On this Easter Sunday of 2022, can I confess to you that I’ve been feeling like having observed the longest Lenten season which began in March 2020 and is finally over as we can celebrate Easter in person? While it is such a joyful occasion to gather in person, we also keep in mind those who died in the past two years due to Covid or other reasons. If there’s one thing that we can take away from this experience of walking through or struggling through at times with fear, anxiety, and loneliness from isolation due to physical distancing, it’s the very presence of one another in which God dwells. We no longer take for granted each other’s presence. Even if we cannot fully take off our masks when gathered inside, the inner light each one of us has radiates through the masks we put on.
Because we’ve heard and seen so many deaths of the ones we know and some who would be our friends and neighbors, the message of the resurrection is desperately needed more so than ever. As a hospital chaplain, death is not something totally far from me. But when it goes beyond healthcare settings and is too close to the homes of the loved ones, there must be a kind of shield that can protect our loved ones. Of course, vaccines, masks, sophisticated safety protocols, etc. can be but anxiety triggered by fear of death doesn’t just go away that easily. Amid anxiety and fear caused by death, our own as well as that of our loved ones, we need hope. And the resurrection is another word for hope for us Christians. In St. Luke’s gospel lesson this morning, we encounter Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women getting up early in the morning and going to Jesus’ tomb with the spices to delay putrefaction. These were the people in despair after witnessing the death of Jesus on the cross. Death seemed to swallow their precious teacher and friend. When two angels in the empty tomb raised the question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the women weren’t looking for the living among the dead. They were technically looking for the dead among the dead. They were correct to do so. The angels’ question, however, was to remind them of the resurrection of Christ and to awaken them from hopelessness. This particular question of “Why do you look for the living among the dead” echoes the gospel that Jesus proclaims, “The kingdom of God is within you.” We might’ve been looking for the kingdom of God, salvation, true happiness, joy, and resurrection in the wrong place as if we are looking for the living among the dead. I came across this parable of searching in the wrong place in Anthony de Mello’s book, “The Song of the Bird.” My edited version of the story goes like this: Jane finds John on hands and knees and asks him, “What are you searching for, John?” John answers, “My Key.” Both of them get on their knees to search. After a while, Jane finally asks John again, “Where did you lose it?” John responds, “At home.” Jane groans, “Good Lord! Then why are you searching here?” John shrugs his shoulders and says, “Because it’s brighter here.” Looking for the presence of the resurrection after death would be like searching for the key in an irrelevant place. As the risen Christ is no longer locked up in the tomb, death can never suffocate the presence of the resurrection. Then, of course, the real question is how we experience it. Without any personal experience, a theory is just a mere composition of words and sentences. There are two ways to encounter the presence of the resurrection in our lives: external and internal. Both ways are in essence the same in that metaphorically speaking, we are to return to Galilee as two angels reminded the women at the empty tomb. Remember to go back to Galilee where Jesus told them of the resurrection. This metaphorical place of Galilee is when and where we have a sense of gratitude, contentment, and compassion for others. Think of those moments in your relationships with others. When someone appreciates you as you are, or when you appreciate someone as they are, this embrace of the entire being cuts through whatever false images or pretenses we put on ourselves. There’s this death of pretension, fake, made-up self-images through which the light of the resurrection shines. This sense of going out of oneself in the act of gratefulness to others is not possible without the power of the resurrection. Going out of oneself or forgetting oneself or giving up one’s selfish desire is a kind of death sentence to that selfish part of ourselves. It’s more like the radiant light of the resurrection removes the sting of death. Now this way of experiencing the reality of the resurrection is external since we take all our chances to be grateful and compassionate to others. The internal way is to be searched from within via contemplation. Amy Allen shared an interesting wordplay about contemplation. There’s a temple in the word con-templ-ation. This is an inspiring image of finding a temple within us and building it more sturdily via contemplation. We pay attention to the breath, this flow of energy that is breathed through the Holy Spirit. Staying in the present moment is to refuse to be stuck in the past and the future. Death to the past and death to the future. Our past is gone and our future hasn’t come. In our present moment, we can change the course of our past behaviors and sow new seeds for our future by making changes in our actions here and now. So my friends in Christ, where are you looking for the living? Where do you look for your hope? Where do you search for the presence of the resurrection? No need to go anywhere. It’s right here, right now. The risen Christ is not there, but here and now. Amen. “Don’t jinx it.” We often hear or say it. I can imagine Judas Iscariot saying this internally in the gospel lesson this morning when he sees Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with costly perfume made of pure nard. Jesus, however, considers Mary’s strange act of anointing as a pre-funeral ritual. This isn’t too surprising since he has also been openly talking about his death to his disciples. It’s just that they don’t want to hear anything about it. This death means their failure. Their decision to follow him would be proven to be unwise and wrong if he helplessly dies. Judas just wants to prevent it from occurring and undo what Mary jinxes it.
