|
Is love difficult? It depends on how you understand it. St. Paul’s understanding of love in his first letters to the Corinthians describes what love is in the Christian tradition. If I may rephrase his famous words on love and change them into a question form, we can ask ourselves as follows:
“Can I be patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude to others? Can I stop insisting on my own way and listen to others? Can I be mindful of any resentment to others and start the process of reconciliation and forgiveness? Can I think and behave conscientiously and rejoice in others’ success and joy?” Can you? You certainly can! At times, we might want to be rude and mean to certain people in certain situations, but it doesn’t mean we are losing our ability to love. It’s never about whether we can or not but whether we want to or not. In this matter of wanting or desiring to love others, there are two forces: restraining forces and driving forces. We want to have stronger driving forces than restraining forces. What would be the most effective way to increase our driving forces to love? Should we push ourselves harder, for example, by commanding ourselves the messages of ought-to, should, and must as conveyed in today’s lesson from Leviticus? I’m not sure how this “should” language can actually change us to love better and more if not triggering guilt or shame at worst when we fail to do so. There’s an easier way to increase our driving forces to love others. That is to reduce restraining forces. The less obstacles there are, the smoother things move along. See what’s in the way and set it aside gently. There are two major restraining forces that get in our way of loving others: fear and apathy or indifference. Fear of the Other creates hatred. We hate what we fear. When we think of the word “phobia,” hatred might come up immediately. Interestingly, the term originated from Phobos who is the god of fear and panic in Greek mythology. Fear, not hatred, is the opposite of love. Hatred may be our self-protective emotional reaction to what we fear, and this fear of the Other is what we fear within ourselves. We are afraid of it because we might be “it” so that we show aggression to it as if the more we hate it, the further we get away from it. But the reality is that the more one thinks of it, the more one becomes attached to it. This is why embracing works better than excluding, which is God’s way of redeeming. The other restraining force to love is apathy or indifference. I see this more as a spiritual condition of acedia, more known as sloth, (one of the seven capital sins in the Christian tradition). It’s a lack of wanting to do anything, one’s passion extinguished. Nothing interests that person in this state. His mind wanders around, never being grounded in his present reality. In this state, he does not and thus cannot pay attention to others, being consumed by himself that is never satisfied with anything in his life. He’s apathetic and indifferent to things and people around him. If the former restraining force of fear of the Other is the condition in which one is too protective of oneself, the latter restraining force of acedia is the condition in which one is too consumed of oneself to the point self is depleted. The common denominator of these two restraining forces is the self. The self gets in the way of loving others. Then, what can be the remedy for this spiritual malaise? I think we can find it in the most crucial teaching of loving others as oneself. The key is in loving “oneself.” Once we know what it’s like to love oneself, then it’s not too hard to love others. How do we then love ourselves? We can consider self-care, self-compassion, etc. Self-compassion in particular is much needed when one is caught up in self-hatred. Yet, this doesn’t include others. It only deals with oneself. I want to suggest something more radical, that the true art of loving oneself happens when one becomes self-less, forgetting oneself to reach out to others. One cannot truly love oneself apart from loving others. These two acts of loving others and loving oneself simultaneously take place. Self-less love is possible when we forget ourselves and give undivided attention to others. In doing so, one becomes patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude to others. It’s like when you are deeply in love with someone, you forget yourself and become solely attentive to that person. As you lose yourself, you’re fulfilled with love in union with the beloved. It’s self-less but in reality is self-fulfilled and expanded by others. The more we empty ourselves, the deeper and wider we are filled with others. The more we empty ourselves, the fuller God fills ourselves with God’s loving presence. Jesus is our example, role model, sign, sacrament for the divine selfless love. He shows the art of losing himself and emptying himself to love others, in which he becomes one with God. It is paradoxical that when he lets go of himself completely, he is eternally filled with God and others. In a way, it may be confusion or a lie that we have to protect ourselves out of fear of the Other and that we can find meanings in our lives if we are only consumed with ourselves. The former takes us to hatred while the latter extinguishes all our desires to do anything. So, as Christians we look at the cross. It’s the symbol that reminds us to lose ourselves, let go of ourselves out of trust in God’s unconditional love and mercy as we see the resurrected Christ. This is the way of liberation and freedom of selves. This is the way of love and holiness. Amen. Both presidential and vice-presidential debates were filled with carefully crafted questions that could corner each candidate into some kind of trap. Topics of these questions usually revolve around issues that might divide people. There may be two ways to respond to these potential traps. One way would be to choose your side, accepting that you can’t have it all. The other way requires wisdom that not only sees through the true intentions of those who create traps but also answers in a way that opens up a new perspective to the issues.