DO YOU KNOW HOW TO BE GOOD?

Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33 #5, Matthew 9:9-13

June 5, 2005, Picture Butte

There is a scene in Richard Nash’s play, "Rainmaker." Rainmaker is a smooth talking travelling salesman, who goes around countryside. Rainmaker seduced a lonely, spinster daughter of the family at midnight in a barn. Her outraged brother took out a gun to shoot the Rainmaker. However, the Rainmaker’s action would restore her sense of womanliness and her confidence. The father, a wise old rancher, grabs the gun away from his son, saying, "Noah, you’re so full of what’s right you can’t see what’s good."

When there is a conflict between what is good and what is right, we often think that Christian way is the righteousness not goodness. In this respect, Jesus often surprises us.

Matthew was a tax collector, and knew that nobody liked him. But Jesus not only accepted Matthew”s invitation for a dinner, but also made him a disciple. No wonder the righteous people were scandalized. At the time, Palestine was under the Roman occupation. Administration of taxation was given to some selected Jewish persons on a commission basis. In other words, tax collection was privatized. The tax collectors invented many methods to impose taxes. They were a enterprising lot. Many of them made fortunes took bribes, pounced on the vulnerable people who were often poor and weak. They became not only morally corrupt, but also because of their immoral practices, they were branded as religiously unclean, in the same class as lepers, prostitutes, and thieves. Priests and Pharisees refused them in religious events. As a class, they were not only traitors working for the enemy but also became excommunicated, so-to-speak. They became rich but they had no friends.

I could understand why the category of tax collectors was synonymous with the one for sinners. But what happened to those who were honest. They could be just doing an unpleasant job to earn a living? There is some evidence in the Bible to indicate that there were some less corrupt ones who would have loved to redeem themselves and to be accepted by society. Matthew was one of those people. This is why Matthew had no hesitation to follow Jesus, leaving his job and money behind when he was called to be his disciple. He must have suffered bad conscience about his job, but did not have courage to quit. But the encounter with Jesus gave him currage to get out of a profitable but questionable occupation.

From time to time, we run into a situation where we find ourselves in a bad company but do not have courage to get out. It is a big problem for many of us. But as soon as we acknowledge that we share collective guilt, we are on the way to redemption. Jesus understood the pang of conscience of some tax collectors like Matthew. And when you can feel the pain, Jesus, like a doctor, can help you. But if you don”t feel it, no one can help you. This is why it is so important to admit that there is a problem and to recognize that you are in need of help.

Here was the problem of the righteous people like Pharisees. They did not acknowledge that there was any problem in their lives. They either denied it or did not see it. They were determined to be God fearing and righteous people. In order to achieve their goals, they made for themselves a set of rules and followed them faithfully. Unfortunately, however, in the process of becoming righteous people they forgot to be good people. They forgot to be loving and kind. While they were on the way to be righteous, they became judgmental and lost the core of being Godly, which is being merciful. They became law-abiding but lost their heart. They forgot that laws were instruments of justice and love. Laws that do not achieve justice are empty shells and burden to society. The worst problem, however, for the Pharisees was the fact that many of them did not see any problem in obeying laws faithfully without being compassionate.

Paul described this state of empty piety in his letter to Corinthians, "If I have all knowledge of God”s words, ability to preach wonderful sermons, faith to move mountains, charity to give everything including life itself, but if I don”t have love, I am nothing." What is most important is what is inside of ourselves. If we do not have kindness and mercy in our hearts, any visible signs of righteousness can be an empty shell and even inhuman. We can easily be hypocrites. The tragedy of the righteous Pharisees was that in their eagerness to be acceptable to God, they became legalistic, heartless and judgmental people. Their worst problem, however, was that they did not think there was anything wrong with them. They thought that they were perfectly acceptable to God because they knew that they obeyed the laws to the last iota.

Their ignorance of how they were wanting was the worst illness, worse than that of sins acknowledged and regretted. People who know the pain of guilt have a much better chance of being made whole. If you do not admit that you have a problem, no one can help you. Socrates in the ancient Greece said that the best knowledge was the knowledge of oneself. "Know thyself." , he said. However, he said that the most valuable knowledge is the knowledge of one”s ignorance. When you know that you do not know, you have a whole unknown world open before your eyes. If you think that you know everything you need to know, the world is closed. And you slam the door shut yourself. No one can help you.

This is why Jesus thought that the sinners, who knew that there was something wrong with them, had far better chance of being saved than the righteous people who believed that they needed no help or no lesson to learn. He said, "A healthy person does not need a doctor." The irony of the context was a sick person who did not believe that they were ill had absolutely no chance of getting to the doctor, because they closed the door by themselves. Thank God for occasional pain. Pain itself is not a good thing. Don”t look for it. But it is a signal. Through pain, God tells you that you need to seek help, to change and to grow.

WHY LOOK FOR THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD

Isaiah 25:6-9, Psalm 118, Mark 16:1-8

April 23, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

A few days ago, my sister and I had a telephone conversation about our visit this summer in Japan. She told me about a party being organized for us by an old friend of mine. Apparently he recently started a Bible study group at his home. This surprised me, because the man I remembered was more interested in making bucks than religion. Apparently, he had a near death experience. His heart stopped. While the medical team was busy trying to revive him, he was outside of his body watching himself on the operating table. He also saw his family and friends huddled together outside of the operating room, and he felt much loved. My sister says that this experience spurred his quest for his spirituality.

This is not an unusual experience. We heard a similar story experienced recently by the leader of NDP in Alberta. She resigned from her seat and began a new life in search of spirituality. Books were written about that kind of near death experiences. There are two common features in those stories: an experience of leaving one”s own body, and an intimate and warm feeling towards the loved ones who surround the body. These stories may not satisfy scientists who demand material evidence, but they do point to the direction towards some kind of existence beyond this material and bodily life. In fact, our belief that Jesus Christ defeated death and came back to life again is the foundation of Christian faith. We do believe in life after death and believe that Christ was the first who came back.

However, there is no scientific evidence to prove that a physical body survives death. Scientists say that all those life after death experiences are the result of brains” momentary glitch caused by a powerful surge of despair or wishful thinking. I believe that this kind of arguments with science is pointless, because we are asking the wrong questions. When someone says that he loves you, you don”t ask him how much money he has right off the bat. It”s simply a wrong question at a wrong time. The message of Christ rising from the dead is not about the fate of our earthly bodies. It is about our life with God. Our life with God goes on beyond death. It is the belief that "Love overcomes death."

The significance of our physical body in our spiritual life will have to be asked sometime, but that is not the most important question to ask on Easter. The Easter message of the Bible is "God will destroy death and wipe away the tears from everybody”s eyes" as Isaiah said, and as an angel said to three women who came to look for Jesus in a tomb, "He is not here. Why look for the living among the dead?" The message of Easter was not about the physical aspect of life and death, but about hope and love that overcome despair.

For the writers of the Bible physical facts were not the point they tried to put across. If you are looking for some physical evidence of resurrection in the Bible, the facts are very confusing and often contradictory. Jesus sometimes had a very physical presence after resurrection in some accounts; eating breakfast of BBQ fish with Peter and Andrew on the beach, and showing Thomas the wounds on his hands. But in other parts, he appeared as a spiritual existence. He went through the locked doors without opening them, could disappear into the thin air after breaking bread in Emmaus, and could appear to three thousand people at the same time. These stories obviously mean to tell us that the risen Christ was in a spiritual body.

Instead of trying to make sense out of contradictory evidence, we should pay more attention to the main theme of the life of Jesus Christ. Because God loved us, Jesus Christ came to the world to live among us by being like us humans. He came to demonstrate his commitment to the love of God by living by it. He could have saved himself from humiliation and the painful death, had he compromised a little. But he didn”t. So, he had to die because he was totally committed to love. The people who do not believe in love get their kick out of defeating others. To them, other people”s death is an ultimate victory, because they believe that death marks the absolute end. But for the people who live by love get their satisfaction in life by sacrificing themselves for others, even at the cost of one”s own life. In the world of love, a grain falls on the ground and rots as it empties itself to bring forth sprouts – a new life. In a world of love, even death can be a sign of victory, because it shows an uncompromising love. We believe this because Christ showed us that death is not the end. The tomb was empty, because he went away to continue his ministry of love.

Christ transformed the meaning of life and death completely. True life is a living by the rules of love. It goes on beyond the end of the physical existence. Life has conquered death in Jesus Christ. In the meantime, death can occur while a process of physical life is still in progress. The life without love is the death appearing to be physically alive. Leo Tolstoy, in one of his children”s stories, spoke about people who breathed death. They were the people without love. They were the "living dead."

Three women went to the tomb where Jesus was laid, discovered the body missing, and ran away. But one of them came back. Her name was Mary Magdalene. She had nothing left in life. Life without Jesus was empty – as good as she was dead, so she came to join the dead at the grave. She did not recognize the living Christ, because she came to find the dead Jesus. It was only when he called her name, she saw the living Jesus. Love is intensely personal. You can not love without a name. And love never dies. So when she felt this intensely intimate moment of love, she could recognized the life which conquered death.

Let us, on this Easter day, renew our resolve to live by love as God commanded. We will taste eternal life, if we know the art of love that never dies. We will feel the presence of Christ who live with us when we believe that.

TWO BEGINNINGS

Genesis 1:1-15, Psalm 29 , Mark 1:7-11

January 12, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

A famous entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes, who opened up Africa for the British Empire, asked the colonial authority to send many missionaries to Africa because, "They are cheaper than the policemen." Slave owners of the American South made church attendance compulsory for the slaves, because they believed that the church made them docile. There are many other examples of miss-use of religion in our history. When people lack self-confidence and feel insecure, they are easy targets for exploitation. Many times in our history, people in power used religions to impose their will on others. Their standard lines were: "You are a sinner. you are not good enough. So you must follow me, because I know what God wants. Just trust me." Abuse of power of the church is legendary in the Quebec politics until only twenty some years ago.

God created the world and everything in it, and he said it was good. The one of the most important points here is that it was good and that God was happy with it. Affirming the basic goodness of creation is very important for us. I say this because we are often not too sure about ourselves and we get hurt easily when we are criticized. When someone reinforces our sense of inadequacy and convinces us that we are not good enough, we often find ourselves defenceless against other people”s ways.

People in power, from time to time, abused religion in order to exploit people by emphasizing the original sin and by down-playing the original blessing of creation. The creation story, if you read it without prejudice, tells us that the world began with a blessing. "That”s good.", said God after he created each item. God wanted the world and everything in it to be the way they are. The world is not bad. We are not bad. Let us not be deceived to think that there is anything wrong with us. God loves us. We do make many mistakes in our lives for sure. But that does not mean there is something fundamentally wrong with us. There is nothing wrong with us even though we make mistakes. Let us celebrate goodness in us and around us.

Incidentally, there is an important lesson for parents here. We have duties to teach our children difference between right and wrong. But, while we do this, we must never give the impression that our children are not good enough. They make mistakes, but they are not bad. Punishment must be meted out, if you must, to correct their mistakes, not to condemn them. We must always make sure our children know that their parents always love them even when they make mistakes and have to be punished. When they do not feel that they are not loved, hence do not feel that they are accepted, they make themselves open to evil suggestions. We are not bad, but evil will come into us when we can not believe in our goodness.

We humans began our life on this planet by being good and acceptable. So we began with blessing. So did other animals, plants, and other natural elements. However, the Bible also tells us that there is difference between human being and other creatures. We do not know the exact nature of this difference. Genesis describes the difference by saying that God created humans according to God”s likeness. Even though we do not know what makes us distinct from other creatures, we know that it comes from the belief that all of us have a bit of God in us. And we call it spirituality. We are different from other creatures, because we are spiritual.

In our Christian tradition, we affirm our spirituality in baptism. When Jesus was baptized, he heard a voice of God saying, "You are my beloved son. I am very pleased with you." You notice the resemblance between the above sentence and God”s expression of satisfaction in the story of creation. But the difference is: in the creation story, God”s expression of satisfaction was a monologue. He was talking to himself that he was happy with what he made. But at the time of baptism, God spoke to Jesus and told him that he was pleased with him. Likewise, God wants humans to know that God is happy with us, because we are created with a spiritual ability to discern God”s will. We are capable of appreciating what it means to be acceptable in the eyes of God.

Practice of baptism is not unique to Christianity. Many religions use water as a symbol of divine cleansing power. In Judaism, converts went through water as the final rite to become Jews. However, at the time when Jesus lived, there were a group of Jews, who wanted to revitalize their religion by forming a community of committed believers. They were called the Essenes. They lived separately in the desert in a community of men and women, just like monks in a monastery. And baptism was the rite of entry into this community. For them, the act of going through water symbolized cleansing of their tired old religious life, and entry into a renewed spiritual life. We now know that John the Baptist belonged to the Essenes. In other words, Baptism was not only the rite of entering into a community, but also affirmation of the original blessing: of being accepted and being loved by God.

Today the strength of traditional religions are on the decline in the West. In this juncture, it is very important for people like us who are still committed to the spiritual way of life to affirm the purpose our lives. Recently, Bill Gates, founder and the CEO of the computer program producer Microsoft at the age of 41 the America”s richest man , was interviewed by the "time" magazine. On paper, he made $10.9 billion last year, $30 million a day. He has made money by reproducing a bit of human brains in computer programs. He was asked by the reporter if ever computers can completely copy and replace human mind. He had to think for weeks before he answered in writing. He said, "Human mind is a creation that must not be compared to computer programs. Even the parts of human mind that can be explained by science have an underlying purpose that can be explained only by religion." In baptism, we celebrate our spiritual being, the part that is beyond science; the part that explains meaning of our existence; the part that enables us to accept and love other beyond reason.

Adam and Eve represent the first human beings in physical sense. For Christians, however, Jesus represents the first human who acknowledged Godliness in every one of us when he was baptized. Let us celebrate goodness of creation. And let us celebrate godliness in all of us.

WHO FOUND JESUS?

Isaiah 60:1-4, Psalm 72:1-7, Matthew 2:1-12

January 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

January 6 is known as "Epiphany" according to the traditional Christian calender. The Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on this day. It is the day to commemorate the coming of the wise men from the East bearing gifts to worship the baby Jesus. They were foreigners – gentiles or pagans to the Jews. They believed that divine revelations were visible in the movements of stars. We celebrate this day, because it was the first time Jesus revealed himself to the believers of a different religion. The story of the wise men also tells us that God will find us when we find meaning in our occupations and are committed to the things we do in them.

What is interesting is the fact that the Bible reports only two rather odd groups of people who visited the baby Jesus. They were the shepherds and the wise men of the East. Priests and scholars knew that the Bible had predicted that the birth of a special child would take place in Bethlehem. But they did not bother to go to Bethlehem. The king was interested to know about it solely because he wanted to kill the baby who might become a threat to his throne. The inn keeper who refused Mary and Joseph, obviously, did not know anything about the birth of the Messiah. Other ordinary people did not know anything about it. The shepherds and the magi were the least expected kind of people God would invite to meet his new born child.

The shepherds were nomads who were in search of grazing land all the time. They did not have normal homes. They cooked, ate, and slept in the open or in tents. Their security was all in animals, and was always precarious. They had a hard life. They wore rags, rarely washed themselves, and had weather-worn leathery skin. Being a shepherd was not just a job; it was a full-time way of life. Ordinarily, they lived on the edge of the human community, away from normal social life. They must have been like modern-day Gypsies, who still live on the edges of settled communities, often in trailers in parking lots of England and other continental European countries. They are never like other people nor do they try to be. They live their own lives. They are stubbornly bonded to their life-style.

The magi came from the east of Palestine. There were people from ancient Persia, which is the present day Iran, who believed that stars determined the destiny of people. It was in ancient Persia where astrology was developed. *Many people in our society today believe in astrology, as you know.* Because every movement of stars was important, watching stars, recording and predicting their movements were a full-time occupation for many highly educated people. They were a respected class of intellectuals, because people believed that they could predict the future. But they were definitely not priests, prophets, or teachers of the Jewish religion. They were not expected to make an important discovery about the religion of the Old Testament. They were after all gentiles – pagans. Why should these unlikely people be the ones who found Jesus first? It”s humbling to realize that the Bible is speaking about the believers of another religion and homeless herders as the only ones permitted to meet the Holy Child during his very first few days in this world.

Here you must understand the notion of vocation to understand this puzzle. The word – vocation comes from a Latin word – "vocatio". It means "to call" or "to summon". It comes from the idea that God called or summoned you to do a certain thing. It can be the same thing as a job or an occupation. But often it is not. You are lucky if your vocation and your job are the same thing. In your vocation, you are committed to the things that you do, because you believe that God is calling you to do them. Your vocation makes your life important and meaningful. It makes your life a pleasure: something worth living. One person told me that she just loved what she did, and that she felt lucky to be paid for what she does. Some people have a job in order to pursue a vocation which is different from the job, because their vocation does not provide a living. Many artists are committed to pursue their art, which often does not pay. So they are used to the idea that they have to have jobs to support themselves, to allow them to pursue the real purpose of their lives, which are their vocations. Many Catholic religious orders are operating on that principle. They make a living by making cheeze, teaching school or becoming nurses; but they do these things only so they are able to pray, to study the Bible, or to serve people.

The wise men of the East and the shepherds had vocations. They were totally committed to doing what they were doing. In fact, those men from the East must have gambled everything they owned to undertake the journey to Bethlehem. Travelling in those days was a hazardous undertaking. They had to provide their own modes of transportation, which were not affordable to many people. There were no maps. Predators of both animal and human kind were many. It was a very costly venture. It was a gamble. They might have believed in a different religion, but they were totally committed to what they believed to be their vocation. The shepherds were committed to their vocation, too. They were not ashamed of their work, though other people thought them to be a lower class. God rewards those who are committed to their vocations by revealing the truth.

On the other hand, some people corrupt their vocation by compromising their commitments. Those priests and Biblical scholars who surrounded the king did not want to displease the king. So they did not follow what they were supposed to have believed. They did not do what the Bible said they should. Ministers of religions, medical doctors and nurses, lawyers and judges, and teachers have the types of jobs that require a sense of vocation. But we know that, unfortunately, some of them don”t live like the ones who have vocations. Ambitions for wealth, power, and often mere vanity corrupt them. They lose their vocations by making them mere jobs they do for living. They no longer have commitments. They no longer feel that God is calling them to do anything. Those without a sense of vocation will inevitably miss the new born Jesus, even if they know, in theory, where to find him.

The story of the wise men of the East is an indictment against those who compromise themselves and pursue ulterior goals while pretending to work for noble causes. It is also a celebration of those who find meaning for their lives in what they do, and are committed to doing the things they believe God called them to do. All of us have been called by God to do some meaningful work in our lives. Salvation is revealed to those who find meaning in their work. When you find the meaning of life, you have found the baby Jesus.

CHILDREN SHALL NOT DIE

EXODUS 12, PSALM 150, MATTHEW 18:18-20

September 8, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

Passover is the most important holiday for Jewish people. It is the day to remember their liberation from slavery and the beginning of the Hebrew people as a nation. For us Christians also, Passover has a lot to do with our idea of salvation. Jesus Christ instituted Holy Communion as he celebrated a Passover supper with his disciples before he was crucified. Today”s Old Testament reading describes how it all began.

Having said that, however, I have real problem celebrating salvation which was achieved because children”s lives were sacrificed. You might say that those who died were the children of the Egyptian oppressors. But I have difficulty accepting the idea of salvation where innocent children of other people had to be sacrificed, while the deaths of their own children were considered to be something abhorrent. I feel strongly about this at a time when so many crimes against children are being reported.

The problem is that the Bible described this tragedy for Egyptians as something good. It saved the God”s chosen people, the Hebrews. I can not accept such logic. For me, our God is for all people, for Jews and for Egyptians, for Canadians and for Iraqis. We are obliged to examine our attitudes towards the Bible when we have this kind of dilemma. How should we read the Bible? This is a very important question. Is it possible to justify such an extreme ideas as hating your enemies so much as to rejoice in the deaths of their children, as this Exodus story seems to be doing. It depends on how you read the Bible. Many deaths and abuses of innocent children and women during the wars have been tolerated or even justified because, "They were infidels, Nazis, or communists, etc." This logic seems to me to be very much against the core of the teachings of Jesus Christ to love your enemies and to give children a place of glory. Prophet Isaiah also declared that in God”s ideal world, "Children shall not die."

There are two very easy solutions to the question of how to read the Bible. The first one is to believe that every word of the Bible is a word of God to be accepted as truth. Those who say this are called literalists or more often fundamentalists. The second solution is to treat the Bible like any other literature, and not to take it too seriously. The first group calls the second group "humanists" and does not accept them as Christians. Neither is the belief of most United Church people including myself.

We believe that the Bible contains the word of God. The key word here is "contain". I did not say it "is" the word of God. In other words, by reading through the Bible we will know the will of God, but every word is not necessarily God”s word. It is like letters from a loved one. They are usually random descriptions of their day-to-day life and work. But reading through those letters, you can feel the palpable strands of love woven into the whole fabric. The German reformer Martin Luther compared the Bible to the crib where Baby Jesus was laid. He said that it is preposterous to treat every straw in the mattress as though it was Jesus himself, even though straws of the mattress are important for his well being. The crib is not Jesus. But if you don”t look for the crib, you won”t find the Holy Child. Likewise is the relationship between the Bible and the word of God. The Bible is an imperfect vessel for the word of God. But it is the only one we have.

But because of the views I have just expressed, people like me and many people in the United Church are often called humanists, and accused of being not 100% Christians, by those who believe every word of the Bible as the word of God. Many heated discussions took place because of this difference, they sometimes split the church. Even though fundamentalists may be sincere as Christians, we must also stand firm in our way of believing as the best one for us.

According to our way of reading and interpreting the Bible, the part of the Old Testament we have been reading is a record of the Hebrew people”s journey of discovery. They journeyed through many trials and errors in their search for the way of God. At various points, some of their prophets had nearly achieved the same level of spiritual perfection as Jesus did later. At the same time, they also overstepped the bounds in their eagerness to be faithful, and made many wrong assumptions. The Bible does not try to hide those mistakes. This is why you find many contradictions in the Bible. For example, to rejoice in the deaths of innocent children, simply because they happened to be the children of those terrible people who had enslaved them, is wrong. But, no human being should be a slave of another. So the Hebrew people were right to firmly reject the notion of enslavement as against God”s will.

Furthermore, people”s idea of God progressed throughout the history described in the Bible. In earlier writings, the Old Testament speaks about people, even the Hebrew people, who believed in tribal gods, not just one God. Each tribe had their own god. Often battles between nations were considered to be battles of gods. Their notion of divinity was that there were many little gods who were concerned only about their own little groups exclusively.

This is why, for Moses, it was important to know the name of the god who was speaking to him in the desert. He had to have some authority to persuade people to make a move that was so brave it seemed crazy. He had to convince people that this God is the real one, not like others. The interesting thing is that God refused to be named. "I am who I am." said God. "You can not describe me in your limited vocabulary. You will find me as you walk with me." This is progress in terms of achieving a better understanding of God as one who is much larger than a mere tribal god.

I am saying all this based on the observation of the whole Bible. Many years after the period that the Exodus speaks of, Prophet Isaiah said that in God”s world children shall not die. And Jesus Christ underlined Isaiah”s conviction in many of his sayings. For us Christians, Jesus reached perfection in what the Hebrew people had searched for throughout their history. In other words, for us, Christ is the measure against which every experience in the Old Testament can be judged. Through Christ, the whole experience of the Hebrew people was opened to all of us. And the journey continues. So let us not be shy about our honest questioning of the Bible. This is not a rejection. It is a journey of discovery and of a deepening of our faith.

HOPE BEYOND HOPELESSNESS

EZEKIEL 37:1-14, PSALM 130, JOHN 11:1-45

March 21, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

 When I think of the disasters and tragedies that some people, including some of you, have managed to live through, I am astonished that they had courage to endure it all and to come out smiling. Today”s Scripture lessons deal with the kind of despair that defies any notion of hope. And yet, the message is very clear; that there is hope beyond hopelessness. What else is there that can symbolize utter hopelessness than a pile of dry bones or a four day old decomposing corpse? Prophet Ezekiel was told to start preaching to the pile of dry bones. He could not believe what he was told to do. It ignored all common sense. But he did, and spoke the words of the living God to the bones. Lo and behold, bones began to put on flesh, sinews, and skins, and came back to life. Four days after his death, Lazarus was a smelly heap of decomposing flesh. But Jesus told him to walk out of the tomb. And he did. In both cases, life came back through words. Words from the mouths of God”s agents conveyed amazing power of spirit proving that there was hope beyond hopelessness.

I read about a minister who had served as a military Chaplain for the U.S. Marine Corps, who was a witness to the power of the Gospel story. The war in the Pacific was finally over, and he and his regiment were on a troop ship going home. Veterans who have seen action know that going home is not always a happy process. Surviving the battle field leaves one with so much anxiety and trauma. Many of them come home psychologically sick. It is called "Post Trauma Stress Disorder". One such Marine came to see the Chaplain. He was in a deep depression. He was a well educated man. When he was called up into the service, he was in the midst of articling after completing his law degree. But now he was in a state of absolute despair. He had never been able to bring himself to tell the chaplain what had been troubling him; what kind of experience he had gone through, what he had seen, had done, or had been done to him. At any rate, he did not want to go home, he did not want to see any one back home, and he had no more courage to live on, but did not have courage to kill himself either. He was a living dead man. But one morning, the young man came to see the chaplain, a completely transformed man. He said that he had been so excited that he could not sleep that night. The story of Lazarus was the Gospel read at the evening prayer. There was no explanation of the passage nor any sermon on it. It was a simple service of a lesson and a prayer. The message of the son of God telling someone he loved very much to come back to life touched him deeply. In the battle field, soldiers often had to live with sight and stench of rotting corpses. The power of the words loaded with love that defied utter hopelessness had moved him. He gained strength to come face-to-face with his psychological scar.

Resurrection stories are not uncommon in many ancient cultures. The resurrection of the Sun goddess who gave birth to Japanese archipelago is one example. A man who saw her dead, and thus became the first witness of her resurrection, was severely punished, because no human was allowed to know that the goddess could be so vulnerable and died sometimes. There are numerous similar stories of the dead coming back to life in every culture. From this, we know that resurrection stories were a form of ancient literature teaching people the meaning of life and death. So, to try to prove the uniqueness and divinity of Jesus by the stories of miraculous resurrections which he performed does not succeed, because there are many other similar stories in other religions. I am not criticising those people who believe that that was the exactly the way it happened. They must believe what they feel right for them. But the important thing to remember in reading a resurrection story is that each story is different. We must find the uniqueness in each story and identify a distinct message.

What then is the point of the story of Jesus bringing life back to Lazarus? Let us make sure first that we know what it is not. We can all agree that this story is not same as the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Lazarus came back to life, but to become an old man, and to eventually die. Jesus, on the other hand, came back to a different kind of life to live forever. We believe that he lives among us even today. He lives a life that never dies. This is the fundamental difference. In fact, what happened in the story of Lazarus was a story of resuscitation not resurrection. Lazarus did not solve the problem of death; he came back to the same perishable flesh. But Jesus Christ by his resurrection demonstrated that his life was more than physical reality. His life goes on beyond death. His life is more than mere flesh and blood.

What is the meaning of the resuscitation of Lazarus? What is different about this story from other stories is the gruesome details John went into to say that Lazarus was truly dead. In other resurrection stories, of which there are at least four, the dead persons all died immediately before Jesus” arrival, making one wonder if they were only in a coma. But for John”s Gospel, when Jesus asked people to remove the stone that entombed Lazarus” remains, his sister Martha warned that he had been dead for four days and the stench would be unbearable. What could be more hopeless than a decomposing body? Why did John tell the story in such a graphic manner? I believe that John wanted to convey a sense of absolute hopelessness and the ugliness of despair. Remember also, the Jews during those days believed that body and spirit stayed together for three days after death. But on the fourth day, the spirit would depart from the body, allowing it to start decaying.

I think that John is trying to tell us that despair is not only dark and stormy and suffocating, but is also so smelly and ugly in a metaphorical sense that repels relationships. When you fall into such a deep depression of despair and hopelessness, you will not be able to climb out of it by yourself. You need help. But you can not seek help yourself, because you are not in a state to see how help from the outside could do any good. So the one who truly needs help looks hostile, unapproachable, and unlovable. We must remember that often the person who is hostile, spiteful, and difficult to love is lonely and in need of love more than anyone else.

Jesus loved Lazarus. He and his sisters, Mary and Martha, often provided Jesus with hospitality. He stood in front of the tomb where Lazarus was laid, and wept. He wept so much that everyone could tell that he loved Lazarus very much. Then he spoke, despite the ugliness and stench of despair. He spoke forcefully to Lazarus to get up and walk. And Lazarus got up and walked. I don”t want to analyze the power of words of love. But this story has made it clear to us that love intervenes forcefully in the situation where all hope had gone. It tells us that the words of love always give us hope where there is no hope, even in the tomb of our despair. Love brings life back to us, and calls us back to life.

LIFE IS NOT ABOUT REACHING A GOAL

Deuteronomy 34:1-12, Psalm 90, Matthew 22:34-46

October 24, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

In April, 1994, many South Africans, for the first time in their life, cast ballots to elect their government. It was a hard won freedom. They were so happy that their dream came true after decades of struggle. I witnessed this historical event with my own eyes as a member of the International Election Observer Team. When the voting day actually came, many people went to the polling stations very early, even the night before. There was a mile long queue everywhere. There was an old man who was so frail that he had to be carried to the poll. He was determined to exercise his right for the first time. He had to wait in the hot Sun for his turn to vote. By the time he reached the door, he died. He was completely exhausted. But people around him said that it probably didn”t really matter to him. His life time dream came true, and was actually lining up to vote. He died a happiest man.

Moses, too, died before his people entered the Promised Land. Some people interpret that as the price he had to pay for his mistakes, and God did not allow him in the land of milk and honey. I don”t accept that interpretation. Moses was happy and contend when he died, just like the old man in South Africa who died before he could vote. Life long dream was about to be realized for both men. Moses gave up his life as the Prince of Egypt to help his own people win their freedom. He wandered about the desert for forty years with people. Despite their never ending grumbling and repeated betrayals, he never gave up. He stayed faithful to people, and helped them to realize their dream, because God was always faithful to him.

Many people think that reaching the goals is very important and ignore the quality of life. Often personal life suffers in the process of reaching the goals. But they think that the goals are worth the sacrifice. They say, "His marriage fell apart, but he was a success." Or "He is not a nice man, but he is a self made billionaire." According to this view, reaching the goal is what life is all about. There is, however, another way of looking at life. I call it a quality oriented view of life. According to this view, the quality of personal life in the process of reaching the goal is as important, if not more, as the goal itself. The relationships with others determine the quality of life. Moses had had good quality of life, as he lived with God. This is why for him dying before entering into the Land of Milk and Honey was not a failure. He saw the promise almost came true, while he and God had wonderful forty years working together. For Moses that was enough. He died happy.

I once lived in a country where people valued the quality of life as much as the goals. In the beginning, this attitude used to drive me crazy. For example, when you go to see someone but he or she is not there, they always say, "He will come back very soon." The expression they use often in such a situation is "Hona joale", literally meaning "right now." Basotho people always say things positively not to discourage you. While you wait, you strike a nice conversation with the host. But the person you want to see doesn”t come. "Right now" becomes one hour, and you ask, "Are you sure he is coming soon?" The host looks a little hurt. "I told you he is coming very soon. Didn”t I? Don”t you trust me?" You may have to wait all morning, even all day. But he is still coming very soon, as far as your host is concerned. In the meanwhile, you are having a grand time enjoying the company of your host. As far as the host is concerned, time is well spent. We have had a good quality of life.

Moses had his moments with Hebrew people. They grumbled at every time they ran into a crisis. They even tried to kill Moses accusing him of leading them astray. They were often unfaithful to God. What kept him going was God”s faithfulness. God never betrayed Moses. Moses” life was complete, in his belief that I was living and working with God.

