Sometimes I wonder if policing someone or regulating someone is inherited in our human nature. This human action of policing someone from something by some standards has to do with who has more power and authority, who gets to say someone is right or wrong, who can decide one is inside or outside. In the first lesson from the Book of Numbers and the gospel lesson, we hear this policing voice.
First, Joshua has some issues with two of the elders who are selected from the Israelites. These two are supposed to be in the tent but instead remain in the camp. Their names are Eldad and Medad. What happens is that Eldad and Medad are able to prophesy even though they are not together with the rest of the elders in the tent. We don’t know why they are not in the tent with the other 68 selected elders. But it doesn’t seem to matter. The Spirit of God rests on these two. Joshua doesn’t like this situation at all. He himself is also one of the chosen elders as well as the chief assistant, the right hand of Moses. Eldad and Medad are disrupting the power arrangement in his community. They seem to go against God’s order. So he runs to Moses and tells on them, “My lord Moses, stop them!” This sounds like Joshua is asking Moses to stop them, but it is Joshua who is ironically telling Moses what to do. It’s almost like “Moses, grant me the power to stop them!” Moses responds to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” It’s quite clear that Joshua is not jealous for Moses’s sake but for his own. Moses then reminds him that all God’s people are called to be prophets who are to act according to the will of God’s Spirit. The Spirit is always inviting, inclusive, and uniting people, never favoring one over the other, never exclusive, and never destructive. Let’s then look at the gospel reading where John is like Joshua. Joshua tells on someone to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” The core message or request of John is the same as that of Joshua: ‘Stop him. They are not authorized by us. We don’t approve them to do anything in your name. We don’t like the fact that we are the only ones with the power and authority you have granted us to do all the great work of yours. So, Jesus you better stop him!’ Jesus thinks otherwise. He answers John, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” On these two accounts of Joshua and John, We hear their zeal and passion for the work of God in a positive sense. But what we really hear is this territorial, envious, power-hungry, and excluding attitude to those who exercise authority in their communities. The problem with policing that both Moses and Jesus point out is not just that how this negative and narrow-minded attitude is somewhat unchristian. It is how this toxic attitude becomes a stumbling block to others who believe in Jesus. Jesus is quite harsh on this issue. Let’s listen to him again: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” It is troubling whether to take his teaching literally or not. But we know what he means. Don’t be a stumbling block to someone who is following the way of Jesus, the way of love in a way that is different from you. Don’t let your ego get in the way of someone who is entering into the life with Christ. We can actually look at this teaching in many different ways. This can be applied to situations like church authorities condemning one another for calling each other a heretic. We have seen this in our Anglican Communion over the issues of women’s ordination, sexuality, and etc. How often do we hear some fundamentalist preachers polemically judge those who have a different perspective? They become a stumbling block to those who are trying to follow Jesus and live like him. Let’s broaden our interpretation of Jesus’s saying in our current situation of how this policing attitude of some becomes a stumbling block to others. This week, I saw this letter size poster on the walls at the platform. It says, “#whyididnotreport.” Considering what’s going on with the judiciary confirmation process, this poster calls out those who have been sexually assaulted to speak out. One of the answers was handwritten which broke my heart. It said, “Because no one cared.” Society’s attitude of indifference or apathy or its victim-blaming and judgmental attitude to these people is a stumbling block. This phrase, “Why I did not report” reflects “What stops me from reporting?” What and who is a stumbling block? Alice Walker, a novelist, poet, and activist once said, “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” I think we can easily go on talking about all these examples of others who are stumbling blocks to us. But this is too easy. Jesus’s teaching on the consequence of being a stumbling block develops into the practice of self-examination. He says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell…” This calls us to look into our hearts and ask ourselves. Have I ever been a stumbling block to myself on my way to Jesus, to have a personal, intimate, and loving relationship with God? What obstacles do you put before yourself to grow and mature in Christ? It can be anxiety of tomorrow, fear of death, resentment, unhealthy guilt, shame, self-hatred, and so on. It can be your hunger for power, your ego to be a god of your own or things that we might call ‘sin.’ A good traditional example that lists what can be a stumbling block to ourselves is the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. What gets in the way for us to become closer to God, to enter life, to live our lives to the fullest in Christ? And what helps us remove this stumbling block before you? Jesus in today’s gospel reading gives us a surprisingly simple answer. He says, “Everyone will be salted with fire.” All these stumbling blocks seem to be removed through this process of being salted with fire. But what does it mean? Purify yourselves. Examine your hearts. Be slow to judge. But there’s more. Jesus goes on, “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” This salt in ourselves, this salt that purifies our hearts is none other than Jesus Christ himself. Have Jesus in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. Have Jesus reflect your will, desire, and intention. Ask the Holy Spirit to see and remove a stumbling block in our hearts so that we get closer to God and reach out to others not as a stumbling block but as salt. May Jesus’s love set your hearts on fire. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “Thy Kingdom come…” This term ‘kingdom’ is used not only in the Lord’s Prayer/Our Father but also throughout the New Testament. It is the term Jesus himself uses when he proclaims the gospel. “The Kingdom of God is near,” Jesus says. Now, this ‘kingdom’ terminology might create some misunderstanding on our part. I can at least think of one case. That is, it would limit our understanding and imagination of God’s Kingdom if we consider it merely as a spatial concept. We might think that it is a place somewhere in this world or life after death.
This way of looking at the kingdom of God, however, doesn’t sit well with the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s not forget that Jesus never taught us that we go to the kingdom of God. He taught us, “Thy Kingdom come.” God’s Kingdom that Jesus talks about is supposed to come to us, not that we go there. It’s the other way around. A helpful way of perceiving this kingdom language from its original Greek ‘βασιλεία,’ I would like to suggest is that we see it as “the Reign of God.” This rather different perception of the kingdom language invites God, not just God’s Kingdom somewhere out there, into our very reality. So that God reigns in every single moment of our lives. It’s about not only God’s Kingdom coming, but essentially God’s Reign coming and breaking into this world, into our lives. This, my friends, is not just a change of translation. This is our way of inviting God to reign, to govern, to lead our lives according to God’s will. This guidance of God is not coercive or oppressive but gentle and loving. In this Reign of God, our reality completely changes. G.K. Chesterton, an English writer, poet, philosopher, and theologian, can provide us some helpful insight about what this Reign of God might analogously look like. Here’s what he says in his piece on St Francis about the world turning upside down. It’s a bit lengthy but I believe it’s definitely worth listening: “...If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasize the idea of dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging...If St. Francis saw in one of his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head-downwards.” (The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume II, pp. 72-73) This image of the world upside down standing in a ‘new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence’ hanging by God and so thanking God is what the Reign of God is really about. In this state, we solely depend on God, realizing that our existence comes from God and is up to God. We don’t idolize ourselves to be a god of our own image. When our reality is upside down by the Reign of God, whatever is great, tall, heavy, or magnificent is in danger. It’s about to fall. The heavier, higher, and greater it is in this world, the more it is about to fall from hanging in the Reign of God that is the world upside down. This analogy applies to jesus’ teaching this morning. Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. A little child is closer to God than those who are considered by the world as successful, wealthy, and powerful. In the world upside down, it is certainly true that “Whoever welcomes one such child in the Reign of God welcomes Jesus, and whoever welcomes Jesus welcomes God the Father.” We Christians are the ones who live in this world upside down. This must be our new transformed reality of the Kingdom of God. But we seem to suffer greatly from a type of spiritual amnesia, our habitual forgetfulness of the world upside down in the Reign of God. Our world is not yet upside down. We keep forgetting that our being, existence, and life itself is hanging downward, as God is holding us. When we forget this divine hanging, the Reign of God, we don’t realize that the heavier and greater we become, the closer we get to being dropped. We might unconsciously feel the danger of falling. This instinct of danger creates anxiety and fear of death, fear of not being heard, recognized, and loved. St James talks about all the symptoms of this spiritual amnesia. There’s dispute and conflict among people. There’s disorder and wickedness of every kind. There’s