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How many worlds are there right now? One world is given to one person just as one life is given to one person. There are about 20 worlds this morning. Your world is not my world even though we are together in this place at this very moment. I say this because how we perceive the world that is right here is all different. How we understand the world varies. Which does not at all mean that there’s nothing objective. It is absolutely there. We just cannot perceive it as it is. For example, I am right here. You’re looking at me and perceiving me in your world. I’m appearing in your world. But you’re not perceiving me as I am since you can only do so through your senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting.
In this world of yours, people come and go and life events constantly happen. It’s a world of constant changes in which nothing remains unchanged. In this world, our ego is the driving force that constructs how we make sense of our world. In this world, we’re controlled by the ego whose faculties are thinking, feeling, and sensing. It is always dualistic, meaning there’s you and me, us and them, darkness and light, good and evil, beginning and end, birth and death, and so on. This doesn’t mean this ego-driven faculties are bad. These skills are necessary for survival. So the heart of the matter is how to use these faculties of the ego in a way that we are not enslaved by them but use them according to God’s will. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the world of the rich man is a world driven by the ego. Lazarus who is at the gate of his house is the same Lazarus who is distanced by a great chasm. Even after his death, the rich man cannot break this ego-driven world. It still is a world of duality. Lazarus, everyone else other than the rich man himself is always the other. He cannot see Lazarus as himself, thus cannot love him as himself. His world after death is actually the same world when he was alive. Which tells us that Jesus’s point is not to tell us what the afterlife looks like. The rich man continues to carry his worldview and live the egocentric world in which there’s always you and me. The gate that sets the rich man apart from Lazarus just becomes the great chasm in the same manner. Yet, the only difference in his afterlife is that he has no power to open that gate he first created in his previous life to let Lazarus in. It eternally cuts himself off from others. Even after his death, the rich man hasn’t changed much at all. He still sees Lazarus as the homeless who he can order to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue. He still hasn’t repented. He still hasn’t changed the way he looks at Lazarus. He still is the same person as he was in his earthly life. While in agony, his heart goes out for his five brothers who are probably like him. But again, his intention to reach out to them isn’t so much about treating the poor as oneself but telling them to avoid the place of torment. His request to send someone from the dead to warn his brothers is rejected. Abraham says, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” The Law and the prophets are more than good enough to save his five brothers from torment if they truly understand them and apply them to their lives. If they don’t already do that, they won’t be open to listen to the one who is risen from the dead. Considering that Jesus tells this parable to the Pharisees who St Luke describes as “lovers of money” (Lk 16:14), he is actually telling them to faithfully follow the law and the prophets. This is another offensive criticism of Jesus against the Pharisees. They are the ones who are proud of showing their Jewish communities what it is like to faithfully follow the law and the prophets. But then, Jesus is telling them they’re not doing a good job at all. They only talk and preach about love and forgiveness to others but they themselves do not love and forgive others. Their life is far from their teaching. They set themselves apart, setting up a gate or a great chasm between them and everyone else. They’re self-righteous. And Jesus calls them hypocrites. In that sense, he knows pretty well that he’s not well received by them. The Pharisees or anyone like the rich man in the parable wouldn’t listen to his message he proclaims. That is, “The kingdom of God has come near to you. Turn around. Turn back right now.” That kingdom is nowhere near to them. They refuse to turn around. They refuse to live in the kingdom of God. They remain in their egocentric kingdom. The point of the parable is quite simple. How are you creating the world you perceive every second? Based on what foundation are you building your world? Is it like the world of the rich man in which one sees everyone else as the other, completely separate from oneself, creating a gate or a great chasm between oneself and everyone else? This is strictly related to Jesus’s greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” This is the heart of our Christian faith. Then how can we actually follow this teaching of Jesus? How can we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind when we can’t even see or feel God? How can we love God with our entire selves? And how can we love others as ourselves? This is a serious teaching of Jesus who we have decided to follow in his footsteps and live our lives like his. His teaching is not rhetorical. He means what he teaches and does what he teaches. What gets in the way for us to love? Let’s face the fact that we all build our