Our culture sees the value of reaching the goal a little bit too much. We have grown to expect a happy ending of any story, "And they lived happily ever after." It would be nice if it is like that. But we know it isn”t like that. Often a real trouble starts when you think you have reached a happy ending. Marriage with your love does not give you a paradise. It is often a beginning of the real struggle in relationship. You have to work harder for the quality of the relationship after the wedding. Otherwise, marriage can be a beginning of hell. Wealth is the same. How many troubles start with wealth or in the process of earning a fortune? Power, fame, and possessions can be the goals which many people strive for. But if you forget that the quality of life in the process is as important as the goal itself, you will see life only as a succession of failures. A goal is only a door into the next stage of your life. This is why there are so much unhappiness in the midst of wealth. We must know that nobody lives happily ever after without paying attention to the quality of life.

Setting goals is important for sure. They punctuate your life, and give you chance to celebrate your life and to thank God for his love. But reaching the goals are not what life is all about. What counts as you proceed is the quality of your relationship with other people and with God. In my first Pastoral Charge in Vancouver, there was a couple who succeeded in having a first child at last in their mid-forties. But the child had a defective heart. They rearranged their whole life, with mother and the child moving to the city where all the best medical facilities were available, while father stayed in Prince George where he worked. But the child died after three years. I had no word to say in such an utterly tragic situation. But in tears, she said she was grateful that God granted her such a privilege to have one”s own child. You may have to move on to the next stage even without reaching the goal. But the most important at such a moment is the quality of your spiritual life – your life with God.

RAINBOW – BEAUTY OF IN-BETWEEN

GENESIS 9:8-17, PSALM 25, MARK 1:9-15

February 16, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

After the devastating flood that killed practically every living thing on earth, God vowed to the survivors that there would never be another punishment as terrible as the one they had just survived. A rainbow was displayed as a sign of that promise. A rainbow appears in an in-between time, as the sun comes out when the rain is not quite finished. It is an effect of two elements intermingling in the sky. And it is beautiful, because that interaction brings out all colours of the sun separately. We live in between times. We are still living partly in the past, though, that is definitely passing. And the world is moving into a time zone we have never seen. This is not an easy time. However, the message of the rainbow is that the time in between times can be beautiful, bringing out the grace and lessons of the past and the anticipation and hope of the future. It is a time to remember and appreciate the old times and hope for the better times in future.

No one denies that we live in a difficult time today. However, we must realize that the nature of the difficulty comes from the fact that we live in a time between times. Old ways do not work any more and new ways are so new that we are not quite comfortable with them. Often we hate the new ways or are scared of them. Religion seem to be on the way out and the church seems to be on the decline. Families do not look the same any more, yet many people demand a return to old family values. We are not sure about the future of Quebec, the prospect of which is unsettling to many of us. And the economy seems to be changing too drastically and too fast, and this is making mature people feel redundant, and young people feel unwanted even before they go out into the society.

However, we must realize that the notion of the "good old days" is a myth. The old days were not always so wonderful. If we remember how we used to live and work, we are living better today and enjoying things that we had never believed possible even a few decades ago. We canned and pickled vegetables because fresh food was not available during winter and spring. But they are available now in supermarkets any time. Tomatoes in winter? Never! Combines were not air-conditioned. And none of us could afford winter holidays or travels abroad, ever. Tuberculosis killed most of the people who had contracted the disease, and many people did not live long enough to suffer from cancer. Landlords felt free to kick tenants off the land, and caused a mass migration of people from Scotland. People were sold like cows and horses simply because their skins were dark. Times are definitely better today in many ways. We suffer today because we live in a time between times, and not so much because the good old days were wonderful but no more. The good old days were not as good as we want to boast to our young people.

Yes, the flood was terrible. Everybody and everything Noah and his family had known perished. But eventually the rains stopped and land became dry. Standing in the middle of vast devastation, Noah and his family were lost and asked themselves, "What now?" They did not see the immense possibility that lay before them. The whole world was theirs to take, but they did not see it. All they saw was enormous uncertainty. Strange as it may sound, it is possible for us to get used to crisis situations, and to find it difficult to adjust to normal life. It is a common experience of many soldiers who have seen the worst to experience difficulty going back to civilian life of the peaceful society. People who spent many years in ugly conflict situations like in Bosnia, in the Middle East, South Africa, Viet Nam, go through the same difficulty. They have a problem coping with peace. They can see only the vast wilderness of chaos and wrecked humanity, and can not look up to see a beautiful rainbow of hope and possibilities of the future. As soon as Noah harvested the first crop from the vineyard, he drank too much fresh wine from the first harvest and became uncontrollably drunk. He lay naked on the ground and fell asleep. His sons were so ashamed of their father and walked backward towards him trying not to see their father”s nakedness in order to cover him. Noah was a good and righteous man. But he had difficulty coping with a normal life after the experience of terrible calamity and trials.

Of course, it is important to remember both good times and bad from the past, appreciate it and learn from it. But also it is equally important to let go of the past and move forward into the future courageously, hopefully, and joyfully. It is important to stand consciously on the spot where the past and future meet. Neglecting either of those times will cause disasters. When the past is good, one wants to remain in the past, basking in nostalgia, and does not want to look into the future. This situation creates a person who refuses to grow up. On the other hand, when the past is bad, one may want to forget it as fast as possible and run as quickly as one can into the future. Such a person is condemned to repeat the mistakes that caused the disastrous past, because this person has not learned from them.

When Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, he heard a voice from heaven affirming his status as the son of God and that he was in God”s favour. But Mark says that Jesus immediately went into the desert and was tempted by Satan. In other words, he did not waste time basking in the glow of knowing he had God”s favour. He faced the future immediately, in solitude, and pondered all kinds of options for his ministry. He did not advertise the fact that he had heard a voice from heaven, neither did he dwell in the euphoria of being declared the favourite son of God. This takes discipline. When honours and kudos are lavished, one is tempted to bask in the glow as long as possible and forget that responsibility comes with honour. Jesus did not tell anybody about his extraordinary experience, but started to think things through alone. He was tempted to choose the seductive ways of magic, money and power to further his ministry, as the billionaires and politicians and other powerful people would likely do. But Jesus rejected all those self-serving options.

Instead, Jesus saw the rainbow of the covenant of God. The covenant God offered was a promise of care and love forever. And Jesus fulfilled the promise by living the life dedicated to others. The other end of the bargain for us in this covenant was our pledge to take care of God”s creation by loving our neighbours and taking care of this world. The Annual Congregational Meeting is the time to see the rainbow. This evening, we will gather to celebrate the past year of our community of faith and look forward to the coming year. Let us come together to renew our promise to build and maintain the community of caring and sharing. Let us see a rainbow and celebrate it.

Fruits of Wisdom

1 Kings 3:3b – 13,16-28, Psalm 111(VU833

1 Cor 3:18 – 19, 4:10

August 20, 2006 at Southminster United Church

by Tad Mitsui

One car was seen going around and round the block. A man working in the garden asked if he could help. He said, "No. I know where I’m going. There is a gas station selling the cheapest gas around. It’s just that a little bit of gas is still in the tank, you see. I want to fill it up."

Often, very smart people do very stupid things. Truly wise people know they do stupid things sometimes. King Solomon, who was considered to be the wisest king ever existed in Israel, knew that there was a limit to human intellgence. This is why he wrote the most bleak literature in the Bible. He believed that those who might be very wise and successful, could still be deficient.

Solomon was the most successful king of all times, not only in Israel but also among all kings and leaders. Under his reign, Israel became a powerful country extending its borders from the present day Israel to Jordan, to Lebanon and to Syria, and even to Egypt. The country became very wealthy. Solomon was successful economically, militarily, and politically. But most importantly, he was known for his wisdom. When he became a king, he first asked God for wisdom and nothing else. He was not only a successful king, but he was also a wise king, as the story in today”s lesson shows.

In fact, many of so-called "Wisdom Literature" in the Bible are said to have been written by King Solomon. They are the Ecclesiastes, the Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and many Psalms. My favourite is from the Ecclesiastes; "For everything, there is a season. A time for every matter under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to love and a time to hate. Etc." Some of them are earthy and funny. For example, in Proverbs there are sayings like: "If you are wise, you will keep your mouth shut." Or, "To live with someone who talks all the time is worse than living in hell." Some are full of humanity. The Song of Songs is the loveliest of all love songs. The fact that such a love song is in the Bible is an affirmation of human sexuality.

However, what is most interesting is the fact that King Solomon ended up being sceptical about his achievements. Because he was wise, he was able to realize how limited humans were. The Ecclesiastes, which I believe to be the best writings of King Solomon, is the most pessimistic book in the Bible. In it, he expressed his disappointments in life. In chapter one, he said, "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. – It is useless, useless. Life is useless, all is useless. You spend your life working hard, labouring, and what do you have to show for it? Generations come and generations go, but the world stays just the same. What”s the use?" Why did such a successful man, like Solomon, end up so disappointed and pessimistic?

A Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy made the same point, in one story. The story goes like this: there was a man who was told that he could get all the land he wanted provided he could go around it on foot in one day. So, at dawn, he started to run. By late afternoon, of course, he could not go on any more. He was absolutely worn out. But with incredible determination he staggered on. As the Sun was setting in the West, he was crawling but still trying to grab more land. He did make it back to the place where he started out when the Sun disappeared in the west. But he died of exhaustion right after the Sunset. In the end, all the land he acquired for free was a piece of land with a size of 3 by 6 feet, where was buried. Now then, the question is: is all we do in this life is useless, because we die anyway? Is what we do is so useless that we should do nothing?

Some people believe that. They think that the best way is to get away from the world and spend the rest of your life in meditation. I don”t think that is what King Solomon was saying. For one thing, he tried his best to be a good king, for people and for the country. And he was a good king and a wise one, too. His country benefited from his wisdom and achievements. But because he tried so hard, he realized that all humans had limitations. He found that his achievements fell far short of the goal. In fact without God, he found them useless. He felt the need of something more, much more, to make life worthwhile. Solomon in toward the end of the Ecclesiastes, said, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth.", as though to say, "whatever you do, you do it with God in mind from the beginning." He also said, "The ultimate way to become wise is to honour God."

Albert Einstein, who was considered to be the best scientist of the 20th Century, once said, "Science without religion is blind and dangerous. Religion without science is crazy." Science is one of the most important human enterprises. And the best scientist we have ever known in the last century believed that human endeavour was dangerous without God. And only lazy people, who don”t believe in science and do not use their minds, turn their religions into superstitions.

The first article of faith in the Christian teaching is "God is love." Therefore to honour God is to love others. This is why Paul in his letter to the Corinthians said, "You may have to be a fool in the eyes of humans in order to be wise in the eyes of God." He said it because the way of love may seem foolish if you don”t know God. If you don”t believe that ultimately the wisdom of God is love, you will have no choice but to see Jesus Christ as the most stupid person ever lived on the earth. It is because he died in order to love people. But for those who believe in the love of God, Christ showed us the true way – indeed the way of wisdom of God. Thanks be to God.

WHO FOUND JESUS?

Isaiah 60:1-4, Psalm 72:1-7, Matthew 2:1-12

January 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

January 6 is known as "Epiphany" according to the traditional Christian calender. The Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on this day. It is the day to commemorate the coming of the wise men from the East bearing gifts to worship the baby Jesus. They were foreigners – gentiles or pagans to the Jews. They believed that divine revelations were visible in the movements of stars. We celebrate this day, because it was the first time Jesus revealed himself to the believers of a different religion. The story of the wise men also tells us that God will find us when we find meaning in our occupations and are committed to the things we do in them.

What is interesting is the fact that the Bible reports only two rather odd groups of people who visited the baby Jesus. They were the shepherds and the wise men of the East. Priests and scholars knew that the Bible had predicted that the birth of a special child would take place in Bethlehem. But they did not bother to go to Bethlehem. The king was interested to know about it solely because he wanted to kill the baby who might become a threat to his throne. The inn keeper who refused Mary and Joseph, obviously, did not know anything about the birth of the Messiah. Other ordinary people did not know anything about it. The shepherds and the magi were the least expected kind of people God would invite to meet his new born child.

The shepherds were nomads who were in search of grazing land all the time. They did not have normal homes. They cooked, ate, and slept in the open or in tents. Their security was all in animals, and was always precarious. They had a hard life. They wore rags, rarely washed themselves, and had weather-worn leathery skin. Being a shepherd was not just a job; it was a full-time way of life. Ordinarily, they lived on the edge of the human community, away from normal social life. They must have been like modern-day Gypsies, who still live on the edges of settled communities, often in trailers in parking lots of England and other continental European countries. They are never like other people nor do they try to be. They live their own lives. They are stubbornly bonded to their life-style.

The magi came from the east of Palestine. There were people from ancient Persia, which is the present day Iran, who believed that stars determined the destiny of people. It was in ancient Persia where astrology was developed. *Many people in our society today believe in astrology, as you know.* Because every movement of stars was important, watching stars, recording and predicting their movements were a full-time occupation for many highly educated people. They were a respected class of intellectuals, because people believed that they could predict the future. But they were definitely not priests, prophets, or teachers of the Jewish religion. They were not expected to make an important discovery about the religion of the Old Testament. They were after all gentiles – pagans. Why should these unlikely people be the ones who found Jesus first? It”s humbling to realize that the Bible is speaking about the believers of another religion and homeless herders as the only ones permitted to meet the Holy Child during his very first few days in this world.

Here you must understand the notion of vocation to understand this puzzle. The word – vocation comes from a Latin word – "vocatio". It means "to call" or "to summon". It comes from the idea that God called or summoned you to do a certain thing. It can be the same thing as a job or an occupation. But often it is not. You are lucky if your vocation and your job are the same thing. In your vocation, you are committed to the things that you do, because you believe that God is calling you to do them. Your vocation makes your life important and meaningful. It makes your life a pleasure: something worth living. One person told me that she just loved what she did, and that she felt lucky to be paid for what she does. Some people have a job in order to pursue a vocation which is different from the job, because their vocation does not provide a living. Many artists are committed to pursue their art, which often does not pay. So they are used to the idea that they have to have jobs to support themselves, to allow them to pursue the real purpose of their lives, which are their vocations. Many Catholic religious orders are operating on that principle. They make a living by making cheeze, teaching school or becoming nurses; but they do these things only so they are able to pray, to study the Bible, or to serve people.

The wise men of the East and the shepherds had vocations. They were totally committed to doing what they were doing. In fact, those men from the East must have gambled everything they owned to undertake the journey to Bethlehem. Travelling in those days was a hazardous undertaking. They had to provide their own modes of transportation, which were not affordable to many people. There were no maps. Predators of both animal and human kind were many. It was a very costly venture. It was a gamble. They might have believed in a different religion, but they were totally committed to what they believed to be their vocation. The shepherds were committed to their vocation, too. They were not ashamed of their work, though other people thought them to be a lower class. God rewards those who are committed to their vocations by revealing the truth.

On the other hand, some people corrupt their vocation by compromising their commitments. Those priests and Biblical scholars who surrounded the king did not want to displease the king. So they did not follow what they were supposed to have believed. They did not do what the Bible said they should. Ministers of religions, medical doctors and nurses, lawyers and judges, and teachers have the types of jobs that require a sense of vocation. But we know that, unfortunately, some of them don”t live like the ones who have vocations. Ambitions for wealth, power, and often mere vanity corrupt them. They lose their vocations by making them mere jobs they do for living. They no longer have commitments. They no longer feel that God is calling them to do anything. Those without a sense of vocation will inevitably miss the new born Jesus, even if they know, in theory, where to find him.

The story of the wise men of the East is an indictment against those who compromise themselves and pursue ulterior goals while pretending to work for noble causes. It is also a celebration of those who find meaning for their lives in what they do, and are committed to doing the things they believe God called them to do. All of us have been called by God to do some meaningful work in our lives. Salvation is revealed to those who find meaning in their work. When you find the meaning of life, you have found the baby Jesus.

THEY TALKED BUT DID NOT COMMUNICATE

II Samuel 23:1-7, Psalm 121, John 18:33-38

November 23, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

One mischievous man went to a wedding and approached the reception line. The bride”s mother had a permanently fixed smile on her face. Smiling as well, he said to her as he shook her hand, "My mother died yesterday." She said, "Oh, that”s nice. Thank you." Nobody listen to others at a party, especially at a wedding. So, people don”t hear you if you suddenly introduce a notion which comes from a different situation. It is as though you are speaking in a foreign language. Communication breaks down when two persons are speaking from two different sets of circumstances. Parents and teenage children, for example, often do not live in the same world. So teenagers can not see how parents can ever understand their lives. Most of you have heard this conversation before! "Where are you going?" "Out." "What are you going to do?" "Nothing."

The interrogation that Pilate conducted before he condemned Jesus to death was a bizarre encounter. Even though they were talking about the same thing, they were not communicating. Jesus and Pilate were facing each other in the same room and were trying to focus on the same subject of whether Jesus was a king, but their minds were in two different worlds. A similar situation happens in our lives, too, maybe too often.

When Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?", He was using the word "king" as it was understood in the Roman Empire. The notion of "king" has to do with control, territories, and power. How much power a king had depended on the size of the land he controlled. In the territory he controlled, he had absolute power. The life and death of many were in his hand. The king had armies to enforce his authority. He lived in a palace, had many servants, and wore nice clothes. That was what Pilate had in mind when he used the word "king".

The Jewish religious leaders, on the other hand, used the word "king" for Jesus to provoke the wrath of the Roman governor. They were angry about the title people began to give to Jesus. People began to call Jesus, the "Messiah" which is the word reserved for the second coming of King David. The leaders believed that only they could decide when the Messiah had arrived. Jesus began to be a threat to their authority and power. They hoped that Pilate would eliminate Jesus for being a threat to the Roman Empire. That would fit their purpose just fine, if the Roman authorities got rid of Jesus. If people got angry, they could always blame the Romans.

Pilate did not take the bait immediately, because Jesus, who was standing before him, did not fit his image of a king. Jesus had no army, nor land, nor even decent clothes. He dressed like a peasant. At most, he looked like a leader of a band of crazy religious fanatics. How could such a pathetic figure be a threat to the mighty Roman Empire? Pilate had no idea that the influence of this man he saw as a travesty of a king would eventually overwhelm the whole empire.

Jesus was indeed handed over to the soldiers and crucified in the end. But his followers never stopped speaking about him, and continued to live according to his teaching. They had the strength to do this, because they believed that Jesus defeated the power of death, and was still living with them and guiding them. Their faith meant that their numbers increased rapidly. This was amazing, because during the first three centuries, it was illegal to be a Christian. The penalty was death. Jesus was a presence in their lives that continued to inspire courage and loyalty. He did not need the trappings of power. His apparent powerlessness was the sign of real power. This power remained so strong that even his death on the cross did not deter his followers.

When Pilate asked Jesus if he was the king of the Jews, he replied in a question. "Who said that I was the king?" He needed to know what kind of situation had led Pilate to ask such a question. We must also learn to do the same thing more often in our lives. We answer questions too quickly. If you don”t know what lies behind the question, you may be giving a completely wrong answer. When a child comes to you when you are busy with a thousand other things to do and ask you too many questions, probably the child is not interested in your answers. He is asking you to, "Please pay attention to me. Please show me that you care about me."

When Jesus asked Pilate, "Who asked you to ask me that question?" Pilate said, "I am not a Jew. It was your leaders who told me." It was clear to Pilate, that Jesus was not his problem. He was just a nuisance. He was ready to release Jesus, but also just as easily he was ready to execute him. Obviously, Pilate didn”t care. Justice and truth were not his concern. He didn”t care whether his judgement was just or unjust, so long as it was effective. Pilate had shown the true nature of his worldly kingdom. He murdered the true king, and made the corrupt leaders happy.

Jesus said, "My kingdom does not from this world; it comes from truth." Of course, Pilate didn”t understand that. So he asked, "Truth?" What do you mean by truth?" Truth had nothing to do with politics. You lie, cheat, and kill to get more territories and power. So the conversation between Jesus and Pilate stopped there. Truth was not in Pilate”s vocabulary. God”s kingdom, on the other hand, is bound by affection, allegiance, commitment, and loyalty. No truth survives without those qualities. You can be truthful if you truly love. You are a Christian no matter where you are, so long as you are faithful to God through Jesus Christ. Likewise, a country is bound by spiritual qualities like love, loyalty, and trust. You are a true Canadian no matter where you are, so long as you love this land and its people. The Roman Empire and many empires fell to ruins because they did not understand how loyalty and love were part of the language of heart. They thought that the army could threaten citizens and conquered people into being loyal. But a true leader rules with love and truthfulness. It is tragic that Pilate didn”t understand that. It is tragic that many politicians do not understand that.

We believe that Jesus Christ is the King of Kings, who is the model for all leaders. Jesus had no land, no army, nor fancy clothes, nor money. But he had the most important qualities for a leader; abundant love and absolute truthfulness. We believe that these same qualities work within our family, our community, our church, and our country. It is our responsibility as Christians to communicate that to the world. We risk being misunderstood as Jesus was. But it is only through our witness that the Messiah can be proclaimed as King, once more.

THE OTHER PRODIGAL SON

Luke 15 : 11 – 32

1. Jesus told a story about two sons. One of them can easily be us. Of the two, one demanded freedom. So father divided all assets between the two. The younger one took off with all the money he inherited and had good time and spent it all. The older one stayed home and continued to work for the family business. The younger one became destitute and nearly starved. But he decided to go home and ask for father”s forgiveness. The father forgave him and welcomed him. The one who stayed home got very angry seeing such soft-heartedness in the father, and did not go into the house to join the homecoming celebration.

2. The problem of the younger son is easy for us to understand. It is a good story to speak about incredible love of God, to speak about his generosity and forgiveness. But those of us who come to church usually manage to stay away from the kind of temptation that younger son succumbed to. I think that we are more like the older son.

3. He stayed home and remained a good boy but got angry about the father”s generosity and forgiveness. We hear the story of the older son less often, because he can easily be us. It is easier to think that other people have problems, but not us. And we don”t want another person to point out unpleasant truth about ourselves.

I was once completely surprised by a person who came to me after the service and declared that he would never come back to church. He said that I spoke about him in my sermon. I didn”t. In fact, I did not know him.

Now then, what were the problems of the one who stayed home? I want to mention three. There can be more.

4. First is the question of how you look at another person in a community. When the older son complained about his own brother, he basically disowned him. When speaking to his father, he refereed to his younger brother as "your son". It was the father who reminded him that the one who came back was also his "brother", his own flesh and blood. When does a man you grow up with, a brother becomes "your" son, not my brother?

When a community of people is bound by mutual affection and respect, everybody should be everyone else”s concern of everybody else”s. When that sentiment disappears, a person becomes somebody else”s concern, not "mine". It is a subtle switch but a significant change in the way of looking at another person. You can not deny a family tie for convenience. But he disowned his own brother. The trouble of this world often comes from our tendency to look at other people, when it is inconvenient, as though they have nothing to do with us. But they suddenly becomes great friends when they suit our needs. Certainly the older brother remained good and honest, a hard working man. But like St. Paul said, "even if I give away all my possessions for good causes, if I do not have love, I am nothing." That was his first problem.

5. Secondly, the question of what your family means to you. When the older brother complained about his father”s soft-heartedness, the older son said, "This is not faire. I worked for you like a slave, but you have not killed even a billy goat for me." But the father said, "What are you complaining about, son. You have always been with me. And you know very well that what is mine is always yours." Here is the man who stayed home and helped his father in the business, while the other one wasted his inheritance and nearly ruined himself. He could not see how lucky he was for being able to resist temptation; he always had a job, ate well, kept his dignity, and stayed within the loving family. We too often forget how blessed we are for not having been away from God.

There is also a question of the quality of the relationship. Are material things more important than human relationships? If you have enough money, don”t you still need a family who loves you? This is a very important question today. I believe that our society is in trouble, because increasingly people believe that wealth is more important than people.

One of my sisters was once nearly adopted by the more affluent aunt and uncle. They had no child of their own, and one of my sisters was their favourite ever since she was born. My sister liked them, too. They lived better because of their wealth. They proposed adopting her, when my sister was ten. Legal adoption between relatives is not unusual occurrence in Japan. It did not look like a permanent separation, we could see her anytime. We did not think that it was a bad idea. But after a few months of trial, my sister came home. I still remember what she said: "I don”t need anything. Can I stay with you?" So the adoption plan was off. We were never rich, ( what do you expect of a family of a clergyman?) but we have remained a close knit family.

The shape of the families may be changing today. But I believe that the basic need of human beings to live in a community of supportive people remains, be it a family, a circle of friends, or caring neighbours. When that need diminishes and the materials things take over in our order of priority, our society will be truly ruined.It would be a truly sick society where a child would say to the parents, "I don”t need you, I”ve got enough money."

6. And the most important mark of such a caring community is readiness to share. As the father said, "What is mine is always yours." It is such a comforting thought, isn”t it? This is God”s world, and he says, "What is mine is yours." You see, the problem of both sons was that they did not acknowledge that.

The one who got away thought, "all I have is mine and mine alone." He began to enjoy freedom without responsibility. "It”s mine, it”s mine. I don”t have to say anything to anybody about the way I spend this money." He forgot that it was once his father”s money. There was no sense of appreciation. Where there is no appreciation, there is no responsibility.

The problem of the older son, on the other hand, was the fact that he took responsibility only as a burden. When one sees an act of love only as a burden, one forgets about the blessing and joy that comes along with the responsibility. Love is both blessing and responsibility, give and take. It creates a sharing community where what God has given us is yours and mine, where everything is ours.

OWE NO ONE EXCEPT LOVE

Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 149, Romans 13:8-14

September 5, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

In England one evening, I was watching a BBC television program. It was a story about an extraordinary couple in Northern Ireland. They just got married, and the program began by showing their wedding. It looked just like any other big wedding in the beginning. But when the camera caught the close-up image of the bride near the alter, I realized that this was no ordinary wedding. The bride”s face was badly disfigured and the maid of honour was carrying a baby. Then the camera focussed on the groom. He did not look like just another ordinary handsome man either. His body movement was awkward. He wore artificial limbs. Later in the interview, he said that he lost one leg and an arm.

They were the survivors of the terrorist bombing in Omagh in Northern Ireland about a year ago, which killed and maimed many people – both Catholics and Protestants. That evening when a bomb exploded in a pub, they were celebrating their engagement with some friends. She was pregnant. The bomb shattered her body waist up, and made him severely handicapped. She was in coma for several months. She gave birth to a premature but healthy baby while she was still unconscious. They were interviewed some weeks after the wedding. It was a big story in Britain. The whole chain of events sounded incredible, almost like a miracle – the fact that they survived, the birth of a child while mother was in coma, and the marriage itself despite their terrible handicaps. As I listened to them speaking about their near death experience and many difficult surgeries they had to go through while they were preparing their wedding, I was struck by a complete lack of bitterness in their comments. They looked and sounded very happy. When asked if they held any grudge against the perpetrator, (I don”t remember the exact words they used, but) they responded by saying something like, "We are so happy that we are still alive. Besides there were thousands of details we had to attend to to prepare for the wedding, and now we have a new life with a little one. There is no time for hatred." I could not help tears in my eyes.

There are too many places in the world today, where violence begets hatred and hatred begets further violence. Spiral of violence continues and escalates in East Timor, Palestine, Kosovo, Northern Ireland and many other places. No amount of talk and agreements don”t seem to stop people killing each other. I became convinced after watching that TV program in England that the people like that couple in Omagh, who were too busy celebrating love, hold the solution to the problems of hatred and violence. The story of Passover in the book of Exodus is a good example of how successfully a nation can begin its life without violence and war heroes.

Passover is the most important festival for the Jewish people. It comes at the same time as we remember the crucifiction and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. It is the day to remember how God freed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. For the last dinner in Egypt, God told the people to slaughter their best lambs and to collect blood, and to smear the doorposts and lintels with it. The spirit of death would pass by the houses whose doors were smeared with the blood of the sacrificed animals. But the Egyptian homes, which did not have the marks of sacrifices, lost all their first born children. Terrified Egyptians let the Hebrews go. That is how the Jewish people still remember the beginning of their nation as free people.

You notice that unlike histories of other nations, the Jews have no brave warriors or victories in battles as the beginning of their history. It was God who vanquished through sacrifices of innocent lambs. Later, Christians inherited the same spirit and interpreted our salvation as the result of the sacrifice of our Lord, Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus Christ is called the lamb of God. It was not because we were so good that we were saved, neither were we so strong that we defeated the power of evil. It was love of God that won. It was love that accepted suffering that prevails. It was forgiveness and sacrifice that had overcame hatred, and sowed the seed of their future.

This is why we believe that love is the supreme law superseding all other laws and rules. This is the teaching of the Old Testament, and was perfected by Jesus Christ as he lived by it. Paul repeated it in his letter to the Romans. "Owe no one anything except to love one another." Then why do so many people still believe that the bigger power that overwhelms violence with more violence can bring about peace and harmony? Violence begets further violence. Jesus said to one of the disciples who used a sword to fight off the people who came to arrest him, "Put down your sword. Those who take up the sword will perish by the sword." And he was led to be the sacrifice on the cross. We belong to the religion that believes in the power of love that accepts sacrifice for the sake of well-being of others.

The last stop on our holiday in England was Canterbury, where there stands a cathedral known for its martyr Thomas Becket. He was murdered in the cathedral in 1170, because he stood for faith and stood against the king Henry the second. In the Canterbury Cathedral, there is a small chapel which is dedicated to the martyrs and saints of our time. Many known and unknown people are remembered there, people like a little known nun who was gassed in the Nazi death camp with her Jewish neighbours, or Martin Luther King who fought for the racial equality through non-violent means in the U.S. and was assassinated, as well as persons like a young theological student who was murdered on a street of Teheran in Iran because he did not tell where other Christians were. They are remembered today and the love they lived and die for is still a powerful force. B

ut the evil powers who killed them are no longer existent. I lit a candle in that chapel to remember the couple in Omagh who did not die but bravely stood for love and forgave those who caused them terrible pain and suffering. Love overcomes, always. Owe no one anything except to love.

The sermons recorded here are the ones I gave mainly at Howick United Church in Quebec, Canada between 1995 and 2001.  A few more sermons were added after my retirement.  They are the ones I gave in Southern Alberta as a pulpit supply.  They are in a chronological order.  

They are not copyrighted.  You are welcome to quote any part or whole.

Year A began in December, 1995 and December, 2001, and 2004.
Year B from December, 1996 and December, 1999, 2002, and 2005.
Year C from April, 1995 and December, 2000, and 2003.

“ADVENT1, etc.” are Sundays in December until Christmas
“CHRISTMAS SUNDAY” is the one closest to Christmas
“FIRST (and SECOND) SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS” is the one between Christmas and January 6 (Epiphany)
“EPIPHANY” is the one closest to January 6.
“EPIPHANY1,etc.” are the Sundays between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday.  (Up to ninth Sunday, normally January until March)
“LENT1,etc.” are the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter (Up to 6th Sunday)
“PALM SUNDAY (or LENT 6)” is the one before Easter
“EASTER1,etc.” (Sundays, including Easter day,  until Pentecost – up to 7th Sunday)
“PENTECOST” is the day of Pentecost.
“PENTECOST 1" (or Trinity Sunday)
Sundays after Pentecost between May 29 and November 26 are dated as "FIRST SUNDAY OF JUNE," Etc.

Isaiah 65 : 17 – 25

All of us wish for a better world. No matter how content and happy we are, we wish that things were a little bit better than they are now. And for many desperate people in the world, who may be starving or dying daily of violence, a need for a better world is often a matter of life or death. Before the human race really knew how things worked, they believed that gods and spirits were in charge and could make the world a better or worse place. Many people think that this was why religions were born: out of a need for a better world. Now that we have become more knowledgeable, economists, politicians and scientists have begun to tell us how we can make this world better. Some people even suggest that there is no longer a need for religion, because we can look after ourselves and create a perfect world by ourselves.