envy. There’s selfish ambition. We want to be greater than others. Our hearts are at war, arguing against one another who is the greatest. There’s no love for one another. There’s no beloved community. There’s no life together with others. What would be the remedy for this spiritual amnesia which creates conflicts and disputes? The only remedy that can help us remember the world upside down in the Reign of God is Jesus himself. He is the only way to the reality of God’s Reign. He is the way of self-offering love for others. More specifically speaking, his way of love is explicitly revealed through his death and resurrection by which we are cured of this spiritual amnesia. When we enter into this reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection, which we sacramentally do through baptism, we no longer forget our true reality of God’s Reign in which we are called to live. Jesus’ command, “Do this in remembrance of me” shakes off all our spiritual forgetfulness. Jesus’ death wakes us up from our deep spiritual amnesia. It shocks us and reminds us of our true reality of God’s Reign that brings the world upside down. We by default want to walk around it to avoid facing our mortality and finite nature, our own death, but we must walk through it. Because for us Christians, death is never the end of everything but really the beginning of the resurrected life. I recently came across this powerful saying while I was watching some TV show. (If you would like to know what show this is, you can ask me privately after Mass.) The saying goes like this, “When you think you’re gonna die yesterday, today is sweet.” In other words, keep death near to you. Keep death in your life to live out the resurrected life of Jesus. St James in this light adds in the second lesson, “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” May God’s Kingdom reign in every moment of your life now and forever. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Have you ever been embarrassed of someone? Or to relate to what Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, have you ever been “ashamed” of someone? Shame is a powerful, yet destructive human feeling. It is similar but different from guilt. Guilt happens when we feel bad about what we did. Shame is about feeling bad about who we are. You can actually say that shame is psychologically more damaging than guilt. Guilt deals with our human behaviors. Shame is concerned with who we are. So, for example, if I’m ashamed of myself, this means I feel bad about who I am. In this state of feeling ashamed, I don’t like myself. Shame can very well lead to self-hatred.
Then what’s it like to be ashamed of someone other than myself? Jesus talks about those who are ashamed of him and of his words, calling this generation as adulterous and sinful. Before we go any further, I would like us to reflect on what it’s like to be ashamed of someone other than myself. Our experience of being ashamed of someone is very much related to our experience of being ashamed of myself. The common experience would be that this distaste or dislike of existence. In the case of self-shame, we dislike ourselves, we hate who we are, or we deny our identity and existence. In the case of being ashamed of others, we disapprove their existence, we dislike not only what they do but who they are. This feeling of shame intends to deny and reject whoever it is directed towards. Sometimes, we might have a strong feeling of shame towards someone who has done evil. It is quite easy to justify this shame we have towards people like Adolf Hitler or whoever denies human dignity. On the other hand, I would like to pay attention to a more subtle case, like that of Jesus. I would like to give you an example of this subtle instance of shame being directed at someone. I commute from New Jersey to New York. I get off at Port Authority. I’m sure Amy would know this commuter life very well that people don’t walk in New York City. People are half running, especially in subway stations. I think I read somewhere that one of the most annoying things that tourists can do in New York City is stopping in the middle of the street or sidewalk. New Yorkers don’t stop. Walk, walk, walk. Or run, run, run. This one morning around 7:30 am, I arrived at Port Authority. I always take stairs to take the subway. This morning, the staircase I always take to the subway station was unusually congested. Traffic in the staircase is quite annoying for commuters who are half-running to be on time at work. I was walking down the stairs. It felt like one step per minute. When I finally got to the end, I realized the cause of this traffic jam. It was this person with a disability who was struggling to get down the stairs. Realizing this person’s challenge and difficulty, I felt quite bad that I lacked patience and understanding. Looking at all these angry, impatient commuters behind him, on the other hand, I had this feeling that I didn’t want to be in that person’s shoes. Was I embarrassed of this person? Was I ashamed of this person? I admit I was. I say this because I didn’t want to be in that person’s place. I didn’t want to be that person who is annoying and delaying all these commuters in rush hour. When I stay with this feeling of not wanting to be that person, I tend to stay away from that person if not reject him. What’s quite sinful about this is that I lack compassion toward that person. In that very moment of shame, I in a way deny that person’s existence and refuse to look at his struggle. Now back to Jesus. I don’t think anyone of Jesus’ disciples would explicitly express that they are ashamed of Jesus and his words. What it’s like to be ashamed of Jesus or his words may be very much related to this experience of not wanting to be in the place of Jesus or not wanting to be Jesus. Being ashamed of him and his words is really about not willing to go where Jesus is, not willing to take his words to heart. Then we must ask ourselves where Jesus is going and what his words are in today’s gospel lesson this morning. Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you think I am?” Peter gets it right. He confesses, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus is the Anointed One of God. He is the Christ. This is who he is. Then this Messiah teaches something that nonsense. Instead of the teaching that would make his disciples and followers proud and powerful, he says he must undergo great suffering, be rejected by religious and civil authorities, and be killed. And he will rise again. What he teaches as the Messiah isn’t something that people want to hear. He then makes it worse and says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Let me summarize his words: “I am the Messiah, God’s Anointed. I’m going to suffer greatly. I will be rejected and killed. But I will be risen after three days. Do you want to follow me? Deny your ego to be powerful or to be a god of your own. Forget shaming yourself. Forget self-hatred. But take up your cross as I do. That is you’re going to suffer greatly as I did. You will be rejected and killed. But you will be risen again with me.” Do you want to be in the place where Jesus is? Do you want to stand where he stands? Would you like to take his words to your hearts that you don’t disregard his words but live them out? Peter is a great example of what it’s like to be ashamed of Jesus and his words. He is the first one who got the honor of recognizing and confessing who Jesus really is. Yet, he is also the first one to be referred as Satan by Jesus by showing his unwillingness to follow where Jesus goes. Now, if we dig a little deeper into this human dynamics of not wanting to be where Jesus is, we face our own fear and anxiety of losing ourselves as though our existence doesn’t matter at all. Why would anyone want to be where Jesus is when he’s about to suffer and die? Before even getting to the resurrection piece, every single person wants to avoid suffering and death! No one with a right mind would be willing to suffer and join Jesus. But for us Christians, it is the way to be who we really are and to live out what we’re called to do. Whether we know or not, the sacrament of baptism is how we enter into where Jesus is, following his footsteps and taking up our cross. You might not have known what your parents have signed you up for if you were baptized as an infant. If you can remember your baptism and it was your choice, that life of Jesus is what you’ve signed up for. And my friends, this is not a bad thing I assure you. This is the good news. This is the gospel. There is no place for shame when we are where Jesus is, when we stand where Jesus stands. Christians are in many ways like firefighters. We are called to go where people usually don’t want to go. That’s what Jesus does. As Jesus goes into the fire of sin, hatred, apathy, and resentment, we like him, our divine firefighter go. Be mindful of those who you don’t want to be because of their suffering. Pay attention to your tendency not to want to be that person who is in need. Don’t turn away your face from them but rather ask the Holy Spirit to grant you courage and wisdom to be with that suffering person. Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you the compassion of Jesus. Ask the Holy Spirit to take up the cross. If you feel ashamed of someone, if you feel like never wanting to be that person, listen to the words of God in the Book of Isaiah which, I imagine, strengthened Jesus, especially when he was hung on the cross: The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens-- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty? (Is 50:4-9a) In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.” (BCP, p. 337)
To pray, we open our clenched fists. Or you’ve probably seen that I raise my arms and hands every time I pray during Mass. This liturgical posture is called ‘orans’ which sounds like ‘oracion’ in Spanish, meaning prayer. Whether we unchench our fists to gather our open palms or raise our arms and hands, there’s a sense of openness in both gestures. We open our clenched fists. In the orans posture, I open myself with arms extended from my sides and hands open. What about when we receive Communion? We never take the host. With our open hands, we receive. It’s that openness which we receive the mercy of God. If you search the word, ‘openness’ on google, it gives you a very interesting definition. We might imagine it would be defined in a positive manner, but this google definition of the word is somewhat different. It says openness is ‘lack of restriction, accessibility, or lack of secrecy or concealment.’ in our everyday language, saying something is lacking usually means something is deficit and deprived in a negative sense. We say, for example, ‘So and so is lacking patience and empathy.’ Or we can think of the phrase, ‘lack of a better word’ when our language of describing or defining something is limited and we’re doing our best with words that we think of. Another example is found in the traditional Christian understanding of evil. Evil is the lack of good. It is the absence of good. This google definition of openness actually raises a good question for us. What ‘restriction or concealment’ do we want to ‘lack’ in order to be more open? In other words, what gets in the way for us to be more open? It may be fear, anxiety, cowardice, anger, resentment, judgment, doubt, and so on. I wouldn’t say that we have to be always entirely open. This wouldn’t be actually beneficial to our mental health. We do need to develop appropriate defense mechanisms to protect ourselves. Yet, there must be a balance to open and close. At the same time, we know we are much more prone to clench our fists and close ourselves out of fear. Opening our hands and ourselves is something we do not do so much. In today’s gospel lesson, there’s a concurrent theme of this openness between two healing accounts. Jesus heals the daughter of a Syrophoenician, and heals a deaf man. Let’s talk about the latter story first. Being deaf in the time of Jesus is like living in a closed world, considering the history of sign language only started in the 17th century. This deafness creates lack of communication with the world. Nowadays, it’s a bit different with the development of sign language that the deaf community can be considered another form of human linguistic community. But that’s not that case in today’s gospel context. This deaf person is linguistically, socially, and probably spiritually isolated and enclosed from his community. In this closed place, however, Jesus is invited to enter. People bring this deaf person to Jesus. This deaf person’s presence is somewhat forced on Jesus. Jesus encounters the deaf person’s social and spiritual isolation which may create an experience of abandonment from his community and perhaps God. In this encounter, Jesus enters deeper into the deaf man’s reality. Jesus first closes himself from the crowd to heal this deaf person as if he’s contracting hard in order to expand wider the mercy of God through healing. He puts his fingers into his ears. He spits and touches his tongue. He then says, “Ephphatah. Be opened.” This healing act of Jesus brings us back to the first lesson from the Book of Isaiah. The prophet proclaims, “...the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.” If I may summarize Isaiah’s words, it is about what’s closed will be opened. What’s isolated will be united. What’s hidden will be revealed. What’s cut off will be reconnected. What’s damaged will be restored. What’s hurt will be healed. What’s lost will be found. Jesus opens up what’s closed. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Having said this, let’s touch base with the first half of today’s gospel story. Jesus shows us somewhat troubling and uncomfortable behaviors. At first, his attitude towards the Syrophoenician woman doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this concurrent theme of openness. Let’s recall our memory that he literally refers this gentile mother whose heart breaks for her daughter to a dog. It’s more like a puppy. Looking at this begging mother for the healing of her daughter, Jesus says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Culturally speaking, this is not something odd to the Israelites. They come first, not the gentiles. But this gentile woman persists. She never gives up. She challenges Jesus with her wisdom. She says, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Some might criticize her for not calling Jesus out being a misogynist and a chauvinist, that she should be much more confrontational. Well, she doesn’t. But what she does instead is she educates Jesus with the same analogy that Jesus uses. The dogs under the table are much more desperate and ready to eat whatever falls off the table. These dogs are open even to the children’s crumbs. This is to say, ‘We the dogs are much more open to the mercy of God.” Referring herself to a dog is not a sign of weakness or lack of self-respect. It comes out of her love and compassion for her daughter. For her, it doesn’t really matter what Jesus calls her. What matters is the life of her daughter. This persistence of the mother actually pulls Jesus out of his culturally and religiously closed box. She opens the heart of Jesus. There’s this openness he learns from her which enables him to open the ears and tongue of the deaf person. There’s a divine chain of openness being handed over first from the gentile woman to Jesus. And what this openness actually does is not just for the person being opened but also for others. When this divine openness happens, people flourish. The gentile woman’s daughter is healed. The deaf person is healed. They flourish to become who they are called and meant to be! Without this openness, there’s no way that God can work through us. We are called to constantly open ourselves to the future that Jesus has