world strictly governed by our ego. We don’t even recognize it. This is why we are so easily consumed and controlled by our feelings, thoughts, and senses. We think about something that someone said and dwell on it. Thoughts create feelings. These feelings are often negative and self-attacking. We suffer from these thoughts and feelings. How about feelings dominating our lives? We might get stuck in feelings of anger, sorrow, or despair and might believe this is all. On the other hand, this is not to say that our faculties or powers of thinking, feeling, and sensing are not important. They are necessary but we are not using them in a way that is supposed to be. We are controlled by them rather than we control them. This is what I call the egocentric world. In this world, we cannot possibly love God or anyone, including ourselves unless we get out of that world. We must transition to the world in which we use our faculties of thinking, feeling, and sensing according to God’s will. This is the kingdom of God Jesus not only proclaims but also embodies in himself. He is the kingdom of God incarnate. That’s why his words are God’s words, his deeds are God’s deeds, his love is God’s love. Only in this world of Jesus, we can love God and others as ourselves. Then how do we transition to this world? St Paul in his letter to Timothy gives us a clue. He says, “...we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.” There’s nothing we bring to this world of the ego. There’s nothing we take out of this egocentric world. In other words, nothing remains the same. Everything changes. Literally everything. Not only things around us change but also ourselves. Not only our physical features but also our thoughts, feelings, and senses. You can experiment how quickly your feeling or thought can change, depending on situations or people you encounter. Then, look deeply into yourself. While thoughts, feelings, and senses come and go, appear and disappear, there’s something, actually someone that’s not changing. For the past few weeks, I did some exercises with some of you together, sometimes in my homily or spirituality group or coffee hours, asking this question, “Who are you?” The purpose of asking this simple yet fundamental question is to unpack or reveal what we believe to be true of ourselves doesn’t necessarily define who we are. The question, “Who are you?” can be simply answered with one’s name. Yet, it’s just a name that one’s parents give. One might say one’s age which is just a number of years you’ve been living up to now or one’s origin of birth or other aspects that might be about one’s life. Another simple question would be “Where are you going?” We might say, “I’m going home later.” But if we keep asking this question, “After home, where are you going?” We might say, “I’m going to work.” Then again, after work where are you going? I’m going to someone’s party or church or home again or so on. We might say, “I’m going to heaven.” But after heaven, where are you going? Both of these questions make us speechless, if not annoying us, because there is no single answer that we can respond with these simple questions. I can’t even answer who I am. I can’t even answer where I’m going. The point is not so much about answering it but experiencing the very fact that everything literally changes. When we reach the point where we have no answers, where we simply sit with ourselves, where we stop and suspect our thinking, feeling, and sensing, we finally meet what’s eternal in us. Say to yourselves, “I do not know.” And remain in that very moment of silence. Because you say you don’t know, it doesn’t mean you really don’t know. It’s just a way to suspend your thinking, feeling, and sensing faculties. While sitting in that very moment, there’s this undifferentiated and non-discriminating consciousness that sees things and people around you. In this state of your undifferentiated and non-discriminating consciousness, there’s no duality but everything and everyone become one. In this state, the Holy Spirit is actively working in, through, and with us. We become one with God. This world is not something we have created but purely are given by God. It’s the very core of our being as the image of God. From this place, we use our ego, our faculties of feeling, thinking, and sensing to do God’s will. For example, when we look at someone, that person indeed shows up in my world. What I want to do is to make my world as the kingdom of God. What I desire to do with my world is to make it beautiful and meaningful. The person who appears in my world becomes God’s mission for me to beautify. Some event happens to my world. Instead of being enslaved by that situation, we make the best of it according to God’s will, arising from the state of the undifferentiated consciousness or the ground of our being. This means we can only gain our strength to love others as ourselves from the Holy Spirit. Our ego has no power to do so. Whenever you see yourself creating a gate or a great chasm that divides you from others, that’s the very moment when you are to go deep down to get in touch with the Holy Spirit who is your source to love. Don’t look for her elsewhere. The Holy Spirit is already in you. It’s the most precious treasure and gift from God. We better use it then. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today’s gospel lesson is tangled up. It is like one big riddle. We wouldn’t be able to understand what it means unless we find one clue that can unlock what’s kept hidden. We can easily name a few things that either doesn’t make sense or sounds confusing. Here they are:
1. In the parable of the dishonest manager, the rich employer does not fire his manager immediately. This is very different from Corporate America. I have seen in the hospital that people can be laid off right away. 2. The dishonest manager, even after being told he would get fired due to his squandering of the property of his employer, continues to squander. He reduces the amounts of debts owed to his employer, which is of course illegal. He has no authority to do that. He clearly abuses the power granted to him, and damages his employer’s assets for the last time to save himself! 3. Now the weirdest thing in the parable happens when the employer commends his dishonest manager for being shrewd, for being practically clever and showing sharp powers of judgment. The employer who is about to fire his dishonest manager praises him for how he is able to accurately assess his desperate situation and how he uses his power that will soon be taken away for his own sake. Logically speaking, there’s no reason for the employer to praise his dishonest manager for being shrewd since the manager is still damaging him financially. I suspect there’s a bit of wordplay Jesus is doing here. The employer who is commending the dishonest manager is no longer the employer but Jesus himself. It makes more sense that it is Jesus who is praising the dishonest manager’s good sense of judgment. 4. Is wealth dishonest? Throughout today’s gospel lesson, Jesus describes wealth to be dishonest. We might wonder how wealth can be honest. It seems Jesus knows money is just money, but the very nature of how people do with it or what they make out of it is the problem. 5. Lastly, Jesus says something that is puzzling. He says, "If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust you to you with the true riches?" He is telling his disciples to be faithful with the dishonest wealth. What does it mean? This idea of being faithful with the dishonest wealth is troubling because it sounds like we need to be faithful to something negative, something dishonest. Doesn't that make us dishonest by being faithful to something dishonest? This last confusing point that I would like us to reflect on this morning helps us to solve the big riddle that Jesus shares with us. In Jesus's mind, we can be faithful with the dishonest wealth without becoming dishonest ourselves. It all depends on how we handle wealth or “mammon” which is translated as wealth in the passage we hear today. Mammon has a broader meaning than wealth. It is more accurate to call it possession. So how to be faithful with the dishonest wealth is about how we handle possession or our deepest desire to possess. The way we manage what we possess and how we handle our desire to possess determines whether we are dishonest or not before God. Jesus tells us how we can do that. He says at the end of our gospel lesson today, “You cannot serve God and wealth or possession.” Serving God is the only way for us to be faithful with possession. This can simply mean we don’t let possession possess us. We do not allow ourselves to be possessed by our possessions or our desire to possess. Underneath this desire to possess lies our fear of death or losing ourselves. Let’s ask ourselves, “Why do I want to possess something or someone or some situation?” What prompts me to desire to possess? Where is that desire coming from? This chain of reflective and soul-searching questions ends with “What am I really afraid of?” The answer is death. Losing oneself is what we are most afraid of. Our ego always feels deficit. It’s never enough. It’s always hungry and thirsty. It’s always anxious and nervous. It’s always unsatisfied. Possession is then our ego’s natural craving to fill in. Possessing something or someone is to have a total control over someone or something or some situation. It becomes our human project to become a god of our own just like building the Tower of Babel. So, when Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and possession,” this actually means, “You cannot serve God and yourself together. You can only serve one or the other.” From this perspective, the reason why the dishonest manager is praised by Jesus in the parable is not really about how he takes his last advantage to use his employer’s money to make friends. It is because he finally realizes what matters to his life the most. It’s not money. It’s not all his possessions or power he had. He believed he had some power over things like a god but not any more. As he accepts his inability to control his current situation as he used to like a god, he sees what matters to his life the most after all is his life itself. He accepts his reality in which he is not that powerful. He is no longer a god. He’s just a mere human being, a creature. He faces his life on the verge of poverty and chooses life by making friends with forgiving their debts. This time, he does all this not as a god, but as a human being who is created by God. He’s about to lose his job but he gains something much more essential. He becomes human again. Jesus’s teaching then challenges us to reflect on our lives. What is your mammon? What do I do when I feel emotionally anxious and afraid, spiritually thirsty and hungry? With what do I fill in the voids that my ego creates? Or what masks do I put on or want to wear to hide my insecurity? For clergy, it may be a collar as if wearing a collar makes him or her look better or give more power and authority. For a wealthy person, it may be all about what one owns and