In each of our relationships, we form an image of self. We may say we have different roles we play in each of these relationships. I came across a video clip that shows a brother’s emotional reunion with his sister after 22 years spent apart. It’s quite moving as they hug each other in tears of joy. On the other hand, I see each of them being united with the image of self that has been long forgotten or unrealized due to the absence of the other. A brother couldn’t be the kind of brother he is to his sister because of a lack of interaction with her.
We create a unique version of self in each different relationship we have. Others’ presence becomes a foundation for that particular version of self. This is probably why there’s a saying we lose a piece of ourselves when we lose someone. If that someone is the one who is dear to us, that partial loss of ourselves is painful. Love is thus an act of making oneself vulnerable for the sake of the other. If that someone is the one who isn’t so dear to us or has hurt us in the past, the partial loss of ourselves is beneficial to the rest of ourselves. We can easily imagine two types of relationships. One is a hostile one in which either you or the other person is unkind to each other. We would obviously avoid or despise that relationship or the other person not just because that person is mean but because we don’t want the version of self that we somehow feel wronged and thus become a victim. The second type of relationship is a friendly one. In that friendship, we have a much better sense of self-image. We are heard, understood, and respected. This respectable image of self is something we always want to identify with. This act of creating a version of self in each relationship raises a question of what kind of self we would like to identify with. No matter who we interact with, we are commanded to bring our best version. This is where Jesus’ teaching this morning makes sense the most. At first, his teaching of welcoming his followers may guarantee a heavenly reward. As the followers of Jesus, we might feel a bit entitled that whoever it may be “ought to” welcome us because it’s like welcoming Christ. Perhaps our inner voice might say, “I better be treated with respect. Do you know who I am?” Unfortunately, Jesus’ teaching doesn’t work like that. In order for us to be welcomed as Christ by others, we first have to do our Christian duty of carrying a Christ-like presence in our relationship with them. We are creating a version of self that is of Christ in that relationship. This is mutually beneficial. For us, we would personally feel good about this Christ-like version of self that is skillful and wise. Those in a relationship with us would feel good about themselves that this encounter brings the best out of themselves as well. So, before we feel entitled to receive respect and hospitality from others, the real work must start with us first. Once we skillfully and wisely become a Christ-like version of self, we create an opportunity for blessing in our interaction with others. Then again, as you can guess what question I would raise at this point, how do we practically create and cultivate a version of self that reflects the presence of Christ or simply “Christ-bearers?” Let’s get some insight from the Greek term “δέχομαι (dékomai)” translated as “welcome.” It can also mean to “receive” or “accept.” To be the bearers of Christ, one must accept or receive or welcome Christ in oneself. This isn’t so much about prescribing to the Christian doctrines or saying, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior” as Evangelicals would do it. It is to accept, receive, and welcome the Breath of God into our hearts as we breathe through our nostrils to the lungs and then to all the parts of our entire body. This is an embodied acceptance, receiving, and welcoming of the Breath of Unforgetting. This is what we practice and cultivate alone in solitude and together in communion. The presence of this practice of accepting, receiving, and welcoming the Breath of God into our body is what we bring to others. We present them with the fruit of Christ’s presence. Only in this way, do our words, actions, and intentions go beyond the pretense or moralistic and legalistic approach of love of neighbors. When we embody the presence of God in us and let it flow as the fragrance of flowers spreads, there’s no need for us to fake it until we make it. This is the only authentic way to keep it real. Authority is a necessary element for any kind of work. Without authority, ministry or any secular operation would be impossible. For example, in our church polity, the vestry has authority over making executive decisions. However, authority often has a bad reputation. We see it frequently abused in politics, workplaces, and especially among religious authorities. Even when we reflect on our own lives, how often do we hear people or ourselves talking about having authority issues? It's like being called to the principal's office and feeling anxious, even when you've done nothing wrong!