accomplished through his death and resurrection. This opening up of ourselves is really to go out of ourselves. Constantly going out of ourselves takes us to encounter God in a new and mysterious way. For God is the perpetual opening up of God’s very own nature to us! We as church need each other to open ourselves to the future that Jesus has brought to the world. Our Christian responsibility which derives from the love of Jesus Christ is to play the role of the Syrophoenician woman, to become that person who wisely pulls the other out of the closed box of favoritism, judgment, fear, anxiety, resentment, and hatred. There’s this forgotten term, magnanimitas in Latin or magnanimity in English. It’s about extending and expanding myself, not aggrandizing my ego, for the sake of others. In this greatness of one’s soul, there’s a room for others to sit, stay, and rest. And finally this room of magnanimitas becomes a place that is filled with the mercy of God, where mercy triumphs over judgment. Jesus’s harsh comment and judgement of the Syrophoenician woman is transformed by the mercy of the Father to the mercy of Jesus himself. Let’s unclench our fists. As we do that, we offer to God anxiety, fear, hatred, or resentment we are holding in our hands. Let God take them. Let your hands be free, and freely open our hands. Open our hearts. Receive the mercy of God to be the open hand that delivers that divine mercy to others. May the Holy Spirit give us the courage to open ourselves up to the mercy of Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The essential Christian identity is that we are all God’s beloved children, but there is one thing that we must go through to get to this point. We’re beloved not because we earned it or deserved it, but simply because God says so. God proclaims that in the person of Jesus through his death and resurrection God loves humans without any conditions or requirements. This is the only reason why we are loved, why we’re God’s children. There’s nothing we do in order to be loved. We might want to raise a question, ‘Don’t we have to love God back to be more loved?’ or ‘Don’t we have to have faith or become Christians to be loved by God?’ To all these questions, the answer is no. No, you don’t have to be a Christian to be loved by God. No, you don’t have to have faith in Jesus to be loved by God. No, you don’t have to love God to be loved by God. There’s no condition to this love of God. God loves all humans whether they believe or not, whether they love God or not. That God loves all as God’s created doesn’t change.
For us Christians, however, we not only acknowledge this love of God in the person of Jesus but also accept that love. How we accept this love is something very unique about our Christian faith. We look at Jesus, his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. And we see that God loves us unconditionally wherever we are and however we feel. But in a way, this coming of God in Jesus, God becoming flesh is like a smack in the face of the entire humanity. It’s like godly spiking in our face. I say this because Jesus’s presence basically tells the entire humanity that there’s no single person who is innocent. Let’s recall that the first word of St Matthew’s version of Jesus’s good news was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Mt 3:2) Before God, every single person is a sinner. In other words, this means all of us are somehow estranged from God. We’re broken and wounded before God. Jesus exposes how broken, distorted, violent, ungrateful, and unforgiving we are on the cross. Traditionally, we call this the doctrine of Original Sin. It is socially transmitted to everyone from generation to generation. We do things that hurt each other. Even if we didn’t do such harmful things, directly we are unwillingly somehow part of those actions because we’re interconnected. In this world, no hands are innocent. For example, the Reverend Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor who protested against the Nazi regime, wrote this poem. This poem is written to show how important it is to speak up and stand up for each other, but in our case, it also reveals doing nothing doesn’t guarantee our innocence. We’re connected and affected by each other whether we want it or not. So here’s the poem: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. / Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. / Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. / Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” (Martin Niemöller, 1946) It is our human tendency to be on the right side. We don’t want to be wrong. We don’t want to be guilty. We want to be right. We want to be innocent before everyone, before God. We want to be on the side of everything decent, correct, and spotless. This is the desire to be innocent. And in today’s gospel lesson, we see this desire to be innocent and righteous in the words of the Pharisees and scribes. They criticize Jesus’s disciples for eating with defiled hands. In this act of criticizing the disciples, they seem to accuse Jesus for not being a good teacher to his own disciples. They ask Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” This question can mean something like this, “Why do you teach your disciples something that is against our great