Let’s think about ourselves. What are some examples of others’ behavior triggering anxiety and fear in us? Among nurses, there’s one word one is not supposed to say out loud: QUIET. There’s a superstition that it will make them busy if the Q word is spoken. About ten years ago when I was a rookie chaplain, I made an unintended mistake of saying this forbidden word to staff. I can imagine them thinking I knew nothing about the hospital culture. This Q word phenomenon might show how much hospital staff doesn’t want to deal with crazy situations when that institution they work for is already filled with anxiety. So what do you say instead of the Q word? I can go with the word “silent” but this word doesn’t work well either since it has the same meaning. Anything that means “quiet” doesn’t work. My go-to word is “uneventful.” I can say, “Have an uneventful one” “Let’s keep it as it is” or “Keep it down.” This whole discussion about jinx or superstition at its core is more about fear rather than what actually happens. As much as hospital staff doesn’t want a crazy shift as if the Q word would trigger that busyness, Judas doesn’t want anything that reminds him of Jesus’ death. When he sees Mary pouring costly perfume over Jesus’ feet and anointing, he would be like, “Mary, you stop it right there! What do you think you’re doing!?” The fragrance of pure nard is not pleasant to him but is the smell of an embalmed body of Jesus. Mary’s behavior not only indicates his failure of choosing Jesus as his leader but also foreshadows the death of Jesus that eventually leads to his death. If one is a certain kind of naturalist who believes nothing is real except what can be studied and verified by the natural sciences, death means an end to everything. There’s no life after death. Whatever one hopes dies with death. It is in its nature nihilistic. We don’t have any information on whether Judas is a nihilistic naturalist. Yet, his fear of death which is triggered from his fear of Jesus’ death is pretty evident. Jesus, unlike Judas, accepts Mary’s pre-funeral or living funeral ritual to the fullest. He completely embraces his death. There’s no indication that he is offended by Mary’s act of anointing. Instead, he defends and justifies her. He then invites his disciples who may secretly agree with Judas’ accusation of Mary being unwisely wasteful of money and inconsiderate for the poor and might be ticked off by her pre-funeral ritual. They’re challenged to imagine what they would do to their loved ones when they know they’ll be gone soon. This anxiety-producing invitation applies to us too. What would we do if we knew our loved ones would be gone? While we don’t even want to imagine that scenario, as if thinking about it somehow makes it faster or not thinking about it makes it slower, we’ll treat them lovingly and kindly. The money wouldn’t be an obstacle to showing how much we love and care for them. In this case, there’s nothing we spend wastefully. Whatever we spend our time, energy, and resources on is worth it. How dare we measure the value of our loved one’s precious life? This is the approach we take to better understand Mary. What about the death piece? How do we make sense of it that may provoke fear of death in us? How do we resolve this fear of death Judas is explicitly reacting to, with which we may share? Don’t we have some reactions to it that we want to avoid talking about? One clear thing is we can never go around this topic. At some point, we will have to face it through our loved ones and our own. This finite nature of humanity, that is, mortality is inevitable. What then seems to matter in the most practical sense is what kind of afterlife we envision. Every human being does make a choice on which version of afterlife one believes in while whether that choice is made consciously or not is another matter. For someone like Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author of “The God Delusion” who is a fundamentalist naturalist, there’s nothing after death. This naturalist view may be a popular one in our secularized culture. The acronym, “YOLO” which means “You Only Live Once” is more used than the opposite acronym “YODO,” meaning “You Only Die Once.” In this position on the afterlife, life is the only thing that is available and there’s nothing else after this life is over. For us Christians, we clearly have our view on the afterlife, which is the resurrection. In the lens of the resurrection, “YODO” doesn’t apply to us. We don’t die once but twice. We die once sacramentally, not alone but with Christ, in our baptism, and die again physically in Christ. Just as we die twice, we live twice too. Once we die in our baptism, we’re called to live out the resurrected life here on earth via contemplation. The second time we physically die. This is the afterlife that we don’t have any scientific evidence to prove it’s real. The afterlife aspect of the resurrection can be considered as a working hypothesis that helps us live better here and now. So we are connecting between the first death and the second death by linking the first resurrected life with the