Jesus, however, shows a different way of exercising authority. He doesn't take advantage of anyone who gives him power and authority as he performs miracles. Looking back at our political history, the type of authority given by people (not from God) is never shared but is always centralized on one particular person or party with military force. That which Jesus shares with his disciples is not of this power that be. Because the authority Jesus gives to them originates from compassion: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36) The basis of Jesus' authority or Christian authority is compassion. What is this compassion? It is the goodwill for those who are suffering that we do not want them to suffer and genuinely hope that they find true joy and happiness in God's presence. Without compassion, no one can access God's kingdom dwelling deep in our hearts. In other words, without compassion, no one can receive Jesus' authority. But then again, this compassion is not a mere feeling or thought to have. It comes out of our deep encounter with God's inner presence in which we are seen by God's long loving look that eternally wishes us goodwill for true joy and happiness. We are lovingly looked at and received as we are, and God is perceived and experienced as God is, not as we are. Out of this contemplative union with God, we cultivate compassion. It compels us out of our authentic desire (which we can call "authority") to reach out to others so that they may experience God's presence in themselves. We can only proclaim what we experience. In reality, what we experience leads us to share with others what we experience. Compassion and authority are the results of our contemplative union with God. Compassion for others pulls us out of ourselves to share God's presence with those who are suffering so that they too can find the ultimate source of courage, resilience, and hope in themselves. Peace, calm, tranquility, joy, rest, and love we experience in the presence of God, not out there, but within our hearts, are what we bring out to the world. Without our contemplatively experiential understanding of the compassion-based authority of Jesus to share the good news of God's kingdom, his call to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons would be challenging, daunting, and unrealistic. Our immediate reaction would be “Me, curing the sick when I'm not that healthy myself? Me, raising the dead? I certainly have my loved ones who I want to bring back to life. Me, cleaning the lepers? I know it's hard to get a dermatologist appointment nowadays but all I can offer is probably petroleum jelly (or Vaseline). Me, casting out demons? Oh no, please no demon talk. I'm an Episcopalian.” We don't take Jesus' call to perform miracles literally. We train our presence to mirror God's presence. We embody God's presence dwelling in us outwardly, and externally. How we cure the sick is to make our presence and company that of healing. We don't step away from the sick but come nearer kindly and gently. With our presence of goodwill, we stay against the culture of death in our world. We do not join anything that kills the living. Our presence touches the spiritual walls of leprosy that no one dares to go near. We do our best to be angelic (or Anglican) faces in places where demons of greed, outrage, hatred, and resentment prevail. The last page of our in-person Sunday bulletin contains the essence of my reflection in the words of St. Teresa of Avila: This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home. There must be something about Jesus that attracts so many people. Once you encounter him, it is hard to forget who he is and what he does. His warmth, non-judgmental openness, wisdom, deep concern, and care for others are all qualities that can be summed up as holiness. Holy people draw others to themselves, as though there is no barrier before them. They are always open, encouraging, intriguing, serene, and calm. It is not too difficult to imagine that those who want to change their lives would always follow and surround Jesus in the gospel stories.
However, not all appreciate his sacred presence. Those who think they are better than others and thus perfect do not need it. When they are already so much holier than others in their own right, why would they need someone like Jesus? They are even holier than Jesus in their self-perception. It is their freedom to believe however they think about themselves, but their actions do not attract anyone who wants to be holy like them. Their version of holiness is not that of Jesus. They are always closed, discouraging, black-and-white narrow-minded, judgmental, and anxiety-producing out of fear of breaking any religious laws. They are perfect archers who never miss the target. The so-called sinners, on the other hand, are unskilled archers who keep missing the mark. They are the ones who come to Jesus. They want to make a radical change in their lives. They desire a different identity other than how society or religion or the power that be defines who they should be. In the gospel lesson this morning, we encounter poorly performing archers. You might wonder why I keep talking about archery. The Greek word ἁμαρτάνω (hamartano) is the root word for "sinner." Its literal meaning is to miss the target. So, instead of calling the folks Jesus hangs out with sinners, let's see them as imperfect, below-average, unskilled archers. This is where we can resonate with them. How often do we feel like missing the target or messing up or feeling incapable and inadequate on certain tasks? Perhaps we may pick the wrong arrow to shoot but never miss the target. Say, some may shoot an arrow of