traditions? What kind of teacher are you, letting your disciples break the law?” We can very well imagine the Pharisees and scribes’ strong desire to be right about their tradition as well as their desire to be better, to be more innocent and more righteous than Jesus. They probably feel better about themselves, if not superior to Jesus and his disciples. We can also imagine them getting self-righteously angry at the unobservant behavior of Jesus’ disciples and Jesus’ unorthodox teaching. They stand higher than Jesus and the disciples. Let’s admit that they’re right about the disciples. If the disciples are devout Jew, then they should better keep their ritual washing. Now what we actually see in the Pharisees and scribes is something psychologically interesting. As they are standing on the right side, or to put it more accurately, as they are pushing themselves to stand on the higher ground than Jesus and his friends, they feel better about themselves. We need to pay attention to their feeling better about themselves. As they are putting Jesus and his friends down, they go up. It’s often called ‘one-upmanship.’ What’s behind this psychological phenomenon is a form of self-idolatry. The Pharisees and scribes pay attention to others to see if they observe the laws and traditions. As they become a judge of all, they promote themselves higher to the place of a god. But Jesus sees this psychological and spiritual distortion in their hearts. The laws or commandments of God are given to stay away from any form of idolatry, but what the Pharisees and scribes are doing is exactly the opposite. The purpose of ritual washing is not to be sanitary or judgmental of others, but essentially to purify ourselves before God and before our neighbors. Ritual washing is there to prevent us to be unclean or impure before God and our neighbors. As Jesus rightly says, its purpose is the washing of the heart. He says, “...there’s nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” St James in our second lesson today also comments, “Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” The Pharisees and scribes’ anger doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. Their anger puffs up. Their righteous anger is a form of self-idolatry. Their hands might be washed, but their heart isn’t. Their heart has no room for love, but is filled with themselves. There’s one forgotten practice in the Anglican tradition. It’s the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. This practice is much more common in the Roman Catholic tradition. But surprisingly, we Episcopalians/Anglicans do have this. We just don’t do it very often, and our priests usually don’t mention it or talk about it much. If you look at your prayer book, it’s on page 447. One thing I like about this sacrament of penance and reconciliation as a priest and a confessor is not so much about The Church-given authority to give absolution to penitents. What I love about it is in the very last sentence of the rite, which the priest says to the penitent, “Go (or abide) in peace, and pray for me, a sinner.” (BCP, p. 448) There’s a great sense of humility in this saying. Because the Church has granted the power to absolve sins, this doesn’t mean that the priest is ‘holier than thou.’ This doesn’t say a thing about the priest being morally holier or superior or more innocent. There’s no room for this feeling better about oneself to kick in. And Jesus calls this feeling evil. My friends in Christ, this morning I would like us to look into our hearts. And see if our hearts are time to time similar to those of the Pharisees and scribes. Without any doubt, we believe that we’re on the right side and they’re on the wrong side. I keep it right, and they don’t. I’m innocent, and they’re guilty. I’m not saying that you’re wrong for keeping it right. I’m asking all of us to see that feeling better about myself in comparison to others. By being right and innocent, there’s this feeling that we feel better about ourselves than others. We feel better about believing that we are morally and spiritually superior to others. In this emotional state, there’s no humility. There’s no empathy for others who are indeed on the wrong side. As a practical way of looking into our hearts, I would like to suggest all of us to pray the Jesus Prayer. This is the very ancient prayer that is mostly known among Eastern Orthodox Christians. It is also called as ‘the prayer of the heart.’ It’s a short prayer which says, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Eastern Orthodox monks are taught to repeatedly say this prayer in silence whatever they do and wherever they do until this prayer enters into their hearts. I would like to encourage all of us to say this prayer. We do this practice of washing our hearts not to earn something but wash the mirror of our hearts not to forget who we are as God’s beloved children. Let us choose to invite Jesus. He can purify and sanctify our hearts and fill them with wisdom and discernment, that he fills our hearts with deeper love for him, our neighbors, and ourselves in the way God desires, that we become doers of the gospel. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. P.Yn. |
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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