God in the 'Why'

Christianity may understand its own faith deeper, and its significance for the future if it can free itself from anthropocentric cosmology and soteriology. Can our 'faith seek understanding' of our faith other than 'human salvation.' Human salvation is central to Christian faith, but God's nature itself cannot be conditioned to our salvation alone. God's gratuitous and providential dwelling among us (the community of whole creation) is to be contemplated. We may begin to live in a world which is not a condemned world.

Creation is much larger than the human world. The what, and the how of it is just begun to unravel before us. Is God absent in what and how? Is God found only in the 'why'? It is the utter failure of an 'external divine' presence, as though someone planning and running a machine. Physics - (why) alone is not a proof for God. Why Christianity has to trust so much in the God of the gaps and distance God away more and more as what's how's and why's get answered? Where is the contemplation of the Logos before and after the thirty-three years of Christ?

With an anthropocentric orientation we may not grasp neither why nor what nor how of anything, even the human lives. Then what about Divine mysteries through narrow anthropocentric thrust?

Holy Grounds

 Jerusalem was of course a private pride which was denied to foreigners, 'sinners,' women and children. Jesus was not going to place himself in the holy of holies. Jesus moves towards Jerusalem where the most shameful and cursed death was awaiting him. Neither the Samaritans, nor even his own disciples were prepared to understand the self emptying Jesus was undergoing in order to bring life and heal many hostilities that threaten our lives. Even the disciples have only the language of fire and destruction.

Job cursed the day of his birth. Once Job had everything and now he is left with nothing; nobody is near to stand with him. His questions are directed to God, only God he finds to talk to. Job finds God worthy of praise even when all his skin will have rotten. When ones own existence becomes one's greatest threat, it is a fall into a big churn of chaos. Will something come inside there to weave threads that bring order?

Holy places and gods there, have been causes of conflict and reason for separating the other. Holy grounds where we really touch the sacred is our own frailty. To cross the threshold to the inside is the difficult thing. Because it involves surrendering of self in grace. Then, though an abandoned grain, we may share life and have abundance of life.

Disciples had three years, we had around two thousand years. We seem to be stagnant in an adolescent enthusiasm of lightning, fire, and destruction. It is time to grow into maturity of life, discovering the sacred within, embracing, accepting differences, building a bond of mutual communion.

The poor heart of the rich man

The Pharisees were not happy hearing the parable of the insincere steward. Because, the text itself says, they loved money. The parable of the rich man and the Lazarus was also addressed to the Pharisees. The purple and linen clothes of the rich man resembles the status dresses of the Pharisees praying in market places. Both the rich man and the Pharisees neglected the poor. The rich man enjoyed his meals being blind to the hunger of others, and the Pharisees celebrated their righteous condemning the 'sinners.'

For the Gospel preached by Jesus, these were foolish. They never found peace in themselves nor with God. The Rich Fool collected everything and stored them in locked rooms. The steward mishandled money cannot get through into the the peace of the kingdom through his shrewdness. The Pharisee did not go home justified even after listing all his 'holy' acts. The rich man is more significant today than any other. The richness possessed by the rich is legally owned and they have no obligation to be mindful of the poor. The question is why the poor cannot grow and why they are oppressed under the powerful. Storing, spending, consuming, and judging here in these cases can be seen totally against the will of God and function as oppressive and unjust mode of living. In a time we speak of largest economies what are we to boast about when people are threatened by their own future and daily realities.

Dogs licking the sores of Lazarus shows the kindness the dogs showed in contrast to the neglect from the rich man, or the pathetic and helpless condition of Lazarus? However, the rich man had his own comfort world just like the Priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan. They knew the Law and the Prophets, but somehow the law seemed saying to them that it is the punishment from God that people like Lazarus had to suffer. The good things he enjoyed is rightfully given by God for his righteousness. What is the use if the Gospel of the risen one is proclaimed to such closed people? They will not listen. 

Generosity cannot be there if our hearts are not filled with gratitude. Only if we can break ourselves out of our chains we can approach the freedom and nourishment of life. Greed in storing, social acceptability created by crooked and unfaithful ways, being blind to the needy, judging with holiness code, all are due to lack of life within. Once life enters, it will shine as mercy and kindness.