hostile behaviors and words and hit the bullseye. In this case, they may be skillful archers but unwise at picking up a godly arrow, if not Cupid's arrow! Not only does Jesus share meals with unskilled archers. Here comes this woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years as well as this twelve-year-old girl who is reported dead. The woman according to Jewish halachic law is considered unclean or ritually impure. The girl's case (corpse uncleanness) is even worse. One becomes unclean and ritually impure by contacting either directly or indirectly a dead human body or even by entering a place where a dead body is located. These two characters are the archers who have not even been provided with arrows, to begin with. They are the archers who never got a chance to shoot an arrow. To these various unskilled and unproven archers comes Jesus. He is an experienced coach for these archers. Those who delusionally believe they are good don't need a coach. "For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Let's imagine the fundamentals Jesus would instruct his students. First, focus on the bullseye. For us, it is to concentrate on God's kingdom in us, not out there. This is the faith or conviction the woman suffering from hemorrhages persists with. Then we learn how to stand and hold an archer with an arrow to the anchor point, which requires patience and strength. Our anchor point before the release is our contemplative center. It is where all distractions are filtered away. Whatever is in our view of the bullseye is set aside. We listen to our breath and make it steady while focusing on the mark and pulling the arrow backward. This act of pulling it back to shoot eventually is like a process of having a long loving look at reactionary thoughts and feelings without acting on them. And when it comes to the release, we relax our fingers and let go of the string. We don't attach to anything but the love of God and neighbor and let go and let God. We will of course miss our target. Yet, we learn from mistakes and try not to make the same mistakes. This is how we become more skillful in our actions. When we come to this stage, human customs and traditions which are the means to define who we are and how valuable, pure, and righteous we are do not matter. We are judged by how skillfully we hit the bullseye of God's Presence in us and others. So, why don't you join Jesus' archery crew? He's not just good at fishing but also at archery to the point where he himself has become our bullseye. The doctrine of the Trinity is the most challenging topic to preach on. One of the reasons is that no one really gets what it is yet it’s what distinguishes Christians from other monotheistic traditions. It is also the reason that our fellow Muslim and Jewish friends might be puzzled about our faith in one God. They can get the Father part as well as the Holy Spirit part because they can be considered as a way to refer to God. But Jesus the Son of God?! Isn’t he a human being just like us? Jesus is the most troublesome reason to make sense of this doctrine of the Trinity but is the very starting point for Christians to experience God and learn to embody God’s presence.
This reflection on the Trinity has two parts. The first is more important than the second one. You can skip the second part but I would like to encourage you to keep the first one in mind so that you actually deepen your spiritual practice of contemplation. 1. How the doctrine of the Trinity is approached in general is metaphysical. It’s talked about in the abstract. It’s like one’s hopeless attempt to grab the air with a hand. The only way to grasp is to breathe it in. This is much more concrete and real. Now, when we talk about the Trinity, it is the Christian way of experiencing God. We Christian experience God’s presence first and express it in a trinitarian way. It is how we make sense of God’s presence in us. So, I would like to invite you to experience and embody God’s presence in a trinitarian way. We start with Jesus of Nazareth. We look at him and listen to his teaching of God’s kingdom dwelling in us. God is “nowhere” out there and “now here” in us. The risen Christ breathes in us as though God breathed into Adam the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Our breath is the entry to the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God. Our spiritual practice of contemplation is not only our lifeline but also our way into the presence of God through breath. Jesus shows and teaches us the way to the very source of God’s presence through our breath that originates from the Breath of Unforgetting or the Spirit of Truth. In our contemplative experience, we stand before God the source of all that is, the Ultimate Reality, the Glorious Transcendent. We embody the presence of God in a trinitarian way through contemplation. This embodied experience must come before we express God as the Trinity in words. Every time we sit in silence to contemplate, we encounter the triune God. Whenever you hear the term “Trinity,” it is really “Try, unity!” with God through trinitarian contemplation. 