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Cambridge dictionary defines this commonly used expression, “full of yourself” as “thinking that you are very important in a way that annoys other people.” I’m sure we have come across a couple of people who we want to say, “You’re so full of yourself!” The opposite of this would be “empty of yourself.” This, however, does not mean “thinking that you are not very important in a way that does not annoy other people.” That would be self-humiliation. Rather, it is “thinking that others are as important as you are in a way that empowers them and takes the best out of them.”
Being empty of oneself in the Christian tradition is called “kenosis.” It literally means “self-emptying.” This is one of my favorite Greek words that describes the entire life of Jesus of Nazareth. His life is all about emptying himself. The cross is the epitome of this self-emptying life. He emptied himself to the point of death. This is far from self-deprivation which is self-focused and thus self-serving. The difference between self-emptying and self-deprivation is analogous to that of humility and humiliation. C. S. Lewis once said, “humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.” Self-emptying is to make space for others than to be full of yourself. This contemplative life of self-emptying has two interdependent directions: 1) Godward and 2) others-ward. But before we go there, we should ask the most fundamental question: what does it even mean to empty myself? As I understand it, the quickest and most effective way to do so is to suspend our thinking and feeling by literally saying to oneself, “I don’t know.” This goes against Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am.” This practice of non-thinking is more like “I think not, therefore I am.” When our faculty of thinking and feeling stops, we experience a sense of emptiness. We might feel so anxious even to think about not thinking and not feeling for a second as if our existence might disappear. But let’s face the fact that our thoughts and feelings constantly change. Depending on something that is always changing is what makes us more anxious. We get more anxious to grasp what’s changing and moving. It’s like catch-22. We keep clenching our fist to hold onto what’s already disappearing from moment to moment. When we stop thinking and feeling, we experience, not the absence of our presence but the fullness of our presence in which God reveals. God who is not seen or clouded under our thoughts and feelings shows God’s very own self in the way we’re in union with God. We don’t see God’s face in a way we see each other with our physical eyes but see God with our spiritual eyes. This suspension of our thinking and feeling is the very beginning step to self-emptying. In this mystical experience of self-emptying, we are united with God. This is what St Paul experienced and described in today’s lesson: “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ…” Without this mystical union with God, we really cannot let go of anything. We can completely let go of things when we know there’s something more worthy and valuable. We can only give our entire selves to God when God is the source of our entire selves. The infamous AA mantra does not leave out the latter part. It’s always, “Let go and let God.” In our context, we let go of ourselves to let God fill ourselves. This Godward direction is the first spiritual route that one takes as one empties oneself. As we let go and let God, God creates space for others to be seen. The second direction is then others-ward. When we’re forgetful of ourselves, we can truly accept others as themselves. For example, we can listen to them, without thinking about how to respond, when they share their stories. Let their words sink into our hearts. Then we respond after fully digesting their intention. Rather than what we think our neighbors need, we ask them and understand their needs. Emptying myself to receive others sounds a bit passive but is the most active way of loving and caring in that it reveals the nature of love that is patient, kind, and not self-seeking. (1 Cor. 13:4-8) This self-emptying is the message of St Paul to us this morning so is that of St Francis of Assisi whose feast day we celebrate. Francis’ act of emptying himself was rather dramatically recorded that he stripped naked as he denounced everything that belonged to his father and himself to follow the way of Jesus. This symbolic gesture of letting go lets God fill his hearts with others. Of course, St Paul is on the same path as Francis as he confesses, ”but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ…” On our Christian journey, we can be where St Paul was pressing on toward as long as we discern our hearts by asking, “Am I full of myself or empty of myself?” After all, kenosis is not really void of any but is filled with loving-kindness and compassion. Kenosis is plerosis (meaning fullness in Greek) in the mystery of Christ. Today’s gospel is difficult to understand, particularly for us who live at the center of capitalism. The virtue (or illusion!) of capitalism is that the harder you work, the richer you become. Whether this is truly happening in our reality or not, let’s read the parable from a capitalist perspective. For sure, the landowner in Jesus’ parable is not following the ethos of capitalism. He should NOT have given the same amount of money to all his laborers. We all know why. Some were hired early in the morning, probably at 6 am. There are those hired at 9 am, then at noon, at 3 pm, and lastly at 5 pm. The ones who worked from 6 am to 6 pm and those who only worked for an hour receive the same. Even though we are aware that these laborers have already agreed with the landowner for the usual daily wage, deep down in our hearts, we know the first laborers are unfairly paid.