Entering into Time

Remember the life that we have lived. Though not everything is remembered, we are able to see it as a series of events. We may be able to take history as human history, earth history or as the universe history. We are capable of considering time as a whole, but we cannot comprehend the whole development of history in its entirety.

There are many things we need to ‘accept’ though not willingly. That is in fact suffering. Those moments do not reveal their meaning if we keep the line of series of events. Though we may never understand them at all, yet everyone of them is significant. Time brings its meaning not in a linear fashion but in a multilinear fashion with innumerous number of intersections as though a web. There we find history and its sense, which we may not comprehend at all. That web is full of grace if they are still connected, there is the Logos and the life. 

The broken or unbroken threads are to be passed through, and we cannot escape any of them. They can be people, religions, cultures, nations or any thing that has sent a spark of life or flash of fire into our history. We cannot avoid or neglect any of them. If we do, we miss the realisation of Christ himself. Because Christ has ourself, our life and history, the world, the cosmos and time in him.

Who failed the Holy Spirit?

Charismatic renewal was to renew the Church in the movement of the Holy Spirit. Instead, it took a shift to revivalist emphasis  on devotions, hierarchy, and liturgy. What was to revive contained a great measure of white Christian nationalism. All these reflected in the 'visions' received by many gifted people. Economic success  of Pentecostal worship also attracted many Catholics to imitate same pattern. When a few depended on the Holy Spirit most charismatic heroes who emerged were revivalists and profit oriented though everyone claims to have the Holy spirit.

... those who keep the Word

Jesus is on a journey proclaiming the Gospel, and ensuring life and forgiveness to all. Very often it came in his preaching that it is not merely hearing the Word, or calling Lord, Lord that makes the will of God being realised in our life, but it is in putting the Word into practice.

A virtuous person was to walk in the path of God in the guidance of wisdom. To act virtuously and with justice is more pleasing to the Lord than sacrifice. God is pleased to guide the hearts of the virtuous, because they are like flowing water that God can turn it where he pleases (Proverbs 21:1-6,10-13)

Walking with Jesus the master, the disciples learned not only to imitate, but to find the Way, Truth and the Life. Gradually they would find the Word as truth and life in them. Listening to the Father, the voice that he constantly listened to was that he was the beloved Son. The meaning of this voice never remained as a status or honour, it placed him on the path of fulfilling the will of the Father. He saw that all who seek the will of God in a sincere heart are all related to him and completing his mission. They would be his mother, brothers and sisters.

What was the mission of Jesus, and how are we to identify our part by listening to the voice speaking in our hearts? First of all, we must commit our ways to the Lord and trust in him, and he will act (Psalm 37:4-5). Committing our ways to the Lord is not merely passivity, it is an active and compassionate response to the daily realities relying on God's grace. Leaving our ways, and placing our trust in God is a costly affair, but then we are opening ways for God to act. God will open surprising ways of how we ourselves are engaged in fulfilling his will.

Jesus could see many great righteous people around him, but they did not have the heart of God. Those who really listened to him were given the power to become children of God. They become the mother, brother and sister to him. Anyone who receives the Word, conceives it and gives flesh, is born anew in Christ as his brothers and sisters.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, herself is the one who has lived it best. Let us walk with her to learn the life of Jesus, the meaning of the Word, and the Word made alive in us.

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... more will be given

Science is of course not the final word on reality. But true science is a great door today for us. Psychology, being the science of the 'soul' today we can have more clarity in the matters of virtues and vices. We still find shelter in the psychology of Plato and Aristotle and we are comfortable with their science of the soul. We may receive better depths of our souls in relation with the strengths and frailties we possess.

However, virtues have all the possibilities to lose if we do not practice them. Even we experience healing when we heal and comfort. We find mercy when we show mercy. Psychology may help us in understanding 'demons' in us and how they are attached to us. It may also help us in understanding the real difficulties in exercising virtues. The growth can be there only when we exercise virtues and make efforts. If we know the hurdles, it is easier to handle them. 

As we grow, more will be given. which does not grow will gradually disappear. 

