Out of all the interesting and strange characters in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible, Lazarus definitely stands out. He died twice physically. He’s not the only one who came back to life and died again. Elijah brought back the son of the widow of Zarephath to life so did Peter to Tabitha. What stands out in Lazarus’s case is all the death threats he probably received after being brought back to life. He may have been questioned whether he faked his death or not. The local religious leaders in his time may have considered him as a part of Jesus’s conspiracy project.
In today’s gospel story, one thing we need to clarify is that Lazarus was resuscitated, not yet resurrected. Jesus’s miracle of resuscitating Lazarus seems impossible, especially considering he had been dead for at least two to four days. What I would like to reflect on in this gospel account is not so much about how that was possible or what a great wonder maker or miracle performer Jesus was. We don’t have any answer to these questions of whether it was scientifically possible. We simply don’t know. I would rather like us to imagine the life of Lazarus after being brought back to life from death. How would he have lived his life afterward? Did he have any fear of dying again? Did he have any sort of life after death experience? Did he see the light when he was dead? We don’t know for sure but there are various traditions about what happened to him after his resuscitation. (I will provide you with a separate material for this.) This spiritual imagination mainly revolves around the topic of death. Which is why it's crucial for us to ponder upon this subject matter during this coronavirus crisis we’re going through. I don’t have to trigger anything in us to imagine our anxiety or fear since we’re already surrounded by something that creates anxiety and fear of death. This is real. I would never undermine its serious nature and danger the virus can cause. In the meantime, I find it crucial to tease out a difference between anxiety and fear at this point. The more we articulate our feelings, the more our mind becomes clear. While there are many psychological and neuroscientific ways to distinguish these two, there’s a simple way. Fear has a target whereas anxiety doesn’t. When our own death becomes our main concern, we might have fear. Yet, our thought of how we will die chips in, anxiety is produced. Our negative prediction of what ifs creates anxiety. I’m not a psychologist as you know, but as a trained professional chaplain and a priest in the Christian tradition, I see we are spiritually suffering from both anxiety and fear of death. The serious harm that the coronavirus can give to us is death. And this seriousness very well triggers all kinds of negative thoughts in us for survival. For me as a hospital chaplain, I’m quite literally surrounded by it! Today’s gospel story, however, challenges us to contemplatively pause and prayerfully reflect on our current condition. Two things to check: 1) fear and 2) anxiety. Our fear in this crisis has a target, which is death. It actually pushes us to do whatever it takes to survive. Continue to wash our hands and practice physical distancing. While we have this benefit of legitimate fear which prompts us to keep ourselves safe, let us be mindful that this fear must be transformed into love. This transformed fear, which we call love, seeks to benefit others for their survival and safety. I’ve mentioned before that the opposite of fear is not hate but love. In the gospel story today, Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved when he saw Lazarus’s friends weeping for his death. This love he had for Lazarus compelled him to go visit him despite his own fear that he would be stoned to death by the religious authorities. See that fear of death in you. Do what’s necessary for your survival. But don’t stop there. Transform it to love. That’s how we make good out of everything. This is how we are detached from fear and truly become free of it. The other thing from which we suffer greatly is anxiety. Anxiety comes from three places: a) Physical sensation, b) negative thoughts/predictions, and c) standing at the edge of the unknown. During this time, b) may be the most common factor that creates anxiety. Ask what you’re telling yourself in this crisis. What is your inner voice telling you? I heard from some doctor that his patient who was tested positive for the virus bursted in tears and said, “Am I going to die?” I think we can certainly resonate with this patient’s narrative that “If you have it, you will die.” This is not factual though there’s a possibility, which I would not deny. Yet, the problem is what this thought does to us whenever that thought gets into our mind. We might panic and paralyze our logical way of thinking, living in the future that we do not know and are not in control of. We might not even recognize that we’re already telling this narrative unconsciously because it can be too daunting to talk about. But if you’re somehow panicking (or spiritually hyperventilating!), you might be in that narrative without knowing you’re locked in there. I’m not