shows off all the luxurious items one has or spends some money on the poor occasionally to feed one’s self-righteous and self-serving desire. For a middle-class American, it can be all about minding no one’s business, even the poor and the oppressed, but solely focusing on paying off mortgages and keeping one’s territory more secure. Whether one is wealthy or not, whether one is seen more religious and spiritual or not, without the naked mind one cannot serve God. Christians are the ones who are completely naked before God just as Jesus is on the cross. Christians are the ones who accept and believe that nothing in this world remains eternal but only God. However we define ourselves and whatever we wrap up ourselves with do not last forever. They change. Whatever we possess cannot protect us or save us from death. Only God does. I can go on with this conditional and finite nature of this world we live in as well as with God’s eternity. But it doesn’t matter so much unless we ourselves decide to be naked before God in us. From this place of the naked mind, we can truly serve God and the world that God has created. From this place of the naked mind, we can truly talk about God’s will on earth. From this place of the naked mind, we can truly become Christ’s hands and feet. Then, how do we have this naked mind? We begin by asking fundamental questions about ourselves. How do I see myself? What is it that I would like to be identified with? What spiritual cravings do I have? Where do I find dissatisfaction and satisfaction? After all these questions are asked and responded, what we are left with is that they all change as our life situations change. Then we can finally see the one who is not changing. That is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Prince of Peace. This is one of the names to describe Jesus. Yet, we often see Jesus criticizing the Pharisees and other local religious leaders in his time throughout the gospels. Today we see the Pharisees picking a fight with him. They accuse him of welcoming sinners and eating with them. In their mind, if one is truly a law-abiding religious person like themselves, one should neither welcome nor eat with sinners who are spiritually unclean. If one does so, that person will also become unclean. In the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus, like sinners that he hangs out, is unclean. And they cannot accept the fact that he is gaining respect from people and becoming more popular than they are.
The Pharisees’ strategy to devalue Jesus’s ministry still works. In our society, we hear stuff like how important it is to hang out with those who have good family backgrounds, competitive credentials, wealth, and power in order to succeed. From this perspective, Jesus had no chance to succeed in this world. His ministry of welcoming sinners and eating with them, this act of loving them as God does did not get him political power of this world. Instead, what he got himself after all was the death sentence for political rebels: the crucifixion. How ironic it is that he died as a political rebel who never asked for political power! So, let’s not forget that the two parables that we hear this morning carry the on-going tension between Jesus and the Pharisees. The audience is not his friends or followers but his critics. Jesus is not merely teaching them what to do when they lose a sheep or a coin or how to manage when things get lost. Jesus is responding to their criticism of hanging out with the unclean and himself being unclean through these two parables. It seems the parables serve two purposes: 1) One is to show them why he welcomes sinners and eats with them. And 2) The other is to invite them to find themselves in the parables. I’ll first talk about how the parables show why Jesus does what he does, which doesn’t look right in the eyes of his critics. These two parables have the same storyline. There is something lost. They also share the same paradox. 1 is greater than 99 in the first parable. 1 is greater than 9 in the second parable. This is nonsense! But in the parables, it definitely is. Jesus says this very unconvincingly, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds?” Logically speaking, if we lost one sheep, then it is better to give up on that one. We cannot leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness. We cannot afford to lose them all for the sake of that one lost sheep. It’s already a minus that one is lost but it is best not to lose any one of the ninety-nine. In this sense, Jesus is really not convincing. The second parable presents the same thing. In this case, we’re not abandoning the nine coins in the wilderness since they’re not going anywhere. They’re just coins. Thank God that they don’t move. But why would anyone waste money on throwing a party for finding the lost coin? If I do so, I end up losing that lost coin again by spending money on the party. Jesus is again really not convincing. How do we possibly think that these parables are the best way to answer his critics? First, let’s remember the world in the parables that Jesus describes is not of this world, but of the kingdom of God. Everything in God’s kingdom is upside down. In the kingdom of God, 1 is greater than 9 or 99 or even 999. The taller, the greater one is in this world, the further one is from the kingdom of God. The more sinner one is, the more mercy one receives from God as St Paul confesses in the second lesson. Jesus is seeing every single person through this paradoxical divine arithmetic. The lost one brings more joy than