2. It seems that in Christian history any attempt to make sense of the Trinity, as though it is a mathematical problem, has either failed or been unsatisfactory. If it fails, then one becomes a heretic. If it doesn’t, then the phrase “mystery” is used. There’s indeed an illogical aspect to the doctrine. We all know 1+1+1=3. But the doctrine seems to insist that the answer is 1, which is arithmetically incorrect. Theologians must somehow turn 3 to 1. Well, the only way to make 3 to 1 arithmetically is to subtract two fingers from three fingers. This does nothing to help our understanding of the Trinity. Perhaps there’s another way to make sense of this confusing doctrine. The real difficulty may begin with our tendency to make sense of God or a living being as a noun or an entity. Our conception of God the Father as 1, the Son as 1, and the Holy Spirit as 1 presupposes that God is a static being or an object (objectified by us) rather than a dynamic force in action. This way of understanding is applied to perceiving us human beings as well. You are counted as 1 as I am counted as 1. This being as 1 in a numerical sense, however, doesn’t capture anything. Let's ask ourselves whether we can be reduced to 1 just because of our nature of having length, breadth, and depth, in this corporeal body. No, we are more than the number 1. This isn’t an emotionally charged rhetorical response we often hear that we are not just statistics. We just cannot be reduced to 1 because it doesn't accurately capture what we are. Think of yourself as the closest example of a human being. Are you a number? Are you a static being? The answer is no. Each one of us is a dynamic force. We are a verb rather than a noun. We are a function in a mathematical sense rather than a number. In the same manner, God is a verb, not a noun. Always simultaneously acting, living, and breathing. Then, our conception of the Trinity is not about that forcing us to believe 1+1+1=1 when it’s 3 but about F(f)+F(s)+F(hs)=F(t) in that each one is understood as a function of f=Father, and s=Son, and hs=Holy Spirit, and of t=Trinity. How does this functional combinability play out in our concrete reality? Again, as I mentioned above, we start with Jesus. We look at how he functions contemplatively in his inner life and acts compassionately in his outer life. We embody how he functions. This reflection has two parts. The first one is a biblical analysis of two passages from 2 Kings and Acts.
1. Here’s some biblical analysis I would like us to engage in. Let’s compare today’s lesson with the story of Elijah and Elisha from 2 Kings 2:9-13. Below is the passage: When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” He responded, “You have asked a hard thing, yet if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted to you; if not, it will not.” As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. We can clearly see the resemblance between these two stories. This simple comparison gives us a pretty good foundation to presume the intent of the storyteller of Jesus’ ascension account. The risen Christ, just like Elijah, does not face death. The metaphor used to express the move against death is a way of ascension to heaven. If death is downward, life is upward. The Hebrew concept of sheol fits in here that it is a place of darkness or the underworld after death. For us, whether to take this ascension of both Jesus and Elijah literalistically (asking “Did it really happen?”) is neither the essence of one’s faith nor the purpose of the lessons. We can step away from mythical thinking. The point is that the resurrection is never swallowed by death. The resurrection of life goes against the gravity of death. Ascension is then the way for those left behind to make sense of the absence of their teachers, Elijah and Jesus, and turn that into the message of hope. 2. Nonetheless, no matter how dramatically both Elijah and Jesus exit, their friends are shocked and distraught. Elijah cries out, grasps his own clothes, and tears them in two pieces. Jesus’ friends mindlessly gaze up at the sky, and there’s no one. This big void is the only available presence. It can trigger fear, anxiety, and meaninglessness. They would be like “What now?!” There’s a sense of being lost. What are we doing now without Jesus? Where are we going from here? What’s the purpose when the true hero is no longer with us? What’s in it for us? These questions are our questions when we don’t physically see the risen Christ, which makes the ascension account our own. Moreover, don’t we all have such questions when we encounter an absence of our loved ones? Just as the angel in the empty tomb takes away fear and shock of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and reminds them of what to do, two folks in white robes redirect Jesus’ friends, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” This is to call their attention to where they are in the present moment, to bring them where they are called to be. Don’t look at the other side. The grass may look greener but it’s because you are not there. If you get there and look at where you were, the grass on that side will look greener. The angels, whose literal meaning is a messenger, urge us to wake up and be right here and now to meet the risen Christ in a different mode of being. There’s no peace in this action of wandering around but restless, unsatisfied, and eventually alienated from oneself and reality. The risen Christ doesn’t leave us alone but reveals differently. To discover and see Christ in our midst, we need to cultivate to have a long loving look. Being grounded in the presence of the Spirit, we are gifted with the beatific vision. We see the Ultimate Mystery and Godhead which we call God only with the very limited sense that there’s no way that the word God can contain that which IS. Receiving the Holy Spirit is like inheriting the mantle of Elijah. One practical tool or technique for your meditation: imagine wearing Elijah’s mantle all around your body as you become attentive to each part of the body and each cell in the organs. Wear the Spirit on you and be here and now every second. |
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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