The essential Christian identity is that we are all God’s beloved children, but there is one thing that we must go through to get to this point. We’re beloved not because we earned it or deserved it, but simply because God says so. God proclaims that in the person of Jesus through his death and resurrection God loves humans without any conditions or requirements. This is the only reason why we are loved, why we’re God’s children. There’s nothing we do in order to be loved. We might want to raise a question, ‘Don’t we have to love God back to be more loved?’ or ‘Don’t we have to have faith or become Christians to be loved by God?’ To all these questions, the answer is no. No, you don’t have to be a Christian to be loved by God. No, you don’t have to have faith in Jesus to be loved by God. No, you don’t have to love God to be loved by God. There’s no condition to this love of God. God loves all humans whether they believe or not, whether they love God or not. That God loves all as God’s created doesn’t change.
For us Christians, however, we not only acknowledge this love of God in the person of Jesus but also accept that love. How we accept this love is something very unique about our Christian faith. We look at Jesus, his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. And we see that God loves us unconditionally wherever we are and however we feel. But in a way, this coming of God in Jesus, God becoming flesh is like a smack in the face of the entire humanity. It’s like godly spiking in our face. I say this because Jesus’s presence basically tells the entire humanity that there’s no single person who is innocent. Let’s recall that the first word of St Matthew’s version of Jesus’s good news was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Mt 3:2) Before God, every single person is a sinner. In other words, this means all of us are somehow estranged from God. We’re broken and wounded before God. Jesus exposes how broken, distorted, violent, ungrateful, and unforgiving we are on the cross. Traditionally, we call this the doctrine of Original Sin. It is socially transmitted to everyone from generation to generation. We do things that hurt each other. Even if we didn’t do such harmful things, directly we are unwillingly somehow part of those actions because we’re interconnected. In this world, no hands are innocent. For example, the Reverend Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor who protested against the Nazi regime, wrote this poem. This poem is written to show how important it is to speak up and stand up for each other, but in our case, it also reveals doing nothing doesn’t guarantee our innocence. We’re connected and affected by each other whether we want it or not. So here’s the poem: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. / Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. / Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. / Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” (Martin Niemöller, 1946) It is our human tendency to be on the right side. We don’t want to be wrong. We don’t want to be guilty. We want to be right. We want to be innocent before everyone, before God. We want to be on the side of everything decent, correct, and spotless. This is the desire to be innocent. And in today’s gospel lesson, we see this desire to be innocent and righteous in the words of the Pharisees and scribes. They criticize Jesus’s disciples for eating with defiled hands. In this act of criticizing the disciples, they seem to accuse Jesus for not being a good teacher to his own disciples. They ask Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” This question can mean something like this, “Why do you teach your disciples something that is against our great traditions? What kind of teacher are you, letting your disciples break the law?” We can very well imagine the Pharisees and scribes’ strong desire to be right about their tradition as well as their desire to be better, to be more innocent and more righteous than Jesus. They probably feel better about themselves, if not superior to Jesus and his disciples. We can also imagine them getting self-righteously angry at the unobservant behavior of Jesus’ disciples and Jesus’ unorthodox teaching. They stand higher than Jesus and the disciples. Let’s admit that they’re right about the disciples. If the disciples are devout Jew, then they should better keep their ritual washing. Now what we actually see in the Pharisees and scribes is something psychologically interesting. As they are standing on the right side, or to put it more accurately, as they are pushing themselves to stand on the higher ground than Jesus and his friends, they feel better about themselves. We need to pay attention to their feeling better about themselves. As they are putting Jesus and his friends down, they go up. It’s often called ‘one-upmanship.’ What’s behind this psychological phenomenon is a form of self-idolatry. The Pharisees and scribes pay attention to others to see if they observe the laws and traditions. As they become a judge of all, they promote themselves higher to the place of a god. But Jesus sees this psychological and spiritual distortion in their hearts. The laws or commandments of God are given to stay away from any form of idolatry, but what the Pharisees and scribes are doing is exactly the opposite. The purpose of ritual washing is not to be sanitary or judgmental of others, but essentially to purify ourselves before God and before our neighbors. Ritual washing is there to prevent us to be unclean or impure before God and our neighbors. As Jesus rightly says, its purpose is the washing of the heart. He says, “...there’s nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” St James in our second lesson today also comments, “Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” The Pharisees and scribes’ anger doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. Their anger puffs up. Their righteous anger is a form of self-idolatry. Their hands might be washed, but their heart isn’t. Their heart has no room for love, but is filled with themselves. There’s one forgotten practice in the Anglican tradition. It’s the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. This practice is much more common in the Roman Catholic tradition. But surprisingly, we Episcopalians/Anglicans do have this. We just don’t do it very often, and our priests usually don’t mention it or talk about it much. If you look at your prayer book, it’s on page 447. One thing I like about this sacrament of penance and reconciliation as a priest and a confessor is not so much about The Church-given authority to give absolution to penitents. What I love about it is in the very last sentence of the rite, which the priest says to the penitent, “Go (or abide) in peace, and pray for me, a sinner.” (BCP, p. 448) There’s a great sense of humility in this saying. Because the Church has granted the power to absolve sins, this doesn’t mean that the priest is ‘holier than thou.’ This doesn’t say a thing about the priest being morally holier or superior or more innocent. There’s no room for this feeling better about oneself to kick in. And Jesus calls this feeling evil. My friends in Christ, this morning I would like us to look into our hearts. And see if our hearts are time to time similar to those of the Pharisees and scribes. Without any doubt, we believe that we’re on the right side and they’re on the wrong side. I keep it right, and they don’t. I’m innocent, and they’re guilty. I’m not saying that you’re wrong for keeping it right. I’m asking all of us to see that feeling better about myself in comparison to others. By being right and innocent, there’s this feeling that we feel better about ourselves than others. We feel better about believing that we are morally and spiritually superior to others. In this emotional state, there’s no humility. There’s no empathy for others who are indeed on the wrong side. As a practical way of looking into our hearts, I would like to suggest all of us to pray the Jesus Prayer. This is the very ancient prayer that is mostly known among Eastern Orthodox Christians. It is also called as ‘the prayer of the heart.’ It’s a short prayer which says, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Eastern Orthodox monks are taught to repeatedly say this prayer in silence whatever they do and wherever they do until this prayer enters into their hearts. I would like to encourage all of us to say this prayer. We do this practice of washing our hearts not to earn something but wash the mirror of our hearts not to forget who we are as God’s beloved children. Let us choose to invite Jesus. He can purify and sanctify our hearts and fill them with wisdom and discernment, that he fills our hearts with deeper love for him, our neighbors, and ourselves in the way God desires, that we become doers of the gospel. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. P.Yn. |
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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