The recent debate about the choice between federation with Canada and sovereignty for Quebec had that tone of a promise of the perfect world or Utopia. We are beginning to learn, however, that politicians more often than not renege on their utopian promises. We are learning very quickly also, that the scientists often sing the songs of their paymasters – for example in the debate about environment – and that they are not always objective. So we don”t trust the experts any more. Consequently many people have returned to their search for Utopia in the spiritual world, like the old times. Experimenting with new kinds of spirituality, or Eastern religions.

In our Judeo-Christian tradition, there has always been a strong promise of a perfect world. The Bible mentions it in different ways. The Prophet Isaiah talked of a new heaven and a new earth, or New Jerusalem. When Jesus began his ministry, he called it the Kingdom of God and declared its coming. He also called it the Kingdom of heaven, and used those two expressions interchangeably. The Bible reports that after Jesus died and rose to life, he ascended into heaven promising that he would come back again. Thus the followers of Jesus began to equate the second coming of the Lord with the coming of the Kingdom of God. I am sure that if you look for it, you will find many other expressions in our Bible to convey the notion of an ideal world and the end of this imperfect one.

Today”s passage from the Hebrew Bible contains a wonderfully simple description of a utopian world – God”s promised land. It says that in such a world: 1) children do not die, 2) old people live out their lives in dignity, 3) everyone works and eats of the fruits of their labour, 4) and everyone lives in own house which nobody takes away. And in order to create such a world, the strong and the weak must be able to live together in peace without harming each other.

What is most interesting to me in this passage is what is not mentioned. I find that there are two things missing, things which are usually very important elements in other promises of an ideal world. First of all, it does not say where such a world will be or when it is coming; it leaves out the questions of location and time. In other words, it does not say that Heaven is the place you go, after you die. Jesus Christ declared the Kingdom of God by saying, "the Kingdom of God has come." If that is so – if it has come then it is already here now, though still unfinished. It is for us to complete its creation working with God, in the present.

Going to church, according to Biblical faith is not an insurance policy that one will go to heaven after death. Our faith and church life are about living in the here and now, because we live in the Kingdom of God only by participating in its completion. The notion of the afterlife as an entry point into the ideal world definitely is not there in the Isaiah passage. God”s world is already here. This is His world.

The second thing that is missing is that there is no mention of any particular system that would bring in such an ideal world. What the Isaiah passage gives us is a standard for Utopia. There are a certain number of criteria to measure whether a system is up to the standard of the Kingdom of God. In other words, Isaiah is saying to us, "How you organize your society is your responsibility. What I care about is whether the system you create measures up to God”s standard." God”s way is neither Mr. Bouchard”s way nor Mr. Chretien”s, neither capitalist nor socialist, neither of marketing boards or of a free trade agreement, whether Mr. Clinton”s nor Mr. Gingrich”s. Our human ways can not promise the coming of an ideal world automatically.

It all depends on the question of whether Mr. Bouchard or Mr. Chretien, or whoever or whatever, can create a society that can pass the following tests: Number one; children do not die. It doesn”t matter how easily we can travel outer space. That is not a measure for a better world. The progress towards Utopia can only be measured by the wellbeing of children. Our real concern should be; "Why do 44 thousand children still die everyday from malnutrition in such a highly developed world of ours?" 44,000; that”s one hundred 747 Jumbo jets crashing down every day. Why do we not respond to such a catastrophe?

Secondly, old people live out their lives with dignity. Many of us have aging parents. I have an aging mother, too. I often wonder, looking at people at Griffith-McConnel Residence, how we are expressing our appreciation to those who brought us into this world, who brought us up, and shared their wisdom of life with us. We have a bad habit of treating people, who can not physically function as well as we can, as less than human. In the hospital situations, I have seen very intelligent people treated like mentally retarded persons simply because they had a stroke and lost their faculty of speech . God”s world accords senior citizens full dignity until they complete their full lives.

Thirdly people "shall build houses and inhabit in them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruits." In other words, in God”s world, nobody will steal our homes or our livelihood. The promise of the God”s world includes full employment, a decent return for our work, and housing for everyone. No exploitation of cheap labour nor bank foreclosures. Imagine: such a vision was recorded thousands of years before Christ, yet, it still seems like an almost impossible pipe dream. Is it really unrealistic to dream of such a world?

The Bible says it should be possible if we change our operating principle from competition to compassion. The purpose of might and power is not to defeat the less powerful and the weak, but to supplement what is lacking so that all may survive.

In our present world, mighty lions live by killing and eating weaker animals. When there are no more animals to kill, lions must perish. Is it not wiser for a lion to learn the way of life from a weaker animal like a sheep and starts eating grass? Grass will grow again. But if you kill a sheep, you kill not only the sheep but its children and children”s children. It is not a sustainable way of life. The more creative way to survive is to learn to eat grass and live happily together with the sheep.

So what is Heaven? And where is it? It is here, now, though it is incomplete. It is a compassionate world, which Jesus began to build. We are working together with a loving God to complete it. It is heaven on this earth. Heaven begins here and extends into the life beyond this life. Let us work together to create a compassionate world, starting from here.

November 19, 1995

Tad Mitsui

Howick, Quebec

WHO”S AFRAID OF Y2K?

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Psalm 100, Matthew 25:31-46

November 21, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

Too many people speak about the year 2000, so-called Y2K, these days. Some people are planning big parties, and some are worried about it. I, for one, believe that it”s no big deal, there is nothing to fear. Those who lived through the Ice Storm in 1998 in Quebec know that when you live in a community of caring people, you will be able to cope with most difficulties. We should not be afraid of any technical glitch that may happen on the New Year”s day. Neither should we be bothered by some religious fanatics who predict "the end of the world". Quite frankly, I think that those doomsday millennium scenario are none sense.

In today”s Gospel, when Jesus said, "When Son of Man comes in his glory,…he will sit in the throne of his glory,…he will separate people one from another…", he was speaking about the last judgment day. The belief in one determining moment, like "the end of the world", "the Second Coming of Christ", or "the final judgment day", was very important for early Christians. During the first few centuries of the church history, they suffered a lot because of their faith. Christianity was a new religion. So both the Roman Emperor and people were very suspicious of Christians. They seemed odd: they were too kind to everybody, met at night, sometimes in the cemeteries, and shared a piece of bread saying "This is my body." That”s why some people thought that Christians were cannibals. So Christianity was prohibited. Many Christians lost their lives for refusing to give up their faith. You understand why the promise about the final judgement and the second coming of Jesus Christ was enormously comforting to them. It was a promise that their faithfulness would be recognized. It was not a threat of some scary cataclysmic events. Jesus was saying to those faithful followers who were suffering the consequences of their belief, "God knows your faithfulness. Your reward awaits. Do not be afraid. Continue to be good to other people."

In 1970, there was a coup d”etat in Lesotho, where I lived. The Army took over the government by force. They declared the result of the election null and void, because they didn”t like the political party elected to take power. Many people were arrested, tortured, killed, or went into exile including many of my students. We were all afraid, because nobody knew what was going to happen next. There was enormous fear especially among the foreign residents. Many of them were desperately trying to think of the ways to escape. The British High Commissioner came to calm our nerves. The British authorities were supposed to be responsible for the security of Canadians, also. We discussed the possibilities of a rescue by air lift or a breakout by an armed convoy, etc. None of us believed that the British would undertake such an expensive operation for a handful of us in a tiny insignificant African country. The best advice came from the Roman Catholic Bishop. His advice was simple, "stay with your people." He was so right. People, who love and trust you, are the best protection against all dangers. There is nothing more secure than living in a community made up of caring people. Today”s lesson from the Gospel makes the same point.

It says that on the day of judgement, Christ the King will come in his glory and sit on the throne. He will praise those who fed the hungry, gave water to the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the strangers, took care of the sick, and visited the prisoners. He said that those ordinary acts of kindness were the proof of true devotion to God. "When you are good to those poor people, you are being good to me." – he said. "You will share the glory of Christ the King." It can be a criticism of those who think that they are Y2K prepared, because they debugged their computers and VCR”s, drew out enough cash, stored enough food and water, and are keeping a rifle handy to protect what”s in the storage.

The message of our Lord is very clear. If you are kind and loving persons offering day-to-day acts of kindness to others, you are already in the Kingdom of God. These words were a huge comfort to those followers of Christ, who had already been living in such a life-style. They treated each other as though each person was Christ himself. They were kind especially to the most hard pressed persons, like a hungry person, a person without decent clothes, or even a criminal who was in a prison.

I found the following story about a daughter of a minister, in a magazine for preachers. Her name was Susan. She is now a Lutheran minister herself. One Sunday afternoon, when Susan was a child, the family was having their customary Sunday dinner. There was a knock on the door. Father went out to answered the door. He did not come back for a long time. So Susan went to check out what was happening. There was a shabbily dressed woman speaking with her father. She had two small children with her. Father took them to the Food Bank and the used clothes storage of the church which was next door to the manse. When Susan came back to the table, her brother asked who the visitors were. She answered, "Jesus and her two children." Susan was not quite correct in facts. But she knew correctly the meaning of the teachings of Jesus, especially the one about feeding the hungry, clothing those who had no clothes, etc. Yes, her father was being kind to Jesus and her two children, as Jesus said, "Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me."

We will go into the new millennium in a few weeks. When Y2K arrives, God will be with us as always. And there will be no problem we could not cope with, if we carry on as we always have; to continue to work with God to build a caring community of all God”s children, which is the Kingdom of God on this earth,.

DAVID AND BATHSHEBA

II Samuel 11:1-15, Psalm 14, Ephesians 3:14-21

July 27, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

The story of David and Bathsheba makes me wonder if all the people in the Bible are good people? The answer obviously is "No." This story is so sordid that it makes one wonder, when children are present, if the Bible should be read selectively. The story tells of a woman bathing nude on a rooftop, of adultery, and of a murder. How do you read a Biblical story like that? There have been two popular but contradictory interpretations. One makes the woman a seducer, a temptress who used sex as a way of becoming a queen. It makes King David a victim of an ambitious and conniving woman. The other interpretation makes David an immoral king, who committed adultery and subsequently a murder to eliminate the woman”s husband. Bathsheba becomes a victim of a forced sex by a man who abused power to satisfy his illicit desire. I totally reject the first interpretation. I believe that the second one is much closer to the mark. I believe, however, that the story in the Bible is not so much to warn us about adultery as it is to warn us about the abuse of power.

Let me begin with Bathsheba. A woman was bathing on a roof-top. The first interpretation that I spoke of assumes that she knew that she could be seen from the palace, and she wanted to seduce the king. This sounds like a typical misogynist” excuse to view women as seducers. It is her fault that she was raped. But we must remember that Bathsheba was bathing according to the religious law. A woman was supposed to take a ritual bath on the eighth day of menstruation, according to the book of Leviticus, which defines this purification rite. Bathsheba was going through a religious act, just like baptism.

Also, anyone who has been to tropical countries can easily acknowledge that this interpretation which makes Bathsheba a loose woman is off base. It is not uncommon sight to see people bathing in public in hot countries. They do it in rivers and lakes, as well as in their back yards. They know how to present themselves discreetly to maintain dignity and modesty even when they are naked. We must realize also that our idea about nudity is different from people in other countries. In Europe, topless sunbathing has been a common sight for decades. Even in my life time, I remember the day when the American occupational forces prohibited mixed bathing in the hot springs in Japan. We did not wear bathing suits in the hot springs. Many of us did not understand why mixed bathing was immoral, because such nudity was without sexual overtones; thus it did not present a moral problem.

If anybody was a culprit in this story, surely it must have been King David. According to the law of Moses in Leviticus, it was taboo to even share a roof with a woman who was not completely cleansed after menstruation. David knew why Bathsheba was bathing; every adult woman did it in a particular manner after her monthly period. And yet he sent for her. He knew that he was violating twice the religious law in one act. There is no denial that David did something terribly wrong. But the question is; what kind of wrong did he commit? Of course, adultery is not commendable conduct. But that is not the main point of this particular story. It was how adultery was committed. It was primarily an abuse of power that is being condemned here.

You see, if you consider the accepted practices in those days, and even as late as a hundred years ago, for a king to take women other than his own spouse was usually accepted as a tolerable royal indiscretion. King David married many wives and took many more concubines, according to the II Samuel. Solomon took more than one thousand wives and concubines according to the I Kings. Even after the Christianization of Europe, though the church allowed only one wife, it still closed its eyes on kings taking concubines. Remember Henry VIII? And the practice continued until even more recently. What is known as "le droit du seigneur", where dukes and marquis had the right to take the new brides of their subjects to bed before the rites of marriage, was carried on even in the last century in Europe. The Opera, "Marriage of Figaro", or the story of the famous Scottish hero of the "Braveheart" referred to that barbaric but accepted practice. I am not saying that what David did was acceptable. What I am trying to say is that the kind of thing that David did was nothing extraordinary for the king in those days. So what is the point? For what reason did the Bible take exception and give this story such an important place. What was it trying to tell us?

I believe it is a warning against the abuse of power. No one is allowed to use power in order to exploit other persons for one”s own benefit. You see, this was the first time that David did not go to war. He was getting old. He had a need to feel that he still had some kind of power in ways other than in the battle field. It is common knowledge that sex crimes are committed by people who otherwise feel powerless. For them preying on the weak – women and children – is the only way to feel that they still have power over someone else. The prophet Nathan skilfully gave that message in his story of a poor man”s sheep and a rich man”s greed. You see, our religious tradition has never been comfortable with the idea that any person should wield power over others. We recite "for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever" in the Lord”s Prayer, because we believe, since the time of the Old Testament, that ultimately only God has power. The power any human being holds is given in trust on a certain number of conditions. Power is defined as a force that obliges others to follow one”s will. According to our religious tradition, no one has the birthright to hold power over others, because we believe that we are all children of God, hence we are all equal. Power is given to some people on the condition that they do some of the God”s work. If anyone abuses the God given power for one”s selfish purposes, one is committing a grievous sin.

We must realize how poignant the moral of today”s story is. All of us have power over other people in various ways. As parents over our children, as owners of assets and properties, as holders of offices and positions of many kinds, we all have power to oblige others to do what we want to some extent. Particularly, politicians and business executives have tremendous power to determine the fate of other people. For all of us, the story of David and Bathsheba gives us an important lesson. It is, "Don”t ever use power to exploit others." We must remember Jesus Christ as the ultimate role model of a power figure. Though he was the son of almighty and all powerful God, he exercised his power only to care for and heal others, even though that attitude cost him his own life. That should be the model of a person with power. Not like David who used his power to satisfy his own selfish desire at the cost of another person”s life.

NOBODY IS PERFECT

I Thessalonians 2:9-13, Psalm 107-VU831(Parts 1 and 4 Matthew 23:1-12

Voices United #229,264,504,651

October 30, 2005 by Tad Mitsui

 If somebody says to me that he never lies, never cheats, and is never interested in money, I know he is a hypocrite and a liar. Then how come we still take politicians seriously who say they are always right and never make mistake. We too often say, "I’m right, and you’re wrong," even though we know that nobody is perfect. Jesus is warning us about a danger of this kind of hypocrisy.

The scribes and Pharisees were often accused of being hypocrites. But they were the experts on the Bible. They were respected and feared. They told people what was right or wrong. People gave them great power. They always sat at the head table. They became used to being praised in public. Many Pharisees, for sure, honestly pursued the truth, like Nicodemous who came to see Jesus in the dark of the night. The Pharisees were God fearing good people.

Unfortunately, many of them got used to being praised and came to believe that they deserved this exalted status. Arrogance and pride overtook them, and humility diminished. This is what happens when righteous people become self-righteous. We must remember that only God is absolutely right and just. No human is perfect. But we can be closer to God, if we acknowledge God”s grace, because God forgives our shortcomings. In this sense, we must remember that all of us who go to church are good people, not because we are good by nature but because we are made good by the grace of God. So it’s important to feel good about ourselves.

Church goers are lucky people, just like people who made it to the hospital in time. C.S. Lewis compared a Christian to a patient in a hospital who has checked in a little earlier than other people. Of course, there is something wrong with him. He is sick. That”s why he is in a hospital. But he got there a little earlier than others. He knows that when one is not well, the hospital is a good place to be. He can give others some tips about how to cope with hospital life, and can assure people that they should not be afraid.

What is interesting in this Gospel passage is that Jesus affirmed the Pharisee”s profession. He said that they sat on Moses” seat. So Jesus told people to respect and follow their teaching, even though some of them were hypocrites. Think of some people who left the church. Often people who leave the church are not against God or the teaching of Jesus. They are against some people who, to their opinion, behaved badly or said things they should not have. People become disillusioned by hypocrisy in the church. Jesus said, however, that despite hypocrisy of some Pharisees, what they taught was still God”s law. So he said, "Do whatever they teach you and follow it."

Of course, when you find some wrongs in the church, you should hear Jesus saying to you, "Do not do as they do, because they do not practice what they teach." In other words, he said, "Reject hypocrites, but follow their teaching of God”s words." It is very difficult to admit that someone you consider to be a hypocrite may be saying the right thing. But it happens. In fact, all of us are not perfect but we all have grains of goodness. The important thing to remember is that whatever good we say is acceptable by the grace of God. All of us are capable of speaking the word of God, not because we are perfect, but because God gave us the ability to do so. The church is not a gathering of people without sin. It is a gathering of forgiven sinners. We are like beggars who know where to find food. Evangelism is beggars telling other beggars where to find food. Let us listen to the word of God no matter how inadequate the carriers seem to be.

The problem of Pharisees and the scribes was that they had begun to believe that they by right deserved admiration and respect. They began to think that it was them whom people respected. They forgot that it was God who gave them pieces of divine knowledge and wisdom. It was this arrogance that made them hypocrites and failures as humans, even though they might have been conveying God”s messages. Arrogance in the Bible is termed as one of the biggest sins, because it makes a person self-righteous thus shuts off all channels of communication with God. It makes a person feel that he/she is complete and does not need any more help from God. It also shuts one off from further learning, because it makes one think one knows everything there is to know.

The church is a good place to be for us. But it is not a place for self-appointed saints to boast how good they are. It is a place where people gather, those who know their weaknesses but feel that they are accepted and safe. We are not afraid to admit the our limitations. The whole point of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is based on forgiveness and acceptance of repentant sinners. It is this humility that makes us transparent, allowing God-in-us to shine out. This is why the church is a good place for us to be.

GOD IS NOT FOR CHOOSING

Jeremiah 2:4-13, Psalm 85. Luke 14:1-5

August 30, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

I had a friend, who turned out to be a spy in the Secret Service of the South African government. I was opposing the policy of that government at the time. The fact of the matter is; he had never been my friend. It was a deception from the beginning. I know now that his treachery caused the deaths of a few friends. But I am more sad than angry when I realized that someone was capable of abusing a quality as precious as friendship for a tool of deception. Prophet Jeremiah spoke of God in a somewhat similar situation. People took God for convenience.

After the people of Israel settled down in the land of Canaan and became prosperous farmers, they abandoned their God of Abraham and Moses, and started to worship the god called Baal. When their need was fulfilled, they just dumped the old friend and went to someone more attractive, so to speak. "What wrong did you find in me?" asked God. "I saved you from slavery in Egypt. I guided you through the desert. I led you into a fertile land to settle. But now you ran to another god. What did I do wrong?" God sounds more sad than angry. The people thought that they had the freedom to choose God for convenience. God isn”t for choosing.

We also commit the same sacrilege too. A sociologist by the name of Reg Bibby interviewed hundreds of Canadians a few years ago, and concluded that we have changed our way to practice religion. Bibby says that God is still very popular in Canada. But Canadians nowadays tend to pick and choose religions rather than sticking to the churches they used to go. People adopted the same attitude about religion as about shopping. They shop around, and choose the religions that suit their needs or go to the churches they like. I hasten to add, though, that this is not necessarily wrong. It means that we have finally begun to exercise freedom of conscience and religion. But, the danger of this trend is in its influence in our attitude towards God.

There is an important difference between choosing a church and choosing God. The freedom to choose your church does not mean there is freedom to choose your God. There are people and things you can choose, and those you can not. The difference is like between a car and a mother. You can choose a car. But a mother is not for your choosing. If you don”t see this obvious distinction and think you can abandon your mother when she is no longer useful, there is something fundamentally wrong with you as a human being. A creature can not choose the creator, just as much as a child can not choose parents. You can choose your friend and spouse. But even there, once you have made a choice, you commit yourself to the relationship with that person. You can not easily say, "Oops. Sorry, that was a mistake." If you think that you can run to someone else any time, you have a profoundly serious problem. You have a crippled mind lacking basic understanding of what it means to be a human being.

Likewise, if you think you can pick the God of your choice, your understanding of religion also needs complete scrutiny. God is not for choosing. If you think you can pick and choose God like you choose your new car, what you have in mind is not a true God, and you don”t know what religion is. What you have is mere wishful thinking not faith.

Let us look at the people of Israel and see how they went wrong. Their escape from slavery in Egypt was fraught with extreme dangers. The forty years of life in the desert was extremely difficult. They needed God who gave them courage to live on without losing hope. God gave them laws which taught them how to live in harmony with other people. Without God, the people of Israel would have perished or disintegrated in Egypt, in the sea, or in the desert. So, they stayed with the God of Moses. With God, they survived and became a nation.

Now settled in the land of milk and honey, they prospered. But in prosperity, they became greedy. The more they gained, the more they craved. They forgot to be grateful. God became an annoying hindrance in the pursuit of pleasure and profit. They forgot the God of Moses who guided through difficulties and suffered with them. They did not want a teacher and a guide. So they became more attracted to Baal, the god who promised fertility, pleasure, and prosperity. God became a mere instrument of their greed.

Faith is a relationship with God who created us. Our option is not choosing one god among many. The choice before us is whether we have relationship with the creator or not. We live out that relationship with the creator by loving and honouring those around us. There are people who are committed to be in relationship with God and people. They seek no gain nor pleasure in doing this. If there is gain, it is the joy of being in relationship. This week, we mark the first anniversary of the deaths of two remarkable women, Diana and Teresa. They were completely different personalities. They were humans with human faults. But we remember them because of their compassion. We remember Diana in the pictures with emaciated men in Toronto who were dying of AIDS, and with children without arms and legs in Angola. We remember Mother Teresa with homeless people in rags who were dying of disease on the streets of Calcutta. They shook hands with them, picked them up, kissed them, and gave them life-giving touch of one human to another. They did not choose those people for pleasure. They chose them because, they were all God”s children. Their choice simply reflected God”s.

We too must be committed to those who are in relationship with us, parents, spouses, children, friends and neighbours near and far. They are not for our choosing. They are God”s choice for us. God is not for our choosing. He was here long before us, is with us now, and will be for ever.

ISAIAH 40:1-11, PSALM 85, MARK 1:1-8

When you take a drawing lesson, you will probably do an interesting exercise.  The teacher gives you a pencil drawn picture of a face of a person, and tells you to put it upside down, and to copy it as exactly as you see it, upside down.  A human face doesn”t look like you think it should look, when you see it upside down.  So you have to look at every millimetre of every line carefully and faithfully, to reproduce what you see.  I guarantee you, it does not look like anything you know.  Once you finish the drawing and put it rightside up, you will see a more accurate duplicate than the one you could draw looking at the picture right-side up.  When you have a picture of a face right-side up, you do not look at the face in the picture as carefully as you should, because you think you know a human face looks like.  But it is an assumption.  Then, unconsciously you draw what you think a face should look like, and not what you really see.

Assumption often betrays truth.  When you think you know, and start acting according to that belief, you can be completely unaware when you make mistakes.  This point was made by the recent revelation of how badly three particular murder cases had been handled by the Canadian justice system.  Three men were tried, found guilty, and incarcerated for crimes they did not commit.  Donald Marshall, Guy-Paul Morin, and David Milgaard were found innocent by a confession of the witness who lied, in the case of Marshall, and DNA tests, for Morin and Milgaard, after spending decades in prison.  In all three cases, the men who were really guilty were found and sentenced.   

The whole justice system assumed that the guilty men had been caught.  No one, in the Police, the Provincial prosecution services, the courts, or the Federal Justice Department had the intention of subverting justice.  But the system had assumed those men”s guilt.  Those three men were outsiders and stereotypical losers – the types of people easily assumed to be shady characters, if not criminals.  Donald Marshall is a Micmac Indian, David Milgaard was a rebellious long haired teenager, and Guy-Paul Morin was a rare Francophone in South Western Ontario.  They were all at the wrong places at the wrong time, when the crimes were committed.  The whole justice system had assumed their guilt.  So with all the resources available, the whole Canadian justice system went out of its way to build up the case against them.  The Police and the courts believed they were right, so they did not see the point of looking at other evidence, which would have proved them wrong.  Their minds were shut and they did not see other possibilities.  Their minds were made up, and no facts could disturb their resolute.

From time to time, we all need to question assumptions to get to the truth.  I believe that this is what the messages in Isaiah and Mark mean when they said, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God."  It is like Curling.  A heavy stone is slowly moving, and the sweepers must clear the way furiously.  In the Bible, this action to clear the way is called repentance.  Repentance is not just to say "I am sorry."  It means completely clearing the mind of all assumptions and to start afresh with an open mind.  You have to look at life up-side down, to rid yourself of biases and to see what life really is.  It is not always easy to forget the old assumptions, and try something completely new with an open mind.  All of us want to believe we have been right all along.

Both Isaiah and Mark spoke about calling people to repent in the wilderness.  In the desert, nothing functions as you expect.  When the path ahead looks completely safe, it may be a cover for a deadly hazard.  You don”t take anything for granted in the desert.  I was travelling in the Sahara on an uneventful boring day.  Suddenly, the driver forced the gears into reverse and the Land Rover violently jerked backward.  We had narrowly avoided quick sand.  Even an experienced driver who travelled the desert thousands of times didn”t see a patch of quick sand.  The wilderness is a dangerous place, because there you can not assume anything.  Everything is unpredictable.  Experienced explorers know that you must respect the desert and never take the wilderness for granted.

In our life too, we all run into "deserts" – times of  life, when nothing looks familiar.  It can be a happy experience or can be a sad one.  It can be exhilarating or can be devastating.  It is a very unsettling place to be.  But it can also be a very creative place and time.  Nobody knows what”s going to happen.  Everybody is equal in the wilderness.  All of us, poor or rich,  can get lost.  Thirst, hunger, loneliness, and heat hit everybody equally.  Age, experience, wealth, social standing, and nationality don”t give you any advantage nor disadvantage over others.  Successful persons can be humiliated because nothing they know or own is any good in the desert.  On the other hand, you may find amazing strength to endure all sorts of difficulties among those people who are on the bottom of social scale.  Like the prophesy of Isaiah predicts,"  All the dents of humiliation are filled and lifted, and all the bumps of arrogance is knocked down and levelled."  In the wilderness, all are equal.  Only those with open minds will survive and thrive in the desert.  That is where and when Jesus Christ comes to meet with us.

Advent is time to learn about preparation.  Isaiah said, "Prepare the highway in the wilderness for the Lord.  Fill up the valley and knock down the rocky hills."  In other words, we must sweep away the garbage of assumptions to keep an open mind, knock down the hills of arrogance, and fill up the valley of sagging spirits.  That”s the way to prepare the way for Christ child.

A STORY OF A TOUGH WOMAN

Judges 4:1-7, Psalm 123, Matthew 25:14-30

November 14, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

 Usually, when you speak about the woman you admire, you speak about a caring and dedicated mother or wife. I can think of such a woman, for example. You must know many women like her, too. She had to delay honey moon, for six years, and had waited for her husband to come home from the war in Europe. She was the youngest in the family, so she looked after her mother as a matter of course while raising three children, singlehandedly. After her mother”s death, she took over the care of her sister-in-law who was mentally handicapped until she died. Lastly, she had looked after her now retired husband who was failing in health until he went into the home for the aged veterans. It is nearly fifty years of her caring other people. She is an amazing person. She follows the pattern of the woman”s life we all admire; their kindness and dedication in caring of other people. But there is Deborah who is remembered not because she was a devoted wife or a caring mother, but because she lived and succeeded like a man. The question is; are we celebrating Deborah of the Bible because she was like a man?

The story of Deborah in the Book of Judges is an amazing story of a tough woman. Even here in Canada, when we have a woman Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a woman Governor-General, Deborah of the Bible seems head and shoulders above our powerful women. She seems to be an incredibly powerful woman. She was a wife and mother, while being a judge, a prophet, and a commander-in-chief of the ten thousand man army. If you consider the fact that the whole Canadian Defense Forces is made up of about 30 thousand uniformed men and women, you could see how powerful Deborah was. In addition to her domestic work, her duties extended to judiciary, political, religious, and military matters of the Hebrew people. It is impossible to find today such a person of multiple qualifications even among men. She was a tough woman even in today”s standard. From time to time, you find amazingly tough women in history. Joan of Arc comes to my mind. There is also Golda Meier who was the woman Prime Minister of Israel. She led Israel to a victory in the Six Days War during 1967. Someone said of Golda Meier once, "She is the only man in the entire Israeli Cabinet." But the question is: why should we have to classify a certain kind of qualities as bravery male, and some others as kindness female. We refer to an aggressive and tough man as a "true man". Or in case of a woman, we say "She is like a man." Likewise, we refer to a caring person in a female term. Why?

Once, any man who showed a sign of tenderness used to be called "sissy". A tough woman, who was not afraid of men, was called "a castrating bitch". Fortunately, those days are behind us, and such views are going out of fashion. We live at a time when these stereo type characterization of man and woman is being questioned. I am very glad also that we are discovering in the Bible a character like Deborah who is remembered for her toughness. Women in the Bible were not always someone like Ruth who is remembered for her tender love. Now we know that both men and women are born with capacity for tenderness and toughness, and there is nothing exclusively male or female about those qualities. There is nothing wrong for some men to be more tender hearted than to be tough. There is nothing wrong for some women to be more aggressive than to be gentle. There is no such thing like typically male character nor typically female character. All of us are born with tenderness and toughness.

Jesus Christ once said, "You must be clever as a snake and gentle as a dove." He is saying that we must be both tough and tender. Martin Luther King rephrased this passage by saying, "You must have tough mind and tender love." In other words, Jesus is saying to those tough men in the old fashioned sense to be more like "women." Likewise, he is saying to those gentle women in the old fashioned sense to be more like "men." Jesus told us to be both tough and gentle, because we all are born with infinitely different capacities that do not depend on sexual difference. All of us, both male and female, have talents in both tenderness and toughness. We must make use of those talents fully, just like the parable of talents in the Gospel of Matthew suggests. In other words, women must not bury their toughness, and men must not be shy to openly act on their impulse from tender hearts.

Have you noticed that many veterans who saw actions in the battle fields don”t want to speak about what they saw? Take my father-in-law. He was in the Air Force during the Second World War in Europe. So far, he has not told any of us about his experience of war. Have you notice also when, in rare occasions, some of the veterans speak about their experiences, they usually break down and cry? I think this is why they don”t want to talk about it. Men have been taught not to cry. It”s sissy for boys to cry. So many of them have their feelings all bottled up, which come out only in their nightmares. I think they should cry. It is not sissy for men to cry. And when they can cry, they will be able to tell us the horror of war more vividly, and will make us more determined to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.

I think that Jesus was sissy, according to the old fashioned standard for men. He cried in public, loved flowers, played with babies and loved kids, and when people came to tell him some insulting things, he didn”t shout back, but gently answered in enigmatic parables. He told his disciple to put down his sword. He was not a macho-man. He was against violence. And yet, he was not a weak man. Anybody, who can pray in the desert for forty days without food, must be a pretty tough person. He could drive out money-changers single-handedly from the temple, because the house of prayer was desecrated. He could get very angry, when he needed to be angry. That takes some guts. He was tough. Jesus was tough and gentle for the sake of love.

I believe we men must learn from Jesus that it is OK for men to be sissy for the sake of love. In the meantime, we must learn from the story of the judge Deborah, that women must let out the captive princess called "tough women".

