others but to serve oneself to look holy. Our culture is designed to encourage vainglory in all of us. This culture we have is that of vainglory. All the commercials and advertisements are made to implant some images that would make us better than how we look right now. The message is quite simple yet extremely powerful: Reinvent yourself with this new item. It tempts us to buy more. It convinces us that we’ll be better or more perfect if we have that product. All the marketing strategies in our time are based on this vice called ‘vainglory.’ And this vainglory is one of the seven capital vices, which are famously known as the seven deadly sins: envy, sloth, avarice/greed, wrath/anger, gluttony, lust, and vainglory. This vainglory is often confused with pride. Pride is the root of all these seven capital vices. Vainglory is one of the fruits of pride. Deep down in this spiritual vice of vainglory, there’s a strong desire and thirst for recognition and approval. We all desire some kind of approval and recognition from others. I confess before you that I do too! I feel quite happy when someone says all the hymns I selected last Sunday were just so wonderful! Our desire for acknowledgement from others is part of our human nature. What becomes problematic or what turns this desire into a spiritual vice of vainglory is when it becomes excessive! When our desire to be approved and recognized becomes excessive, vainglory is born. What’s more important here is what makes our desire excessive. What prompts us to be recognized more and more to the point where we disregard the very truth that God knows us as we are, accepts us as we are, and loves us as we are? I can think of two reasons why our desire for recognition becomes disordered. One is that we are too anxious and scared to reveal ourselves as we are. We somehow want to hide ourselves from others because we believe we are never good enough so that we need something else to cover up or gloss over. We choose not to believe God loves and embraces us as we are. And the other thing is that we are tempted to create our own image rather than bearing the image of God in us. I often talk about this chronic issue of spiritual amnesia. We keep forgetting we are created in the very image of God himself. This temptation to create our own image comes from our desire to control our own happiness, which we call “pride.” In today’s gospel lesson on this Ash Wednesday, the key point, however, is not so much about this spiritual vice of vainglory. Naming our excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval as vainglory is one thing. And this spiritual practice of going deep down into our hearts to reflect on why I have that excessive desire is another. I would consider this case of vainglory as an example of how we can honestly reflect deeper into some of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours during this Lenten season. This spiritual practice that I invite all of us to begin during this Lent is really about letting go of our old selves and choosing to take the new life, the new self in Jesus Christ. This is the movement of dying and rising day by day. So, the essential message that we want to take away from the gospel is not a moral teaching of how not to be vainglorious but this phrase that Jesus repeatedly says: Father who sees in secret will reward you. We want to see what Father sees in secret which means we want to see ourselves truthfully before God, that we want to see ourselves and others the way God sees. It is my prayer for all of us here at Saint Agnes Church that God would give us the eyes that God himself sees in secret, the eyes unclouded by fear, anxiety, hate, or pride, that we see ourselves and others through the eyes of Jesus. And that will be our reward from him that we see ourselves and others as unconditionally loved by God in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. * This homily is inspired by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung’s Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies. |
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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