Now, I would like us to turn our attention to the landowner. He’s a very strange figure. What kind of landowner goes to the marketplace to hire laborers every two-three hours? It’s a bit of waste. Not only does he go against our capitalist ethos but also financially damages himself. Something is wrong with him. This then tells us how we should perceive Jesus’ parable this morning and brings us back to the intention of Jesus’ telling this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.” Following St. Francis’ way of understanding the kingdom of heaven as the world upside down, the landowner is countercultural to what we’re used to. His persistence to get more laborers at the marketplace is like God’s persistence to reveal God’s unconditional love and eternal presence to us and the entire humanity. “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me.” (Revelation 3:20) God always stands at the door of our hearts, knocking until we open our hearts. God’s coming into our hearts is always gentle, loving, and kind. It’s never coercive, manipulative, or imposing. Then God eats with us. The Eucharist is the church’s expression of opening up the heart of the world to God for the life of the world. The church’s opening up of the heart of the universe is not so much about proselytizing our world into some kind of Christendom in a colonist manner. Rather, it is the sacred expression that God is in union with the entire world in that the church, each one of us baptized, is called to function as a means to show that eternal union to the world. Let’s dwell more on the landowner’s sense of time in the parable. First, early in the morning, he goes to the marketplace. Then, he goes at 9 am, at noon, at 3 pm, and lastly at 5 pm. This is in chronological or sequential order. The word “chronological” originates from the Greek, “Kronos.” It means “time” or “the personification of time” with a three-headed serpent in Greek mythology. There’s another term for the time in Greek, which is “kairos.” Kairos is qualitative, numinous, beginningless, and boundless. We’re only used to kronos time. Kairos time is a bit tricky to grasp since it is subjective and personal that it only makes sense only when we experience it. This doesn’t mean it’s hard to sense it. We just might not be too aware of it in a conceptual sense. There are special moments in our memories that we can recollect and still feel like it’s happening. In kairos time, there’s no sense of aging or time flowing but eternal now. Kairos is God’s time. It’s the time that the landowner goes to the marketplace and seeks for his laborers. For the landowner, there’s no distinction between 6 am and 5 pm. What matters is the encounter or that sacred moment of the divine and human spark. This, however, isn’t only available to some. No one needs to be chosen to experience God knocking on the door of our hearts and us letting God in. When the clouds of dust of our minds settle down, God appears. God is not hidden but is rather unseen in our hearts because of our busy minds filled with thoughts and feelings. I can say the landowner always goes to the marketplace but in reality, he never even left the marketplace. He’s still in the marketplace. We still haven’t come to terms with the first laborers’ resentment towards the landowner. They feel as though they deserve more. This kind of attitude is shown in the religious elites in Jesus’ time. They deserve more because they are more religious and holier than others. In our time, it can be compared to Christians in our country that we deserve more than non-Christians. At a personal level, this unhealthy attitude can be shown in our spiritual life that the more we pray about what we want, the surer we’re to get it, or the longer we’ve been Christians, the more we’re blessed by God. To this attitude, Jesus says, “No.” The kairos moment when we are in union with God doesn’t give us more blessings than others. We are spiritually awakened to the presence of God in us that everything becomes secondary. Our union with God is more than enough and there’s nothing better. God’s love becomes real to the point where we become compelled to love others. The kairos experience creates a healthy spiritual practice that makes us more generous, more loving, and more compassionate to others. If I’m picked up by the landowner at 6 am, I have twelve more hours to practice compassion and loving-kindness for others. If I’m picked up at 5 pm, it’s still fine because I finally encounter God’s presence and realize God and I are one. So says Jesus, “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” This applies as a warning or a wake-up call to those who misunderstand what it’s like to be picked up by the landowner as if one deserves more money, more blessing. But for those who are content with what this union with God provides, they enter into kairos time. And in kairos time, there’s no last and first but oneness with all life. Amen. Roughly speaking, the principle of Ockham’s razor states, “Don’t add unnecessary assumptions to explain something.” The simpler, the better. This principle, of course, doesn’t apply to everything but at least for our Christian faith, I think it works. Considering how our theological ideas and languages tend to make things difficult (or to make God more difficult or distant at worst), the principle of Ockham’s razor forces us to cut to the core of our Christian faith. At least, it questions us, “What really is the essence of our Christian faith?” When this fundamental question is ignored, we Christians get lost on our way to the way of Jesus.