THE MARK OF LEADERSHIP – CHRIST THE KING

Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 103, Luke 23:33-43

November 22, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

We will vote in a Provincial election in a week from tomorrow. I suspect that many of us are anxious about this, because our votes at this election may be crucial for the future of Quebec. However, the most unfortunate aspect of our election is the fact that we have to choose a party not a person. It is the party that decides in our system. So too much attention is given to the leaders of the parties, and many of us do not bother to find out who the candidates in our riding are. This is unfortunate. We have lost the practice to hold each of our representatives accountable. We are voting for a person who might as well be a dummy. We have to make each one of them responsible to us again rather than to their party leaders.

Traditionally, today is the last Sunday of the church calender year. It is called "Christ the King" or "Reign of Christ" Sunday. It is the last Sunday before the Advent – the season to prepare for Christmas. Today, we remind ourselves that Jesus Christ is the true King. It is he who demonstrated all the marks of authentic leadership. If we think of Jesus Christ as the ideal leader, we will learn how to choose a good leader by examining political figures according to the standards of leadership Jesus Christ had set.

We must first notice the significance of the Scripture passages chosen for today to celebrate Christ as King. The Jeremiah passage speaks about the shepherds, and the Luke passage depicts the scene on the cross on which Christ died. The image of a shepherd projects an image of a leader who takes care of the flock. Christ himself portrayed his role as that of a shepherd. The cross is the symbol of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. The crucified shepherd is a lofty role model for our political leaders. We can not expect any human being to fully live up to the kind of a standard set by Christ. But we can set the Christ”s example as a 100% perfect score – "A+", and grade our political figures accordingly.

Let us think about the image of a shepherd. We have a long tradition in our religion of comparing leaders with shepherds. Jeremiah compared the kings with shepherds who destroyed and scattered the flock to pass judgement on the performance of the bad kings. Jesus told his disciples to be shepherds also. Our present day understanding of that comparison may not quite fit with what the Bible intended to say, because livestock have become commodities, not friends. But when the authors of the Bible used the image of a shepherd, the relationship between people and animals was much closer – almost as though animals were part of the family. They roamed the barren land together in search of grazing land, sharing the good times and bad. They depended on each other, and their emotional attachment to each other was strong.

So when the Bible compared the kings with the shepherds, the expectation was that they would behave like the ones who cared about the people as much as they did about themselves. The kings were expected to be more than parents. A shepherds is visible. The shepherd had to be seen by the flock, walked in front of them, and often exposed themselves to the danger of the elements before their animals. The shepherd exercised their leadership by being visible as well as by being caring. There is a risk that goes with being visible. Bill Clinton must have learned that lesson. A leader is expected to be a role model by being open and visible. It is true not just for the political figures, but for other public figures too, teachers and ministers included.

Sometimes the price for authentic leadership can be extremely high. In the case of Jesus Christ, the price of his leadership was death on the cross. He did not have to be so public about loving the sick, the poor and the outcasts more than the rich and powerful. He could have loved them quietly, in private. But the mark of Christ”s leadership was that he demonstrated his loving care in public so that others could see God”s love clearly revealed and would follow his example. His deeds spoke more loudly than his words. When he prayed even in his extreme suffering, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.", all his teaching about love and forgiveness became more credible than ever.

Human history records many persons who, like Jesus, paid the price of visible leadership. They met their demise because they tried to live out their beliefs. Peter and Paul were executed because they publicly professed their faith in Christ. Many martyrs followed their examples; some of them did so without the knowledge of Christ. In recent years, there were Mahatma Ghandi, Indira and Rajiv Ghandi, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Steve Biko, Bishop Oscar Romero, and the most recently Itzak Rabine in Israel. I don”t think that they intentionally sought death. But they did not hesitate to express their conviction openly even though there was a risk in doing so. A Japanese saying has it, "A nail which sticks out inevitably will be hammered down." A leader must be seen when exercising leadership, and so sticks out like a sore thumb. A principled leader always takes a risk of being hammered down. A leader must be courageous to truly lead.

I can not say that all those human leaders I mentioned were perfect. In fact, all of them had flaws in their characters. But consciously or unconsciously, they all tried their best to live up to the standard of a perfect leader – Jesus Christ. Consequently, they paid the ultimate price in their sacrifice. As we stand in front of a ballot box, let us remind ourselves of the marks of a true leader. A true leader cares for us and is responsible to us. Also a true leader is ready to pay the price of leadership even at the expense of own demise. Most likely, we will have to settle for the very cheap and flawed version of a true leader. It is also possible that our riding will elect the wrong person for the wrong reasons. It is then our responsibility to demand their accountability and to make constructive criticism, according to the standard we believe in – of true leadership: Jesus Christ, the true leader of all other leaders, the crucified shepherd.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS ARE OFTEN FREE

Isaiah 55:1-9, Psalm 63, Luke 13:1-5

March 15, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

We often consider cash as a measure for value; and this is a serious spiritual problem. Often we don”t know what real value means, and treat ourselves and each other poorly. Lord Beaverbrook, one of the richest men Canada has ever produced, was quoted as saying, "Everybody has a price… I would even go to hell if the price is right." A comedian, Jackie Mason, had a similar line about patriotism. It goes something like this: "I love America. I would give up anything for America. I would give up even my wife for America. But money? No! That”s different." We too often measure the value of things by looking at the price tags, and forget what is truly valuable does not cost money. This is why we call what is truly preciously "priceless", because we can not buy it.

Lent is the season to repent. The colour purple in the church is the symbol of repentance. To repent means not just to say sorry for what we did wrong, but also to change our mind and make a u-turn. Today”s scriptures suggest that we change our attitude and to start seeing the real value in what is freely available but priceless. Then, we will see what is truly important in our life is spiritual and free. We will understand the meaning of Isaiah”s words, "Those who thirst, come to the water. Those who are hungry, come to the food without money. Why spend money for things that are worthless. Why labour for things that do not satisfy. Come to me, says God."

Think about what you miss when you are way from home for a period. You miss people and things you have at home for free. You miss the baby who keeps you awake at night, and the kids who never stop to demand your attention and your time. You miss your wife who knows you a little bit too well. You miss your home and those messy rooms where you know exactly where things are. You feel comfortable when you are surrounded by those who love you and with things that are familiar to you. I attended many international meetings held in luxury hotels, with swimming pools, and good food, all paid for by somebody else. But always within a few days, I became homesick missing my family, my messy house and the home cooked meals.

They are the most important items in your life. And they don”t have any price tags attached to them. Also those freely available items in our lives are essential. Our life will be seriously in danger, if we do not know the affection and care that people give us freely in our homes and our communities. I was listening to the report on the sexual exploitation of children last week. Most of those children who end up on the streets, come from dysfunctional homes where they did not receive affection nor attention. Instead, they often received abuse and rejection, and their emotional growth had stopped. They are like a baby crying out for any kind of attention, even though they have the bodies of adolescents. We do not survive very long physically, if we do not receive affection.

A lack of emotional care affects us not only spiritually but physically; even animals can not survive very long without daily dose of attention. There was a well known experiment with mice. Two groups of mice lived under exactly the same conditions; same food, same environment, etc. But each mouse in one group received a head to toe rub everyday, and the others didn”t. The effects were quite definite. Those who received daily attention grew fatter and healthy looking, and lived longer. The others, though they were just as well fed and well provided for physically as the other group, but without daily rub they were less healthy and died earlier. A constant assurance of love is as essential to us as food and water.

It is well known fact that if we are emotionally secure in the knowledge that we are accepted and loved, we can stand up to difficult conditions longer than those who feel insecure. Misfortunes and tragedies hit all of us from time to time. Those who feel secure can take them as challenges, fight back, and survive them. But those who feel alone in the world because of experiences of rejection in the past, take such difficulty as a punishment. They end up bitter and often resort to self-destructive behaviours. What love gives does not cost any money. But it is far more valuable and long lasting than what money can buy.

Money represents only a part of us. Giving money is an manageable sacrifice. We can even pretend to be a good person by giving up a certain amount of money we can afford to throw away. We will look good, even though we are mean spirited inside. But in reality we can not get away with it. We must realize that the most important things in our lives, although they have no monetary value, are also very costly. It is because love demands a total commitment. There is no such thing as a partial commitment. It is just like there is no such thing as half pregnant; a commitment is always total. Therefore you can not buy love with money. Money can actually makes it cheap, and there is no such thing as cheap love. Love is always priceless. If you can buy it, it is not love; it is travesty of love, like prostitution. Love is priceless. It is so costly that it takes only a total commitment, but not in terms of money.

Loving God is a total commitment. We love God by loving our neighbours. To love God and to love people are one and the same thing. It is just like the Apostle John said in his letters, "If someone says that he loves God and does not love people, he is a liar." There are many ways to love. You can love people with money, too, if it is a genuine expression of what is inside of you. But if there is no love inside, money can be an indication of deceit.

When I was working in Africa, sometimes I saw people stuffing the coffins of their deceased family members with the receipts for the giving to the church. I appreciated their desperate attempts to make sure that their loved ones went to heaven. But money could not buy entry into heaven. Salvation is given freely. Christ sacrificed his life on the cross without demanding any payment from us. He did that because he loved us. So it was free; there was no precondition nor advance payment required. All we need to do is to accept his love and love him in return. Just like Isaiah suggested, "Come and drink the water and eat the food without money." Jesus is inviting us to come to a banquet. His table is always overloaded, the cups run over, the flour and oil never diminish, milk and honey are plentiful. You don”t need to pay, as his banquet is always free. What is it required of us, then? Nothing. Just love him. Then we will know how to love our neighbours. It is a total commitment to love. But it is a happiest commitment, because love is a great joy as we all know.

WE ARE WHAT WE DO, NOT ALWAYS WHAT WE SAY.

I Thessalonians 2:9-13, Psalm 107, Matthew 23:1-12

November 3, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

A comedian, Greg Malone, commenting about the debates between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, said, "If somebody says to me that he never lies, never cheats, and is never interested in money, I know he is a psychotic. Then how come we still listen when politicians make similar claims?" Jesus said that some people do not practice what they say. He said, "Do whatever they say, but do not follow their examples." This is a warning to us about a danger of hypocrisy.

The scribes and Pharisees were the experts on the Bible. In a society ruled by religious traditions, they were considered to be the experts on the Law just like our lawyers are. They were respected and feared. They also had a lot of power. They could influence public policy by being able to whisper into the ears of kings and governors. They told people what was right or wrong. People gave them great authority. They always sat at the head table. They became used to being praised in public. There were, certainly, many Pharisees who honestly pursued the truth, like Nicodemous who came to see Jesus in the dark of the night. Paul was also a sincere Pharisee. In fact, he was so serious about pursuit of the true religion that he gave up all glory and fame, once he became a Christian evangelist, and suffered the consequences. The Pharisees were, in principle,God fearing good people.

Unfortunately, many of the Pharisees got used to being praised by others, and came to believe that they deserved this exalted social standing. Arrogance and pride overtook them, and humility diminished. This is what happens when righteous people become self-righteous. We must remember that only God is absolutely righteous and just. No one can be absolutely righteous and just. But we can be closer to God, if we acknowledge God”s grace, because God forgives our shortcomings and accepts us as we are. In this sense, we must remember that all of us who are church goers are good people, not so much because we are good by nature but because we are made acceptable by the grace of God. So we must feel good about ourselves, because we are loved by God.

Church goers are lucky people, just like people who made it to the hospital in time. C.S. Lewis compared a Christian to a patient in a hospital who has checked in a little earlier than other people. Of course, there is something wrong with him. He is sick. That”s why he is in a hospital. But he knows the hospital procedures a little better than new comers, and has met some of the doctors and nurses. He knows that when one is not well, the hospital is a good place to be. He can give others some tips about how to cope with hospital life, and can assure people that they can trust doctors and nurses, and not to be afraid.

What is interesting in this Gospel passage is that Jesus affirmed the Pharisee”s profession. He said that they sat on Moses” seat. Moses was the one who brought God”s laws to people. Pharisees were heirs to the Moses” seat, so to speak. So Jesus told people to respect and follow what they taught, even though some of them were hypocrites. Many of the people who leave the church do so because of conflicts. Think of some people who left the church. Often people who leave the church are not against God or the teaching of Jesus. They are against some people who, to their opinion, behaved badly or said things they should not have. People become disillusioned by hypocrisy in the church. Jesus said, however, that despite hypocrisy of some Pharisees, what they taught was still God”s law. So he said, "Do whatever they teach you and follow it."

Of course, when you find some wrongs in the church, you should hear Jesus saying to you, "Do not do as they do, because they do not practice what they teach." In other words, he said, "Reject hypocrites, but follow their teaching of God”s words." I agree; it is very difficult to admit that someone you consider to be a hypocrite may be saying the right thing. But it can happen. In fact, all of us are not perfect but we do have grains of goodness to share with others. The important thing to remember is that whatever good we say is acceptable by the grace of God. All of us are capable of speaking the word of God, not because we are righteous and virtuous, but because God gave us the ability to do so. The church is not a gathering of sinless saints. It is a gathering of forgiven sinners. We are like beggars who know where to find food. Evangelism is beggars telling other beggars where to go to find food.

Paul had many enemies. Many of the first Christians who lived in Jerusalem did not agree with Paul”s teaching, because he did not always follow the Jewish laws. But Paul was spectacularly successful outside of Palestine. He started new churches in Turkey, Greece, and Italy. Many of Paul”s enemies in the church were envious, and consequently, they bad-mouthed him. Some of them said things with the view to make Paul suffer more in prison. But he said of those people, "Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry..[and]…proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true,; and in that I rejoice." As Jesus said, let us follow the word of God no matter how inadequate the carriers seem to be.

The problem of Pharisees and the scribes was that they had begun to believe that they by right deserved admiration and respect. They began to think that it was them whom people respected. They forgot that it was God who gave them pieces of divine knowledge and wisdom. It was this arrogance that made them hypocrites and failures as humans, even though they might have been conveying God”s messages. Arrogance in the Bible is termed as one of the biggest sins, because it makes a person self-righteous thus shuts off all channels of communication with God. It makes a person feel that he/she is complete and does not need any more help from God. It also shuts one off from further learning, because it makes one think one knows everything there is to know.

The church is a good place to be for us. But it is not a place for self-appointed saints to show how good they are. It is a place where people gather, those who know their weaknesses but feel that they are accepted, anyway. We are not afraid to admit the truth about our limitations, because the whole point of the good news of Jesus Christ is based on forgiveness and acceptance of repentant sinners. It is this humility that makes us transparent, allowing God-in-us to shine out. This is why the church is a good place for us to be. Not so much because of what we say, but more so because we can practice what we believe with joy and without fear.

TO BE A FOOL IN ORDER TO BE WISE

1 Kings 3:16-28, Psalm 111(VU833 1 Cor 3:18

August 20, 2006 at Southminster

VU:409,371,506,663

A car was going around and round the blocks. Seeing it coming around his house several times, a man who was working in a front yard asked if he was lost. "Can I help you find what you are looking for?" "No, no, no. I know where I’m going." He said. "There is a gas station selling the cheapest gas around here. I’m trying to empty the tank, so I can fill it."

Often, people who think they are very smart do the most stupid things. King Solomon, who was considered to be the most smart king in Israel, knew that. So he is the one who wrote the most pessimistic literature in the Bible. The story of King Solomon teaches us about the limitation of humans, even those who may be very gifted and wise and successful, nevertheless are flawed.

Solomon was the most successful king of all times, not only in the history of Israel but also in the stories of all kings. Under his reign, Israel became a powerful country extending its borders from the present day Israel to Jordan, to Lebanon and to Syria, and even to Egypt. The country became very wealthy. Solomon was successful economically, militarily, politically. But most importantly, he was known for his wisdom. When he became a king, he first asked God for wisdom and nothing else. He was not only a successful king, but he was also a wise king, as the episode in today”s lesson shows.

In fact, many of "Wisdom Literature" in the Bible are said to have been written by King Solomon. They are the Ecclesiastes, the Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and some Psalms. My favourite is from the Ecclesiastes; "For everything, there is a season. A time for every matter under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to love and a time to hate. Etc." Some of them are humorous. For example, in Proverbs he says, "If you are wise, you will keep your mouth shut." Or, "To live with someone who talks all the time is worse than living in hell." Some are full of humanity. The Song of Songs is the loveliest of all love songs. The fact that such a love song is in the Bible is an affirmation of human sexuality.

However, what is most interesting is the fact that King Solomon himself ended up sceptical about his achievements. Furthermore, he did not succeed in creating an enduring kingdom: in fact his kingdom crumbled immediately after he died, and split up into two countries causing the eventual demise of the Jewish nation. Because he was extremely wise, he was able to realize how limited humans were. The Ecclesiastes, which I believe to be the best writings of King Solomon, is the most pessimistic book in the Bible. In it, he expressed his disappointments in life. In chapter one, he said, "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. – It is useless, useless. Life is useless, all is useless. You spend your life working hard, labouring, and what do you have to show for it? Generations come and generations go, but the world stays just the same. What”s the use?" Why did such a successful man, like Solomon, end up so disappointed and pessimistic?

A Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy made the same point in a story. There was a man who was given all the land he wanted if he could go around it on foot in a day. So,at dawn, he started to run. At one point, of course, he could not go on any more because he was absolutely exhausted. But with determination he staggered on. As the Sun was setting in the West, he was crawling but still trying to grab more land. He did make it back to the place where he started out when the Sun disappeared. But he was completely exhausted, in fact he died a moment after the Sunset. In the end, all the land he acquired for free was a piece of land with a size of 3 by 6 feet, where a hole was dug to bury his body. Now then, the question is: is all we do in this life is useless, because we die anyway? Is what we do is so useless that we should do nothing?

Some people believe that. They think that the best way is to get away from the world and spend the rest of your life in meditation. I don”t think that King Solomon was saying that. For one thing, he tried his best to be a good king, for people and for the country. And he was a good king and a wise one, too. His country benefited from his wisdom and achievements. This is why he is fondly remembered even today. But because he tried his best, he got to know that what we do had limitations. He found that his achievements fell far short of the goal. In fact without God, he found them useless. He felt the need of something more, to make life worthwhile. Solomon in the Ecclesiastes, said, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth.", as though to say, "whatever you do, you do it with God in mind." He also said, "The ultimate way to become wise is to honour God."

Albert Einstein, who was considered to be the best scientist of the 20th Century, said, "Science without religion is blind and dangerous. Religion without science is crazy." Science is one of the most important human enterprises. And the best scientist we have ever known in the last century believed that human endeavour was dangerous without God. And only lazy people, who don”t believe in science turn their religions into superstitions.

Of course, the first article of faith in the Christian teaching is "God is love." Therefore to honour God is to love. This is why Paul in his letter to the Corinthians said, "You may have to be a fool in the eyes of humans in order to be wise in the eyes of God." He said it because the way of love may seem foolish if you don”t know God. If you don”t believe that ultimately the wisdom of God is love, you will have no choice but to see Jesus Christ as the most foolish person ever lived on the earth. It is because for love of other people he died. But for those who believe in the love of God, Christ showed us the true way – indeed the way of wisdom of God. Thanks be to God.

MILLENNIUM BUG

Isaiah 65:17-25, Psalm 33, Luke 21:5-19

November 15, 1998

For some people, there are many reasons why we should be worried today. The upcoming Provincial election, for example, could be the beginning of the end for our beloved country. In addition, a lot of people are worried about the year 2000. One religious fanatic in the U.S, for example, led people to commit mass suicide, believing that the end of the world was imminent at the threshold of the new millennium. So-called "Millennium Bug" in the computer systems is worrying many people, and the rumour has it that our government has a secret plan to mobilize the entire Armed forces and the Police to deal with the chaos caused by the massive failures of computers in such essential services like banking, business records, hydro power distribution systems, transportation, etc. Some people declare that the recent spate of unusual and often disastrous weather patterns, and endemic of terminal diseases like AIDS and cancer are the signals to warn us about the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ, the last judgement, and the end of the world. What are we supposed to think about those predictions of doom and gloom? The message of Christ is very clear. "Do not be led astray by those who come in my name to predict the imminent end of time."

When the books in the New Testament were being written, many people in the church were in a collective state of anxiety. They were waiting for Jesus Christ to come back to establish the Kingdom of God, as he promised. But Jesus did not come back as they expected. So they kept on waiting. In the meantime, the Roman Empire began to persecute the Christians, and many started to die. They were very worried that those who had died before the second coming of Christ might have missed the chance to enter the Kingdom of God. They thought, wrongly I must say, that such a kingdom would come in the form of a political system, and would defeat the Roman Empire. Christ the King would sit on the throne, and all the Christians would be vindicated. So every time, something disastrous or unusual happened, always there were a certain number of people who declared that it was the sign of the second coming. They became very agitated, when they saw or heard about events like insurrections and riots, wars between nations, earthquakes and other natural calamities, spread of plagues and other deadly diseases. As the result, some people began to behave strangely. They quit work and refused to pay taxes. The Christians in Jerusalem sold all their personal property and started to live together sharing all possessions. Having to meet in secret in small groups in homes and underground cemeteries at night so that nobody outside of the church would find them did not lessen their anxiety. But fear is not what the message of the Kingdom of God is supposed to generate. The Gospel is the good news of freedom, hope, and love, not a blackmail of doom and gloom.

This is why the New Testament is full of teachings like: the "Judgement Day" will sneak up on you like a thief, so be prepared, always keep oil in your lamp; or calamities and rumours of calamities are not necessarily the signs, so do not be swayed by those events even though some false prophets may scare you by saying "the Day is coming." It”s like my mother who kept telling me, "Always wear clean underwear. You never know." The message is clear: "Live a normal good life. Then there is no need to worry about the judgment of God or the end of the world. Give your best whatever you do, and always love others and be faithful to God. When the faithful life-style becomes your habit like brushing your teeth, you are ready to meet Christ anytime." This is why the Gospel teaches us to be kind and loving always; to give water to the thirsty and feed the hungry, visit the sick and prisoners, clothe the naked; they are Jesus Christ in disguise.

A problem is, however, our short-sightedness. We want to know the conclusion, soon. This is why we are easy suckers for those pundits who claim to predict the future. We don”t have patience to live in ambiguity and wait. This is why some unwise parents get so upset when their teenage children rebel and become obnoxious, even though we know in theory that teenage rebellion is a normal process of growing up. This is why there is so much "eschatology" among religious people. Eschatology is the whole gamut of talk about future – prediction of an ideal world in the Isaiah 65 or talk of doom and gloom like the end of the world. The first such story in the Bible is the Noah”s Ark. There are a few books like Daniel and Revelation that are almost totally dedicated to eschatology. Jesus spoke about it often, so did the Apostles.

But if you read all these eschatological writings carefully, the message is always the same. If you are faithful to God in your daily life and love your neighbours, there should be no reason to worry. You must live as though you meet Jesus Christ everyday. Everytime you love someone, and especially when you extend your kindness to those who need it, you are being kind to Christ. Difficult or unusual situations must not upset you nor push you into despair. They do not signal the end of the world.

In fact, my personal belief is; Jesus Christ did come back on the day of Pentecost, and He lives among us in Spirit. All of us have a bit of Christ in us. Christ has come back and he lives with us who believe in him. Also I believe that the Kingdom of God is here already. You may think that this world is too corrupt and too rotten to be the Kingdom of God. Remember Jesus said, "Kingdom of God is at hand." It is like a nation becoming a state. You first "declare" the statehood of your nation. You begin the work of building the nation-state after the declaration. Canada was declared a state more than a hundred years ago when the British North America Act was enacted. We still have many problems. But together we are working to build up this country. Canada is here, and yet not complete. So is the Kingdom of God. Heaven is here, and yet not.

Because there are many events to disturb us, you may want to ask, "When do we know for sure that Christ is with us?" It is like asking, "When do I see the proof of your love?" The answer is, "Now or never. If you trust me, the proof is everywhere. But if you don”t have faith in me, you will never know." According to today”s lesson the answer to many disturbing questions is, "We will know now, or never." It all depends on our faith. But I believe that Christ has come back and is with us. Let us work hard to complete the project he has started; to complete building heaven on earth.

HOW CAN THIS BE A SIGN OF HOPE?

– REIGN OF CHRIST SUNDAY –

Jeremiah 23 : 1 – 6 Luke 23 : 33 – 43

The Church Calender helps us to remember important events in our faith. Today is the Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the day to highlight our belief that Jesus Christ is ultimately in charge of the world. Isn”t it strange, however, that today”s scripture reading is the story of the cross on which Christ was being executed; a sure sign that he failed in his mission? It completely betrays the expectation of some Christians that the Christian church eventually will dominate the world in the belief that Jesus Christ is the king of kings. This is because the message of the Gospel is that Christ rules the world but with humility and love, not by power and conquest. Paradoxically his death was the sign of the ultimate victory of love over hatred and self-centredness.

In the last two weeks, we have witnessed the violent deaths of two brave campaigners for justice and peace: Yitzhak Rabin and Ken Saro-Wiwa, an Israeli and a Nigerian, a Jew and a Christian. Rabin was a professional soldier, a General, a war hero turned a peace activist. He successfully fought the British, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Palestinians. He ruled the occupied land of Palestine with an iron fist as Minister of Defence. But in the end, he realized that no matter how much blood was spilt, peace would not come. He realized that security of his people could never be guaranteed with the power of arms, and that violence would cause more violence. Security could only come with peace and reconciliation. So he decided to shake the hands of his arch-enemy to reconcile with him and his people. He became a stubborn peace maker. And ironically, he met a violent death on his way not to a war but to reconciliation . He died not in a battle but for peace.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a successful Nigerian poet and writer. He could have lived in a safe haven like Switzerland to continue his lucrative writing career. But he went back to his people in the Niger River Delta area, and organized a peaceful protest. His people belong to the minority Ogoni tribe whose livelihood was completely destroyed by an oil company which polluted the river and killed the fish stock. The military dictatorship tried him in a kangaroo court, found him guilty of a trumped up charge of murder, and hanged him. He was bad news for the country”s economy, which depended on income from oil exports.

I had a couple of friends who died in the South African prisons in the 1970”s. When I met them during the late sixties, they were students in a university Christian movement; one was studying medicine and the other Social Work. They tried to help their people to acquire self-confidence, by providing credits for small businesses through a credit union. They were arrested for allegedly inciting violence, and were murdered by the Police while in custody. The story of one of them, Steve Biko, became a Hollywood movie a few years ago.

They were not the only ones who paid for their work towards justice and peace, their wives and children lost their loving partners, fathers and a grandfathers. Saro-Wiwa”s family were not allowed even to mourn with their friends. The Nigerian dictator feared political violence by emotional admirers of the dead hero, and prohibited a memorial service in the church. Even a mention of his name is cause for arrest.

When someone becomes a martyr, the family of the martyr suffers just as much if not more. They become living martyrs. When Jesus was crucified most of the disciples ran away. But his mother Mary sat at the bottom of the cross in agony watching her son suffer. Jesus told some of the disciples who remained at the foot of the cross that Mary was now their mother, and asked them to take care of her. Unlike the disciples, Mary had never understood exactly what her son”s mission was all about. A few time, she tried to stop him in his ministry for fear of his safety. Of course, she was right. The pursuit of total love was a dangerous career.

I corresponded for several years with one of the widows of my dead South African friends. Her name was Nohle. She lost her house for lack of income, and became near destitute trying to raise her children. She often wondered why she had to be the one who married someone who would give his life to the people. Her husband”s suffering ended when he died, but Nohle”s suffering has continued.

At the state funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, 16 year old grand-daughter, Noa Ben Artzi, read the most touching piece, more memorable than any other given by the heads of states. "Excuse me," she said, " I do not want to speak a piece, but to speak to my grandfather…. Grandpa, you are the pillar fire in front of the camp, now we just have the camp alone. Dark. and we”re so cold and alone. I know that people are speaking in terms of national tragedy, but how can you comfort a whole nation and involve them in your personal pain when Grandmother cannot stop crying. We feel the incredible open space without you. Very few people really knew you. They can speak about you, but I feel like they really don”t know anything about how deep the pain is… Grandpa you are our hero. I want you to know, that in everything I did, I saw you before my eyes. Your love, appreciation took us with every step, every path and will be a light to us forever. You never abandoned us, but we are abandoning you now. I cannot do anything to help you. People bigger than me already eulogized you, but your caress, your great caress, your warm hug, that was reserved just for us. Your sort of semi-smile, that great smile doesn”t exist anymore. The pain is so great. The ground is slipping out from under our feet and we”re trying to deal with the vacuum."

This is a cry of a young suffering woman who lost a loved one for the sake of peace, which continues. It is like agony of Mary”s excruciating sadness, who lost her son to the salvation of the whole of humanity. Jesus never looked for such suffering, or for such painful death; neither did many other martyrs who followed him. Furthermore, they never intended their loved ones to suffer so much. But the families” agonies were inevitable because of their uncompromising pursuit of justice, love, and peace. Even as he was dying, Jesus forgave those who were responsible for his suffering and death. His pursuit of love continued even on to the cross.

When a just person suffers by the hands of an unjust, iniquity of the unjust is exposed. Like the snow which melts in the sun, evil can not withstand absolute love. When the good are killed for doing good, the iniquity of the power that kills the good becomes clear. As the darkest of the night is the sign of imminent dawn, the suffering of the just is the sign of hope of the end of the dominance of evil and the coming of the Kingdom of God.

When my friend Steve Biko was murdered, that was the last straw that broke American patience. The U.S. Congress immediately passed an arms embargo against South Africa. Iniquity was exposed in the bright light. The end of Apartheid began as the direct result of the death of one 31 year old medical student. Those who loved Steve carried the torch in their suffering as living martyrs. The death of Yitzhak Rabin caused so much anger in the Israeli society, that the movement for peace is now unstoppable. The word for martyr in the original Greek language (marturion) means simply a witness. Some of the witnesses for Christ died for their testimonies, but many continued to live. For every martyr, there are many living martyrs who continue the task of building a just and peaceful world in their grief.

It is a sign that the Kingdom of God is still incomplete, when the good people suffer and die for doing good. However, it is a sure sign of heaven on earth and the presence of Christ that there are brave lovers of humanity who never stop loving, even if it costs them their lives. The victory of love is achieved not just through the deaths but though the living cloud of witnesses that remembered them. The death of Jesus Christ is a sign of hope, because it means the victory of love.

November 26, 1995

Tad Mitsui

Howick, Quebec

A GLORIOUS MISUNDERSTANDING

Isaiah 50:4-9, Psalm 31, Matthew 21:1-11

March 28, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

It was fun watching the Academy Awards last Sunday night. I was happy for those people who received the awards. To a large extent, I thought they deserved the honour. But I felt bad for those people who were nominated and, in my opinion, deserved them, just as much as those who won, but didn”t. Commentators keep saying that it is an honour to be nominated as much as receiving awards. They say that to think winning is everything is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Academy Awards. But the fact is that it is all about receiving awards. So those equally deserving excellent artists, who don”t win those silly statues, think that they are losers. It is a cruel fact of life that such a misunderstanding makes losers out of those talented people who have made tremendous achievements.

Palm Sunday is also about misunderstanding. Thousands of people cheered Jesus, as he entered a gate of Jerusalem, because they thought Jesus was somebody else. He made it clear who he was by riding a donkey. But they didn”t see the point, because they didn”t want to see it. If he was a king, as people had expected the Messiah to be, he would have been on a chariot, or at least on a horse like a general. It was like riding a beat-up old rusty pick up truck, instead of a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. But it didn”t matter. Once people misunderstand something, they don”t see contradictions in details, and they don”t realize what a big mistake they are making. It was a misunderstanding. They believed that the Messiah would be a powerful king, like the one they remembered – like the King David. They thought that, with a mighty army, the king would lead them into a victory over the Roman Empire and re-establish a powerful Jewish Kingdom. It was a glorious misunderstanding.