The insincere steward

The parable of the insincere steward seems to me a sarcastic warning on a possible tragedy. It is tragic to wait for a fortune that will never come. Those who expect eternal homes by corrupt and crooked means will never have it in the kingdom of God. Every time and age show its own tricks to excel, conquer and rule the business of the world. So the temptation for the children of light always is to adapt the 'successful' path of the children of this age.

The steward who squandered the property of his master does not deserve any appreciation. He uses his cleverness/cunningness to make his future safe by unjust and insincere ways when he was sure he is going to be out of his office. making his future safe, being wasteful with the property, he is causing damage. The people who take the benefit of that damage also show a corrupt system of compromising and taking pleasure in the evil things. In fact, who will come to take him home once out of office? He was not doing any virtuous deed, but he was wasting the master's property.

In all ages, 'the children of this age' are cleverer than the children of light. Every age has its own strategy of success, whether it be in politics in matters of power or in business in matters of money. It is not at all necessary that they have to be in the path of light, truth and justice. Not to chose those paths is a foolishness. but it is there the foolishness of the children of light becomes greater than the wisdom of the children of light.

The lesson at the end of the parable is that no one can serve both God and money. The rich fool nurtured an emptiness in hoarding his richness. Here this insincere steward follow a corrupt conscience in misusing the property for the safety of his future. We need to take these parables into the line of Jesus' instructions to his disciples teaching them 'how not to be' with regard to money and power.

It is through the narrow gate that we can be sure of eternal homes. The foolishness of the Gospel is the path there. With all crook and tricks the children of this age might be ruling the world. The temptation is to follow the same path. Corrupt strategies and skills of success are very much accepted today. We can gather wealth, have domination, go with the wicked and compromise on justice truth and love. Without all these we cannot build the kingdom of God! But we must keep in mind that, what is highly esteemed in human eyes is loathsome in the sight of God.

What will be the nature of eternal homes being prepared by the disciples of Christ if we have lost the essence of Christ?

know Christ the Logos

All are invited to the table of the Lord, and all are there except for those who knowingly reject it. Jesus never avoided anyone. Those who missed the table were those who could not tolerate the 'unholy' along with themselves who were 'holy.' 

Why do we need others also at the Lord's table? We can understand the fullness of Christ only if we are fed with the charism present in others. No one can expect to enjoy the Lord's table all alone.

Christianity has boasted over centuries that it is the whole and only body of Christ. Christianity as a religion is only one of the many members of the body of Christ. In order to understand the whole of Christ, we need to approach him not only as the family of humanity, but as the community of the whole of creation. The prophetic voices in this community are more evident and available to us in our time, thus widening our horizons to know Christ the Logos more fully.

Eucharist as the celebration of life

Eucharist is the celebration of life, both the life of Jesus and the life of ours. Anytime when the Eucharist is limited to a church altar and the species of bread and wine it does not communicate what it really contains. God is life and giver of life. Jesus offered his life in a life that was self emptying and life giving. Even in the unjust death he suffered he poured out love and life. That life and love unite all of us into his own body, and through him take us into the communion with the Father.

Atonement figuration in connection with the Old Testament does not sufficiently hold what Jesus has done for us. Reparation, ransom, redemption, retribution and so on somehow condition God and constrains the understanding of the life that Jesus gives us. Divine life in us needs to be understood in terms of dynamics of life itself. Truth of Christ is as the life giver, though our emphasis goes to him as sin bearer. He himself is the reason for our life and in the whole of creation and the grace at work in us, even before he became man. This life, communion, and that reality lived in our life as forgiveness, reconciliation, sacrifice, love and communion together make the Eucharist.

Since "Eucharist is the source and summit" of Christian life, our understanding of the church, priesthood, mission, family, devotion and every dimension of Christian life will be formulated based on how we understand the Eucharist. If it is simply a ritual performance at an altar, if it receives an image of a super-powered bread, accordingly it will reformulate others.

The divine life, the life of the Holy Spirit in us shapes us as individuals and communities into the image of Jesus. The beauty and richness of life (both divine and human) is the meal we serve for one another with the words, 'this is my body, this is my blood.' Unwilling to do that in sincerity of heart, we forget the life Jesus emptied for us, and what he meant in his words upon bread and wine, 'this is my body, this is my blood.'