St. Paul in his letters to the Romans which we hear this morning goes right into the essence of Christianity: Love. There’s no greater teaching than love in our Christian tradition. This simple teaching is something that we already know. Because we’re so used to it, it seems this teaching of and call to love is somewhat taken less seriously. Every single Christian knows love is the highest value they’re to keep. 85% of the 116th congress, which is 456 members, are Christians. We as fellow Christians might want to ask whether their core value as both a Christian and a politician is love and how love influences their political and policy decision-making processes. Without having to actually look at a single data, we might somehow assume love is not reflected in whatever most of these 456 members of the 116th congress do. While this assumption is unfair to some faithful politicians and is quite biased, it can reflect what we see in our current American political scene and what we think about it. There’s a reason why I bring up this uneasy topic of our American politics in this reflection. Right before his teaching on love which we read, St. Paul talks about governing authorities: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” (Romans 13:1) Paul’s view on governing authorities is not the essential teaching of Christianity though it may have been true in his time. What’s more troubling is not so much about his view on politics and authorities. It seems to me lots of Christians pay more attention to his relative advice than Jesus’ actual teaching and commandment of love. When love is emphasized in decision-making, it might be easily brushed off or considered unrealistic. It’s like love may be kind but is never popular in our culture. Love can be put on hold because love is patient! I often wonder about this lack of consideration of the essence of Jesus’ teaching and its somewhat ineffectiveness in our lives. Why so often do we forget about this teaching of love, and how can we follow it? We may not have been the one and only generation of Christians who do not faithfully follow this teaching. The Romans to whom Paul writes in his letters would’ve been just like us, which is why he talks to them about love. Paul’s diagnosis of this spiritual apathy is clear: “...you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” This past Sunday, we talked about what it’s like to be in union with God. Connie brought up how difficult it can be to experience that union during this pandemic. This realistic assessment of our situation is crucial to make sense of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Betsy shared her experience of being one with God in her contemplative observation of plants, flowers, and animals. To wake up from sleep is to be aware of God’s union with us. When our minds are focused on only one thing from 11 million pieces of information of unconscious processing per second and 40 pieces of information of conscious processing per second, we experience a sense of peace and restoration. This moment of clarity and serenity is when God who is always present is revealed to us. When our God-consciousness is awakened, we’re in union with God. This is also when we go out of ourselves that we experience a great joy of self-forgetting. No second thought about ourselves exists. No self-doubt. Not a chance for self-hatred to sneak in. Now, bring this experience to when we interact with other human beings. Imagine we’re not distracted from anything but are solely focused on this one person we’re encountering. This full attention to the person is an act of love. We empathetically listen to and are fully present with the person. In this very state, we and the person are in God’s presence, being united with and in God. Thus says Jesus, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) Our personal spiritual practice of being in union with God extends to our neighbors. This then is how we put on the armor of light and what putting on Christ looks like. 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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