So when they discovered that Jesus was not such a king, their expectation turned to anger. The same crowd who had cheered him in the beginning of the week, turned into a crowd who cried "Crucify him! Kill him." They decided that Jesus betrayed them. They didn”t think that it was their misunderstanding. Jesus made it quite clear about his mission. He was riding a donkey – an animal that carried the kind of stuff we load our pick up truck with. It”s low, so is easy to load and unload. So a pregnant woman rode it when she was too big and heavy to walk. Children rode the donkey too. It was not an animal of prestige. It was not good looking but it was tough. You don”t park a pick-up with a load of hay in front of the Ritz Carlton Hotel nor drive it to a state dinner at the Rideau Hall. Jesus wanted to demonstrate that the real Messiah was humble, was like any ordinary person. He wanted to show that such humility was a sign of God”s love. God does not seek glory. That”s why Jesus chose a donkey to ride into Jerusalem.

What a misunderstanding! The disciples enjoyed their master”s popularity as people cheered him. They just loved it. That meant they didn”t understand Jesus either. They thought that their leader was finally recognized and going to be declared a king. He would rule the whole country. No more wandering around country side like a band of outcasts, no more being thrown out of town; no more eating whatever was offered like beggars. The disciples expected that people would admire them: They would wear fine clothes and live in luxury. They completely misunderstood Jesus. This is why they ran away when Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified. That was the time when Jesus needed the show of love and faithfulness more than any other time from his disciples. They did not understand that the purpose of the ministry of Jesus was to demonstrate humility and the love of God. They had in mind majesty and power, fame and popularity. They were pole apart from the path of humility, love, and sacrifice on which Jesus was treading. They just didn”t understand.

We suffer from the similar misunderstanding today. Our misunderstanding is called Christendom. It was a misunderstanding from the fourth century. It was a glorious experience. The church enjoyed it enormously just like the disciples did when Jesus was welcomed with cheers by people. In Christendom, everybody went to church. Remember those days? The church was powerful and wealthy. Many fine buildings were dedicated for the work of the church. The church leaders were respected and feared. They were powerful. Those were the good old days. Many of us still remember those days and are nostalgic about them.

Christendom began during the fourth century when the Roman Empire made Christianity an official state religion. The church dominated Europe for sixteen centuries, expanding its influence sometimes even by force. It did a lot of good work, for sure. The church spread the spirit of love around the globe. But expansion and increasing its power still was a more important goal than creation of the caring community. Consequently the church caused many conflicts and deaths as it tried to expand. Such conflicts still continue in some parts of the world. In many ways, the current conflict in Balkans stem from the old religious rivalries. The church misunderstood its mission just like the disciples did Christ”s mission at the gate of Jerusalem.

The church is going through a difficult period of time. But I am not disappointed. We are going through the same experience as the disciples did when they watched their master crucified. But let us not run away like the disciples did. We know that the mission of the church is the same as Christ”s mission; that is to love and to be humble for the sake of love. Let us not misunderstand our mission ever again. Our mission is not to be big and wealthy. It is not to become influential and powerful. Our mission is to be humble, riding on a donkey, in order to love others as we love ourselves.

WHAT COUNTS MOST IN YOUR LIFE?

Joel 2:23-32, Psalm 65, 2 Timothy 4:6-8

October 25, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

I once had a board game called, "Careers". To begin the game, everybody is asked to write out their life”s goals by allocating a fixed number of points into four categories according to your values. The categories are: money, fame, power, and happiness. The purpose of the game is to reach your goals as quickly as possible, by travelling around the board and accumulating the number of points you”ve specified in each category.

The assumption of the game is that you have to make choices in life. If money is the most important, you will have to sacrifice happiness. But to be truly happy, you have to give up fame, power, and wealth. For example, if you want power and want to be Prime Minister or an MP, you will have no time to go fly-fishing with your son, thus costing your happiness. Or if you want to climb Mt. Everest and to become famous, you will have to spend a lot of money for equipment, and you will have to be away from your family a lot of time, making you less happy and less rich. Your wife may leave you saying things like, "Marry the bloody mountain." And so on. This game makes you realize that you have to set priorities in your life. Some people think that they can have everything they want if they try very hard. But we know that life is not like that. We have to know what is the most important in life, and we have to make choices.

A story has it that a young missionary went to Africa with a conviction that he could help Africans to have abundant life. On his first day in Africa, as he walked about the village, he ran into a young man having a snooze in the nice cool shade of a tree. So he stopped to talk to him. "Good morning! What are you doing?" The young man half opened his eyes and said, "What do you think I”m doing? Can”t you see." The missionary looked annoyed. "But it is a middle of the day. It”s too early to take a nap. Don”t you work?" "Work? What for?" The young man looked truly puzzled. "Well," said the missionary, "If you work, you can earn money." "Money? What”s that for?" "Now is the chance to win a convert.", the missionary thought. So he patiently preached a short sermon according to his idea of European Christian values. "If you have money, you can live in a nice house, eat good food, marry a pretty wife. Then, you can relax, be happy, and can think of higher things." "But", said the sleepy young man now truly puzzled, "I”m relaxing and happy now. I was dreaming about higher things before you rudely woke me up. Why should I get up and work?" It”s all the matter of priorities, isn”t it?

When Paul was writing the letter to Timothy, he was in a prison, knowing that he would never be free, and that he would soon die a horrible death. Unlike Paul”s other combative or theoretical writings, the tone of the chapter four of the second letter of Paul to Timothy is calm and reflective. He was old and weak, I guess, and knew that the end of his life was near. He sounds content even though he lived in the terrible conditions and with a gloomy prospect. I think that this is because he knew that he was in possession of what was the most important in his life – which is why I think that he was a contented man when he died.

Every one wants to live a long and healthy life. But the fact of the matter is that we all have to die sometime. There is justice in death, because it treats everyone equally. The idea of one”s own death helps you realize the importance of knowing what counts most in your life. Paul knew that he was going to die soon when he said, "I ran a good race; I had good fights; and I kept the faith. I am ready to go. My life has been poured out as libation. The crown of righteousness is waiting for me.". He knew he won the gold medal. Paul was content as he faced the end of his life.

I am fascinated by the word, "libation" in this passage. It means a cup of wine poured out for God. At a social occasion, when we take the first glass of drink, we raise it and say, "Cheers", "To your health", or "To the bride" or "to the Queen." This custom comes from the idea of libation. We celebrate the occasion of being together by offering the first cup to God wishing that God will grant health and happiness, etc. However, some translations used the word "sacrifice" even though the original Greek word means "libation". But I prefer libation. Paul considered his life a success, because his life was libation – an instrument of celebration shared between God and people. He knew what was the most important in his life – his relationship with God through Christ. He was convinced that nobody and nothing, even death, could take that away from him.

Dr. Bill Taylor was the Principal of the Theological College in Vancouver where I studied. He was a respected scholar, a good administrator, a successful fund-raiser, and a builder of many new college buildings. He received many degrees and honours. His achievements are still evident on the campus of the University of British Columbia. But I remember him most of all as a gentle and kind person. He died last August at the age of 92. Jim Taylor, Bill”s son and a well-known and much loved writer in our church, recalled the last days he spent with his father in his hospital room on a recent CBC radio program. At the end, Dr. Taylor declined all the extraordinary measures to prolong his life. As Jim kept watch at his father”s death bed, father and son had the most profound conversations of their life together. "Achievements, degrees, honours, and money all faded into insignificance as we faced the imminent death of my father." said Jim, "What counted more than anything else in the whole universe at such a moment was relationships." It was the assurance of love between father and son that made them content. They were absolutely sure that the relationship would continue beyond this life. They were absolutely sure that God granted Bill Taylor eternal life because of the quality of his relationships with people and his God.

Happiness is knowing what counts most in your life, and is something that even death can not destroy. Next Sunday is All Saints Day. It is the day to celebrate the communion of the living and the dead and the continuing relationships between them that nurture and sustain through memory. That”s the idea of All Saints Day and the reason that the night before is "Hallowe”en". Let us not put our hopes in the things that pass away. But let us keep our eyes on what is most important. Like Paul, let us be libation for God and people, an instrument to celebrate relationships. If you know what counts more than anything else in your life and live fully in accordance, death itself will fade into insignificance.

GOD, FOOD, AND US

Exodus 16, Psalm 105, Matthew 20:1-16

September 19, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

In God”s world, there is always food for everyone. The story of manna and quails in the desert teaches us this important truth. If we have faith in God and follow his commandments, none of us will have to starve. It wasn”t easy for the Hebrew people to learn a new way of living in the desert. They could not grow food or raise animals, as they used to do in Egypt. They had to find different kinds of food. They found manna and quails on the ground. Tamarisk trees secret sap, which become wafers like sweet cream puffs in the morning. The Hebrews called them manna. Greedy people did not profit by gathering more than they needed because manna went bad next day. You can still collect them in Sinai desert today. The quails migrate between Africa and Asia. Many of the weak birds do not complete the whole journey and fall to the ground in the desert exhausted. They provided meat. But all these foods were new to the Hebrew people. They still remembered sweet smell and taste of meat stew they used to enjoy in Egypt. It was not easy to change eating habits, as it is for us. But the message of the story is clear. God always provides.

One day in March, 1985, I was visiting a feeding camp near a place called Makele in Northern Ethiopia. Some of you remember that during the early eighties, many Africans were starving. Crops had failed completely for several years after consecutive drought. In Ethiopia alone, it is estimated that about one million people starved to death. I was working for the World Council of Church as Coordinator of Famine Relief at the time. There was no problem raising money and collecting donated food for relief. When people saw starving people on the TV, they responded generously. We targetted $100 million. But we collected $600 million in cash and gifts in kind at the end of my mandate. Surplus food was plentiful in the world, so the governments gave us grains by the millions of tons. A part of my job was to make sure that the relief went to hungry people. So I travelled extensively in 23 drought affected African countries.

Makele was the first place I visited in Ethiopia. What I saw was absolutely disturbing. People looked like skeletons, and were hardly able to even sit up. They were looking into void with wide eyes that looked like dark empty holes. Overworked relief workers, nurses, and doctors were doing their best. Bodies were wrapped in sheets and being carried to mass graves. After the tour of the camps, the grateful officials invited us to a lunch at the hotel in the city of Makele. It was a wonderful Italian dinner. I must confess; I enjoyed it. I was hungry. Looking back, it now seems to me to be almost obscene to eat such a good diner in the midst of absolute misery. But at the time, my hunger pang took better of me.

Then I came to realize one basic fact about hunger, the fact which now seems so obvious, but at the time escaped me. Hunger is not caused by shortage of food, but it is caused by poverty. People starve because they are poor. There is no such thing as shortage of food in the world. Food is plentiful in the world, especially today. In fact, there is so much food today that cheap food is becoming a serious problem for farmers. The reason why people starve is because they do not have access to food. They are poor. So, they can not afford to buy it or grow it. If you have money, you can always buy food or grow it, and eat it. Farmers can grow food, if they have access to credit. If anything, the real problem today is that there is too much cheap food in the world, and people eat too much. In our society, more people die because of health problems caused by over consumption of rich food. But in poor countries, people die because of malnutrition and starvation.

In fact, irony is that Ethiopia increased the volume of the export of agricultural products to Europe, while their own people starved. Export of beef, coffee, oranges, and sugar from Ethiopia, in fact, increased during the 1980”s. The producers of those cash crops received all kinds of subsidies from the government, because it needed foreign currency, and Europe welcomed cheap food. With generous subsidies, an abnormal climate like drought was not a serious problem. Money can solve many problems created by nature. When farmers are looked after, they will produce food.

Nobody should starve in God”s world, if we behave as we should according to God”s commandments, because there is always enough food. We can always buy or produce food in the world which God created and entrusted us with. The important question is what do you do with what God has given us. Jesus said, "No one lives by bread alone, but by the word of God." In other words, according to Jesus, the word of God is as important as food is for our survival. A recent "Maclean”s" magazine reported a result of a survey done among 4,000 senior citizens, which was conducted over six years period in North Carolina among poeple of 63 years of age and over. It found that 46% more people died among those who didn”t go to church reglarly. The survey concluded that not only regular church goers lived healthy life style, but more importantly also, they lived in a caring community where they cared for and supported each other. We lived by bread and by the word of God.

When we live by the word of God, we will create a society where we love and care for each other. In such a society a wide gap between rich and poor is not tolerated too long. Likewise, the same spirit helps us to live a productive life. You know how productive food producers can be, when a caring government gives credit to farmers. But if you don”t trust God and don”t observe his words, there will be hunger in the midst of plenty. Then, rich people die of over-eating and poor people suffer because they have little to eat. Remember. God always provides. Let us care for each other. We are all invited to the banquet of God. It is a fabulous spread of love and plenty.

WE CAN”T CRAM FOR ENTRANCE INTO HEAVEN

Ezekiel 34:11-19, Psalm 100, Matthew 25:31-46

November 24, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

I don”t want to be a teenager again. It is because I still have nightmares about exams. You must remember those frantic sleepless nights before examinations? Cramming, cramming without understanding what was going into the brain. It was like swallowing marbles which could never be digested. I always knew that there was a better way to prepare for exams. I knew that studying everyday little by little would make preparation a lot easier. Then the night before would be a simple process of organizing what is already in one”s brain. That should be a lot easier than cramming hundreds of pages in one night. I had known this, but I was too busy doing other things. So this fool suffered before every exam.

It is like that in the kingdom of God. If you have to cram to meet God, it is usually too late. The way to heaven is to be an ordinary good person everyday. It is like prayer. If you don”t have a habit of praying every now and then, you don”t know how to pray when you really need it. It is also like going to church. It feels natural to go to church, if you go regularly. But if you have never been to church, you need courage to go even near the place. It is like a foot path in a bush. If it is well trodden, it is easy to find it. But it is not used, soon undergrowth will cover it all up. Today”s Gospel selection is teaching us the importance of being everyday kind of a good person. It tells us that you can not cram for entrance into heaven. Doing good deeds have to become a routine of your life.

In the early church, where these parables were first told, many people were expecting an imminent second coming of Jesus. Atmosphere was highly charged with expectations. In fact, they became fanatics doing many strange things. They believed that Jesus would return very soon. They believed that on that day of coming those who would be saved would be separated from those who would be damned. So many of them believed that their normal lives were no longer important. Some of them stopped working. Some others stopped paying taxes. They got so excited and stopped following a normal pattern of life.

This is why the leaders of the church tried very hard to tell people that the heaven, the kingdom of God, the final judgement day, the second coming of Jesus Christ, or whatever the way it was described, was not distinct from a normal life of a good person. In fact, it would be an everyday life of an ordinary good person that would be celebrated on that day. For one thing, no human could tell when such a special day would come. Paul said that the day would come unexpectedly like a thief at night. So the Apostles told people to be prepared for it all the time. They told the Christians, to live a normal life as a good person everyday. The life of a Christian should be like a walking with Jesus everyday. In fact, according to this way of thinking, everyday is the day of coming, and every person you meet is Jesus Christ.

The leaders of the church also tried to tell people that for God time was very different from ours. Psalm spoke about God”s time, "a thousand years, for God, is like yesterday, like a flash of a second." You can not guess God”s timing, because it has a different scale from ours. As a story goes, a greedy man was trying to make a deal with God. He asked God, "Is it true that for you one second is like our thousand years?" God said, "Yes, that is true." "Does that mean," he continued, "a million dollars for us is like a penny for you?" God said, "I suppose you could say that." Now he is so excited, "Will you spare me a penny?" God replied, "Why, sure, no problem. Wait a second." If we try to second guess God”s timing, we are in for disappointment. Basically we don”t know God”s time; we don”t know the day of coming. And we won”t know who Jesus is, how he looks like, even if he is with us face to face. So the Bible teaches us that we must live as though everyday is like the final judgement day, and treat everybody as though the person is the Lord Jesus himself.

On the judgement day, Jesus said, anybody who was kind to anybody else, even to criminals will be remembered. Jesus was a criminal also, if you remember how he died. In fact, Jesus was telling us to be an ordinary good person doing normal decent things to anyone whose path we cross. It is normal for any of us to give a cup of water, when we see anyone thirsty. It is normal for us to visit a sick person. There is no big deal. But that”s the moment and the place where we meet God. The other side of the coin is; if we wait for some special moment, neglecting ordinary good deeds, you are neglecting God. Everyday is the day of coming, and every person you meet is Christ.

In the parable of Good Samaritan, there were two persons who did not help a desperately wounded person, and passed him by. One was a priest and the other was a Levite. Priest was a person designated to conduct worship services in the Temple. A Levite belonged to a special class designated to attend the business of the Temple, sort of like our Stewards. They were both the especially chosen people to serve God. They must have had good reasons not to bother with a wounded man on the way from Jericoh. They had more important things to do than wasting time to save a wretched man. They had to serve God. They had to get to a meeting of Stewards. But Jesus said, no, they were wrong. To serve God is to be kind to a person in need who happens to run into to you.

A society that depends on people to be good only on some special day could not function too well. A special day must be a day to highlight or to celebrate our daily life. Mother”s Day is not the only day to be good to mothers. If we don”t think about our mothers after Mother”s Day the rest of the time, we are in a big trouble. If you love your child only on his or her birthday, you have a dysfunctional family. Christmas is not the only time to remember Christ. It is the day to celebrate everyday Christ.

I don”t think that God is asking us to be extraordinary. To give someone a cup of water or to give some clothes, to visit a sick person; those are not particularly heroic deeds that require a exceptional courage. They are normal things which any ordinary person would do. You may not have visited people in prisons, but you have visited lonely persons or troubled people. Those are ordinary good deeds for ordinary people.

God meets us in the ordinary. God is in everybody we meet. But if you make ordinary good deeds a routine of your life, you are already in the kingdom. You don”t need any special day, or any heroic deeds to meet God. If doing good and kindly deeds is your daily routine, you may be in a big surprise to find how brave and heroic, godly and saintly you can be without any special effort. If you walk with Jesus everyday, Christ-like nature will become your second personality.

"VISION OF KINGDOM" – CHILDREN DO NOT DIE.

Isaiah 65:17 – 25 1.

One excruciatingly hot summer day in Africa, an old man was sitting by the road looking tired or even sickly. A young Missionary had to stop the car and offered him a ride. But he declined the offer and said, "I walked a long way today. It was time to sit down and let my spirit catch up with me." Now we ask ourselves, when was the last time we got out of our car and waited for our spirit to catch up with us? Things are moving very fast now-a-days. We move an average of 50 km an hour in town, and 100 km on highways. When we fly we move with a speed of sound. Our spirit moves with a speed of 5 km an hour. We might be moving very fast but without getting anywhere, like a chicken with its head cut off. Spirit is the one who knows where we are going, not our body. When we don”t have a head, any speed might be dangerous. 2. Legend has it that Ancient king of Egypt, Thamus, often entertained himself by inviting god of invention, Theuth, and by watching the demonstration of his latest ideas. He invented Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, etc. But now he came up with the idea of letters, a writing system. No longer anyone needed to repeat oneself umpteen times to memorize some important events and sayings of the day. The next generations would know the wisdom of the ancestors from papers not from people. Wise king thought about it for a long time, but decided that he did not like the idea. He said, "Our brain will atrophy for not having to remember anything in future, because the letters will remember for you. The worst of all, we will degenerate into a state of some lower life form. We no longer have to talk with our sons and daughters telling them the important things that happened in our lives. There will be no time for families, and without time spent with families, we will be the same as some less intelligent animals. We will eventually perish as human beings." 3. This important lesson from Egypt is that new things are not automatically good unless we know what it is that these new things are good for and are not good for. One big problem we have today is that people believe whatever faster, bigger, newer, or lauder is automatically better. Once we stop to think about it, we know it isn”t always better. How come, then, we spend so much energy, money, and time to get often useless things without thinking what they are good for? 4. This is a question of values. The bigger is not necessarily the better, for example, unless we know why it is better because it is bigger. We have to have a goal to judge the values of things that are bigger, better, or newer. What, then, are our goal and values as Christians? 5. Our goal is to build the Kingdom of God here and now. We know that our values come from Love. So let us think about those. 6. The notion of the Kingdom of God is known in our Bible in many different ways: Heaven, Kingdom of Heaven, New Heavens and New Earth, New Jerusalem, etc. There are many different expressions, but they all mean the same thing. It is the world where God rules. Jesus Christ declared its coming. It is already here. The problem is, it is still in a process of completion. God expects us to join in the job of establishing the reign of God in this world. 7. How then should the Kingdom of God look like? Among many descriptions of the Kingdom of God in the Bible, I like the one found in the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 65 very much. It says that in new heavens and a new earth: 1) Children shall not die. 2) Old people live out their lives and die in dignity. 3) People build their houses and live in them. They shall not build and another inhabit. No one will take their houses away. 4) People eat fruits of their labour. They shall not plant and another eat. In other words, everyone will have work and can live on it. So our goal is to help build up the Kingdom of God, which will look like that. 8. What then are the values that create and uphold such a world? The force that gives us strength to work for the Kingdom of God is Love. When we have love, it is easier for us to see that the world must be the kind of place where the strong and the weak live together without harming each other. It is love for each other that allows lions and sheep to live in the same cave and share the same food. The strong will give way to the weak, so that all should survive. There will be no superior nor inferior, there is only difference. The law of nature ”survival of the fittest”, does not have to be the guiding principle any longer. Our ethics, philosophy, and religions do not accept the current practice of our society, which is based on competition. We doubt that only the biggest and the strongest should win the competition and survive. We can and want to let the weakest survive, because we love them. We want to live and stay with all creatures as loving brothers and sisters. We don”t condone the act of exterminating deformed and feeble-minded anymore, which was attempted many times in human history, as in Nazi Germany. We believe in the god who does not allow even a sparrow to fall. Those species which cannot compete do not have to, and must not become extinct. 9. All this sounds wonderful, but you will soon realize that I am speaking about what is an impossible dream. It looks impossible, because our society runs on the principle of competition:survival of the fittest. What deem to be weak and inferior are not allowed to remain on the scene. Most of us believe that we advance and progress because of competition. Without winning in the competitions, we will atrophy and perish, like dinosaurs did, who were presumably weaker than the elements that killed them. We believe that we will survive, because we are stronger than elements. We can beat the floods, earthquakes, and tidal waves, and wild beasts. We can beat the nature. We will outlive the nature. You can now easily see the problem in this kind of argument. We see others as competitors, rivals, enemies. And we don”t we our own destruction, if other creatures are destroyed. 10. Another problem with this argument is: we never stopped to ask, "What for the progress?" We really don”t know whether all this progress is good for us, especially if we have to look at others as enemies, or competitors at best. Competitions must produce losers, because without losers there is no winner. That is not good for those who did not make it in the society and become homeless, unemployed, or commit suicide. Secondly, all this rapid progress may not have any direction, and may be leading all of us to ultimate destruction. Destruction of our mother earth in the name of progress, balding mountains, dirty lakes and rivers may be telling us that we don”t know where we are going, and that it is time for us to stop to think where our spirit is. We must realize that if we don”t know where our spirit is, we are in a big trouble. There is nothing to tell us the direction of life.

LIFE AFTER THE APPLE

Genesis 2:15-17, Psalm 32, Matthew 4:1-11

February 21, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

I was so glad that at last Americans are ready to move from sex onto other important issues.* I am sure I”m not the only one who feels relieved. The fact that this scandal drew so much attention shows that sex is an obsession in our society. That”s why sex sells. It is a lure of a forbidden fruit. Sex is a wonderful gift from God, but we are ashamed of it. Without it, human race will become extinct, and yet we are inhibited to speak about it publicly. So we are condemned to enjoy it behind the thick curtain of hypocrisy.

You can blame Adam and Eve and an apple for this double standard. But before going into the meaning of the story, there is one problem we need to settle once and for all. The question is: Did the Biblical stories like the Garden of Eden happen exactly as they were written, or were they made up? Personally, I think it matters very little whether it is a fact or a story somebody wrote. The important question is, why our ancestors chose to record it to tell us about God. What is the meaning of the particular event or of the story? That”s the question we should ask.

What then is the point of the story of Adam and Eve? For many centuries, Christians have been led to believe that Adam and Eve ate an apple against God”s command, and sex appeared as the result of disobedience. Therefore sex has become some thing to be ashamed of. After this, all humans are sinful by nature at conception, because no one is born without sex. This is why some people still believe that the baby who dies without baptism will not go to heaven. This notion is called Original Sin. We must realize, however, that this interpretation came from one man who lived in North Africa. His name was Augustine.

I don”t doubt that Augustine was a sincere Christian. He was born a very rich man in the city of Hippo in Carthage – today”s Tunisia. He was a play boy as a young man, had many mistresses, and had done almost everything sinful. When he was converted to Christianity, he had a serious problem dealing with his past. He had gone through a long period of time tormented by guilt. He wrote a thick book called "Confession" describing his sordid life before he became a Christian. Because of his deep sense of guilt, he became convinced that sin was imbedded deeply in human nature and sexual desire was its most obvious expression; only the sacrifice by the Son of God could redeem humans from sin. No doubt Augustine was sincere about his conclusion. Nevertheless, I must point out that it was one man”s interpretation of the Bible passage.

If you read the accounts of the Book of Genesis without any preconceived idea, you will find many aspect of the story do not quite fit with Augustine”s interpretation. For example, when God created the world including humans, he looked at his work and saw that it was good. He blessed all and said, "Be fruitful and multiply." The Bible was speaking about Original Blessing not sin. How can sex be the result of an evil act of disobedience, if God wanted us to be fruitful and multiply? Why could the fruit that gives wisdom to know good and evil be something to be forbidden? Did God want us to remain children? There are many other questions which don”t fit neatly with Augustine”s notion of Original Sin.

Without denying Augustine his right to interpret the story of Adam and Eve to make sense out of his journey of faith, we should look at the story with fresh eyes to find what it means to us today. One advantage many of us have over Augustine is the fact that we are parents and watched our children grow up. He never had. I suggest that we read today”s Genesis story, from the perspective of a parent watching a person growing up from childhood to adulthood.

Like young children, Adam was free and innocent in the beginning. He could do anything as he pleased and did not have to pay for what he took. Likewise, young children are allowed to do anything freely without taking any responsibility for their action. In those days, however, God told Adam not to go near the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Likewise, it would be unwise to let children exercise their discretion, because they can not be responsible. This is why parents must put restrictions on what a child can watch on the TV, and on how old a child should be before he can drive a car or sign a mortgage. That”s called responsible parenthood. Also young children are not shy to run around naked. But once a boy begins to feel lonely and a need for a companionship of opposite sex, he is ready for clothes, and other privileges and responsibilities. So, God provided a life companion, Eve. Adam was so happy, just like a teenage boy who fell in love for the first time.

But when he fell in love, he also had to face all sorts of risks. First, a snake appeared, and his sexuality was awakened. A snake has always been a symbol of male sexuality. But sexual awareness has to come with wisdom – a fruit that had so far been denied. As the young people grow up, they would want a right to use their own discretion, and for that they need wisdom. So they ate the apple. Incidentally, reference to "apple" is not mentioned in the Bible. In Genesis, it simply says, "the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". Now that Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were ready to enter the adult world. No privilege comes without risks and responsibility. They had to work with sweat and blood to earn the living, and have to go through anxiety and pain of childbirth. God warned them about hazard of the real world. God sounds like a worried parent whose grown child was ready to leave home. But you must notice also that the God of Genesis is the God who takes a walk in the garden when cool breeze ended heat of the day. God is described like a human, like any parent.

I believe that the message of the story of Adam and Eve is this: "Life is good and beautiful, but it is also full of hard work and pain. You are fully responsible for your life, and for that the knowledge of good and evil is essential." But, of course, this is only one of many interpretations, as much as Augustine is another one. For the fact that much of the Bible is written in the forms of stories, parables, and poems without giving away definitive interpretations, I believe that God is allowing each one of us to read the Bible in the way meaningful to us so long as we are absolutely sincere in that belief, and are humble and respectful of other people”s views which may be different from ours. That is why the Bible is so rich. Thanks be to God.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS ARE OFTEN FREE

Isaiah 55:1-9, Psalm 63, Luke 13:1-5

March 15, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

We often consider cash as a measure for value; and this is a serious spiritual problem. Often we don”t know what real value means, and treat ourselves and each other poorly. Lord Beaverbrook, one of the richest men Canada has ever produced, was quoted as saying, "Everybody has a price… I would even go to hell if the price is right." A comedian, Jackie Mason, had a similar line about patriotism. It goes something like this: "I love America. I would give up anything for America. I would give up even my wife for America. But money? No! That”s different." We too often measure the value of things by looking at the price tags, and forget what is truly valuable does not cost money. This is why we call what is truly preciously "priceless", because we can not buy it.

Lent is the season to repent. The colour purple in the church is the symbol of repentance. To repent means not just to say sorry for what we did wrong, but also to change our mind and make a u-turn. Today”s scriptures suggest that we change our attitude and to start seeing the real value in what is freely available but priceless. Then, we will see what is truly important in our life is spiritual and free. We will understand the meaning of Isaiah”s words, "Those who thirst, come to the water. Those who are hungry, come to the food without money. Why spend money for things that are worthless. Why labour for things that do not satisfy. Come to me, says God."

Think about what you miss when you are way from home for a period. You miss people and things you have at home for free. You miss the baby who keeps you awake at night, and the kids who never stop to demand your attention and your time. You miss your wife who knows you a little bit too well. You miss your home and those messy rooms where you know exactly where things are. You feel comfortable when you are surrounded by those who love you and with things that are familiar to you. I attended many international meetings held in luxury hotels, with swimming pools, and good food, all paid for by somebody else. But always within a few days, I became homesick missing my family, my messy house and the home cooked meals.

They are the most important items in your life. And they don”t have any price tags attached to them. Also those freely available items in our lives are essential. Our life will be seriously in danger, if we do not know the affection and care that people give us freely in our homes and our communities. I was listening to the report on the sexual exploitation of children last week. Most of those children who end up on the streets, come from dysfunctional homes where they did not receive affection nor attention. Instead, they often received abuse and rejection, and their emotional growth had stopped. They are like a baby crying out for any kind of attention, even though they have the bodies of adolescents. We do not survive very long physically, if we do not receive affection.

A lack of emotional care affects us not only spiritually but physically; even animals can not survive very long without daily dose of attention. There was a well known experiment with mice. Two groups of mice lived under exactly the same conditions; same food, same environment, etc. But each mouse in one group received a head to toe rub everyday, and the others didn”t. The effects were quite definite. Those who received daily attention grew fatter and healthy looking, and lived longer. The others, though they were just as well fed and well provided for physically as the other group, but without daily rub they were less healthy and died earlier. A constant assurance of love is as essential to us as food and water.

It is well known fact that if we are emotionally secure in the knowledge that we are accepted and loved, we can stand up to difficult conditions longer than those who feel insecure. Misfortunes and tragedies hit all of us from time to time. Those who feel secure can take them as challenges, fight back, and survive them. But those who feel alone in the world because of experiences of rejection in the past, take such difficulty as a punishment. They end up bitter and often resort to self-destructive behaviours. What love gives does not cost any money. But it is far more valuable and long lasting than what money can buy.

Money represents only a part of us. Giving money is an manageable sacrifice. We can even pretend to be a good person by giving up a certain amount of money we can afford to throw away. We will look good, even though we are mean spirited inside. But in reality we can not get away with it. We must realize that the most important things in our lives, although they have no monetary value, are also very costly. It is because love demands a total commitment. There is no such thing as a partial commitment. It is just like there is no such thing as half pregnant; a commitment is always total. Therefore you can not buy love with money. Money can actually makes it cheap, and there is no such thing as cheap love. Love is always priceless. If you can buy it, it is not love; it is travesty of love, like prostitution. Love is priceless. It is so costly that it takes only a total commitment, but not in terms of money.

Loving God is a total commitment. We love God by loving our neighbours. To love God and to love people are one and the same thing. It is just like the Apostle John said in his letters, "If someone says that he loves God and does not love people, he is a liar." There are many ways to love. You can love people with money, too, if it is a genuine expression of what is inside of you. But if there is no love inside, money can be an indication of deceit.

