We all have experiences of being in crisis and we wish situations like that wouldn’t happen. We don’t need to look further for an example. Our global world of which we are a part is still struggling through the pandemic crisis, impacting all of us personally. Thankfully, it is getting better with the vaccines available yet this doesn’t undo all the suffering that this pandemic has caused. No crisis each person experiences is small or any lesser. Every single crisis is heavy, difficult, and challenging in its own context, which is why no one can say others’ suffering is less than their own. What makes one’s critical moment better is compassion. We are willing to join where they are with our actions and prayers. This compassion can be the sole reason for building and maintaining a community of love in the name of Christ. It’s to lessen one another’s suffering by being together.
In the gospel lesson this morning, both Joseph and Mary are in crisis. Their crisis starts with Mary’s unexpected pregnancy. Mary shouldn’t have been pregnant before she marries Joseph according to their cultural norm. Something goes clearly wrong. For Joseph, the fact that Mary is suddenly pregnant and he’s not the biological father is a crisis. It’s a type of crisis that can damage his reputation in his community. He might have felt betrayed, and we can imagine him being resentful of Mary. Yet he doesn’t play a victim role. Instead, he does his best not to harm Mary’s future. He’s aptly described as “being a righteous man”. For Mary, on the other hand, Joseph’s resolve to not expose her to public disgrace may have helped her only a little bit. She would still be pregnant regardless of what he does. In the time of Mary, social prejudice against women who become pregnant before marriage would be worse than in our time. Contrasted to a commercialized image of the nativity scene in which everything seems calm and peaceful, the coming of Jesus of Nazareth narrated in the gospel story this morning is first and foremost perceived as the crisis of Joseph and Mary, not as Christ. This child the Crisis shakes the world of Joseph and Mary upside down. Because of this Christly crisis, their lives will never be the same. Mary is about to become a single parent, and Joseph is looking for a new wife. Whether we like it or not, all sorts of crises somehow affect us. Some may impact us more than others. Just when Joseph decides to pull himself out of this crisis by cutting his ties with Mary, God intervenes and stops his plan from annulling his engagement with Mary. What we see in parallel between Joseph and Mary is then their response of fiat (“let it be done” in Latin) to God’s mission of the incarnation which first comes as a crisis that shatters their plans. What kind of crisis has impacted you? What crisis have you recently gone through? While I want to acknowledge with compassion how hard that crisis has been for you, I would like to empower you not to lose heart. God is present even when we don’t feel God’s presence, and our desire, longing, and anticipation for that very presence keep us going in difficult times. In the crisis each one of us is personally going through, I would like us to ardently yearn for the coming of Christ and to experience the presence of Emmanuel, God with us. Amid the crisis, Christ comes as Emmanuel. This experience of God with us is the very source of our strength and resilience to go through our crisis. Rather than asking to remove or change a challenging situation, we learn to rely more on God’s presence in that crisis and trust in God’s faithfulness that keeps us carrying on and moving forward. Whenever we discover God’s very presence in ourselves as well as in the midst of our crisis, Christ is born to us. In the eyes of God, we are found and born to Christ. As a faith community of love in Christ, it is our Christian duty to be present and to be representatives of Christ to those in crisis. St. Teresa of Avila summarizes this Christian obligation, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.” While we personally contemplate the presence of God with us, Emmanuel, we as God’s beloved community materialize and incarnate Emmanuel so that we can shift from crisis to Christ. This Sunday gospel lesson continues the apocalyptic and eschatological theme of the First Sunday of Advent. Think of it as a sequel like Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) or 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007). If the gospel lesson on the First Sunday of Advent is about the uncertainty of when the end times would take place and how consistent preparedness is crucial, today’s lesson is about what kind of event this eschaton would entail. St. John the Baptizer’s message is clear: “The kingdom of God has come near. Bear fruit worthy of repentance because all will be judged.” Then comes the images of the winnowing fork to sort between wheat and chaff and the unquenchable fire to burn the chaff.