second resurrected life. This is to say that what we’ll be resurrected into depends on how we live our resurrected life here and now. If we believe and hope that we’ll be united with our loved ones in God after death while we leave open to what nature or form we’ll be transformed, that longing for the union must drive us to love one another as ourselves more consciously and intentionally to the fullest. Mary’s extravagant longing and love for Jesus is the longing and anticipation we want to cultivate. Lent is a perfect season to reflect on this longing for the union with our loved ones in Christ and to let this longing make compassionate changes in our relationship with others here and now. How do we respond or react to others’ happiness? Do we wholeheartedly celebrate together or do we feel quite unhappy as if their happiness was supposed to be or could’ve been mine? This complex feeling can be termed envy which is defined as “the feeling that you wish you had something that someone else has” according to Cambridge Dictionary. It’s similar to jealousy in that it admires what someone has but is much more aggressive in the sense that I would like to take that away from that person. Jealousy allows co-sharing whereas envy aims for monopoly.
Similar to envy is schadenfreude in German or joie maligne in French or malicious or harmful joy in English that one finds pleasure at others’ misfortune or suffering. Just like envy, I don’t think I need to explain what schadenfreude is like since we probably know what it is. We may see our close friends going on a trip to a place where we cannot afford to join. We see their pictures posted on Facebook and discover the weather was either cloudy or rainy. Yes, this feeling of a small victory or a quick win (for nothing)! Envy makes us a predator while schadenfreude a spectator. In both cases, what’s missing is empathy that pushes one to get out of oneself and to reach out to others. In the parable of the prodigal father, we see envy and schadenfreude coming altogether. The older brother and the younger one seemed to give each other punches of envy and schadenfreude. It’s easy to see the older brother’s envy because of his dialogue with his father. But before he reached the point of envy developed into resentment, imagine how he would’ve felt to see his older brother. A bit of joie maligne! Does this mean the younger brother is innocent? The younger brother was able to freely leave home without having to worry about his father because of his older brother. He might have thought his older brother would take care of things at home as well as all his duties. In a way, he ended up dumping all his work to his older brother. Let’s keep in mind that the older brother after all had always been responsible. Who knows whether the younger brother enjoyed schadenfreude, secretly telling himself, “Oh my poor brother, not enjoying his life!” or “I choose to enjoy every single thing in life unlike my father and my brother.” Is he then free of envy? Let’s wait and see until he doesn’t get anything from his father but his older brother takes it all! While these brothers are entangled in their flaws of envy and schadenfreude that they share in common, they don’t and can’t see what kind of person their father truly is. The prodigal father may be considered as a parent too naive or unrealistic or conflict-avoidant so that he gives away the younger son the share of his properties too easily. Perhaps he trusted his younger son too much. Regardless of how we evaluate his parental style, he treats his younger son as an adult who is in charge of his life. See him as the person he is now rather than as his baby boy. This is a risk-taking action, and there was a consequence of financial loss for this. It’s interesting to observe that the older son always feels like a slave before his father while the younger son who returns home decides to be a slave to his father. Both of the sons may share this slave mentality while they have never been a slave to their father. In this mental and spiritual state, one is locked up and limited to a place where there’s no agency. No true happiness is available, not because it really isn’t but because one looks for happiness outside oneself, elsewhere, rather than deep inside. It’s like looking for an orange in an apple orchard. The truth is, my inner happiness doesn’t conflict with others. Others’ inner happiness does not lessen mine either. We can first cultivate this view of inner happiness by changing the way we understand true happiness. Just as the kingdom of God is from within, joy comes from within. Wealth or fame can surely make us happy but doesn’t last long. We feel the urge to keep fueling its craving to maintain. Look inwardly instead. You don’t need anything but yourself, your presence, your breath for the true happiness God provides. Contemplation is simply a tool to have that experience where we let the Eternal Spirit flow through our being. Once our desire for happiness as well as our attempt to seek it outside is replaced with our inner happiness, we can then genuinely see others in the eyes of