When I was working in Africa, sometimes I saw people stuffing the coffins of their deceased family members with the receipts for the giving to the church. I appreciated their desperate attempts to make sure that their loved ones went to heaven. But money could not buy entry into heaven. Salvation is given freely. Christ sacrificed his life on the cross without demanding any payment from us. He did that because he loved us. So it was free; there was no precondition nor advance payment required. All we need to do is to accept his love and love him in return. Just like Isaiah suggested, "Come and drink the water and eat the food without money." Jesus is inviting us to come to a banquet. His table is always overloaded, the cups run over, the flour and oil never diminish, milk and honey are plentiful. You don”t need to pay, as his banquet is always free. What is it required of us, then? Nothing. Just love him. Then we will know how to love our neighbours. It is a total commitment to love. But it is a happiest commitment, because love is a great joy as we all know.

Jeremiah 29: 1, 4 – 9

Psalm 46(#30 Romans 13 : 1 – 13

Today is a day before the referendum, and two weeks before the Remembrance day. So I am departing from the prescribed lectionary to speak about what the Bible says about the country and the government.

When the mighty Babylonian Empire defeated the Kingdom of Israel, it tried to destroy the spirit of the vanquished nation. The Babylonians expelled all the elite of Israel. The educated people and the community leaders were forced to migrate to Babylon. In other words, the Hebrew exiles were forced to live among the enemies who had defeated and humiliated them. Similar incidents of forced migration by orders or by circumstance happened many times in human history. It happened to Acadians, Irish, Scots, Japanese Canadians, etc. What would you do, if you were forced to live under such circumstances? Sabotage the society of your defeaters and create chaos; or resign yourself to the fate imposed upon you and sulk?

What God said to the Israelites in such a situation is somewhat surprising. Contrary to the normal human reaction to fight back immediately and seek revenge or to quietly bottle up one”s hatred and seek revenge later, God through Jeremiah advised the exiled Israelites to build houses in the hostile foreign land and settle down. Furthermore God said to marry local boys and girls, make many children, cultivate the land, grow food and be happy. Most surprisingly, he commanded the exiles to seek the welfare of the host nation. God eventually brought his people back to Palestine. But at the time, Jeremiah did not mention any such promise.

This advice established the attitude that God”s chosen people should have towards the secular state. We, Christians, really do not belong to any earthly country, but must seek the welfare of the nation and be happy until the coming of the kingdom of God.

The relationship between God and the state in the Bible has always been tenuous. Sometimes God told his people to seek the welfare of the nation, even when it was a hostile nation like Babylon. At other times, God could be very harsh on the kings and governments not only of a hostile nation like Egypt, but also on those of his own chosen people the Israelites. During the early Christian era, the tenuous nature of the relationship between the divine authority and the earthly power continued. Paul in his letter to the Romans told the Christians in Rome to obey the pagan Roman authorities, while John in his enigmatic book called the Revelation described the Roman authorities as an ugly blasphemous demonic beast.

The book of Samuel recorded the situations during the time when the nation of Israel installed a king for the first time. It is an interesting story which traces back this love/hate relationship between God and the human authorities. For the first thousand years after Abraham founded the Hebrew nation, they had lived under theocracy: the direct rule of God through prophets and priests. It was the prophets, as the interpreters of God”s will, who appointed the judges and the military rulers, and conducted the business of the nation. Even today a country like Iran is run under such a system of theocracy.

It was only when they were repeatedly defeated by the Philistines, the Israelites realized they needed a much more centralized and secular authority to cope with war situations, which required quick decisions and actions. They decided that a prophet could not run a war. So people asked the prophet Samuel to give them a king with sovereign power over secular institutions, just like other nations. They believed that to have such a king, who would make decisions on the day to day running of the country, would be more efficient. Especially at the time of war, there would be a better chance of winning with such efficient government. Samuel did not like the idea. He thought that his authority as a prophet would be diminished by the king. But God said to Samuel, "No, that is not the case. They did not reject you. They became impatient with God. They want earthly success instead of having to wait for divine revelations. So you give them a king, but with a stern warning that such human authorities must strictly follow divine guidance."

So they got the king Saul. But the tug of war between divine authority and earthly power began from that moment in our religious tradition, because often the kings and governments did not want the interference of religious people. The history of the Judeo-Christian traditions has always been a struggle between the state, which often tried to assume all the power, and the people who believed that they had rights to check the power of the earthly authorities according to the will of God. So even when Paul urged Christians to obey the Roman authorities, he did it with the proviso that the human authorities were the servants of God. He in fact said that ultimately, "Owe nobody anything, except love." In other words, Christians should obey the authority of the state in order to love one another.

Therefore we follow the laws and pay taxes, so that the state will protect the weak and guarantee our security. But if the state begins to pursue its own interest without care for its citizens, it shows that it is acting against the will of God who gave it the mandate to exercise power and authority on behalf of divine authority. The book of Revelation described such a self-interested state as an ugly blasphemous monstrous beast (Rev. 13:1-2). And John said that such a beast was given its power from the demonic dragon, which would demand that people worship the human head of the government instead of worshipping God. John was speaking about the Roman empire in that instance, but history is full of such human authorities which exercised arbitrary and absolute authority over people. Many immigrants who came and still come to this country were the victims of such demonic powers, including some of our ancestors. And some people fall victims to such arbitrary authority even in Canada from time to time.

We must be loyal to the nation in which we live, because that is one concrete way to spread our love for neighbours through the system of the government. But our loyalty is conditional. We obey the authorities in order to love. We even give our lives to defend a state for the sake of love. But when we see the abuse of power on the part of authorities, we criticize and even reject them. This is not an unpatriotic act. True patriotism, the love of the nation and people, is ultimately loyalty to God and to people.

Jesus spoke about this peculiar relationship by using the metaphor of the sojourners or temporary visitors. He said that we, his followers, were the citizens of the Kingdom of God and in this world were only sojourners. While we live in Canada, or Scotland, or Japan, or anywhere in the world, we really only park our cars in the short terms parking, and temporarily become the guests of the land. While we are there, we seek the welfare of the family – the nation, because that is one concrete way to love many people in that land.

We may or may not like the outcome of the Referendum. But one thing is sure: no matter how it turns out, our country will not turn into an utopia, the kingdom of God, nor will it turn into a totally hostile enemy territory. In my short life time, I have lived, at least in two such hostile countries, in the war time Japan as a Christian and in South Africa as a person who opposed the system of Apartheid. I not only survived, but can also boast that those experiences of having lived in hostile territories were rich learning experiences. I loved the Japanese and South Africans. The love of the people persisted despite my critical attitudes towards the states.

Let us seek the welfare of the nation, wherever that may be and however it turns out to be. That is one way to love our neighbours as Jesus told us to do.

October 29, 1995

Tad Mitsui

Howick, Quebec

FREEDOM FROM OURSELVES

Exodus 20, Psalm 19

October 6, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

Today”s Scripture lesson introduces the Ten Commandments for the first time in the Bible. Unfortunately the laws that begin with "Thou shalt not" are not very popular nowadays, because they sound repressive and seem to stifle joy of life. It is important to remember, in this context, that it is not God, who are responsible for making the laws instruments of oppression. It is people who have abused the laws as a means to exercise power and exploit others. It was not God”s intent to make laws to oppress us. The law was a way of God to make us independent and free. God gave us laws as a way to free us from slavery. Let us take a look at the second commandment, "You shall not make yourself an idol." as an example.

No one worships a piece of stone or wood in this day and age, of course. But if you look carefully, you will be surprised how many people are still practice idol worship. When you interpret the idol as something that enslaves you, you will be surprised to realize how serious the power of idols is, keeping many people in slavery of one kind or another, even today.

An idol is something that should not dominate your life, but it can trap you like a few notes of melody that does not leave your head. Worse still, it can totally control your life. When that happens, this commandment snaps us out of such a nightmare and frees us. "Do not let anything that is below your dignity control your life." So what are some of the idols in our lives? Francis Bacon, a 16th Century English philosopher, made an interesting list of civilized people”s idols. It is not an exhaustive list, but it is a convenient list, as a starter for our reflection. He listed four idols, and called them the idols of "cave, theatre, market, and tribe."

First of all, the idol of the cave is created by people who can not see anything outside of their own life. In Japan, the same notion is found in an expression, "A frog who lives in a well." For that frog, a tiny little sky he sees from the bottom of the well is the whole of the outside world. The dark wet hole and a bit of water held in it are the whole world for him. He is trapped in the well, but he does not know that. Some of us can behave and think like that, when we do not see anything beyond what we know. By refusing to believe that what you see is all there is in the world, you become free to go beyond a little world of our own and discover a much wider world of God”s creation.

Secondly, the idol of theatre keeps us in bondage in a belief that whatever is entertaining and popular is absolute and must have its way. Women no longer suffer from corsets made of whale bones, but the same principles still keep them in bondage. What you wear must be must be in fashion and pleasing to look at. You are made to feel inferior, because you do not look like fashion models or because you only have the clothes you bought five years ago. It does not matter even if they are very comfortable to wear. The same principles ensnare men, also. When you believe in the idol of theatre, everything you do and say must be pleasing and acceptable to others, no matter how wrong it is. You completely lose your own creativity and identity in order to be acceptable and pleasing to others.

Thirdly, the idol of the market makes you believe that the life is about money and profit and nothing else. If there is no bucks at the end, you feel that you life is wasted. Of course, market place and the bottom line are important components of our life. They provide the means of exchange of material goods that are essential for our survival. But some people have made money and profit their ultimate goals of life. They even made God as the servant of the bottom line. They lose faith in God when they fail to make money. We must remember that we can be free of obsession with cash. There are many people who have managed to be freed from the idol of market place, and have found the way to live a contented life despite modest financial achievement.

Finally, the idol of tribe makes you reject people outside of a little world of your own. We believe that our family, community, and our country are often the very reason for our existence. Our language, our culture, traditions, food, and even idiosyncrasies are the essence of our identity. They are very important, for sure. But some people take those things too seriously and do not accept others who are different, and deny the legitimacy of their ways of living. Then you are limiting your life to a small world of a cave where your own kind live, not only that you are being unjust to those people who may be different from you. Those who believe in the idol of the tribe believe in it absolutely. Therefore, they don”t recognize that other people also are the children of God and have rights to live according to their ways of life. This idol worship is often exercised in a form of racism. And we must know that such belief and practice are an insult to God”s creation. Besides, it”s fun to taste foreign food and dance to a different music sometimes.

I hope that now you know why the prohibition of idol worship is freeing not restricting. It is a means of love of God to free us and make us independent. The most basic principle of our life according to our belief in God of Jesus Christ is love; love of God and love of our neighbours. All the laws must help us to love and to free us from the arbitrary measures that exploit us and repress us. If any human laws and rules enslave us and oppress us, remember that our Lord Jesus gave us freedom from such laws by becoming an outlaw himself. It cost him his life. The symbolic meal which we share today is the reminder of that defiance of love.

Isaiah 35 : 1 – 10
Luke 1 : 47 – 55
Psalm 146

Today”s Gospel selection is called "Magnificat".  If indeed Mary had anything to do with its creation, it is an incredible piece of literature .  Consider the circumstances.  She must have been only in her mid- teens, unmarried, and was just informed that she was pregnant with the child who was going to inherit the throne of David, the messiah the whole nation was waiting for.  And she was no royalty.  She was only the fiancé of a poor carpenter.  A scandal!  The punishment could have been death by stoning.  But she believed in the message.  And she went even further.  She thought, if a lowly girl like her was to be a mother of the most high, the rich and powerful could be humiliated, and hungry and poor would be exalted.  There would be justice.  In fact, it would be a new world.  Mary”s child would bring peace, a special kind of peace.  Peace based on justice and love, not by power.   What a dream!  Is this only a silly fantasy of a crazy teenage unmarried mother?

This notion of the new regime of which Mary dreamt is expressed today in one word in three different languages, Salaam in Arabic, Shalom in Hebrew, and Khotso in African Sesotho.  They all have the same meaning, somewhat inadequately translated into English as "peace".  All of them are used still today as the most common form of greeting.   It means "Hello and good-bye." –  for meeting and parting.  When they meet, they wish each other peace.  And likewise they bid each other peace as they go their separate ways.  I believe that this expression is the world”s most profound way of greeting.  Harvey Cox, a theology professor at Harvard Theological School once told a touching story about the use of this word.  When a Jewish mother was separated from her child before she was shipped off to a Nazi extermination camp during the second world war, she hugged the child and said, "Shalom."   Miraculously both the mother and the child survived the death camps and ran into each other at the port of Haifa in Palestine five years later.    When they hugged each other, in tears they only said "Shalom."  That was enough.

It was enough because the word contains all the important ingredients of the perfect world under the reign of God.  God will bring justice to the world.  And when that happens people beat their swords into ploughshares and will hear of war no more.  There is justice hence there is peace.  In the language I learned to preach in Africa, the same notion of peace is expressed in the word – Khotso.  It also has all the important ingredients of the better world, just like the Hebrew word – shalom.

In Lesotho, when you finish a dinner, for example, the host will ask you, "Uena ka Khotso?" – Are you at peace?  It means, "Have you had enough?  Are you satisfied, happy?  Are you at peace with yourself?"  They believe that when you are physically well, you are spiritually content also.  They firmly believe that there is no peace without justice, and there is no want with justice. 

When one lacks inner peace and is frustrated and insecure, one tends to be violent.  Secondly, one is driven to anger and unhappiness, when one is treated unjustly.  Humans have known this for tens of centuries.  But we have not taken the idea seriously and have made the same mistakes over and over again. 

We can learn a lot from those nomadic traditions about peace and about justice.  Our idea of peace has long been dominated by a notion of "Pax Romana" – Roman peace.  It comes from the idea that there is peace when a powerful nation dominates others by force, just as the Roman Empire did dominating others absolutely by force for six hundred years.  We still believe in that peace can be achieved when one overpowers others by force.  But the idea never worked because importance of peace of mind based on justice was completely ignored.

No empire has ever achieved enduring peace.  The longest lasting empire we have known was the Roman Empire.  But the millennium that followed was a history of bloody conflicts.  The British one lasted not even two hundred years.  Domination by the Americans and the Russians has not even lasted one century and is already slipping.  And whenever the empires fall, violence and blood-shed follow.  Many of the regional conflicts today are rooted in the histories of empires.  It shows no sign that the peace enforced by those empires has any lasting effect.  Hatred that has been festering while being ruled by force demands settling of scores.  Look at Northern Ireland.  Look at former Yugoslavia.  The whole of Balkan is suffering from the memories of three fallen empires.  They still remember the atrocities committed to each other and by those empires.  And they fiercely hate each other.  Has the British victory at the Plain of Abraham produced an enduring peace in Canada?   Apparently it didn”t, judging from the never ending threat of separation .

When do we ever learn?  Haven”t we ever learnt that there can never be enduring peace unless there is justice?  Haven”t we ever learned that there can never be justice unless there is love?  Where there is no love there is no peace of mind.  Where there is no love, there is greed and self-centredness.  And greed and self-centredness are the causes of injustice.  A vicious circle goes around and around.

We are waiting for the arrival of the gift from God.    We are waiting for the era of peace that began with the birth of Jesus.  We are going to celebrate the birthday of the one who declared the new regime.  Let us wait actively for the coming of peace – real peace of shalom, salaam, and khotso, with excitement, joy, and determination, not just in this season of Advent but also in our daily life at all times.  Our waiting may seem hopeless, just as the magnificat sounded crazy.  But why not?  The dream of one unmarried teenage mother-to-be came true with the birth of Christ 2000 years ago.

HORRIBLE AND WONDERFUL BIRTHING

I Samuel 1:4-20, Psalm 16, Mark 13:1-8

November 16, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

I learned the language living among the villagers for six months and lived in an old abandoned Mission station, in the mountains of South Africa. There was a cemetery for missionaries in the compound. There were many graves of babies, who died during the first year of their lives, and of mothers who died while giving births. One French missionary lost one infant every year and in the fifth year he lost his wife and the child. It made me realize how horrible birthing used to be only a century ago. Times are definitely better today for expectant mothers and new born babies. Though birth meant a big risk for women and children, it was always seen as a harbinger of great blessing. According to Mark”s Gospel, Jesus forbid us to despair, even as he predicted terrible disasters, "because they are only the beginning of birth pang."

When Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple, he meant more than a mere demolition of a nice big building. It is historically correct that the temple in Jerusalem was totally razed to the ground in 65 A.D. when the Romans crushed the last Jewish rebellion. But it meant more than a loss of a temple. It signalled a loss of the soul of a nation. The spiritual traditions and values of the Hebrew nation lay in the ruins. Times are likewise hard for us, because of changing values. What many people used to respect do not mean very much for them any more. Many people don”t go to church. Sex is a casual entertainment. The pattern of the family life is changing. People do not respect the institutions any more; they distrust people in the Government and the police . The mail services are no more sure things. Market is volatile. There are still earthquakes, floods, epidemics of deadly diseases, and wars. But those disasters are not as serious threats as they used to be, because we are more confident that they can be overcome someday in the advanced civilization. But when the values you used to hold dear seem discarded, you have lost the foundation of your life. You don”t know where you stand any more. That is hard.

We suffer from loss of jobs or money, because in our system it means loss of dignity and security. This is because our operating values are for the individualistic society. In a collective society, security comes from a sense of being connected with the family and community. Old people who have no financial security do not suffer in such a society. In the traditional African or Asian communities, for example, families and communities look after the elderly. The older people keep their dignity because they know they are respected. On the other hand, being dispossessed by the family or community means death in such a society.

I had my first spiritual crisis, when I found a stack of years of my letters to Santa Claus in the bottom drawer of my father”s desk. This confirmed my doubt about existence of the jolly old man in the funny red outfit. That did not bother me, because I was right after all. But, a sense of betrayal, "My dad has been lying to me all these years." was a real shock. Thus, a rebel was born. You may find this a cute little story. But when it comes to a serious attempt to challenge other people”s culture and values, it is no longer a laughing matter. When you deny someone”s customs, language and spiritual values, you reject the existence of that person. You are saying to another person, "You are not good enough. You have to become someone else." As an English speaking people in Quebec, you understand how difficult that is. But we must come to terms face to face with such hurt and pain, and grow. Then, you will appreciate a crisis as a catalyst.

We know how difficult changes are, just like loss of your home, your church, or your money and property. Earthquakes, fire, flood, and economy cause those losses. Conflicts and wars also destroy and kill. But they are much worse because they divide friends and cause hatred among brothers and sisters. Destruction of the temple is a metaphor for the change in the value system, which is more serious than any material and physical change. even then Jesus still says, "Do not despair." They are but birth pains.

After many years of infertility and humiliation, Hannah at last became pregnant and bore a son. She was so very happy. Even with a possible social stigma as an unmarried mother, when Mary was informed that she was pregnant, she was happy. How can such horrible experiences of pregnancy and birthing be so wonderful? Birthing is horrible but wonderful, because it is not just an experience of sickly symptoms and pain. It means not just a change, but it means life is being transformed. When a fetus begins to give a sickly sensation or kicks the stomach from inside, it signals transformation of a woman into a mother. A carefree woman becomes a caregiver who is totally responsible for another life. You are utterly changed into another category of human being. This is not just a change. It is called transformation. It is like a larva changing into a butterfly. When a change is transformative, pain that accompanies it is like birth pain. You can anticipate a joyful conclusion at the end of a birth channel.

Change is a crisis. But transformative change is a creative crisis. A matured person can turn a crisis into an opportunity. You think that security is found on a solid ground. That is not so. Life is fluid. Life is like a river. You can not stay on one spot in a river. The art of living is not knowing ”how to stay put”. An art of living is knowing how to navigate a current, that could be slow and easy; or could be rapid and dangerous. Life is about taking up a change and turning it into a creative transformative process.

The Gospel according to Mark was written in a Roman prison. Mark was waiting to be executed. Remember, at that time, merely being a Christian was a capital crime. Peter and Paul, and many other Apostles had already been executed. Seeing that many people who knew Jesus personally were dying, Mark felt that he had to write the life and sayings of Jesus Christ before he himself was killed. He hoped that the succeeding generations could read about Jesus after those who had known Jesus were long gone. Mark wrote his Gospel in such a desperately critical situation. Is it a book of despair? On the contrary, Mark knew that all that suffering was a passing phase. He was not in despair.

This is how Mark remembered Jesus speaking about birth pang. A mother knows how horribly painful but wonderful experience to give birth, just like Hannah who gave birth to Samuel, and Mary who gave birth to our Lord. Jesus came to introduce new values. They upset the Jews and Romans alike. That”s why they persecuted the followers of Jesus. But Christ”s kingdom was beginning its journey in the birth channel of the world. Mark knew that.

JESUS WAS TEMPTED LIKE WE ARE

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7, Psalm 32, Matt 4:1-11

By Tad Mitsui, February 25, 1996

Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. This begs some questions, because our sense of Jesus being a divine "son of God" is stronger that of him being a human "son of Mary". In other words, we don”t think of him as human like us. Somehow in our imagination Jesus was a god most of the time, who didn”t even go to bathroom. But the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness brings us back to reality of his humanity. Yes, he was tempted like we often are.

First of all, Jesus went into the wilderness and fasted for forty days. Forty was in Hebrew language a symbolic figure for a long testing period. Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years before they went into Palestine. Jesus was tested in the wilderness for a number of days for his suitability in God”s mission. The wilderness is an unfamiliar place, where nothing resembles what you have known. When we face a new situation in our life, we are led into a wilderness. A new job, unemployment or retirement, a new baby, a political change, or even death are all wilderness for us. It is an uncomfortable and unpleasant place, but it can be a gateway for a new future and opportunity. The wilderness is a metaphor for a place to learn God”s plan.

Some of us have to learn that there is no easy way to learn the art of living. We can be seduced into believing that there is a cheap way to learn. I don”t know how much money I wasted buying "How to" packages, "French in one week", or "Learn to drive a car with a book, and save money on Driving Lessons", etc. Learning is always hard, it is a wilderness experience. Jesus had to go through that to switch his career from a carpenter to the messiah. And it wasn”t easy.

After forty days of fasting, Jesus became hungry. I suppose one does after forty days. Satan asked him if he wanted to turn stones into bread. This first question was about choosing a priority, between material and spiritual goals. Of course, it is important to feed the hungry. But is it more important to solve the problem of hunger than it is to know the will of God? Which is more important? Jesus chose spirituality. To use religion to turn a stone into bread shows lopsided values, said Jesus. It is the word of God that has to come first. Then desire to solve the problem of hunger comes naturally out of obedience to God”s will. It is a warning to the United Church of Canada, in which one tends to overemphasize the importance of social action. Some of us do it at the expense of spiritual life. What suffers sometimes in our church is the knowledge of the Bible. Jesus clearly chose knowledge of God”s plan as a matter of priority. He believed that acts of charity would follow when we learn the will of God.

Without spiritual resources, our good works and social action are like a journey without destination. It can be a total waste. Many times I saw the cost of unwise acts of charity, when I was working on the famine relief in Africa. People can lose self-respect, for example, if they are treated without due dignity. Persons without self-respect do not have the will to support themselves. The word of God is like a water tap. Without a water tap, you can waste water, because there is no adequate control which can adjust to the need. By the time there is a genuine need, there may not be any water left. The word of God tells you what is needed, and when and where it is needed. The word of God comes first.

Then Jesus was taken to the top of a temple tower. Satan said, "Throw yourself down. Angels will catch you and bring you down to the ground level without any harm." Jesus said, "No thank you. I don”t have to test God." This second test was about the nature of his relationship with God. Jesus refused to use God to promote himself and save himself. You can make money and win a fame if you jump off a tall tower without a safety net and live. But by doing so, you turn God into a mere tool. If we believe in God merely to pray for success, God is only a means to achieve our goal. If we come to have something else more reliable, then we don”t need God. There are unfortunately many so-called Christians who perform healing for fame and money. This was not the way Jesus chose. He performed many miracles, but he always told those who were healed to keep quiet about what happened. And most importantly, he did not save himself on the cross by a miracle. Many people taunted him saying, "If you are the son of God, call on Moses and Elijah to save yourself." But he didn”t.

For Jesus, God was not a means to a goal. God was his goal. He obeyed God”s commandment to love, and thus healed the sick. But he never used God for his own purposes. There is something drastically wrong in a relationship, if a child says to the parents, "Now I am educated, have a job, a family, and a house. I don”t need you any more." In an authentic relationship, no one is a tool.

Finally, Jesus was taken to the mountain top and shown all the riches and splendour of the Kingdom of the world. Satan said, "All you see will be yours to take, if you worship me." To this, Jesus simply said, "Go away, I only worship God." This final test was about compromise. Jesus was offered the whole world on a plate, if he would combine two opposing views of life. He could conquer the whole world, if he would combine a little bit of evil in the God”s work. What a temptation! There have been so many people in this world who could not resist it. It is a very strong temptation. Imagine. What if I promise that the whole of Canada would turn into United Church members, filling the churches every Sunday, if we adopt the "right" strategies. You just have to promise not to ask questions about the morality of such a strategy.

Wouldn”t this be wonderful – we could be a powerful lobby group with such a large membership – pressuring the government to deal with child poverty, the homeless, etc? We would just have to ignore the initial compromise – the one that would give us power over so many people, rather than respecting religious diversity and the individual”s right to freedom of belief.

Power corrupts unless one refuses to compromise. I can offer one example where someone refused to compromise. As soon as Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa, Archbishop Tutu accused him of taking too big a salary. Mr. Mandela did not increase his own salary. He simple adopted what was normal for all presidents at the time. But Tutu said that if Mandela won the election with a promise to create a more just society, he should begin clean. So Mandela, to his credit, cut his salary by 30%.

If Jesus compromised a little in his journey to Jerusalem, he might not have had to be hung on a tree and killed. But he didn”t. Therein was his power. It was power of integrity, even thought he seemed powerless in the normal sense of the word.

As we begin Lent, we begin an intense period of reflection and learning. We are called into the wilderness. Today”s Gospel offers us 3 essential lessons to carry with us. The story reminds us of the importance of spirituality over material needs; of having to choose a relationship with God as our goal rather than just as a means to an end; and of integrity over compromise.

It is a sign of Jesus” humanity that he faced the temptations that he did. It is a sign of his divinity that he made the right choice. But above all, it is a sign of his closeness to us in love that he took the steps through the wilderness which now offer us a path to follow.

THREE STRIKES AGAINST JESUS

Romans 5: 1-11, Psalm 95, John 4:1-42

We don”t quite understand why the disciples were so shocked to find their master with a Samaritan woman by Jacob”s well, as it is described in the today”s Gospel. John said that the disciples were so astonished when they found who was with Jesus. They were too embarrassed to ask a question. Jesus must have had a knack of doing things wrong. He angered, annoyed, astonished, and disgusted many people. This is why the leadership of society, and even the public who used to follow him, demanded his death after only a few years in his ministry. And this episode in Samaria epitomizes Jesus” ministry that drove him to the death on the cross. It must have been pretty shocking incident. As far as I could gather, Jesus made three big mistakes.

The first mistake was that he spoke to an unaccompanied woman in public. She was a stranger, too. That was a very serious breach of etiquette. According to the custom of the time, no man is permitted to speak to an unaccompanied woman in public, unless she was his daughter or wife. This still is the case in many cultures even today. Worse still, Jesus asked for a drink of water. You can do it only in an intimate relationship. You don”t do that even today, unless you know the person well. According to the custom of the time, you might be permitted to ask a stranger for water. But you must bring your own container. Jesus had none. The woman said, "But sir, you don”t even have a bucket." She would have had to offer it to him with her own bucket. This could happen only between intimate friends or between family members. If you ask for a cup of water without your own cup, your are asking for relationship. And they had never met before. So you know how an outrageous act that was.

So the woman was surprised. But she did not run away, because she was a woman of experience with men. Anyhow, she was a Samaritan woman. That was the second strike against Jesus. It was a serious breach of Jewish customs. Samaritans had been despised and loathed by the Jews for nearly one thousand years. People even took long detour to avoid travelling through Samaria. Samaritans were an artificially created nation. King of Assyria defeated Kingdom of Israel in 900 B.C., drove the people out of Samaria, and like deportation of criminals to Australia, forced massive immigration from five different nations. They eventually intermarried and became a nation of mixed blood people. The king of Assyria did this out of spite to humiliate the Jews.

The Jews considered the Samaritans to be not only bastards but also pagans who desecrated the Hebrew religion. Samaritans brought in a Jewish priest to learn about the religion of the land they inherited. But they ended up mixing the Hebrew religion with their own and created a hybrid religion. So Jewish people at the time of Jesus despised and deeply hated the Samaritans for a religious reason, also. Jesus not only spoke to an unaccompanied stranger woman, but also to a Samaritan woman. A disgusting thing to do.

Thirdly, this Samaritan woman was a person of ill repute. She had five husbands, and currently was living with a man but not married to him. Jesus did not hesitate to be friends with women of ill repute, even with prostitutes. They were eager to learn the truth about God and spiritual life. He did not discriminate people who followed him. That was bad enough for his reputation. But this woman was a Samaritan. He had gone too far. I would be reluctant to be seen in a company of certain kind of people, especially discussing an intimate subject like history of sexual relationships.

What is interesting is the fact that nobody asked whether her misfortunes in her married life were because of her failings or were they due to circumstances beyond her control. But it was assumed that her many failed marriages indicated that she was not a good woman. Isn”t it possible that she was simply unlucky? She might have been widowed a few times. And yet, she was ostracised in society. She had to come to the well in the heat of the day – noon. Noone wants to go outside in the middle of the day in the Middle East, when the Sun is too hot. Temperature could be more than 100 degree F. Besides, it was a common custom in many cultures for women to socialize and to exchange useful information as well as gossips at the well or by the river. It was a good time for women. Why would this Samaritan woman come to the well at noon, when nobody was around? There must have been some serious reasons why she had to avoid more comfortable part of the day and pleasant company of friends. It was all because of her unfortunate marital past, which might not have been her fault at all.

It is the same with the status of the Samaritans. The origin of the Samaritan nation might have been a shameful event for the Jews. But that was not the fault of the Samaritans. Samaritans did not cause such an abnormal beginning. They did not even exist when such disgrace was forced upon the nation of Israel. The Samaritans were also the victims.

We have an appalling tendency to blame the victims rather than the perpetrators. We blame the poor and say it is their fault that they are poor. We blame the victim of sexual violence and say she must have been insolent. It is like beating your baby for not stop crying at night, only to discover that the child was in a terrible pain because of a broken bone. Jesus could see injustice in such treatment of victims. He did not hesitate to have a conversation with a Samaritan divorced woman. Jesus saw that she happened to be a person of profound spiritual insight. Jesus did not discriminate in the choice of his followers and friends. He did not see the labels on people, but saw spiritual quality in them.

You see, what Jesus said in the beginning of their conversation was enigmatic, if not totally puzzling. He spoke about living water. He said that it would make people never to thirst again. The woman was sceptical. She was not convinced until Jesus switched the subject of conversation to her personal life. He guessed about her failed married life. Then she immediately realized that this man was not teasing her or making a pass at her. It is to her great credit that she recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the one who would bring salvation. It showed that she was a person of some spiritual depth. Also it is, of course, due to Jesus” extraordinary spiritual capacity to recognize that, beyond a appalling reputation in society, this Samaritan woman had a inner gift of understanding in the spiritual matters.

For Jesus Christ, the labels on people had no meaning. A woman, a pagan, a half breed, a loose woman, all these were just the labels, some of which might have been false. Even the religious questions, such as whether to worship God in the Samaritan mountains or in the temple in Jerusalem, whether you kneel or stand to pray, or you are Catholic, Presbyterian, Muslims, Jews, or United Church; those are questions about labels and often are meaningless distinctions as far as God is concerned. He spoke about worshipping God in truth and spirit. He was not interested in discussing the difference between Jewish religion and Samaritan beliefs. He was only interested in salvation of all people.