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is in a religiously and politically crafted trap. The Pharisees in the presence of the Herodians publicly ask Jesus, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Let’s pay attention to the adjective “lawful.” It’s unclear whether the Pharisees are asking about Jewish laws in a religious sense or about the civil law in a political and legal sense. It doesn’t seem that Jesus has any chance to win them. He’s about to be persecuted for either treason by the Herodians or idolatry by the Pharisees. Suppose Jesus says yes to the question that it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. This acknowledges the emperor’s authority over Jewish people in their territory, adding to the oppressive power that be. It also raises the question of whether Jesus puts God before the emperor in his religious life according to Jewish laws. You can imagine those judgmental eyes of the Pharisees. Suppose he says no to the question that it is not lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. This would infuriate the Herodians who are the Jewish supporters of King Herod, meaning they are against Jewish independence. By saying no to the question, he can risk criminal charges and endanger his family and friends. There’s no way out of this trap by saying yes or no since nothing is designed to satisfy both the Pharisees and the Herodians. This dissatisfaction with Jesus or to put it more accurately, Jesus as their public enemy number one unites them who are religiously and politically against each other. Just like an ancient proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In their hostile attitude to Jesus, the Pharisees and the Herodians become friends. As we know, Jesus gets himself out of the religious and political trap. (But not entirely. His death on the cross was both politically and religiously planned.) What we want to pay attention to is not so much about whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Instead, we want to reflect on what Jesus is trying to do here. I don’t think his intention is to avoid the trap. He knows what the Pharisees and the Herodians are trying to do, directly asking them, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” It seems to me that even though he’s aware of their malice, he does not want to give up on them. He’s not trying to shame or rebuke them but to redirect them to see what really matters in life. So asks Jesus, ““Whose head is this, and whose title?” as they show the coin used for the tax. Consider his question not literally but spiritually and rephrase it as “What do you see on the coin?” At first, looking at the coin, we’ll respond like the Pharisees, “The emperor’s.” But look deeper (comtemplatio) and ask the question again, “What do you really see in it?” From the engraved images to the reality of people under oppression and uncertainty of their livelihood, its composition of copper, tin, and zinc, and then to its use as a medium of exchange. This introspection finally leads back to us, our human lives. This symbol of the coin can capture the nature of our human lives that we work and earn money in order to sustain ourselves. Now as believers, who sustains our lives? To whom do we belong? Whose head is this, and whose title? Whose image and whose inscription do you see in yourself? Whose image and whose inscription do you see in others? Alas, the Pharisees and the Herodians are blinded by their own insecurities that cause envy and hatred against Jesus. They are unable to see the image of God and the author of life in themselves and others. They’re enslaved by the engraved image of the emperor, which symbolizes their spiritual blindness to the presence of God in whose image they’re created and under whose inscription they’re to humbly place ourselves. So says Jesus, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The Pharisees and the Herodians know what things to give to the emperor but do they know what things to give to God? The Collect for Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost we prayed on September 20 sounds fitting: “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure…” The things that belong to God are not the things that pass away. The spiritual introspection (or contemplative observation) to see through what’s essentially at stake is simply to be aware of God’s presence in everything and everyone we deal with. Paying contemplative attention to God’s presence is to be mindful of our union with God at this very moment. This contemplative attention is what keeps Jesus out of trouble in today’s passage. It sheds light on what really matters in life. Some of us might still look for the answer to the question of the Pharisees. (So what’s Jesus’ answer!? Is it yes or no?) Neither, either, and both, meaning he would like us to begin every issue we tackle with from our experience of being in union with God. Then, we are able to see people, not just a religious or political issue to resolve, who are beautifully created in the image of God. 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
|