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.

FAITH IS A MIRACLE

Luke 17 : 5 – 6

The disciples had been following Jesus for a few years now and watched him perform many miracles. His teaching was like a breath of fresh air. Hoards of people followed him day and night. He was so popular. The disciples felt that it was about time they should be able to show the benefit of their dedication to Jesus. After all, they gave up so much when they decided to follow him. They wanted to be as popular as their master was. They tried a miracle by trying to drive out a demon. But it did not work. They surmised that it was because their faith was not big enough. So they asked Jesus to increase their faith. But the answer they got from him was totally puzzling.

Jesus said that faith about the size of a mustard seed is quite enough to perform a miracle. Jesus was trying to say that faith is a matter of quality and is not a question of how big your faith is. The most important quality of faith is that it is alive. A mustard seed is alive, though it is very small. Even a pebble is bigger. But unlike a pebble, a seed is alive. If it is dead, being bigger won”t make any difference. So even if faith is as small as a mustard seed, because it is alive, it can perform miracles. If faith is not alive, it does not exist. It is not a question of whether you have "a little" or "very much faith." It is like pregnancy. There is no such thing as being a little pregnant . It is strictly a question of whether you are pregnant or not. There is no inbetween. There is no such thing as a touch of pregnancy that you can ignore like a cold.

So the question of little faith or large faith is irrelevant; if it is not alive, it does not exist. Jesus must have been either exasperated or chuckling, when the disciples asked him to increase the size of their faith. It never occurred to the disciples to ask the fundamental questions: "Do we have faith? And if so, is it alive?"

This is why Jesus responded, "Even if your faith is the size of a mustard seed, you can command a mulberry tree to uproot itself and move into the sea." A stupid question got an enigmatic answer. In the account of the same story, the Gospel of Matthew used a different metaphor. Instead of a mulberry tree, Matthew recorded an image of a mountain. He said, "With a mustard seed size faith, you could command a mountain to move." Mohammed used the same metaphor. He said that he could command a mountain to come to him. The saying about the faith that moves the mountain must have been very common in the Middle East.

The point Jesus was trying to get across here is that faith is not a matter of magic. What you see when you see magic is a trick: a sort of deception. But faith is a matter of trust. Asking for a greater quantity of faith, in order to perform magic is completely missing the point. Jesus was able to cure illnesses because he truly cared about the people who were suffering. He cared about people who trusted him. Miracles happened where there were love and trust. On the other hand, the disciples were eager to boost their egos. So their pursuit of faith was simply an ego trip. They were after their own fame, not a solution to the suffering of people. There was no love nor trust. Jesus must have been rather exasperated by the disciples” complete lack of understanding about faith.

You see faith is a spiritual attribute which engages others. It has a lot to do with relationship. You have faith in somebody. This is why John said in the Bible, "Those who say ”I love God” and yet hate brothers and sisters, are liars." That is to say, there is no such thing as faith if you don”t love others. So you can see how absurd it was for the disciples to ask Jesus to increase their faith, in order to boost their public image. Disciples exposed their total ignorance of what faith meant.

But if you have faith – since genuine faith is a living thing – a small amount is suffice. It can grow. Jesus said, "A mustard seed grows into a big tree where birds can make their nests, lay their eggs, and bring up their family." A person who has faith has an enormous capacity to love. I think that this is a profoundly more important miracle than moving a mountain. Today, large bulldozers can move a mountain. You do not need a miracle.

I like the punch line of the story about Mohammed and the mountain. He commanded the mountain to come to him. But the mountain didn”t move, so Mohammed went to the mountain. I don”t know too much about Mohammed. But I like the sense of humour he showed in this story. So the mountain did not come. Big deal! So what? He could walk to the mountain. No miracle was needed, miracles are for important things like love and trust. Jesus did not perform a miracle to save himself from a painful death on the cross, because the real miracle was his act of sacrifice and love. On this day of Thanksgiving, we affirm God”s love to us, and thank him for all his blessings. Yes, we worked hard to reach this harvest time. But we believe that God was with us throughout the year. We have faith in God, who loves all of us. So today we say "thank you, God".

Faith is a fundamental component of society that glues us together. Society will cease to function, if we lose our faith in other people and in our institutions. We have to have faith to bank our money and sign contracts. Without faith, those basic institutions do not work. We have to trust other people to make friends, to get married and create families. If we lose our capacity for faith, we can not trust other members of our communities. The result is a dysfunctional society. O J Simpson trial is a sad example of what happens when there is a breakdown of trust. Because of racism Los Angels Police is no longer trusted by a majority of black people. With such a lack of trust it becomes hard to believe that justice can ever be done.

Without faith, kindness shown to others become suspect. When you are nice to others, they ask you, "what”s your pay-off?" With this attitude there is no need to say "thank you" to anybody. Without faith, thanksgiving is meaningless. The early settlers who first inaugurated Thanksgiving Day in North America had difficult times. They went through crop failures and harsh winters. Many died in the first few years. But when they had the first good harvest, they believed that God was good to them, and celebrated it by saying "thank you, God."