This is why Jesus was a very disturbing element for those people, for whom religious differences, national distinctions, and social statuses were more important than God. This is why the ministry of Jesus had three strikes against him, in this story of Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Because some people are more concerned about keeping out other people, in order to preserve the purity of institutions. In the same token, we can say that the suffering and death of our Lord are the signs of his integrity and of his uncompromising love. He did not allow superficial labelling interfere with the matter concerning salvation of people. Jesus loves, and is ready to die again and again for us because he does not stop loving.

Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:47-55

In order to learn the language in Africa, I lived in an isolated mission which was two hundred years old.  It was a compound of about ten acres, with a bush, a vegetable garden, a spring, a cemetery, and a huge house made of mud and cow dung.   Looking at the grave stones in the cemetery, I often wondered how missionary families survived in the last century.  Many children were buried there.  Infants died before they reached their first birthdays, with quite a few dying at birth.  The life of the missionaries must have been hard.  I can”t begin to imagine how hard it must have been for women to go through the pain and suffering of giving birth and then seeing many of their children die.
 
My knowledge of child birth is from watching TV programs and films.  My daughter was born at the time when fathers were not allowed in the birthing room.  It all looks and sounds so painful.  I don”t like pain.  This is why it is hard for me to understand how any woman would be willing to give birth even in civilized conditions.  And yet, birth happens all the time, billions of times.  Without women”s acceptance of their painful role in procreation, our species should have been extinct a long time ago.  I sometimes wonder how women can accept child birth as a blessing.  If it is, and I am sure they think it is, it is a costly blessing.  The story of Annunciation is about a costly blessing and about Mary”s huge faith in God”s plan which she largely did not get to see realized in her life time.

When Mary received the news about her pregnancy, the angel Gabriel said to her, "God is giving you a big favour.  You will bear a child.  He will be great and called Son of God."  But Mary never sounded convinced that she was hearing good news.  "How can this be?  It can”t be true."  She said.  You realize that she was only a teenager of maybe 15 or 16.  But I don”t think she was completely gullible despite her age.  She must have known the fate that awaited a pregnant unmarried girl.  It was not just the hazards and pain of child birth.  At best, it could mean being cast out from the community for being a loose woman, or, at worst, death by stoning as an adulterer, which was the sentence for a woman who became pregnant outside of marriage.  Mary was right.  How can this be a blessing?  It sounded more like a curse than a blessing.

Her fiancé, Joseph, saved her from this cruel fate.  Without his incredible graciousness in accepting Mary”s claim, we would not have Christmas.  He believed a message he heard in a dream as God”s words.  He wanted to believe in God, because he loved Mary so much.  He swallowed his pride, and accepted Mary”s story and her faith in God.  Christmas is a story of love.  It is a story of the faith of a man in a woman, of a man who decided to believe an impossible story because he loved her dearly.  Today, if we heard a teenage girl say just like Mary, "God made me pregnant," we would probably ridicule her for being gullible and stupid, if not downright insane.  The story of Joseph is another miracle of Christmas.  It is also a story of a brave young girl who accepted as a blessing what looked like a curse.  She believed in God”s plans, although she didn”t understand what it was all about.  Mary believed what she heard and accepted the fate that awaited her and her son.  "I am a servant of the Lord; may it happen to me as you have said," she said.

The Annunciation is the beginning of a story of a costly blessing.  Mary”s life with Jesus was mostly the story of a mother”s suffering.  She was distressed many times as Jesus outgrew Mary”s capacity to understand.  Her son said many outrageous things in public, offended and angered many important people.  She didn”t understand him.  She tried to take him home, because she was so afraid of her son”s safety.  One time, she even thought that her son had become insane.  She was very happy, when her son became a popular healer and preacher.  Thousands followed him everywhere.  But the good time was short lived.  He was soon arrested, publicly humiliated, and died an excruciatingly cruel death on a cross.  What an ordeal for a mother!  How could such a son”s life be a blessing for mother?

But Mary was a mother.  Mothers understand the costliness of blessings, because they live through the pain of birth.  Though there weren”t many visible rewards for Mary in her life time, the annunciation became a blessing, nevertheless, because of her faith.  She never knew that her son would be adored and worshipped so universally two thousand years later.  She only knew for a few years the small daily joys of watching her child grow.  She had never imagined that she would be admired for her courage and faith, in the arts and music, and named in some faith traditions as the "Mother of God."  Her faith gave birth to a blessing for all of us.  Thank God for Mary and Joseph, and their faith in each other and in God, which made Christmas possible.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

Exodus 16: 1 – 15, Psalm 111, Matthew 20: 1 – 16

September 22, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

There is no universal standard to determine, "how much is enough." For some people, what is enough is so little according to other people”s standards. On the other hand, for some other people there is no such thing as enough. According to the World Value Survey in 1995, only 8% of people in the Republic of Ireland said they were not happy. Americans, Canadians, Germans, and Japanese, in contrast, who are on the average twice as rich as the Irish, a full 20% of people said they were unhappy. It is clear that being rich is not a guarantee for happiness. The scripture lessons for today tell us that God provides enough. And it is up to us to be happy about it.

One morning when the Hebrews ran out of food in the desert, they found some edible fluffy and sweet stuff on the ground. Moses said that it was gifts from God called manna. We don”t know what it was. Whatever it was, it must have been very perishable. Those who collected more than they could eat in one day, found left-over completely spoiled next day. We know that some food stuff must be eaten very fresh like sushi. Many people think that it is revolting to eat raw fish. What they have to know, however, is that only very fresh fish, no older than a day, is good enough for decent sushi. And when it is fresh, it is very good. It is addictive. Ask Muriel. This is why in most of the Oriental fish stores, the fish is sold in aquariums like we do with lobsters.

Most food stuff are the best when they are fresh. And fresh food is good for health. There is a Japanese saying, "The way to good health is to eat the fruits of the season." I now can affirm this ancient wisdom as we enjoyed fresh produce from our garden this year.

"One day at a time." is one of the important articles of faith for the Alcoholic Anonymous. Things change unexpectedly. We will never know what exactly lies ahead of us. It is because God”s world is alive and dynamic. Yes, it is important to plan ahead. But also we should be humble enough to know that we can be quite wrong in our predictions. When we depend only on our ability to see future, we will never find peace of mind. This is why those brave people in the Alcoholic Anonymous who have guts enough to admit that they have problems have decided to look at themselves only one day at a time. They know that on the next day, something unexpected can happen and they may go back to bad old habits. All of us fail from time to time. So the day after they will try again. They trust that God knows best and is watching over them lovingly and patiently, like a mother who watches over a toddler learning to walk.

So how do we know when we have enough? It is when we are happy with what we have, and stop wanting more. Happiness and material things are two important components of knowing when we have "enough". They must come together. It is never enough when you have nothing. Everyone needs a certain amount of material things. This is why the Christians do not believe that there is such thing as purely spiritual happiness totally devoid of material things. So we believe that to work hard to eliminate poverty is an important Christian duty. However, at some point, we have to be satisfied with what we have. Otherwise we will never feel we have enough. Then we won”t know when to stop working. Simply accumulating things will never make us content, unless at one point we feel happy with what we acquired and stop. Some people never feel they have enough, even if they have the whole world at their disposal. It is because material things alone does not give you satisfaction without deep feeling of contentment. And it comes only from spiritual part of you.

We learn two lessons from today”s scriptures. First, we must believe that God provides enough for every creature. Secondly, we must know when it is enough and when to stop wanting more. Otherwise greed takes over, and there will be no stopping. Greed will stop only when everything is destroyed including the one who is greedy.

Each one of us has to do our share of God”s work as much as we can. However, God created this world where every creature could be sustained. As all farmers know, we can produce a lot more food. No one denys that agriculture can feed a lot more people than there are on this planet now. The world God created has an enormous capacity to sustain us. Then how come some people are malnourished and even starve to death. We know it is not because of shortage of food. It is because of the world does not have a good distribution system. So some people can not buy food, though food is there.

When I was assigned to the job of coordinating famine relief in Africa ten years ago, one of the projects I participated was to study the cause of starvation. In no time we discovered that the problem was not producing not enough food. We humans can produce a lot of food. Even Ethiopia, where about a million people died from starvation ten years ago, exported more food items, like coffee, sugar and beef, to Europe during the famine, for cash. They needed cash to buy armaments to fight a civil war. Many people who were outside of the government, military, or cash crop sector starved, because they had been given no credit to produce food thus had no money to buy food when crops failed. There is a lot of food available in the world. I am sure many of you want to produce a lot more food, if there are buyers. The problem is that there are not enough people who have money to buy food. So people continue to starve, while food is wasted.

So God does provide, so long as all of us do our share of work. Even those who were unlucky to find work at the last hour of the day can have share of world”s goodness to live. Problem is greed. If there is no greedy people in the world, it will be easier to create a system that distributes enough things to everybody. Greed does not like equality. The one who worked all day did not like what they saw when the one who worked less got the same pay. A seed of greed was germinated when envy entered his minds. Once greed has taken over, it will not allow you to stop. It is like going down hill on ski without knowing how to stop. You have to crash into something solid to stop. You may seriously injure yourself at best, you may even lose your life.

Ask a bunch of very rich people if they have enough. Few would say they have enough, I am sure. They need, I am told, on the average, 30 % more to be happy. Funny thing is that the people with median incomes also want the same 30 % more, also. Greed will never let you feel that you have enough. Also greed never allows you to be happy when you have as much as your neighbour. Greed thrives on inequality. So our society ends up with some people having too much and some too little. Today”s lessons tell us that is not the God”s way.

Have you ever stop to think sometimes that our affluence can be actually harmful? By 1967, the most of the western countries reached the level of affluence that provided all the basic necessities for our healthy life. Anything that has come after that are extra. We really do not need them, but it is nice to have them. We enjoy them, but some of those extras are actually harming our well being. For example, we all know that many of the top killer diseases are preventable if we consume less. Have I told you about my former anti-white student who became the Director of Botswana Meat Board? His job was to sell beef to Europe? With a cheeky smile, he said, "I am killing Europeans slowly."

So, let us remember and trust that God provides enough. And let us be happy and grateful for it. Many of us love our work, that”s O.K. Consequently many of us produce more than we need. That”s O.K., too, so long as you have time to enjoy it. The trick is not to get caught up in a rat race of accumulating surpluses we don”t need. We should know the time to say, "That”s enough." and stop to enjoy and to share. And don”t forget to say "thank you" to God who provides.

WITHOUT LIGHT, THERE IS NO SHADOW

Exodus 14:19-31, Psalm 114 , Matthew 18:21&22

September 15, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

Every new experience of life is a process of growth. And we know that a ceratin amount of pain is unavoidable in a process of growth. You can complain about it, or you can celebrate it. As soon as God led the people of Israel out of slavery and out of Egypt where they lived for nearly four hundred years, they ran into hardship and some scary experiences they did not anticipate. They complained about them bitterly and wanted to go back to become slaves again, because at least it was the place they knew.

As the story goes, calamities befell the Egyptians, one after another. The Egyptians did not blame God but blamed the Hebrews for their many misfortunes. The king wanted them to go as soon as possible. But Moses knew that the king would change his mind. He had done it many times before. So the Hebrews left Egypt in a hurry. According to the Bible, God instructed them not to wait for bread dough to rise before they baked it. They were told not to gut the animals before they roasted them. There was no time to waste. They ate the dinner without sitting at the table, standing, already dressed to travel. They left in a hurry.

They were happy as they started out. They were free! No more hard labour in the hot sun, mixing mud, moulding it and baking bricks, day after day. They were no longer other people”s slaves. They were free and independent human beings. But as soon as they got out of the city, they found themselves in the desert. It was not just hot sand and prickly bushes, but it was also a long stretch of hard rocks with sharp edges, or exhausting process of trudging up and down of the sand dunes. Also, there were many hungry predatory animals. Worse still, Moses didn”t tell them clearly which way they should be going. At that point, he didn”t know that either. It was a test of trust in God. They were so busy getting out of Egypt, they didn”t have time to think about those details. So reality set in as they inched forward with heavy loads on their backs. It was hot and dry. "How long do we have to keep walking? We have no more jobs. How are we going to make a living? Where does our next meal come from?" Many troubling questions began to bother them. You would do that when your trust in God wanes.

Then they came to a swamp with reed bushes. The water looked deep. Also there was another problem on the horizon. The king had changed his mind again. He wanted slaves back. No Egyptian would do such a dirty job as cheaply as the Jews used to do. They were important for the country”s economy. So he sent his army to bring the slaves back. They were ordered to kill them if they refused to return. There was dust rising on the horizon. The Egyptian army! Now what? Speak about the devil and the deep blue sea: They were in between. So now they were really complaining to Moses. "Just look at the mess you got us into. In Egypt, we had work, enough food at least and place to live. But here, we have none of them. And now we are either going to be killed by the soldiers or drown in the sea." Notice; they blamed Moses, not God. It is always easier to blame some one nearby than to look at a larger picture like God”s plan.

When we first think about something new, it always seems so attractive and exciting. In our excitement, it”s easy to overlook that what is new is also unknown and therefore can be frightening once you actually face it. Where there is light, there must be a shadow. Once we step into a new phase of life, we suddenly realize that we don”t know anything about the new territory. It is scary to realize this. It is like crossing of a sea. There is no bridge on which to go back. We seem suddenly to be surrounded by all sort of dangers. The real test for an adult who desires to be free and independent is how to face those problems.

You can avoid them, complain about them, or ignore them as though they don”t exist. But that means you have decided to not grow up. One can never learn to live by avoiding your problems. One can never learn to swim without getting wet. We must know that unresolved problems always seem an impossible challenge. Two summers ago, we discovered water slides at a park in the Laurentiens. We enjoyed the thrill of going down those steep and twisting slides. It must be like learning to ski down hill, which I have not done yet. But I have yet to go down the steepest straight down slide. We”ve looked at them every time we went there. It looked like jumping straight down from the top of a cliff. It looked like a sheer terror. But I suppose, once you have tried it, it must be such an exhilarating experience. That”s why we saw people, young and old, who kept going back up and shooting down. I don”t want to trivialize life”s serious experiences by comparing them to ski or to water slides. But the psychology behind overcoming the fear of unknown is basically the same. Unless you try it, you will never know.

To give birth to the first child must be very scary. The first day at the school, or at a new job can be very frightening. But we learn not to fear them from others” experiences of having gone through them. Also it helps to know that someone you love and trust is with you, going through the frightening experience with you. Then how come we always complain about any new situation that challenge us. We are just like the Hebrews on the banks of Red Sea.

The Hebrews witnessed many incredible and powerful acts of God that redeemed them from the bondage in Egypt. But how soon they forgot those favours they received from God. As soon as they came face to face with some fresh difficulties and dangers, they regretted that they had ever wanted to be free. When you can”t remember the love of God, you will never appreciate what it means to be a human being. The Hebrews wanted to return to the easy but sub-human life of slaves, because they forgot the love of God. When they were slaves, they did not have to make decisions, never had to exercise their imagination to solve problems. They were like babies letting others make all the decisions. In fact, it is the life of domesticated animals they wanted to go back to. They completely forgot how they hated the way they were treated like animals. When one is in such a mindset seeing only the past with nostalgia, one can not see any possibility of resolution because one is not looking forward. If going back seems impossible, sulking and whining are the only thing left for them to do. This was the case of the Hebrews by the Red Sea with the Egyptian Army behind them. "Why did you force us to do it? It is all your fault." We whine when we decide to give up, refusing to look at what is possible. When we give up, nothing is possible. Even if there are many avenues visible before us, we don”t see them.

Anyhow, when the whole company of Hebrews were in a state of panic, God told Moses to touch the water with his cane. We will never know what exactly happened. But the sea parted, and dry land appeared. Some translation of the Bible suggests "Reed Sea" instated of "Red Sea", which is Northwest of Red Sea and a border region between Egypt and Sinai desert. It is now a part of the Suez Canal system. In that region, from time to time, a strong gust of wind from Sahara desert can blow away water from the marshy reed bush, and animals and people could walk across the swamp for a short while. But it is also dangerous, because you never know when the wind stops and water comes back. The Egyptians did not make it. No one can tell if this was how it actually happened. The point is, however, that if you look hard enough, most problems are solvable. But if you give up and only complain, they are insolvable.

If you believe that you are acting according to God”s plan and you are a co-worker with God, you will be more determined to face life”s difficulties. You will not give up, because God is with you, as he promised to Moses. The most important lesson of the story is that the Hebrew people were always reminded that they were travelling with God, as he promised Moses that he would. Even when they forgot about God”s presence, there were many signs that reminded them of that. There were pillars of clouds in the daytime, and of the fire at night, which signalled God”s presence and his guidance. The same promise is with us. If you look around, there are many signs of God”s presence. If we forget, there are many faithful witnesses who point those signs out to us. Those witnesses are everywhere; some of them may be sitting next to you.

BUYING LAND BEFORE A WAR

Jeremiah 32:1-3,6-15, Psalm 91, Luke 16:19-31

September 27, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

Katharine White was a long time Gardening columnist for the New Yorker magazine. When she sent for the spring bulbs from the catalogue for the last time, she knew that she would never see them grow. Her husband wrote about her planting spring bulbs in the last autumn of her life before she died of cancer. He observed "her studied absorbtion in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her own detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection."

Today”s story of Jeremiah tells us about the same kind of faith in the future. Jeremiah bought a piece of land and hid the title deed in a stone jar, just before Jerusalem fell into the hand of the enemy troops, and was totally destroyed. Jeremiah knew that he would never take possession of the land. Jeremiah is not known for his optimism. In fact, he was a prophet of doom and gloom. He constantly accused the king and the people of Israel for their lack of faith in God and their immoral life style. He had warned that the result would be a total destruction of the nation. He had predicted the defeat of the Judean kingdom by the Babylonian empire. Soon enough, Jerusalem was besieged by the enemy troops. The king was annoyed and angry with Jeremiah and put him into prison. Yet Jeremiah was telling the truth. But nobody likes to hear the truth if it is a bad news. So what was the idea of buying a piece of property in a city which was about to be destroyed and occupied by the enemy? This story is telling us that the people with faith in God never lose hope, even though the immediate future does not look bright.

However, how can anyone be as optimistic as Jeremiah was, while they are angry with a corrupt world? Some people who get angry with the unjust and immoral world, act on their anger causing terrible destruction. We see them in Israel and Palestine. We saw them in Unabomber, or in Kansas City. We saw them in Northern Ireland, and recently in Kenya, and Tanzania. They are angry with the people who treat them unjustly or do not obey their God. They are not mere criminals. They are worse than criminals, because they are convinced that they are doing the right thing. They commit those terrible acts out of conviction, often ready to sacrifice their own lives for what they believe to be right. What separates those terrorists from the angry Prophets like Jeremiah is faith in a loving and merciful God. Jeremiah was angry with the corruption and knew that the future of the country was bleak, and yet he bought a piece of land. He never lost hope. He had faith in the future of his people, because he believed in the love of God.

When your belief in moral living is based on the laws of a loving God, your deeds are always motivated by love and never by hatred. Love does not diminish even in anger. There is nothing wrong with being angry, so long as love is the cause of anger. But when anger drives you to hateful and destructive acts, it shows that you don”t see any future. There is no love in your anger. Love is always hopeful, because love always anticipates the future. Love knows that there will be spring and summer beyond the coldness and darkness of winter.

There is nothing wrong with being angry with an unjust and immoral world. It is too bad that righteous anger is considered to be out of fashion. Many people in the church think that antagonizing people by speaking about the evilness of the world is not a helpful thing to do these days. They think that the church must be attractive. We have to offer nice music and a good time, to make people think that the church is a nice place to go. I don”t entirely disagree with this way of thinking. The church must give comfort to people and encourage people with strength to live on in this difficult world. But we must also remember that our religion has another important spiritual tradition. It is the tradition of the Prophets. Prophets say things that are right even though they may annoy people and make them feel uncomfortable.

Let me tell you a story. Old Michael was in his death bed. A priest came to give him the last rites. "Well, Michael," said the priest, "Are you ready to renounce the devil and make peace with your Creator?" "Yes, Father," answered Michael, "I am prepared to make peace with God. But as for the devil, I really am not in a position to antagonize anybody." We must know that in our religion, you can not have it both ways.

When we see injustice done to people or corruption in high places, we must be angry. It is worrisome when we see people forgetting spiritual values and pursuing pleasures as the only goal of life. When a nation loses spiritual values and moral principles, it is doomed. We must keep on speaking about justice no matter how unpopular that will make us. But in the mean time, we must remember that God who demands justice is also a merciful God who forgives and gives us a second chance. Therefore, we speak about righteousness out of love, not out of hatred. Love is always hopeful and anticipates the future.

One person who contributed more than many other people to bring justice into the world is Martin Luther King. He was once asked what he would do if the world ended the next day. He answered, "I will plant a tree." People like Jeremiah and Martin Luther King teach us that there is always hope even in an evil world, because God is good and merciful. I want to be hopeful as they are.

PRIMARY BLESSING: Food and Drink
Exodus 16 : 2-4,13-20, and John 2:1 – 3, 7-11

Christmas is coming.  It’s time when everybody thinks about food.  Bake cookies, fruit cakes, maybe a time to start looking for a recipe for a different kind of stuffing.  I love eating.  I think that food and drink are the signs that God truly loves us.  There is a good reason for the Christian Church’s most important ritual, Communion,  involves eating and drinking.  

I will tell you a story of a first communion.  My father grew up in a Buddhist home in the beginning of the twentieth century in Japan.  He became a Christian through an American woman who came to his village, and started a Sunday School.  My father’s parents heard a rumour that this missionary could deal with any rambunctious and uncontrollable teenage boy.  My dad apparently was one.  So he was sent to Sunday School.   Anyhow, he liked the Sunday School, especially the singing.  He eventually became a Christian to the consternation of his parents.  They wanted the American woman to fix their son, not to make him a Christian.  One day, as my father told me, the missionary announced that a minister would come to baptise them and celebrate the most important dinner for the Christians.  So the congregation was quite excited about it, and looked forward to the first visit of an ordained minister, and a special dinner.  That day came but the minister was delayed. The congregation came hungry expecting a big feast.  So they decided to have the dinner without the minister anyway.  They didn’t have bread and wine.  So they thought that sake and sushi would do.  They had a good time feasting.  By the time the minister finally arrived, he found a very happy and noisy congregation indeed.  He was a Methodist minister who believed in total abstention from alcohol, so he was very annoyed.  They had to wait until they became sober before they were baptized, and observed the first communion with bread and wine.

I think that this story tells us something about a problem of the communion service of our church today.  As you know, another name for communion is  “Eucharist.”   It means thanksgiving.   We celebrate the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ by having a symbolic dinner together.  It is meant to be a joyful occasion.   The communion was a congregational dinner in the early church, like the one we had a month ago.  When it became a ritual in the established church by the Roman Imperial authority, we lost that sense of joy and became a solemn formality.  I don’t know how we can recover that sense of gratitude and joy in our communion.

Humans always marked special occasions by eating together.   We eat not only to celebrate happy occasions but also to celebrate the loving community of supportive people at  not-so-happy-occasions but significant ones like funerals.   We do this because food and drink always bring people together.  A loving community always share a joy of life.  There is a good reason why the Gospel tells us of the miracle at the wedding in Cana as the first act that Jesus performed in his ministry.  Jesus providing wine for a party!  God blesses a joyful occasion with food and rink.
                                  
Food used to be a huge source of happiness before.  It is too bad that we don’t appreciate food as much now.  Our society is so affluent that it’s not too much of a struggle to put food on the table.   If anything we eat and drink too much.  We have forgotten that food was a real blessing and a source of great happiness.  We live in a society where the grace before meal became just a formality and does not have as much meaning as it used to.  Abundance diminished pleasure of God’s blessing.  Greed and gluttony spoiled blessing of God.  All of us have weight problems and less appreciation of food.  Our affluence made food a curse.  What a great pity!

There is an expression in Japanese language, “Kappuku ga iidesune.”  It more or less means: I see you got fat. You must be successful.  Congratulations!   Food used to be scarce and precious.    People could not afford to eat so much to be fat.  So not only in Japan but also in many countries, being overweight meant affluence and success.  You ought to be congratulated.

When people of Israel were freed from slavery, they had to wander in a desert for many years in search of land to settle down.  There was not much food in a desert.  They became hungry, and complained to Moses, “When we were slaves, we were not free, but we ate meat.  Now we are free but we are starving to death.”  So, as the story goes, God provided food.  God sent down quails for meat and some stuff that looked like marshmallow for starch and sugar.  They were told not to collect too much, only what they needed.  But some of them got greedy and stocked up for next day.  But they found surplus food rotten and smelly next day, full of worms.  Now today in Canada, food is plentiful and cheap.  30% of food is thrown out.  We became greedy and glutenous just like the people of Israel in the desert.  Overweight is now a major health hazzard.  Food is supposed to be a blessing.  But greed made us glutenous, and food has become a major health issue.  This is how we turned the blessing into a curse.  There is an important lesson to be learned from the Book of Exodus.

Doctors advise that three items to be avoided if you want to stay healthy: fat, salt, and sugar.  But they are very important substance that our bodies require.  Sugar is an easily digestible source of energy, fat is a way to store carbo-hydrate in time of need, and salt is needed to retain water in our bodies when engaging in a physical activity.  We need them and thank goodness we like them.  But now that food is easily accessible but we do not move our bodies as much, those essential ingredients became poisons that make us sick.  They are still the essential requirements if we take them according to the need.   What God told Moses was a lesson against greed and gluttony not against food.  We can recover the sense of blessing of food, when we take the experience of the Israelites in the desert seriously.

There is a good reason why the church’s most important ritual – communion involves food and drink.  As we partake of it, we must remember that food is a primary sign of God’s love.  Let us drink and eat and be merry with our loved ones during the festive season and be grateful.  As we partake the communion, let us remember to enjoy God’s blessing.  And let us not turn it into a curse.  

 COMMUNION IS SHARING John 6: 1-14, Acts 6:1-6

I am warning you this right off the bat : Some of you are hearing this sermon for the second time.  It’s not that I am getting lazy in my old age.  I am doing this because this is the first of the trilogy about communion I am planing.  I want us to think about the communion in sequence.   When you look up the Oxford Dictionary, the word “Communion” is defined as “sharing in a very deep level.”    So, this morning we will think about the communion as sharing.  In November I will touch on the dinner table as a community builder, and in December we will celebrate the “Pleasure of Eating.”

The scriptures read this morning,  the Corinthians and the Acts are both touching on the difficulty of sharing in the early Christian Church.  You may know this: In the early Christian church the worship services always began by eating together.  It was a proper dinner.  An apostle began the dinner by breaking bread and sharing the cup in memory of Christ, according to his command.   This was the harbinger of the communion service, which today is only a symbolic act.  However, it looks like in some cities particularly in Corinth, there was a problem.  The poor people, the widows and those who were not Jews were often discriminated against.  When they came to the table often there was no more bread and wine left while some others were already drunk because they had too much.  This is why the apostles selected  some good people as elders to make sure that everybody had a share of food and drink.  That was the beginning of the office of “Elders” in the church.

This reminds me of the communion services in African.  In a country called Lesotho, I taught at an university for eight years.  But, I was called upon to conduct the communion service sometimes.   At the communion elders surrounded me like body-guards.  Then I was shocked to see them pushing some people away.  Apparently they grabbed too much bread, or drank too much wine from a common cup.  I realized how they were hungry.  In a country like Canada where the major problem is eating too much, it is hard to understand this.  But in a poor country, where people are hungry all the time, even a bit of bread and a sip of wine is precious.  They never had enough food.  So, like in the early church, elders’ job was to keep the order and to make sure that everybody had bread and wine at the Lord’s Table.

Today, we are all concerned about energy.  But our attempt to reduce our  dependancy on oil  had caused hunger and starvation in the poorer parts of the world.  When industries discovered that corn can produce alternative fuel to run a car, price of corn shot up.  Many poor people in the countries where corn is a staple food could not afford it anymore.  So, many people became hungry and rioted.  The rich world is worried about sources of fuel to run a car, but the poor people are worried about food.  It’s such an unequal world.

It is said that today one billion people are hungry and malnourished.  In the meantime, here in North America, a major health problem comes from eating too much.   Health problems caused by over-weight are replacing cancer and heart diseases as the major causes of death.  I’m told that a half of our children are over weight and a fifth of them are obese, while in the rest of the world thousands of people die everyday  from diseases caused by malnutrition.  Food is killing us while lack of it is killing in the rest of the world.  Sharing food is a big challenge today.

Many of us think that a massive food aid is the answer.  Just send them food, you say.   The price of our agricultural products will go up and the farmers will benefit.  But I don’t think that will work.  For one thing, who is going to pay for it.  The government, our tax?  And secondly, food aid often destroys food producers in the receiving countries.  It was cheap rice from South Carolina destroyed once thriving rice production in Haiti in the last century.  I saw the same thing happened many times in Africa.  When I went to Lesotho, Africa in 1968, there were some old farmers who still remembered the days when there was a movement among Africans to “Send food to save hungry English people.”  It was after the second world war when the whole Europe was starving.  What made Africa food aid receiving continent afterwards?  A good question.  There is a lot of debate about this but I believe that commercialization of agriculture in a global scale deprived of the small farmers’ dignity as food producers and made them beggars.  Cheap food from industrialized world drove them out of the market.

The lesson from the Gospel according to John teaches us something important in this context.  When Jesus asked if there was food for many peopel, Andrew came up to tell Jesus, “Here is a boy who has 5 loaves of barley bread and two fish.”  This nameless boy probably gave up food for the family dinner and offered all he had.  That’s how the miracle of the feeding of five thousand happened, through a willingness of one boy to share all he had.  Even if you don’t believe in a miracle, there is still an important message.  That is: when you fight for food, there is never enough of it.  But when you share it, there is enough.

The answer to the problem of hunger is not food-aid.  It is in giving back the dignity of growing their own food.  Give farmers everywhere farm credit.  You have no idea that in the poorer part of the world, farmers have no crop insurance nor farm credit our farmers take for granted.  So a few years of drought do not kill our farmers, but in Africa even one drought is a total disaster and many people starve.   Then, how come our foreign aid program does not include farm credit?  I know why.  We rather keep producing food we can not possibly consume, and give away the surplus.  There is no way we will allow our government to give financial incentive to the farmers of other countries.  Agriculture is a very competitive market.  We don’t want more competitors.   We rather destroy other food  producers, and make them customers of our farm products, and recipients of our food aid.  Production is a source of dignity.  We really don’t want to share such a precious right.  Sharing all we have is far too much of sacrifice.

When I first went to Lesotho, everywhere I went I was surrounded by beggars.  I hated it.  One day, a school teacher who taught me the language told me something I didn’t know.  He said, “We have a sharing society.  If you have something others don’t have, you will share it.  That’s why every mother teaches her children to leave a tiny portion of dinner for a hungry stranger who may knock on the door anytime.”  Demanding something you don’t have from someone who has is no shame in our culture.  To prove his point, my teacher suggested an experiment.  When you go into a village and run into a beggar, you beg instead, saying  “I’m hungry.”  That’s what I did to a nearly naked herd boy who was looking after a bunch of sheep.  I said, “Ke lapile.  M’phe lijo.”  I’m hungry, give me food.  To my surprise, he pulled out without hesitation, a roasted corn on the cob from under his dirty blanket and gave it to me.  He probably gave up his lunch but he looked happy.  He helped a hungry stranger.  Sharing surplus is good only temporary, but sharing something important lasts longer.  That is what communion is about: It’s a symbol of sharing what is precious.  Remember Jesus shared himself.  What can we share to mend a broken world?  

A SCANDALOUS DINNER
 Luke 5:27 – 32,  7:36-39

Have you ever been with someone you should not be seen with in a place you should not be?   I have.   When I was a newly ordained minister, I was asked by an Immigration officer to accompany a young woman to a clinic for the sexually transmitted disease.   She was suspected of attempting to enter Canada illegally.  I was asked to be an interpreter.   All the time I was in the waiting room I was praying very hard that noone I knew would come in.  I admit: I was worried only about my reputation, not at all about a person who was about to be deported.  She could have been an innocent victim of human traffic.  I  still feel ashamed that I was only concerned about me not about her.