going to say not to be anxious but I would rather encourage you to be realistic and present in the moment of here and now. Being logically realistic and spiritually present in the moment is another form of courage because this act requires us to accept our reality as it is. As a healthcare worker and a cancer survivor, I can only share how I personally practice this spiritual exercise of being present and realistic. This has been working for me which is why I can go back to work everyday. (You might be disappointed that I won’t talk about a method of praying away anxiety!) While I was going through my cancer treatments, I was also visiting patients. I was immune-compromised, and of course, I was very careful not to see anyone who could give me something with my doctor’s guidance! So, this is my practical spiritual exercise: Do what’s necessary to protect yourself and others. (e.g. wash your hands, practice physical distancing, & avoid a large gathering) Never act out of anxiety but be realistic and present right here and right now. (e.g. no hoarding of items, we’re not in apocalyptic movies.) Check yourself if you have mild or severe symptoms. If severe, check with your doctor and go to the ER. We do our best and its result is not up to us. Let go of the control in the eternal hope of the resurrection. Jesus was not just on his way to bring back Lazarus to life. He was also on his way to the cross. He was realistic, perhaps too realistic that he talked about his death to his friends numerous times. Yet, he still went on. In the miracle of Lazarus, we see the glimpse of the resurrection, in which we find our hope, trust, courage, and love of God. Our hands and feet might be bound with strips of fear, and our faces wrapped in a cloth of anxiety. Jesus looks at us and tells us today, “I unbind you and let you go.” Now, he tells us who are no longer bound with fear and wrapped in anxiety, “Unbind others, and let them go!” How do you unbind others? Show your kindness and compassion to others. Share what you have with them. Pray for them. Protect them and shield them. And Love! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN. There are two things at stake that Jesus sees in today’s gospel lesson: 1) an egoistic attachment to personal and social boundaries and 2) human deficit as a means to reach the deepest reality of our being.
Jesus sees in both the Samaritan woman and his disciples their attachment to socio-personal boundaries. What I mean by this attachment to socio-personal boundaries is quite simple. Let’s look at what Jesus does in the story. He does something that he’s not supposed to do according to social rules in his time. He should not talk to or engage with Samaritans whatsoever, and even more so with a Samaritan woman. The Samaritan woman in the gospel story knows this very well. Jesus’s disciples all know this social norm very well. Yet, Jesus who knows this very well, without any hesitation, breaks that norm. In his eyes, both the Samaritan woman and his disciples are so attached to this somewhat ridiculous sociocultural norm. What happens when one is particularly attached to something that has no ethical basis but prejudice and stereotype, it produces a cycle of division. Let’s look at the Samaritan woman. When Jesus talks to her to get water, her immediate reaction is, “Why are you talking to me? You and I are not supposed to engage at all. I’m not Jewish enough.” We can see that she sees less of herself compared to Jewish people. Or we can imagine she’s a feisty person who is smart enough to see all this homogeneous pure-blooded Jewishness is delusional. Her response to Jesus can be something like this: “Well, well, well...I thought you Jewish pureblooded peeps aren’t supposed to talk to us. But now you’re just like us, getting thirsty for water and asking me for a cup of water? Aren’t you supposed to be better, higher, and superior than us?” We can go many different ways to imagine and understand what kind of attitude the Samaritan woman might have had to Jesus. But the reality is that there is this social boundary or norm that divides people from each other. What it does to people at a personal level is that they become so locked in their images created by this unscientific and discriminatory norm. For the Samaritan woman, it is “I’m a Samaritan who is forbidden to engage with Jewish people.” For the disciples who are astonished that their teacher is talking to the Samaritan woman, they have this mindset, “I’m Jewish who is better, cleaner, and purer than those mixed hybrid Samaritan gentiles.” Either way, it is self-destructive. What Jesus does in this reality, however, is to set both the Samaritan woman and his disciples free from that attachment or to shatter their preconceived images of themselves. In a way, this is the work of healing, making them whole, wholly human. There is no logical ground that one is better than the other. Also, no one chooses to be born Jewish or not. It’s simply given. So Jesus talks to her. He reaches out to her. Even when his disciples come back from the city, he doesn’t stop his engagement with her but invites them to change. He crosses the boundary