If there is no communion with one another, there is no sincerity in the participation of the bread broken. So a sincere Eucharistic celebration demands justice ensured. Because denial of justice deprives the victims from the life promised to them. The pain of the sacrifice of Christ, calls us to share in the misery of those who suffer near and far. We cannot take the bread in our hand when Christ says, 'take this and eat/ drink' if we cannot be sensitive to the flesh (with grace and with gracelessness) of ourselves and others. In every Eucharist we need to ask ourselves, where am I taking myself in this celebration of the Eucharist? A customary eating and drinking with a favour seeking approach is not what we can do to the Eucharist. Life is to be responded with life.

The Women Disciples of Jesus

 In a 1999 television miniseries named Jesus, the character of Mary Magdalene, in a conversation with Jesus, tells him, “if I was a man, I would be your most loyal disciple.”

Among the disciples of Jesus, dear friends, there were also many women disciples like Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, accompanying Jesus and participating in his ministry (Luke 8:1-3). At the foot of the cross there were ‘many women’ witnessing his last moments (Matthew 27: 55-56). They name only a few - Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Salome the mother of the sons of Zebedee, Jesus’ mother Mary and her sister, and Mary the wife of Clophas. Jesus, also learned from them that his ministry was not limited to particular groups and persons, but belongs to all who come to the master’s table (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28). Every event, intervention or conversation of Jesus with women expresses a very significant dimension of God’s attitude to the whole of humanity.

These women were accepted to the folk of Jesus’ disciples in a time when the customary morning blessings of the Jews thanked God for not making him a gentile, a woman, or a slave. Women were expected to be good wives and mothers and stay at home. In the synagogues and in the temple, they had a secluded section just for the women, separate from men. They had to walk seven feet behind their husbands when they were in public. A Rabbi would not talk to a woman, and some strict ones even avoided their sight.

   We are all the children of God, there is no longer male and female; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).  Women in the company of Jesus ‘provided’ for their needs. It was not simply to perform some domestic tasks. Some of them funded his mission, and some were leaders and guardians of communities at the very beginning of the church. However, their identity was not defined by their wealth or status, but it was the fact that they had been “with him” that described them.

Some of the ancient writings show the life and vision nurtured by the women in the early church. It resembles the heart with which they loved and knew Jesus. Jesus was not a ruler and judge, but the teacher and mediator of wisdom. This relationship to Jesus generated an ethics of freedom and spiritual development than an ethics of order and control. Those who were more spiritually advanced shared what they had freely without claim to any fixed, hierarchical ordering of power, position or honour.

There was an emphasis on a loving relationship with the risen Christ through the Holy Spirit. This gentle touch of the Holy Spirit is experienced in the unity, power, and growth in the Spirit here and now, not in some future time. They were eager and committed to the realisation of the kingdom of God amidst them. So, overcoming social injustice and human suffering were seen to be integral to spiritual life. It was well reflected in works of charity, prophetic voices, and songs and music.

The women disciples of Jesus loved him, followed him, and shared in his ministry and stood by him even when he died. Jesus was not a relic in the tomb, he was alive, and a woman disciple witnessed it first because of her deep love.

Among us there are loyal women disciples of Jesus, who wait to anoint him even before dawn, who followed him closely, ministered to him, and proclaimed his Word. May the body of Christ, we the church, find new life under their care.

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Being found

Losing something adds lot of pain to us. That pain may begin to reshape our life. It may be something very precious to our life. It may be a separation of a person, or a distance created in a relationship. Out of many experiences of love, one that we really experience deeply is the aspect of being found again, being accepted, and embraced. Other side of it is that we find something that has been lost. 

Three parables in Luke 15 tell us the joy God has in finding us. A key to understand the good news Jesus shares with us is the very human relationships we have in our lives. Though not perfect in life, our own  love, pain, betrayal, longing, thirst and so on are the doors to understand the way that God loves us. Having sufficient trust in order to believe in that love gradually leads us to experience the constant accompaniment of God. However sinful, broken, or destroyed we are, God walks with us is a reality. It is not that God comes to save us when we are in a crisis. God has been walking with us all through. Why, then, he did not intervene when the wrong happened? Actually there is no answer. Perhaps, God suffered vulnerability with us. But God is the source of life, and life assures new beginning. We can have sure confidence in the grace that is shining deep within ourselves as a dim light.