I sense that most of the end times movies take these images of judgment literalistically. In a typical zombie movie, for example, some are bit by zombies and turn to the undead themselves while others who learn to adapt to a new environment continue to survive and rebuild an apocalyptic civilization. Now, as we observe this Advent season, these images are solely for entertainment. These images might have worked as a fear-marketing strategy to gain Christian converts back in the old days. Yet, I question whether these images perceived by films deepen our spiritual lives. This fear-mongering interpretation of the eschaton doesn’t sound so hopeful as we yearn for the coming of Christ who is the hope incarnate. What changes our hearts, after all, is not the message of fear. It happens when we encounter Christ, the incarnate kingdom of God within ourselves. So, I would like to propose a different way of understanding today’s gospel lesson that we can apply to our spiritual practice of contemplation. Let’s pay attention to the verses below and ponder on them as we sit in silence. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (3:2) The word “repent” carries negative connotations. Let’s stick with the Greek term, “metanoia”, the change of the heart, which is translated into repentance in English. This message of St. John is identical to the good news Jesus proclaims. It’s not so much about changing one’s mind or perspective. Here, its subject matter is the kingdom of heaven. It has come near and has always been that way. So, we need to change where we look at. Don’t look outside. Turn our view internally and inwardly. The kingdom of God, the eternal, unconditional, and deathless presence of God is within. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (3:11b-12) Baptism assures and ascertains the inner dwelling of the Spirit. The element of fire isn’t much discussed. Fire in this context is unquenchable. It is the fire of the Spirit that purifies. In the presence of the Spirit within, pick up Christ’s winnowing fork to sort out the wheat from the chaff. The chaff here is all our unskillful behaviors, and the wheat is all the skillful behaviors that we would like to continue. The chaff will be burned with the Spirit’s unquenchable fire which is operated through our precepts of love of God and neighbor and conscience. To distinguish the wheat from the chaff, we sit in silence and have a long, loving, and judicious look at our behaviors. In contemplation, we face our motives and intentions of words and deeds and examine how we respond or react to each action. ask ourselves, “Is that action skillful or unskillful? Does it bring me instant gratification or long-term happiness?” We acknowledge and accept our failures and shortcomings without unfairly judging our self-worth yet fervently motivate ourselves for the better. Without this spiritual muscle which is gained from meditation or sitting in silence in the presence of God, we have no strength to hold the winnowing fork and to toss the stalks and heads of grain into the air, in the face of the breath of God. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (3:8) Set our expectations high in this Advent season. Hope for changes. We will certainly bear fruit worthy of the change of the heart and get ready to enjoy it. Be nourished by that fruit. This spiritual nourishment will deepen our process of metanoia. As night becomes longer, may we open up our contemplative eyes to see the light coming nearer to our hearts. Advent prepares us for the coming of Christ. There are two kinds of “coming” that we anticipate. One is the birth of Jesus of Nazareth which dominates this liturgical season whereas the other is the second coming of Christ. Our popular culture focuses on the nativity scene. The second coming of Christ, however, is rather disregarded or ignored for various reasons. For this Advent season, I would like to invite all of us to pay attention to the latter aspect of Advent to take Jesus’ teaching on the coming of Christ into our hearts. This coming of Christ is also the disciples’ consistent interest and curiosity throughout the gospels.
Jesus always gives them a simple, straightforward answer to this question of when and where: “Don’t know when and where the eschatological coming will actually take place.” But he doesn’t stop there. He urges his friends to “be awake here and now.” St. Paul follows up on Jesus’ emphasis on the here-and-now nature of Christ’s coming and says, “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” The Advent message is way too simple then. Wake up from sleep right here and right now. Jesus has a sense of urgency that we can hear in the gospel lesson this morning. His parable of the owner of the house staying alert and ardent about staying up all night to guard his house against breaking in is the attitude that he would like his friends and us to have. Be alert and ardent always. This may sound a bit unrealistic and even stressful. Can we really continue to be awake? How do we actually do that? Before adding more stress to our lives, especially during this holiday season, let’s unpack and undo our assumption about being awake. Too often, we assume and presuppose that we know what it means to be awake. But we usually don’t. Here, being awake is to give appropriate attention to the presence of God in ourselves. We keep in mind that God breathes into our breath. Keeping in mind, while being alert and keeping our ardency, is to be awake here and now. This simple practice sounds like nothing so serious, yet once you actually do it, it may not be so hard. As we keep in mind God’s breath entering into our breath, we notice thoughts and feelings proliferate. It’s not that our thoughts and feelings are jumping around because we start meditating. Because we pause to breathe and contemplate, we can see what’s going on every second in our daily lives. What has been unseen or unnoticed is now exposed as we meditate. It’s like what Lao Tzu would say, “Do you have the patience to wait? Till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” Jesus provides us with a great metaphor to have a more biblical theme to our practice of the Breath of God through our breath. The image that he coins is Noah’s Ark. I would like to invite all of us to briefly delve into how Noah ended up building the Ark. Below are the verses from the Book of Genesis with my comments in italics: 5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. (6:5-8) In God’s eyes, Noah is right with God. This cleansing act of God, however, contradicts the image of God who is loving, compassionate, and forgiving. I would not suggest that we take this story literalistically, but rather God’s anger acknowledges that evil does exist and still does in our days. Despite all the reasons to be dishonest, if not becoming evil ourselves, Noah keeps his integrity. When others go low, he goes high. 16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and put the door of the ark on its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. (6:16) The Ark is designed to have no windows on the sides but only the roof on the top. Mechanically, no windows on the sides would prevent any water leak. Also, later when it finally stops raining after forty days and forty nights, Noah sends the raven and dove to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. (8:6-8) Psychologically, Noah and his family are protected from seeing all the creatures, especially people drowning to death. This may prevent them from potential PTSD. Spiritually, Noah is focused on the roof, single-minded to set his eyes on the sky. My friends, for this Advent season, I would like us to build this ark of the heart within. Remember what to keep in that ark. Keep in mind what’s most essential, which is the Breath of God. You will build a roof or a window that lets you focus on the presence of God only. Be alert to what you see in that window. Thoughts and feelings might come across. You can simply turn on your wipers to clear your sight. As the presence of God charges, restores, and energizes our hearts, we become ardent about maintaining the ark of the heart. Instead of forty days and forty nights of rain, we’re entering into four weeks of Advent. We yearn and long for the coming of Christ as we set our eyes on the window on the top of our inner ark through which the dove dawns upon us. |
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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