ninety-nine self-righteous persons who don’t believe they need repentance. So, why does Jesus hang out with sinners or lost ones? They bring more joy to God than the self-righteous Pharisees. Jesus is telling the Pharisees something like “Guys, people you call sinners bring more joy to God than you. You too better repent. Turn away from whatever you’ve been doing according your ego.” Why then are these so-called sinners more receptive to Jesus than the Pharisees? It’s kind of like the situation in the parables. Both sinners and the Pharisees have lost a sheep. They both share this absence of one thing. What they don’t share is that the Pharisees have 99 sheep and sinners don’t. Sinners have none but one that is lost. This is what makes a huge difference between them. I’m saying this metaphorically and figuratively but it is the reality of the Pharisees. They are blinded by what they possess in their world. They obey the Law. They have religious and political power. Unlike the Sadducees, they are patriotic, fighting against the Roman Empire. They receive respect and honor from others. They are righteous. Because they have everything, they do not see what they’re truly missing. On the other hand, the so-called sinners who are already labeled by those who have 99 can only see what they’re missing. They don’t even have any expectations to have 5 or 99 sheep. For them, finding one thing is enough. And Jesus is the one who finds them what’s lost in their lives. No wonder why they also welcome Jesus and would love to eat with him and hang out! Wouldn’t you want to be with someone who finds your company joyful? In telling these parables to the Pharisees, as I said earlier, Jesus is not simply explaining them why he would hang out with sinners. The reason why he welcomes and eats with them is is quite simple. Sinners are more receptive and open to Jesus and his teaching, and it brings joy to Jesus and God. This isn’t clearly the case with the Pharisees. Yet, he is also teaching the Pharisees with the parables to look into their hearts. It’s not that they are the ninety-nine sheep or the nine coins that are not lost. They also have lost one important thing in their lives that is worth more than what they have. They just don’t see it. They must find themselves lost. They must accept there’s something so essentially missing in their lives. Everything they have and all that they enjoy do not last forever. They come and go. This one thing which is being lost in their lives but found in sinners is only eternal. After all, the Pharisees become the lost sheep and the lost coin, not the sinners Jesus hangs out with. Then what is this one thing? The first verse of Psalm 14 which we recited this morning answers the question. “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” God is missing in the hearts of the Pharisees. This doesn’t mean God isn’t present. God is always and eternally present in every single person. What the fool believes is that there is no God in his heart. Pay attention to “in his heart.” This is opposite to Jesus’s teaching that the kingdom of God is within you, therefore God is within you and let God reside in your heart. In other words, we can say that the Pharisees are missing the Holy Spirit in their hearts. They do not look for her within themselves. They sincerely believe they have already found the Spirit and now possess her by keeping the Law. It’s like they are saying they have a god elsewhere outside themselves other than in their hearts. Don’t look for God outside, but only look into your innermost being. Jesus’s ministry is not only to let people know the kingdom of God is already present and very much existing in everyone’s hearts but also to show this kingdom of God in flesh, the Holy Spirit fully revealed as a human being. So when one encounters Jesus, one automatically meets the face of God in him and encounters the kingdom of God like his friends and those labeled as sinners. Yet, for this encounter with God to be real, one must sense and experience first within the deepest place of one’s being. St Paul’s question in the Book of Acts is still valid in our time and applies to us, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” More specifically, did you experience the Holy Spirit within yourselves when you became believers? When we truly did and still do, there’s this inner joy that we can feel. This joy is the joy that Jesus is talking about in the parables that there will be more joy in heaven and in the presence of the angels of God over one who finds oneself lost first and found the Holy Spirit in one’s innermost being. Can you sense this joy in your hearts right now? May God grant us mercy to discover the Holy Spirit who is eternally present in us and grant that the Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The human mind is analytical in its very nature. Medieval thinkers believed that the mind has four powers or faculties. The reason and the will first come, then imagination and sensuality. We think and desire. We also imagine and experience the world through the five senses. We feel too. What constitutes the mind has a lengthy history. The entire history of philosophy perhaps is about what the human mind is and how it works. This topic of the human mind might sound quite boring since it tends to be too academic or most philosophy books you’ve ever read in the past have not been so fun if not making you yawn. Who cares about Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle nowadays unless one is a philosopher or has a vast interest in philosophy?