to help both the Samaritan woman and the disciples start the process of knowing what they really are. How does Jesus actually lead them to see what they are? He starts from where they are. He starts with their longing and urgency for survival. He uses water and food. The Samaritan woman comes to Jacob’s well for water while Jesus’s disciples go out to the city for food. Water and food are the most vital and basic elements for us to sustain our lives. As we encounter the coronavirus outbreak, we too experience this reality of human survival. (On a completely off-topic note, I recently went to Costco to buy my son’s daily snack and juice for his daycare. As I was passing by the beverage aisle, there were no water bottles left. Thankfully, a box of juices for my son was there. Canned food, especially Spam and soup seemed to be popular. If you have watched TV shows or movies about apocalypse, they portray how important it is to secure water and canned food. What happens in this kind of crisis is that people who have less suffer more. There was an article in the New York Times about how the rich people are preparing for coronavirus differently that they have a means to obtain concierge doctors, chartered planes, yachts, and germ-free panic rooms. It is always easy to blame those who might unnecessarily and selfishly hoard piles of hygiene products, water, and food, yet this kind of criticism does not take account of our society’s serious inequity and imbalance of the capitalist system. We usually end up criticizing our own when the rich are securely and secretly hidden and well protected without ever getting their own greed and selfishness caught.) The Samaritan woman, Jesus’s disciples, and all of us facing the coronavirus outbreak deal with the basic human needs: water and food. Jesus goes further than this. He talks about the living water to the Samaritan woman, which will make her thirst no more and the food that his disciples do not know about. He turns our focus on our physical sensation of thirst and hunger to our fundamental spiritual thirst and hunger. Our physical sensation of thirst and hunger becomes a way to recognize deep spiritual longing in us though we might not experience i at times.. To experience this spiritual longing or void is, spiritually speaking, a gift from God solely because that experience awakens in us what is most important in our lives. Our deepest longing for God also awakens what we really are before God. St Augustine’s famous saying echoes this reality of our yearning for God, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” This unrest is what Jesus means by spiritual thirst and hunger which can only be satisfied by God alone. When we realize this spiritual longing in us, our artificial cultural norm that divides us from each other loses its power over us. The division between the Samaritan woman and the disciples no longer exists. Because Jesus experiences and sees spiritual longing in himself, he knows what he truly is: God’s beloved. He sees the void that can only be fulfilled with God alone. Jesus sets the Samaritan woman and his disciples free from their attachment to the false images of themselves by awakening their spiritual thirst and hunger so that they can see their true nature as God’s beloved whose hearts can only be satisfied by God. Let’s look at what false images and delusions we are attached to in our lives. An example of this attachment to delusions is the Nazi ideoology in which the German Aryan race is superior than any other races. What about perfectionism we all suffer from? We may be attached and fixated to this unrealistically perfect version of ourselves. Any form of discrimination always manifests personal and social attachments. Only God can liberate us from all these delusions, and awakening our sense of spiritual longing is the very beginning to that liberation from attachments. This spiritual longing becomes our common ground on which we stand together without division. It is then transformed into our common ground of being where we are one in God and with God. From this Universal Ground of Being, which we call God, we drink the living water and receive the food to feed others in need. During this Lent, keep alive your spiritual thirst and hunger for God. Your spiritual longing will remind you of what you are and what others are. Your spiritual yearning for the oneness with God will evoke the desire for the oneness with others. As you eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, may your spiritual longing be filled and deepened. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN. When someone visits you at night, there’s something secretive about this visit. It can definitely creep you out! Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. He doesn’t want his visit with Jesus, who is a controversial figure, seen by others. Considering his position as a leader of the Pharisees, his association with Jesus, especially calling him a teacher, should never be seen. In a spiritual and literary sense, this visitation at night may implicate Nicodemus’s spiritual state that things are dark, unknown, very much under the shadows.