When Jesus was seen eating dinner with tax collectors and other socially unacceptable characters, some Pharisees asked his disciples, “How come your teacher eat with such people?”  It must have been terribly embarrassing to the disciples.  Particularly in ancient times like the time of Jesus in the Jewish society which had a very strict code about eating.  There were many rules about what to eat, how to prepare it, how to eat it, and whom to eat it with.  No respectable Jew would be seen sitting at the same table eating dinner with a character like a woman of ill-repute or a tax official.  Tax-collectors were seen at the time as corrupt traitors who sold their souls to a foreign occupation authority for profit.  You see, at the time the tax collectors were contractors who made their living from commissions.   So you understand why they were hated and shunned.    What Jesus did was a scandal, eating with such people!   Even today, it is assumed that you have dinner only with someone close, special, and respectable.  It was much more so in ancient times when the dinner table was a very private place like a bed room.  We are going to observe communion this morning.   It is a commemoration of the dinner with Jesus.  You must understand the communion service in that context.  It is important to remember whom Jesus had dinners with.  Jesus gave a clear message that no one in his world should be exclude.

Jesus is telling us that everybody is a family and a friend.  Every one is invited to his table.  This is quite a revolutionary idea.  Many people thought he was crazy.  Even today such an act is often unacceptable and easily misunderstood.  It would be like eating at a Macdonald’s with a sex-trade worker.   Clearly, Jesus is rebelling against the accepted social order.  His idea of the universal love and inclusiveness is alien to our common sense even today.  You see how an animal eats, and how it growls when anybody comes close.   Food must be protected.  Herd animals eat together only with the close knit group of the same species.  It is natural to eat only with your family or with very close friends.  Food is precious.  You have to always fight for it and for the sake of your family.  So most of the living creatures are very picky about their dinner companions: that’s natural.  

So you can see what Jesus did was unprecedented.  He declared a new order.  Prophet Isaiah a long before Jesus advocated for a such world: the new world order where a lion and a lamb eat together, and a baby puts its hand into a poison snake’s den without being harmed.  No one in this new world will be harmed by another.  That’s Isaiah’s vision of God’s world.   Jesus was acting to demonstrate it.

Not only did Jesus eat with social outcastes, he also ate with rich people and people in high places.  He did not discriminate his dinner companions.  Why did he do that?  I believe he did that because he wanted to show the world that the human race is one, and noone should be excluded from the family of human race.  When you pray, “Thy kingdom come” you are praying for such an inclusive world.  He ate many dinners like that, and wanted his followers to remember such a dinner at his last supper.  He ate the last supper with those who betrayed him, and abandoned him.  Remember?  Everybody at that table ran away when Jesus needed friends, during his trial before the high priest.  Even the top cat disciple, Peter, said, “I don’t know him, I’ve  never seen him,”  three times.  Judas was not the only double-crosser, all the rest of them ran away too.  What a bunch of scums!  And yet he ate the last supper with them.  That is what he told us to remember and that is what we are remembering this morning.  We must remember what Jesus taught us during the first communion:  to be inclusive in our daily life – “Don’t exclude anybody!  Everybody is my friend and a friend of yours.”

Of course, you can not be eating with your family and close friends exclusively all the time.  There will be an occasion when you have to eat with someone not so intimate.  You have to eat with someone you have to make a business deal, you have to eat with someone you don’t know well but whom you have to honour.  You have to do this but under a set of rules.  This is why humans developed customs and table manners.  You can not just walk into anybody’s home for supper unannounced because you are hungry.   When you think of the customs and table manners, you realize that most of them began as safety measures to avoid bad feeling, unequal share of food, even violence.  You have to be nice to the guests, and share everything on the table.  This is why the person who presides over the procedures of eating together, particularly the one divides the food and drink must be respected.   This is why such a person is called the one who does the “honour”.  It is because such a person must be respected and trusted.  Jesus Christ was the first person who did the “honour” in the new world.

When I was working for an Ecumenical organization, conversation took place at a coffee break one day about Communion Service, more specifically about how different churches handled the left-over elements –  bread and wine.  A Roman Catholic woman said, “Of course, the priest locks it away.  It’s the body of Christ.  It’s sacred.”  An Anglican said, “the priest drinks and eats all the left-overs at the end of the sacrament.”  An United Church woman said, “I stuff my turkey.”  Each church has a different custom according to a particular belief.  But those are important manners with which to observe communion.  Like a dinner, each family has an unique custom.  We follow the custom of the communion service as an important ritual no matter how different the ways we follow it.  It represents Christ’s fundamental teaching of universal love and acceptance.  We are all in it together.  
                            

FEEDING THOUSANDS
Psalm 23 (Voices United 747), Mark 6:30-44

The word, ‘communion’ means first of all ‘sharing’ in the Oxford dictionary.  But when we use it in the church, it is a Sacrament to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  I wish that the church would emphasize‘ the sharing’ aspect of the service more prominently.  Today’s miracle story, the feeding of thousands, should also be understood as a story of sharing.  But first let me begin with a story from Africa.

I worked for eight years in Lesotho, a country in Southern Africa during the 1970`s.   The church I was sent to work with, has the communion service  held only once or twice a year jointly with several neighboring congregations which share a minister.  This is because of a dire shortage of ordained ministers and because  the church was too poor to pay full time ordained ministers for all congregations..  By the way, the most of the congregations are looked after by trained and certified part-time lay preachers under the supervision of an ordained minister, who often looks after several congregations.  Most of lay preachers are full time farmers or teachers.  It has been like this for years.  So such an occasion as a joint communion has come to be called  ‘mokete.’ or a feast.  It commands the attendance of a few hundred to a thousand people.  The host congregation provides a meal for the whole crowd after the communion service.  People come from near and far on foot and horseback, sometimes taking a whole day to get there.  It`s a joyful occasion which many congregations share together.  A host congregation hold a special fund raising to feed the whole crowd.

In the communion service, everyone goes to the alter and takes a bit of bread and sip wine from a common cup.  It can take sometimes hours to serve a thousand people in this way.  Long hours don’t bother them; people sing their favorite hymns and spend the day visiting friends waiting for their turn to be served.  It feels more like a giant party rather than a worship service.  When I first officiated at such a communion service in Lesotho, I was surprised by the number of elders surrounding the bread and wine.  They formed a circle like an honor guard.  I had a double shock when I found them pushing people away after they took communion.  People were hungry.  So everybody tried to take as big a chunk of bread as possible.  This was quite a revelation because I never thought of communion as food.  For me, it had been a ceremony with a symbolic bit of bread-like substance and a drop of liquid with an undefinable taste.  But we must remember that in the early church, when the communion service was held, it was always a liturgy at the beginning of the communal meal.  The Communion service in Lesotho recovered that style out of necessity.  

The Act of Apostles in chapter six records such occasions where people met for communion which was followed by a  meal.  However, sometimes distribution of food was not done justly and some people like foreigners and widows were discriminated against and had to go hungry.  This was why the elders were elected for the first time in the history of the church to help the apostles administer the communion so that the elements and food were shared equally.  

The clue to understanding  the story of Jesus feeding thousands of people with five loaves and two fish lies in the significance of sharing.  And the meaning of our communion service should be understood as a symbolic act of sharing the goodness of life with others.  It should remind us that all the necessities of life must be held in common.  Communion which is not followed by a  life of sharing in the community is meaningless.  We must remember that Jesus himself shared his own life with us.

Many people believe that the story of the feeding of five thousand is a miracle which proves Jesus was God.  There are a few problems with this interpretation.  For one thing, many scientific-minded people think this is ridiculous. It could never happen.  Secondly, for persons like me and others, we know that there are many other religions which have similar miracle stories: it does not prove that Jesus Christ was the son of God because of this miracle.  For me, if we are a community of people who love each other, this is a story to stress the importance of sharing with others.

According to the Gospel of John, five loaves and two fish belonged to a boy.  The Bible does not say if the boy offered the food willingly or if the disciples just confiscated them.  The point  is that one boy fed five thousand people with what he was carrying for his lunch, because it was shared.  When people share precious things, miracles happen.  To give up something important for others is the message of this story.  The boy gave up all he had, not what he could spare.  Also it tells us that when people give up something precious for others, something amazing happens.

When I went to Africa, I was young and immature.  I don’t think I was a racist, but there was one thing that I disliked about the local people.  It was begging.  I just didn’t like being surrounded by He told me that, the Basotho have a culture of communalisms, something which we who live in a culture of individualism should think carefully about.  The Basotho still hold a notion that everything is a gift of God, and belongs to everybody.  When one has more than others, it is natural that one shares with those who don’t.  He suggested that next time I ran into someone – a beggar who wanted something from me, I should see how the beggar would react if I also ask something from him.  So that’s what I did when a shepherd boy wanted money from me.  I said, “Ke lapile.  Mphe lijo.” – “I’m hungry.  Give me food.” in response.  Immediately without hesitation, he pulled out a roasted corn on the cob from his tattered blanket.  I was embarrassed because I lied but the boy thought I was serious.  I had to take his gift.  Probably that was his only meal for the day.  But he gave it to me, because I said I was hungry.  Then I realized that we in the west have lost something precious which bound a society together.

We have lost a spirit of sharing things that belong to everybody.  This is why the world practically ignores starving people in Africa.  We are more concern about increasing our wealth which are already more than enough.  Not many people want to think about a staggering number of people who are starving.  Last week a news report gave a figure of one billion people on the earth who are starving.  And it is not because we lack food supplies.  Even in the countries where people are starving, people can produce food.  Food shortage is cause by poverty, not by shortage of food.  There is food but people can not buy it.  Where there are people who can produce food, they have no access to bank credit like our farmers do.  But the current economic system does not allow that.  Food production is a highly  competitive business.  Rich countries which can afford so much credit to the food producers produce so much surplus food.  We don’t want more competitors in Africa who can supply food much cheaper than we can.  Rich countries give our surplus food rather than changing global economic equation.  We want them to remain beggars.  We do not want any more competitor in the already crowded food market.

Here is the crux of the matter.  Just like the boy who gave up all he had so that Jesus could feed the thousands, are we prepared to sacrifice our well established position in the global economy in order to make African to be food sufficient?     Communion is about sharing.  True sharing is not giving what we have in surplus, but giving up something that forces us to sacrifice our affluence.  Jesus gave his own life to share.  If we are ready to give up something so precious that it hurts in the giving, there will be a miracle just like five loaves of bread and two fish fed thousands at the time of Jesus.   Just like a Jewish folk tale of Stone soup.

WHERE DOES GOD LIVE?

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19, Psalm 24, Mark 6:14-15

July 12, 2009

Mrs. Thomson’s Sunday School class was discussing the house of God.  Jenny’s hand went up.  She said, “God lives in a big house in Montreal.  It’s a church called Notre Dame.  That’s where Celine Dionne got married.”  But Bobby thought God lived in the bathroom.  “Why?” asked Mrs. Thomson.  “Every morning, Dad stands in front of the bathroom and shouts, “My God, are you still there?”  You may think that Jenny and Bobby were funny and they were wrong.  But you really can not laugh at them, because grown-ups make the same kind of silly mistakes too.  

There are so many people who believe that God lives in the church building or some  place like Jerusalem.  That’s the only way we can understand why so many people throughout history spent so much money on the church buildings; cathedrals and basilica.  Not only that, they fought over those church buildings, , even killed each other.  They thought those buildings were as important as God himself.  Speaking about the place God is supposed to live, think of the way people of different faiths fight over the Holy Land in the Middle East shedding blood. God does not live in the Middle East only.  They are all wrong.  We should know that God does not live in just a brick and stone building or at one place.     God is everywhere.  

The idea of where God is has changed over the years, even among the people who wrote the Bible.  The earliest writing in the Bible about where God lives is in the Book of Genesis.  God was described as an old man who could not stand the heat of the day and strolled in the cool evening breeze in the garden of Eden.  As the time went by, the ideas changed and God became a spirit like a wind not an old man.  Jesus said, “Nobody has seen God, because  God is spirit.”   Spirit comes and goes like a wind.  We know God is there, but nobody know where he comes from and where he goes, and when.   In fact, the word for spirit in the Bible is the same word as wind or breath in both Hebrew and Greek.  What this is saying is that depending on how one sees God should look like, the idea of  where God lives has changed over the years.  Some people believe the Bible word by word as facts.  They don’t like me talking like this.  I don’t mind if people believe that the every word in the Bible is a historical fact, it’s their business.  But I for one and many others see the Bible as a precious record of people’s search for God, in a form of made up stories, poems, and metaphors.  So I believe that people made wrong assumptions in the process.

By the time Moses appeared, humans had invented letters and characters to write words.  So when God told humans to live according to the  basic rules of behaviours, Moses wrote them down on two slabs of stone.  They are called ten commandments, because there were ten basic moral principles God wanted us to follow.  So the Hebrew people thought that those stones on which God’s commandments were written were where God could be found.  They made those two stones holy and put them in a box and called it “the Ark of God.”  The story of the Old Testament which has been selected for today’s reading was about that box those holy stones were kept.  People treated them as though God himself.  Furthermore, the building that housed those stones was as important as the commandments, almost like God himself.  They were not allowed even to touch the box.  Now we know that such an idea is wrong.  God does not live in the words nor a box that contains such words nor in the building that contains the box.  Neither the Temple in Jerusalem nor the stones on which the Ten Commandments were written exist today .  But God is with us because God is everywhere.

In fact, when King Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem, he realized that no matter how big and splendid the building was, God was too big to live in any building made by humans.  So on the completion of the temple, he prayed, “But can you, oh God, really live anywhere on earth?  Even heaven and the highest heaven can not contain you, much less this house that I have built.”  

Here appeared a new assumption, “heaven” as the place where God could be found.  For a long time, God was thought to be “up there” in heaven.  That’s why the writers of the Bible at some point began to speak about God who lived in  heaven.  Heaven became holy the same as God, because that was where they believed God lived.  The problem is, nowadays we know the earth is round, and ‘up there’ in Canada is ‘down there’ in China.  When the second Soviet astronaut went into the space during the sixties, he said, “I went up into the heaven, but I didn’t see God.”  Of course, he didn’t.  God does not live up there.  He is everywhere.

Now back to the temple and the box that housed it.  It is interesting that King David’s son, Solomon was able to build it, not King David.  It was David who won many battles to bring the Box of Ten Commandments to Jerusalem.  In our mind, it should have been David who had a privilege to build the temple, not his son who inherited his father’s achievements.  The reason Solomon was given this honour was because, by the time Solomon was on the throne, there was unity among people, no more fighting.  Because there was peace and unity among people, Solomon was able to undertake and complete such a big project.  The temple was a symbol of unity, people of Israel stopped fighting among themselves and were able to cooperate in building a house of prayers.  The temple made people come together, work together, and pray together.  The building was the people’s house when peace and unity among them were achieved.  The real church is possible where there is peace.  We make mockery of God and ourselves when the church is divided.  We come to church to hear the word and to pray together in peace and harmony, not to settle the score.

My wife and I went to Cluny in the Burgundy region of France two weeks ago and saw a ruin of then the biggest church in Christendom before St. Peter’s cathedral was built in Rome.  It was so huge that even our city block looks smaller.  The church was so powerful that one of the most powerful politicians in France like Cardinal Richelieu was once the Abbott of this church and the abbott of Cluny always had a palace in Paris.  But today, it is a ruin.  Only parts of the building are left to be dug out by archeologists.  People destroyed it during the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, and took the stones away to build their own homes.  The fury of the people’s anger against the church is unimaginable.  The church must have been seen an oppressor and the enemy of people.  They must have hated the church so much that they didn’t want anything of that church building left standing.  It took years to demolish it.  But people did it: made it completely devastated.  The church is no house of God where there is no love and mercy; nor peace and harmony.  Where there is peace among people of God, there is no need for a building, because God is everywhere.

God is everywhere.  Most importantly, he lives within each one of us when we accept the spirit of Jesus Christ, and try to live according to his principle of love.  This is the reason why Paul called our bodies the temple of God.  This notion is the very basis of our moral principles.  Because God lives within ourselves, we must keep ourselves clean and loving.  Inevitably, a house collects dust and falls into disrepair.  That’s normal; we don’t have to be ashamed of that.  We clean it up from time to time.  So look after ourselves, like mothers look after themselves for the babies and for themselves.  When you look after yourselves, you are looking after God who lives with in.  We must also be kind and nice to each other, because our friends and neighbours are also the temples of God.  God is with us and in us.

            CONNECTED TO LIFE
                 Psalm 84 (VU 800), John 15:1-11
                       232,376, 703, 603
                               
                   May 10, 2009 by Tad Mitsui
                               
A tragedy hit my friend’s family some years ago.  Their
young adopted son committed suicide.  He was born of an
alcoholic mother and suffered from fetal alcoholic
syndrome.  One of the symptoms affected him was that he
could not receive nor understand other people’s
affection.  Consequently he was incapable of trusting
people.  Like a branch that was cut off from a tree, he
cut himself off from life despite his devoted parents
who loved him dearly.

The parable of the vine and the branches is a metaphor
of our relationship with others.  But it also speaks
about cruelty of pruning and the fate of the branches
which have been cut off.  We must know that the point of
this parable is the importance of being connected to
life, and not about being cut off and burnt in fire.  It
is about “Stay in my love.” 

A certain business man fires people by quoting this
parable of Jesus.  “He removes every branch that bears
no fruit.  Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away
like a branch and withers: such branches are gathered,
and burned.”  This man is an example of those who
ignores  Jesus’ main message and uses the word of God
for one’s selfish advantage.  There are two glaring
mistakes in his logic.  He is not Jesus, for one thing.
So he is not a life-giving vine.  Secondly what Jesus
meant by the word “fruit” is not his profit.  Jesus was
speaking about the vine as the source of life, and love
as the sap of life.  The vine according to Jesus is
certainly not a money tree.

Some religions also abuse this parable.  In order to
keep loyalty of members, leaders of some churches use
this parable to black-mail their members so that they
would stay on or agree with their teaching.  Anyone who
criticizes the church or its teaching is threatened to
be kicked out and to be damned.  This is why it is very
important for us to know the point of this parable.  We
must resist temptations to use the story to suit our
purpose.

What then is the point of this parable?  A simple rule
of thumb to read any parable is to take the first
sentence as  the main point.  So in this case, the point
is:  “I am (Jesus Christ is) the true vine and God is
the vine grower.”  In other words, God gives and
sustains life through Jesus Christ.  The emphasis should
be the vine that gives sap of life.  Life of the branch
can not be sustained without being connected to this
vine.  And this is not meant to be a threat.  In to
emphasize the positive aspect of this connectedness, I
would like to use the metaphor of the fetus in mother’s
womb.

The first nine months of our existence is a life of
total dependency in the mother’s womb.   We are
connected to the mother through the umbilical cord and
receive all we need from her.  The mother’s womb is the
source of life, like the vine is for the branch.  It is
also the very first most comfortable and life giving
experience of our lives.  This is why we curl up in a
fetal position, when we feel miserable.  Instinctively
we try to return to the most comfortable and protected
time we remember, in mother’s womb.  Most of the time,
we receive from mother what we need sufficiently.  This
is how we develop our equipments for survival and
learned to reject what endangers our life.   This is
also why on a very rare occasions when a fetus receives
substance that is harmful, it is shocked into developing
abnormal resistance to anything external.  Fetal
alcoholic syndrome is an example.  It is dangerous
because the fetus learns not to trust and accept.  In
our mother’s womb, we learn to receive life and accept
love.  And that is the normal development.  When we grow
normally in the womb, we develop all the organs and
capacities for us to survive after we leave our mother’s
body.  When we are born, we will have fully grown lungs
and digestive systems to breathe and to take in
nutrition. 

The experience in our mothers’ womb is mostly about our
physical development.  However, when Jesus spoke about
the vine and the branches, he was telling us about
spiritual life that was sustained by being connected to
him.  And spiritual life is as essential for us as air
is for our physical body.  Without air our bodies die.
Likewise without spiritual life we die as human beings.
Just like for the young man, of whom I spoke about in
the beginning, who could not trust anyone, thus life
became impossible, we will not be able to live without
the fruits of the spirit.  Paul says that the fruits of
the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
faithfulness, gentleness, generosity, and self-control.
It does not take too much imagination to see how those
fruits of the spirit are essential for our existence as
human being. 

Imagine a life without love or joy?  It will be so
miserable that it is not worth living.  Imagine a
society where people refuse to be gentle to each other
and live only by impulse without any self-control?  It
is a description of hell.  It is scary to see today that
many people decided that spiritual life is not important
in their lives.  When we are cut off from the source of
the spirit, we die as humans.  People do not realize
that by ignoring the spiritual life they are creating a
society that does not function.  And without functional
society, our civilization dies.  For us Christians,
Jesus Christ is the source of spiritual life. 

So, we have a mission.  We must teach our young people
and tell others that spirituality is a basic ingredient
of our life and that we must be connected to the spirit.
It is a fact of life, not a threat.  How then can we
remind of this reality without sounding like a
blackmail.  Let me go back to the very beginning of our
life.  The first thing we must do as soon as we are born
is to let the air through the wind pipe and into the
lungs.  Not a second should be wasted, because lack of
air will caused irreparable damage of the brain.  This
is why it is absolutely necessary for the baby to cry as
soon as it is born.  Everybody around the newborn must
encourage it to cry and make the first sound of life.
We slap the bottom and do other such things.  It is a
loving act to remind the child how to start using one
most important survival equipment.  It is a plea; it is
a prayer, urging the baby to, “Live, my love, live.
Breathe, cry and live!”  It is not a threat nor
blackmail.  Threats and blackmails are the messages of
death.  But the message of the vine and the branch is
the message of life and love.

Jesus Christ is the vine and we are the branches
connected to him.  Through this metaphor, God is telling
us to live in his love by being connected to life.

            WE ARE WHAT WE EAT.
                 Psalm 98 (VU 818),Acts 10:1-16
                       401, 375, 371, 684
                   May 17, 2009 by Tad Mitsui
                               
When I was living in Africa, one day I found in the
fridge a bowl full of termites.  My daughter and her
best friend brought them home, roasted them alive in
the oven, buttered and salted them.  It’s a favourite
snack for our African neighbours. So my daughter and
her friend loved them too.   This father knew nothing
about good food, told them to throw them out.  The
native people who live in the Arctic do not like to be
called Eskimos, because it means in their language
“people who eat raw meat.”  Europeans called them by
that name to insult them, because they thought eating
raw meat was disgusting. 

It is interesting.  Isn’t it?  We often consider foods
other people eat disgusting, and forget that our food
could also be disgusting to some people.  In Japan,
eating red meat use to be a disgusting behaviour
according to the Buddhist belief.  Europeans introduced
beef into Japanese diet.  A story has it that the early
ones brave enough, or crazy enough, to taste red meat
were bad boys in high school.  They had no respect for
traditions.  They cooked it outdoors, because parents
did not allow them to bring it inside the house.   This
is why the famous Japanese beef dish is called
“Sukiyaki”, meaning cooking on a spade.  They must have
sauteed the steak outdoor on something like a spade as
a frying pan.  It was the early Japanese BBQ. 

We are very particular about food, because food is
intimately personal.  We keep personal things like
personal habits and favourite food private.  They can
be the source of misunderstanding unless we know each
other well.  This is why being in a position to share
the intimate moments is an important mark of a close
personal relationship.  Only family members and very
close friends share what is private.  Food is one of
those things.  We are very particular about what we eat
and with whom.  We can now see the meaning of the story
of Peter and strange animals as food in the book of
Acts.  In this story, God gave Peter a lesson about his
relationship with a non-Jewish person – called
Cornelius.  The Bible is telling us in this story that
by eating other people’s food, you are accepting other
people as your own family.  You understand why people
were scandalized to see Jesus having dinner with
prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners.

Throughout the Acts of Apostles, you find one central
and important message from the early church.  The
Church that began on the day of Pentecost was open to
absolutely everybody.  It was firmly grounded on the
belief in One God, the Jewish God of Abraham and Sarah
for sure, but through Jesus Christ, it has become the
religion for all peoples of all nationalities.  On the
Pentecost, the Apostles began to speak in many
languages, so that all nationalities could hear the
stories of Jesus in their own languages.  When Paul
began to baptize non-Jewish people, he did not require
them to be circumcised.  In other words, he did not ask
them to become Jewish before they became Christians.
Peter’s vision about food was another sign making Jesus
Christ for everybody.  Christianity is an inclusive
religion.  It is a religion that accepts everybody;
saints and sinners alike.  Accepting others through
love is the central belief of our religion.

Unfortunately, some people feel that they have to
protect themselves against any strange thing.  They
say, “My way or no way.”  All of us are like that
sometimes.  It is easier for us to demand others to
change their way, rather than trying to understand
different views and adapt.  The Church which began with
the missionary work of Apostles like Peter and Paul
thrived in Europe because of their open-mindedness, and
became the foundation of today’s church.

I watched on PBS an interesting program about the
Vikings in Greenland.  The program probed the reason
why the once thriving Viking settlements in Greenland
completely disappeared.  Scientists discovered that
when the last ice age came, the Vikings could not
sustain their cattle and sheep based agriculture in the
ice covered Greenland.  Most of the people gradually
died out of malnutrition and diseases, leaving
magnificent stone houses and churches in ruins.  In the
meantime, in Iceland the Vikings switched to fishing,
changed their diet to sea food, and survived.
Greenland Vikings did not learn anything from their
Innuit neighbours.  Historians speculate that because
Innuit were pagans, the church prohibited any contact
with them.  The result was that the Vikings had no
chance to learn the Innuit’s survival skills in the
extreme cold climate.  They didn’t learn to fish and
hunt.  Least of all, they never learned to eat fish,
seal and whale meat raw.  They would have provided
plenty of fat and vitamins to protect them in the cold
and long winters.  They never thought of wearing seal
furs and skins like their Innuit neighbours.  So when
their sheep died, they had no more wool to make
clothes.  Their fear of pagan practices didn’t allow
them to survive in the extreme cold.  So they died out.

I am not saying to know other people and their ways of
life is just a survival skill.  Even if loving and
accepting others is costly, Jesus’ most fundamental
commandment to love God and to love neighbours still is
our most precious Christian tradition.  But the history
often proves that an exclusive and rigid attitude
causes disasters, and an inclusive and flexible life-
style leads to survival.  Remember what Peter heard in
a vision?  “Don’t call anything God created unclean.”
We must accept and understand other people’s views and
life-styles.  It is an act of loving our neighbours,
and perhaps the only way for our species to survive.

                       CONNECTED TO LIFE
                 Psalm 84 (VU 800), John 15:1-11
                       232,376, 703, 603
                               
                   May 10, 2009 by Tad Mitsui
                               
A tragedy hit my friend’s family some years ago.  Their
young adopted son committed suicide.  He was born of an
alcoholic mother and suffered from fetal alcoholic
syndrome.  One of the symptoms affected him was that he
could not receive nor understand other people’s
affection.  Consequently he was incapable of trusting
people.  Like a branch that was cut off from a tree, he
cut himself off from life despite his devoted parents
who loved him dearly.

The parable of the vine and the branches is a metaphor
of our relationship with others.  But it also speaks
about cruelty of pruning and the fate of the branches
which have been cut off.  We must know that the point
of this parable is the importance of being connected to
life, and not about being cut off and burnt in fire.
It is about “Stay in my love.” 

A certain business man fires people by quoting this
parable of Jesus.  “He removes every branch that bears
no fruit.  Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away
like a branch and withers: such branches are gathered,
and burned.”  This man is an example of those who
ignores  Jesus’ main message and uses the word of God
for one’s selfish advantage.  There are two glaring
mistakes in his logic.  He is not Jesus, for one thing.
So he is not a life-giving vine.  Secondly what Jesus
meant by the word “fruit” is not his profit.  Jesus was
speaking about the vine as the source of life, and love
as the sap of life.  The vine according to Jesus is
certainly not a money tree.

Some religions also abuse this parable.  In order to
keep loyalty of members, leaders of some churches use
this parable to black-mail their members so that they
would stay on or agree with their teaching.  Anyone who
criticizes the church or its teaching is threatened to
be kicked out and to be damned.  This is why it is very
important for us to know the point of this parable.  We
must resist temptations to use the story to suit our
purpose.

What then is the point of this parable?  A simple rule
of thumb to read any parable is to take the first
sentence as  the main point.  So in this case, the
point is:  “I am (Jesus Christ is) the true vine and
God is the vine grower.”  In other words, God gives and
sustains life through Jesus Christ.  The emphasis
should be the vine that gives sap of life.  Life of the
branch can not be sustained without being connected to
this vine.  And this is not meant to be a threat.  In
to emphasize the positive aspect of this connectedness,
I would like to use the metaphor of the fetus in
mother’s womb.

The first nine months of our existence is a life of
total dependency in the mother’s womb.   We are
connected to the mother through the umbilical cord and
receive all we need from her.  The mother’s womb is the
source of life, like the vine is for the branch.  It is
also the very first most comfortable and life giving
experience of our lives.  This is why we curl up in a
fetal position, when we feel miserable.  Instinctively
we try to return to the most comfortable and protected
time we remember, in mother’s womb.  Most of the time,
we receive from mother what we need sufficiently.  This
is how we develop our equipments for survival and
learned to reject what endangers our life.   This is
also why on a very rare occasions when a fetus receives
substance that is harmful, it is shocked into
developing abnormal resistance to anything external.
Fetal alcoholic syndrome is an example.  It is
dangerous because the fetus learns not to trust and
accept.  In our mother’s womb, we learn to receive life
and accept love.  And that is the normal development.
When we grow normally in the womb, we develop all the
organs and capacities for us to survive after we leave
our mother’s body.  When we are born, we will have
fully grown lungs and digestive systems to breathe and
to take in nutrition. 

The experience in our mothers’ womb is mostly about our
physical development.  However, when Jesus spoke about
the vine and the branches, he was telling us about
spiritual life that was sustained by being connected to
him.  And spiritual life is as essential for us as air
is for our physical body.  Without air our bodies die.
Likewise without spiritual life we die as human beings.
Just like for the young man, of whom I spoke about in
the beginning, who could not trust anyone, thus life
became impossible, we will not be able to live without
the fruits of the spirit.  Paul says that the fruits of
the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
faithfulness, gentleness, generosity, and self-control.
It does not take too much imagination to see how those
fruits of the spirit are essential for our existence as
human being. 

Imagine a life without love or joy?  It will be so
miserable that it is not worth living.  Imagine a
society where people refuse to be gentle to each other
and live only by impulse without any self-control?  It
is a description of hell.  It is scary to see today
that many people decided that spiritual life is not
important in their lives.  When we are cut off from the
source of the spirit, we die as humans.  People do not
realize that by ignoring the spiritual life they are
creating a society that does not function.  And without
functional society, our civilization dies.  For us
Christians, Jesus Christ is the source of spiritual
life. 

So, we have a mission.  We must teach our young people
and tell others that spirituality is a basic ingredient
of our life and that we must be connected to the
spirit.  It is a fact of life, not a threat.  How then
can we remind of this reality without sounding like a
blackmail.  Let me go back to the very beginning of our
life.  The first thing we must do as soon as we are
born is to let the air through the wind pipe and into
the lungs.  Not a second should be wasted, because lack
of air will caused irreparable damage of the brain.
This is why it is absolutely necessary for the baby to
cry as soon as it is born.  Everybody around the
newborn must encourage it to cry and make the first
sound of life.  We slap the bottom and do other such
things.  It is a loving act to remind the child how to
start using one most important survival equipment.  It
is a plea; it is a prayer, urging the baby to, “Live,
my love, live.  Breathe, cry and live!”  It is not a
threat nor blackmail.  Threats and blackmails are the
messages of death.  But the message of the vine and the
branch is the message of life and love.

Jesus Christ is the vine and we are the branches
connected to him.  Through this metaphor, God is
telling us to live in his love by being connected to
life.