Two somewhat silly things come to my mind as I reflect on this Sunday’s gospel lesson:
1. Jesus keeps his distance from the crowd. He gets into a boat and sits there before telling the infamous parable of the sower. You can already guess what I would like to relate Jesus’ physical distancing with. But I won’t go there. You get the point. If Jesus knows how to keep his six feet distance from the crowd as they gather around him at the beach, this is the time for us to follow his example though he never taught about physical distancing! Yet, isn’t this much easier to do than any other teaching of Jesus? On the other hand, there seems to be spiritual significance in his move to the boat. Not only does he get himself in the boat but also it can be seen as his invitation to those to join him in the boat. Echoing Amy Allen’s last Sunday reflection, we can imagine Jesus sitting in the boat and secretly inviting the crowd, “So, come on in, the water’s fine! Take a leap of faith into the waiting arms of God, and find refreshment in the sea of infinite love.” Yet, remember this invitation to journey with him in the sea of infinite love is not going to be like being on a cruise. It’s a small boat with like-minded people who are willing to experience the God of Jesus. Since it’s just a small boat that sails on the sea, you will most likely get seasick and encounter a bumpy ride. Of course, you’ll see the beauty of God’s creation and love. What’s important is to have a realistic picture of the life Jesus calls us to join. You might find him sleeping with his head on a pillow, especially during the storm! (So if you happen to get in his boat, bring your most comfy pillow!) In case you feel terrified or anxious on this journey, don’t wake him up but try to take a nap like he does. Get curious more about what enables him to do that. It’s not a sleeping pill that gives him sleep but the peace and love of God with which he is united. 2. Regarding the parable of the sower, I wonder about the sower’s clumsiness. The sower is quite sloppy! The seeds fall on the path, on rocky ground, and among thorns. S/he doesn’t seem to be so careful with the seeds and isn’t skilled at planting seeds on good soil. Shouldn’t Jesus blame the sower for being somewhat inexperienced, ungainly, and even wasteful? On the other hand, we can see the sower as Jesus himself. He might be seen as extravagant, incompetent, and unprofessional, displaying a lack of skills in asset management. Yet, remember he’s not so into capitalism’s ethos or our sense of how one should precisely and effectively manage to plant seeds, and has never ever signed up to be the CEO of the Christian religion. As his focus on the parable of the sower is not on the sower but on where the seeds are sown, the sower’s rather clumsy and extravagant way of handling the seeds can be considered as the limitless and abundant grace of God. God’s love is unconditional and unbound. There’s no need to worry about saving the seeds. The seeds, which Jesus interprets as the word of God, are always abundantly given without ever stopping as God’s grace doesn’t ever stop though we may feel like it can be short at times. Now, getting in the boat of Jesus is like cultivating the seeds in the spiritual garden of our heart. Our first task is to take care of our spiritual garden so that the seeds, which are constantly provided, can bear fruits. I remember Fr. Keller was very much into gardening, which he was good at. I never met him in person, but I imagine he was not only taking care of our church garden but was probably gardening his heart. It must’ve been his spiritual practice. For those of you who actually do garden, you know what it’s like to remove weeds between beneficial plants, water, and etc. Spiritual gardening is similar. We have to know what’s in our hearts first and accept not just flowers and plants but nettles as well. This analogy of gardening, however, can easily be used to take a sort of Puritan undertone that we are to rip out all the weeds of bad behaviors, feelings, and thoughts. I suggest otherwise. Accept them for what they are in you rather than striving to be perfect. God never asks us to be perfect but to be faithful gardeners who bear fruits for our neighbors though our garden still has some nettles to take care of. This pandemic has forced us into isolation. It’s still baffling yet we do it because we have to. From this forced attitude, we can move onto a creative and positive perspective which considers this isolation as the time of solitude. This solitude in which we look into our spiritual garden invites us to a silent prayer that we listen to God. The word of God is sown, which is to say the language of God has spoken to us. The language of God is the sacred silence that is peaceful yet is louder when faced with injustice in our world. Here’s the famous story about Mother Teresa. When Dan Rather, CBS anchor asked her what she said during her prayers. She responded, “I listen.” So Dan asked again, “What does God say?” With a smile on her face, she answered, “He listens.” Today’s gospel lesson captures one of Jesus’ most provocative sayings. If all these sayings are quoted without disclosing those are his words, we would most likely dismiss them as divisive and unhealthy. Let me reiterate his problematic and challenging sayings: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword...For I have come to set a man against his father...Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
While his sayings are deeply troubling and do not meet our common image of Jesus as morally perfect, their goal in a literary sense is to shock the audience. Pedagogically, it’s effective that those sayings would last longer in our memory than others. So how are we to understand his words? We need to connect the two dots here, and how we connect them is from the second dot to the first in reverse order: 1) The first dot is the context in which Jesus sends his disciples to proclaim God’s immediate and intimate reign in the lives of people and to heal the afflicted. For him, sending his disciples feels like sending his sheep in the midst of wolves. He has to warn them: “My friends, you will be persecuted for my name’s sake, for the sake of the good news about the immediate and intimate reign of God on earth.” This is his way of preparing his disciples for any unexpected hostility from people they encounter. 