But right at this moment, you’re using your mind. You’re getting information as you’re listening to me through your ears and seeing me right here through your eyes. Our mind is constantly working and changing. We think, feel, imagine, and sense. Nothing remains the same but changes from moment to moment. One of the things that the mind does is to divide. We divide, analyze, and categorize the inner and outer world just like there’s yin and yang. If there’s light, then there’s darkness. The mind divides things. Things in the world or ourselves can be divided or fragmented into two like day and night but more than two. Let’s experiment it. Simply ask yourself how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. You might feel fine, happy, sleepy, or bored. It’s not just one feeling that is always dominating you either. You can feel both bored and frustrated or okay. If you stretch your body or move around your neck and shoulders, you’ll feel more relaxed. Feelings come and go. They change quite quickly. What about your thinking right now? You might be thinking about what I’m talking about. But not just one thing but many things at the same time. Feelings and thoughts come and go. They can appear suddenly and can also disappear somehow. One thought creates another thought. One feeling creates another feeling. What we see in today’s gospel lesson is this work of the human mind that is programmed to divide things. Jesus sees it directly in the Pharisees. Now, let’s remember that today’s gospel lesson starts with Jesus being invited to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to have a sabbath meal. As he arrives at the house, he immediately notices the divisive work of the human mind. He observes how the guests choose the places of honor. Everyone in their mind knows which place is of honor and respect. The mind categorizes and sorts out who’s worthy of honor and who deserves less. The mind discriminates one from the other. This phenomenon of the guests choosing where to sit at the table is the mind’s act which is externalized and actualized. The mind judges who is to take the highest place and who is to take the lowest place. The mind tells, “You sit here because you’re good. He sits over there because he’s not so good.” So, by instructing them where to sit when they are invited to a wedding banquet, Jesus exposes the guests’ minds that constantly judge, divide, analyze, categorize, seeking their own honor, respect, and security for their own sake. What about the second advice that he tells the leader who invited him to the sabbath meal? He does the same thing. He exposes the leader’s mind. Jesus knows what kind of people the leader, the owner of the house would usually invite to his house for a meal. Who are they? His friends, brothers, relatives, or rich neighbors. These are the people who belong to the same socioeconomic and religious class. The leader’s mind, on the other hand, already made a decision that the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind are not considered to be invited to his house for a meal. His mind has no place for them, therefore no place at his table. When we hear today’s gospel lesson, especially Jesus’s two teachings (one for the guests and the other for the leader of the Pharisees), at first it sounds like he’s talking about humility and hospitality. But where do humility and hospitality come from? How does one genuinely desire to be humble? How does one truthfully want to be hospitable to those socially forgotten and unlikeable people? What enables one to be humble and hospitable? If we reflect deeper on Jesus’s advice and teaching to those at the sabbath meal, he’s not merely instructing them what to do. Instead, his questions are meant to throw them off completely. Let’s think about the first teaching lesson he gives to the guests. He tells them to take the lowest place whenever they’re invited to someone’s house. By the time he urges them to do something completely opposite, they’re all settled down at the leader ‘s house, taking the seats that present where they belong in their own kingdom. His saying is somewhat off putting and repellent to them. It’s like I got my seat which feels quite comfortable and fitting to me but Jesus is changing my seat to the lower part. What about the second teaching lesson he gives to the leader of the Pharisees who invited him to the house? Jesus is again off putting, repellent, and offensive to the leader. Jesus is basically telling him, “You have invited all the wrong people to your house. Don’t invite your friends or those who belong to your class. Invite the unwanted.” Is this Jesus’s way to offend the Pharisees? I mean we all know that the Pharisees invited Jesus to trap him and put him into a trouble. Jesus knew this more than anyone. Then, he should’ve behaved nicer than offending them. But he doesn’t just sit back passively to defend himself from the Pharisees out of fear and anxiety because he is fully