compassion, since there’s nothing deficit in our lives, and we can act on what the prodigal father says: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” We can finally look at life itself in everyone, that precious life breathed from the Spirit with empathy and compassion. The way of Jesus calls us to examine all the values we uncritically take for granted. If I perceive myself as a slave or internalize myself as a victim, no joy is available but false humility is forced upon us. The way of Jesus sets us happily free and freely loving to others, intending their inner happiness in Christ. This is the joy that may have been lost but is to be found anew during this season of Lent. With this joy, we can be the “fellow who welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Amen. Idolatry is the direct opposite to the very first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have no other gods but me.” (BCP p. 350) If we were to ask who all the other gods are, we might think of gods and goddesses from Greek mythology. But this is missing the point. These gods are much more noticeable, and realistically speaking, most of us neither believe in nor worship them. The gods St. Paul is warning us not to believe in are the ones we create for ourselves to serve our wants and needs. These gods are made by us and created in our own image. We become god-creators, which makes us higher than gods. Idolatry is always self-idolatry.
St. Paul describes idolatry quite graphically: “...their god is the belly.” (Phil 3:19) Whose belly is he talking about? It’s the belly of idol creators. A belly is an effective metaphor for how we create our idols in our image according to our unfiltered desires. We create not only our idols but also ourselves, who we are, by feeding the belly. As I observe one infant at home, whose name is Henry, there are a couple of behaviors that I need to pay attention to. Of course, crying is one thing to keep the peace, and the second thing is to make sure he doesn’t put inedible and unclean objects into his mouth. This latter behavior seems to continue even when we become older in a different form. As infants eat, their bodies grow as well as their sense of self. Notice toddlers refer to themselves as a third person or confuse a sense of you and me that they have not developed to differentiate themselves. We grown-ups wouldn’t literally put things into our mouth to check if it’s edible but would feed ourselves with sensual desires or things that would quench our thirst or fulfill our craving or ideas about who we can become. This feeding of the belly is first physical, then psychological, and spiritual. The basis of the belly is a constant thirst or craving that originates from the unsatisfactory nature of the human mind. No matter how much we feed ourselves with, be it wealth, fame, identity, recognition, honor, or privilege, the belly is always deprived. Even if it is filled, it will feel thirst, hunger, and the existential void which doesn’t seem to be satisfied as long as life goes on. We thus become what we eat, and our god may become the belly. We obey the belly. More specifically, we are shaped by what the belly craves. Our first task is to see what we are feeding onto. Know what we crave and cling to. Most of the time, we are on autopilot that we don’t even recognize our own craving. We simply do and act at the will of the belly. Whatever feeds us is what we identify ourselves with which is how we define who we are. For example, Mastercard’s “Priceless” commercials lure consumers that they will be able to experience something priceless and thus can themselves become priceless. But in reality, credit card holders don’t own anything but banks, and they are priceless borrowers. What about cars? Consumers are not merely buying a car, say, Tesla. In their financial transaction, they gain the identity of Tesla owner. What matters is to be aware of and attentive to what we are actually doing. Our desire is driven by the belly’s craving. Once we become more conscious of our habit of craving and clinging, we cultivate a different desire to transform the belly’s craving into something that can last longer. The way to cultivate is through the persistent practice of contemplation in which Christ “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” (Phil 3:21) In deep silence, we learn to create a gap between our self-images driven by the belly and that we truly are. Transformation is born out of that gap. There’s this latest Grubhub advertisement posted all over subways. (Grubhub is an online food ordering company.) It says, “Meatitation: a sense of calm that comes from being transported to your umami place” This advertisement captures the belly’s main function, and its sense of calm doesn’t last but intensifies our dissatisfaction. I don’t think any of us want to dwell on meatitation but meditation in Christ, which is how we stand firm in the Lord. The belly, after all, can find its perpetual fulfilment through the Body and Blood of Christ. 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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