2) The second dot is the provocative message of Jesus that unravels our family relationships and requires us to love him more than our family. I don’t believe his intention is to destroy a family unit and become irresponsible for our family responsibility. But there’ll be a conflict because of his teaching of love. This love is not only just interested in one’s own kind but in others who are not biologically related. So, his rhetorical saying, “Whoever loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” challenges and extends one’s spiritual capacity to love strangers, especially those who are not valued in our society. To put it rather bluntly, Jesus may be saying, “Don’t just love your own kind only. If that familial love is locked up in there without ever reaching to others, it is mere self-love for self-preservation that is simply self-centered and self-serving!” From this second dot, we connect to the first dot. The second dot is Jesus’ challenge for us to broaden our horizon of who is to love. It is not just focusing on our family or our own kind who is more likable and easily loveable but on strangers who are totally not like us. This is the impetus for Jesus to proclaim God’s immediate and intimate reign among people and to heal the afflicted. The love which is worthy of Jesus is the same love Jesus taught and lived out. That is, love of one’s neighbor as oneself which eventually got him murdered. What then is your spiritual capacity for love? The way we can measure it is to see how compassionate we are to those who are different. Again, this kind of love has nothing to do with pity. The difference between pity and compassion is the power dynamic between giver and receiver. Pity places the giver on higher ground than the receiver. That’s cheap, arrogant, and dehumanizing. Compassion places the receiver on the same ground as a giver. It presents genuine solidarity with those suffering and is always humble and understanding. It is much harder to have compassion than to show pity. Pity doesn’t last long. It is temporary and momentary, which is why it’s easier to do. Compassion, on the other hand, continues as a relationship in which there’s no giver or receiver but only friends who are standing together on the ground of Christ. This call to compassion for others is our Christian calling. Living out a compassionate life that Jesus exemplifies is to take up our own cross which is ourselves that tends to be narrow-minded and only interested in preserving and empowering an egoistic self. There really is nothing in self-love and self-preservation. It only sees others as a means to serve selfish wants. What we believe to be who we are is simply empty by which we afflict ourselves and others as we try to fill in the void. Father Thomas Keating once said, “The cross Jesus asked you to carry is yourself. It’s all the pain inflicted on you in your past and all the pain you’ve inflicted on others.” Only in Christ where we are timelessly united with God, we can truly be fulfilled and satisfied with eternal life and unconditional love. Lose yourself to gain yourself. Empty yourself to be filled with God’s love. Don’t limit your God-given potential to love strangers as yourself. Let your love flourish like an abundant river. That life of love is not only worth living for but also definitely worthy of Jesus. That is our only way to experience the resurrection right here and right now. Amen. Notice the target audience of Jesus for the good news of God’s immediate and imminent reign of God in today’s gospel lesson. Why does he send his disciples only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? Is Jesus being discriminatory towards the Gentiles or Samaritans? At first, it seems Jesus is excluding certain groups of people, but when we see the whole gospel according to St Matthew, that really is not the case. There are two stories of Jesus healing the son of the Centurion (8:5-13) and the daughter of the Canaanite woman (15:21-28). It’s more like Jesus knows what needs to be handled first before reaching out to others. It’s like getting your house in order before trying to do anything for anyone.
Jesus’s command to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel is also to be read in the context where he says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Due to the lack of laborers for the harvest, the disciples’ mission is not only to proclaim the imminent and immediate reign of God, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons among them, but also to make them the harvesters. Now, we Christians are very quick to consider Jesus sending off of his disciples as our own calling. Some of us would just like to jump in and do the work of God right away. The gospel lesson like today’s also tempts clergy to talk about all of us being called and sent out to the world. This interpretation is indeed correct. As baptized Christians who are partaking in the Eucharist, we are called to join the mission of God. But I think this move without discernment is too hasty and too clumsy on our part. Self-examination must take place prior to this action. There are two things that we need to take into heart if we truly want to be sent out. Without having to experience these two things in our lives, our sense of being sent out only serves to satisfy one’s own moral superiority in which those who have less are a means to fulfill one’s own selfish desire. So, what are these two experiences one must have in order to join God’s mission? 1) Compassion: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Compassion is the fundamental requirement that every human being must have. It is what helps us evolve from an animal with a high IQ to a human being created in the image of God. Compassion is more than being nice to someone in need. It’s an ability to see one’s own suffering as a spiritual source of empathy and to suffer and cry with those who are suffering. Only in this sense, our own suffering becomes more than forgettable memories of pain, and becomes a means to enter into others’ suffering. Jesus is able to join the crowd and see they are harassed and helpless because he himself had the experience of being harassed and helpless. And we do have this experience of suffering in our lives. Don’t let it go waste but cultivate it as your source to be compassionate to others and to suffer with those who are suffering. Our experience of oneness or union can only be felt in compassion for others. 2) Free of charge: “You received without payment; give without payment.” We Christians are the ones who confess that we receive God’s grace and love as free of charge. When we say God’s love is free, we don’t mean it to be measured in value. We might imagine Mastercard’s long-running “Priceless” campaign, but it’s not even that. That God’s love is free to all means it is unbound, unconditional, and all-encompassing that goes beyond our value system. We can’t possess it as if it is ours. In our eternal union with God, we are freed by God’s immeasurable love freely given to the world. Which is why we can also freely give ourselves to others. Only the one who experiences this free gift of God’s liberation can give freely. One is not attached to any means of love. One doesn’t assert one’s self-importance to anyone. Before we embark on our journey to join God’s mission, our sense of compassion and free gift of God we have received must be revived. These two experiences of compassion and God’s free love are two sides of the same coin. The wound of my heart becomes the way to those suffering. We don’t pity them. We humanize their suffering as we empathize with them. And this act of compassion arises because our wounds have been and will be healed by God’s free gift of love. Jesus joins all of us in our suffering through his own suffering on the cross. The divine love frees us from our toxic mentality of capitalism to self-surrender to God and self-sacrifice for those who suffer. We might wonder where we are to harvest. It’s rather simple once we embody our compassion and God’s free love. Where our heart aches is where God calls us to be. Where our desire to freely give ourselves is where Jesus leads us to be. 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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