grounded in the presence of God the Father as the Son through the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t care about how the Pharisees would accuse and attack him. He is proactive and fearless. He questions and tests the Pharisees. But let’s not misunderstand his intention of throwing the Pharisees off. His shock method is not to win them over or shame them but in order to gain them by changing their minds. He’s not there to fight and argue against them that he’s right. He’s rather like a firefighter who jumps into the fire to rescue the Pharisees. He doesn’t just criticize them out of hatred but out of God’s compassion and grace. After all, they’re also the children of God who carry the image of God in their very own existence. So this is Jesus’s intention. By interrupting their default behavior dictated by their minds, he shocks them so that they can be awakened to see their true reality. For that disrupting moment of his radical teaching, they stop thinking of themselves. That’s when they can get in touch with their true sense of being. What’s your immediate response when you’re interrupted by something? Imagine yourself as one of the guests in the gospel. You’re one of the spiritually and socially respected people. You’re invited to, say, the bishop’s house. You’re there because you have been respected and honored by people. At the dining table, you find your spot which is close to the bishop’s seat. You settle yourself there and those who are invited also believe you deserve to sit there. Now this guy, that is Jesus, who looks quite poor and whose occupation is a carpenter, hanging out twelve other men like himself, advice you to find another seat. I’m taken aback. I’m shocked. But before I realize that I’m offended and think to myself “How dare he!?” I get to suspend my thinking and feeling. The same thing Jesus does to the leader of the house. Jesus tells him, “From now on, only invite the socially unwanted.” In a way, Jesus is identifying himself with the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. “I’m not one of your rich friends but one of the socially unwanted.” The point of Jesus’s teaching to the guests and leader of the Pharisees isn’t so much about moving one seat from the other. The point is for them to look right into how their minds are dividing low and high, clean and unclean, wrong and right, or foolish and smart. Jesus tells them, “Look what your mind is doing. Your mind is divisive only to serve your own ego for your sake only. Detach yourself from that thought of aggrandizing yourself. I’m going to shake you so that you’re not thinking much. What you’re doing is illusionary. It means nothing. You’re just playing an ego game that is harmful to both you and others.” Get out of your meaningless unreality and illusion that your mind creates. See the true reality in you. Ground in the very divine nature which is already in you. Settle yourself in the image of God you carry within yourself. Go to the depth of your inner being in which God is fully and eternally present. When we go to the deepest depth of our very existence, we are in union with God. God is no longer an object of our thought but the Subject. Not just God is in our being but God IS our being but never we are God’s being. It’s the place of I am as I am. The mind is too busy to be aware of God’s presence deep in us. When we remain in the divine presence and look at people and things around us, there’s actually no you and me. That distinction disappears. This is how Jesus looks at everyone and everything around him. Only in this sense, loving others as myself makes sense. Jesus loves us or others as himself because there’s no distinction between him and others. In Jesus, others become him. Loving others then is the same as loving himself, which is what we’re striving for in this world. In this spiritual state, you have humility and hospitality. They’re just how we name some spiritual fruits. If this is the case, then this toxic business of deciding who’s higher is just the mind’s game. Seeing others as myself, on the other hand, is the very fruit of the resurrection. We go beyond this mind game and remain in the presence of God in which we’re fully united with him. This is saying “No” to the mind that divides ourselves, judges everyone and everything. It is then saying “Yes” to our true image, the image of God in us. Of course, we cannot just have this inner eye of love that sees everyone as ourselves. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we constantly pay attention to the very depth of our being where we meet and become united with God and conform ourselves to that image of God. We already have the ability to do this at our baptism yet need to build up our spiritual muscles. The divine seed is already sown, and it is up to us to make that seed into the flower. This is the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
April 2025
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