Nicodemus coins an interesting concept of “the presence of God.” Trying to make sense of Jesus and all his miracles he performs, Nicodemus basically tells Jesus, “I don’t know how you do all that crazy stuff you do. But God must be doing something with you.” So comes this phrase, “the presence of God.” This, however, limits God’s presence. Is God only present when there’s a miracle or a supernatural phenomenon? No. God is present all the time more so than ever, even beyond time and space. God is ever present. Jesus, immediately catching this spiritual phrase of Nicodemus, expands that concept of the presence of God into the kingdom of God or the reign of God. Jesus is actually helping him to get that presence of God right. It’s like Jesus telling Nicodemus (hereafter Nick), “Hey Nick, God is present all the time. It’s not that God is only present when I perform miracles. I don’t make God present. God is right now, right here with you and with us. But for you, the divine presence has become something that has to be fought in order for you to see. God’s presence must reign in your consciousness for you to recognize. So, I’m using the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ or ‘the reign of God’ instead of your ‘presence of God’ to help you understand God’s presence better. You really gotta do some work to see God’s presence. God’s presence must reign in you, in your heart, in your reality.” Jesus doesn’t stop there. He is very practical. So he adds one more thing for Nick to really see God’s presence. There’s one thing Nick must do in order for God’s presence to reign in his presence relativizing all other presences around him. He has to be born again to gaze upon God’s presence. This contemplative act of gazing upon God is the moment when God reigns in his being. Nick is quite confused by this saying of being born again. So he asks Jesus to clarify with the question, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” I find his question quite innocent. He really doesn’t get it. I don’t think Nick is trying to trick Jesus. He wants to understand what it means to be born again so that he can enter God’s kingdom or he can sense God’s presence all the time. Jesus gives a clear response to Nick, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” What Jesus means by being born again is that of the Spirit. Being born of the Spirit is being born from above. This is not a physical process of birth, but a spiritual process of rebirth. Baptism is the Church’s official sign of being born of the Spirit. Does it mean that you are born of the Spirit, that you are born again from above automatically? It’s the expression of one’s rebirth, which does not mean one actually experiences it. Making a statement and acting upon that statement are two different matters. The former is the beginning whereas the latter is its process. Most of us here, as far as I know, are all baptized. We have already begun our process of spiritual rebirth. Then how do we actually experience this official expression of spiritual rebirth? Quite simply, we can find this answer in the first saying of Nicodemus: no one can do these signs you do apart from the presence of God. The key word again is the presence of God. God’s presence needs to be experienced in your presence. Be present to God who is present to you. Gaze upon God who gazes upon you. This mutual gazing upon each other is none other than the oneness of God and you. It’s like lovers gazing upon each other lovingly. This is where Jesus’s understanding of God who so loves the world comes in. God gazing upon the world, you and me, is the loving look of God. The one who can gaze back on that loving presence of God eventually stands in the place where Jesus is. On the same ground where she stands with Jesus, she will clearly understand the saying of Jesus, “...God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And she can confess the same. Jesus’s saying becomes her confession of love, too. “God so loved the world that he gave his daughter, so that everyone who believes that they can also experience God’s eternal presence in them like her may...have eternal life.” The one who stands on the ground where Jesus stands faces the perpetual presence of God. She faces God’s reign. She enters God’s kingdom. With this eternal presence of God in her, she is sent to the world with Jesus through whom she becomes God’s beloved. She is called by God to remind people that they too are to face God’s presence in them, they too can enter God’s kingdom. Our shared calling is to be a fellow traveler to help others discover God’s eternal presence and union with them. Too often, we are so passive about our own spiritual life. We tend to depend too much on others, especially on religious authorities, to help us experience God’s presence. “Can this clergy person help me experience God? Can this bishop or a spiritual guru do that?” What you end up experiencing is not God but that clergy’s version of God. No one can actually make you experience God’s presence unless you do it yourself with the help of the Spirit who is always available, who is always present. I can assure you that all of you have already experienced the presence of God. Haven’t you had those moments you’re so refreshed and restored as if you’re born again, having a new day, a new self, a new you? It’s because you’ve experienced God’s reign, God’s presence in you. When God is experienced, our body, mind, and spirit are renewed and reborn. God fills us with hope, courage, trust, and strength. In this fear-driven world we are living, the world needs people who are born of the Spirit, who are always, not sometimes, living in the presence of God. The world needs people who can confess, “God so loved the world that God sent God’s beloved so that everyone who finds in themselves God’s presence may have eternal life.” The world needs people who are God’s blessing which is God’s loving and eternal presence to this world. And all of you are called to be that blessing. 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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