Because we have faith, we feel blessed at this time of harvest. The season of growth is at an end. We”ve harvested not just the fruit, but seeds for next years”s planting. We feel thankful for what we have in hand as well as for the potential of next year”s growth. We feel the love of God and feel comforted even as we approach the cold and darkness of winter. As long as we don”t lose sight of that, our faith remains alive and energized by the miracle of what it may become.

WHO IS THIS SUPER WOMAN?

Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13-18

September 24, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

I went to Africa for the first time as a student volunteer. We helped a market women”s association to build a community centre in a village called Abakaliki, in Nigeria in 1964. Market women in West Africa are very powerful people. I went to the bank with the head market women one day to order cement. She tore off the name of the company from a cement bag, walked straight into the bank manager”s office, an Englishman. She was illiterate. She put down the piece of the cement bag on the manager”s desk and told him to order a thousand bags. He quickly obliged and told his secretary to prepare the paper. When it was ready, Mrs. Abiola picked up a pen and marked her "x" with greatest dignity. Market women of the West Africa have been powerful for centuries and control the trade of most food stuff. When the head of the government in Ghana decided to tax market women, food simply disappeared from the country. All the power of the Police and the Army could not break the women”s stranglehold on food market. In the end, the government gave in. Market women were not taxed.

However, I had a surprise when I went to the home of Mrs. Abiola. At home, she worked like any house wife. She cleaned the house and cooked for the family, brought her husband beer and tobacco, and grew vegetables in the garden. She was the most powerful market woman, and yet ran her home like a hard working traditional mother and wife. What did her husband do? He always sat in his stool in the court yard of the family compound and smoked his pipe. He did nothing at home. He didn”t seem to have any job either. I found a similar pattern in the country side of many other parts of Africa.

You must realize that this pattern of the rural life in Africa is an unfortunate legacy of Africa”s colonial past. When the Western countries came to Africa a few centuries ago, to exploit its natural resources, it was typical in African cultures for men to spend long period away from home, hunting, and fighting wars. It was women who grew food, ran the market, and raised the family. In such circumstances, it was easy for Europeans to recruit men to work in plantations and mines. As hunting and warfare became less a part of life, men had nothing to do at home. They knew nothing about running a house. Some lucky boys were sent to schools and universities and got Western education. They became white collar workers in urban businesses and in government offices. But in the mean time, rural communities remained the same. Men had little to do if they stayed at home and women did all the work.

Proverbs speaks about an ideal wife as someone who is good to her husband, can weave and sew the clothes for the family, buys and prepares food, does marketing far and wide, organizes servants, is good at dealing with real estate and at starting new enterprises, runs an efficient farm and diversifies the crops, runs the household well, helps her husband to be respected in the community, speaks with wisdom, is generous in the charity work, is respected by children and praised by her husband. Proverbs describes a super woman. When I read this, I thought of Mrs. Abiola of Abakaliki. Is the Proverbs trying to tell us that an ideal wife is the kind of woman who is found in an old fashioned society, like the one still existing in rural Africa? Or could it be trying to tell us something about the nature of wisdom by comparing it to a super woman?

Let”s suppose it is the first and see what it means to us. Here, you are dealing with a woman married to a member of the leading class. Proverbs 31:21 says "Her husband sits with leading members of the society." This narrows the focus of the passage to a woman like a wife of a very rich and prominent person. This woman runs a big business and manages a large finance. Her house employs many household staff. She gives generously to charities. This describes a super woman of the high society. I don”t like this interpretation, because it does not mean all that much to common folks like us. I don”t believe that we should read the passage of the Proverbs 31 as a description of the ideal wife. I don”t believe that the Bible is telling us all wives should be super women.

I believe that Proverbs is speaking about everybody. I believe that it is telling us about our relationship to God. It”s showing us what it takes to be a good citizen by giving us the image of a man married to a woman who personifies wisdom. Proverbs 1:20 says, "Wisdom cries out in the streets, in the market place she raises her voice, at the business corners, she cries out…etc." The description of a super woman is the description of wisdom. In other words, any person of significance must be metaphorically married to wisdom. Wisdom is earthy and worldly. Being married to wisdom means that care for one”s bodily needs are looked after by ensuring that there are warm clothes and good food; that matters of business are managed responsibly and that human relations are attended with care. But most importantly, according to the chapter 31:30, wisdom is wedded to someone who honours God, and not to someone who seeks beauty and charm which can be deceitful and superficial. When you read the description of a good wife or a super woman as a metaphor for wisdom, you will learn that this marriage to wisdom comes about through a life committed to the way of the Lord. I believe that the point of the Proverbs passage today is an advise to all of us to commit ourselves to such a life, and in doing so to wed ourselves to wisdom itself.

