The Hebrew word Messiah means “anointed.” It symbolizes a sense of being consecrated or made holy. For those who believe in God, the most ultimate way to be made holy is when one is completely embraced in God. For example, when your entire body is fully immersed in purified water, there’s not a single part of your body that isn’t touched by that clean water. This image reminds us of the sacrament of holy baptism in which our entire selves die and are risen. This ritual of baptism in our Anglican tradition has one more thing other than this image of our entire selves being immersed in holy water.
Can you guess what it is? It’s on page 308 in the Book of Common Prayer where it says in italics, “Then the Bishop or Priest places a hand on the person's head, marking on the forehead the sign of the cross [using Chrism if desired] and saying to each one, ‘N., you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever. Amen.’” There’s this rich image of being “anointed” or Christened. As Jesus is considered “anointed,” we too are anointed through the sacrament of baptism in which we are entirely embraced by God and thus are made holy. This doesn’t mean we’re holy. We are made holy by God’s grace in our union with God. We become sanctified as we’re one with God. In this union with God, we forget ourselves. We lose a sense of ego-consciousness by which we feel, think, perceive, analyze things, and protect ourselves, etc. We face our naked selves in our oneness with God that there’s nothing else but God’s very own. I imagine this is where Jesus comes from as he heads to Jerusalem where he would be murdered by the power that be. Peter represents the one who is not yet in union with God that his sense of ego dominates his way of thinking, feeling, willing, and living. So, Peter who was once praised by Jesus in the gospel lesson last Sunday is now called “Satan” by the same person in today’s gospel lesson. “Get behind me, Satan!” Whether Jesus really thinks Peter is Satan or not is not that important. I see this rebuking word of Jesus as his own way of reminding himself of the eternal union with God. It’s more like “See what matters the most!” or “Get it right!” or “Do the right thing in God’s eyes!” Don’t let anything disturb this union with God. Act from there. Then, Jesus goes straight into setting one’s mind on divine things, not on human things. And to set our mind on divine things, all we gotta do is to take up our cross, which is our own selves. Think about how often we ourselves are the ones getting in the way of reaching out to people in kindness or compassion. We become our own obstacles to join God’s mission. Jesus specifically says, “Take UP your cross” first and follow him. The cross we need to carry is ourselves that are in the way to follow Jesus. We need to take ourselves up, to get them out of the way first. It’s like a stage performer suffering from stage fright that one cannot do anything, being too much focused on oneself. To reduce one’s stage fright is to shift the focus from oneself. For us, we’re to shift our focus from ourselves to God that we are no longer an obstacle to ourselves. This act of taking up the cross can never be done on our own but is only possible when we’re one with God in which we lose and forget ourselves. Only in our union with God, we can take up our own selves and follow the way of Jesus because our minds are set on God in our oneness with God. In this union with God, we lose ourselves. Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” We enter the cloud of forgetting ourselves, yet in truth we gain what we truly are. We might be terrified even to imagine losing ourselves, yet in truth we gain more than ourselves. What we gain in losing ourselves is nothing but the resurrected life. During this pandemic, what part of you is in your way to follow Jesus? See what’s getting in your way of love and accept as it is without judgment. Everybody has a part of themselves that always gets in the way to love others as themselves (therefore more than themselves!). While we’re not able to socialize in person, this time may be used as the time to transform isolation to solitude where we become more aware of our eternal oneness with God as God’s Christened. 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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