It is in letting ourselves to be found we can experience being found by God. This letting ourselves is on openness towards life, letting ourselves to be found as a brother/sister, father/mother, son/daughter, as the beloved, as a friend. We too extend ourselves to find 'them' once again into our life. Then there is an experience of joy in life, and an experience of God finding us, and finding God once again as source of our lives.

Celebration is not in spending, celebration is the sharing of joy. That is the challenge these parables place before us. The challenge is that whether we are able to share in the joy of God, to share in the joy of someone who has found what was lost, to share in the joy that someone has of being found by God or one's beloved ones. The righteousness of the Pharisees and Scribes in the Gospels had corrupted them in such a way that they were reluctant to celebrate.

Wisdom-freedom

It is the experience of the providence of God that enables us to trust in God deeply. It is the source of freedom that we find in God. This freedom alone can fill us with peace and joy. When we speak of Christian service, these are the elements that need to qualify it. That is a commitment in freedom. 

The following of Christ necessarily generates this freedom. Because it is  an encounter with truth and life, and develops a responsibility emerging from it. This freedom is inherently guided by prudence and wisdom. In that way freedom frees a person to seek the will of God whole heartedly.

Freedom is restricted when wisdom is attached to some schools and ideology. Mostly wisdom or knowledge is categorised into modes of transcendence. Real wisdom that guides the freedom of the children of God makes us descend to our daily reality and seek the will of  God in every human condition. Gradually it also helps us for an indescence, to go deeper into our depths seeking the light of God.

Value of the gospel

 The Word guides times and history,

so the true standard of judgment is the Word.
The real judgment of our truth is how much we have the Word in us.

What marks the Word in us?
What is the sign that the Word is alive in us?
It is the presence of the Gospel in our lives -
Truth, justice, mercy, compassion, love, forgiveness...
Christ becomes visible in us as a testimony to the world.

This value of the gospel is worthless for the standards of the powerful,
that is the foolishness of God, and what God finds wise in us who follow the gospel.
Playing a fool and resisting to learn things is not what God values in us.
Preferring the values of the gospel over power and wealth is the foolishness God desires.

We prefer to love the old wine of customs and traditions over newness of the Gospel. The old wine intoxicates, for it has lot of space for power and wealth. But we must know that the bridegroom is taken away.
Gospel speaks to time and history anew.

We belong to Christ

Our past has shaped us into someone unique with special beauty and ugliness within. We may have to bear the burden and pain of the past. Future calls us to move with its own concerns. Even an afterlife fills us with great concern about its details. 

"I am very regular to this programme in this channel," "I follow that writer/preacher/bishop," "I just wait for that spiritual magazine" so on may be familiar statements for us. We may be very faithful to the specifics of these visions and act accordingly. They are fine, unless and until they constrain our life within their frames. It is not easy to realise how our close affinities to these gradually turning into a bondage. 

What, then, is to be found to walk without stumbling? One need to look deep into one's own mysteries, longing, sighs and pains. 'Put out' into the depth, what we find is the emerging image of Christ from our own depths. What heaviness presses it down? What closes the doors of our core?  

Empty labour, failed attempts, harsh emptiness do suffocate us. There may be many more who are even more severely bearing similar helplessness. To our helplessness Christ would say, 'do not be afraid.' Having no fear in casting the net into the depths, having no fear in seeing the Christ image in our core, having no fear also in strengthening others in doing the same. That could be the meaning of 'catching men' in solidarity, kindness, care, action of justice and so on.

We belong to Christ. Belonging to Christ is not a political lineage. It means to be comforted in the providence of God. It is being rooted in Christ in relation to God as the children of God. Whether we are alive or dead we belong to God. Our beloved channels, programmes, preachers, Bible, the world, life and death, the present and the future, the afterlife concepts, are all our servants; but we belong to Christ.