Letter of James speaks about spiritual wisdom and demonic wisdom. Wisdom in Proverbs is generous and honours God. It is not the wisdom of the founder of the Brofman or the McCain business dynasty, which makes business successful but not charitable. Rather the wisdom of Proverb is embodied in a person like Mother Teresa. It could very well be the kind of wisdom which compelled you to throw away the worldly success, just like Jesus who threw away his popularity for the sake of love.

This wisdom has nothing to do with "being smart" in an intellectual sense or being successful in worldly terms — Rather it has to do with recognizing what priorities in life really are–Caring for oneself, one”s family and one”s community. Being a good market woman really only means being a good steward of one”s resources.

Proverbs doesn”t set impossibly high standard for women to meet. It”s not saying that any wife has to be a superwoman or that any man should expect to be married to one. In fact, seeing it that way might be an example of demonic wisdom that urges us towards "success" at any price. Instead it offers us good news: If we follow and honour God, we enter into an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit. In doing so, we marry ourselves to a wisdom that helps us care for ourselves, nurture our families, and make responsible choice about the world around us. What more can we ask for? Thanks be to God.

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

The Southern African custom has it that the host will ask you towards the end of a dinner, "Uena ka Khotso? – Are you at peace?"  You don”t have to struggle to find a word to express your spiritual well-being; she simply wants to know, "Have you had enough to eat?"  They believe that when you are physically well, you will be spiritually happy, also when you are happy in your soul, your body will be well.  When people are well in body and soul, there will be peace between people.  The word "Khotso" expresses all those conditions that create the ideal state.  The Hebrew word for peace "Shalom" also has the same meaning as "Khotso". 

Mary expressed the same idea of peace and justice in today”s Gospel.  She was told by the angel that she would conceive a child by the Holy Spirit and her child was going to inherit the throne of David – the Messiah the whole nation was waiting for.  Her son will bring justice in the world.  In fact, it would be a new world that he would bring.  Peace that Mary”s child would bring would be based on justice and love, not on force.    It was an incredible message.  But in the end she believed the angel and said, if a lowly girl like her could be mother of a son of the most high, the hungry and poor would be exalted, and the rich and powerful could be humiliated. 
Is this some kind of outrageous fantasy of a poor, uneducated pregnant teenager?   Maybe she was a little demented, overwhelmed by the burden of the situation she was in.  Think of the predicament she was in.  She must have been just a teenager, perhaps sixteen at most; unmarried.  She was engaged to be married to Joseph.  I am sure when people heard that Joseph”s fiancé was pregnant, people smiled and winked at him.  Joseph and Mary were the only ones who knew that Mary”s child was not his.  Should he tell anyone about this awful truth?  Mary said God made her pregnant by the Holy Spirit.  There”s a joke that says that one day God wanted to send the Holy Spirit down to earth again because there was a big mess among people.  The Holy Spirit refused because he was afraid that Joseph might still be looking for him.  You may think that such a joke is a sacrilege.  Indeed for the Jews, Mary”s claim was a sacrilege.  Mary was not only a loose woman who betrayed her future husband but also she was blasphemous for claiming that God was responsible for her pregnancy.  It was a serious offence!  The punishment could have been death by stoning, in either case.  How could Mary speak about a new world of justice and genuine peace when she herself is in such a mess?  Was she completely confused?

I believe that the secret lies in Joseph”s love.  The fact that Mary was not stoned to death indicates that Joseph had decided to accept Mary”s explanation and not to hand her over to the authorities.  How could Joseph ever believe Mary”s preposterous claim unless he loved her deeply.   He wanted to believe her so he did.  Mary must have been deeply touched by his capacity to love.   If a man could love someone so much, and was ready to accept such a seemingly impossible situation, anything would be possible.  It could even be possible that a child born of a lowly teenage girl could bring about the new world order of peace and justice.  Is this interpretation absolutely insane?  I don”t think so.

The problem of the world today is the lack of faith in the power of love.  Practical people believe that love is a silly sentiment, and is irrelevant in our vast and immensely complicated world.  The real world is competitive and cruel.  If you don”t beat them first, they will beat you.  Get real.  Ray Kroc, the founder of the world”s largest restaurant chain "Macdonald”s", once said, "This is rat eat rat, dog, eat dog.  I”ll kill ”em, and I”m going to kill ”em before they kill me."  But I say that precisely that is our biggest problem.  Many people have handed themselves over to the rules of competition and forgotten that the most life giving force in the universe is love.  They believe more in the strength of hatred than the power of love.   I met some of them in Africa.  They were self-proclaimed revolutionaries, who were completely committed to transforming the world into the better one.   Those revolutionaries believed that the forces of hatred could create a better world.     

If you are treated unjustly, you will be angry and unhappy.  You have no peace of mind.  If you don”t have inner peace, you will be always frustrated.  Then you are ready to resort to violence.   Then how come we still believe that peace can be achieved when one overpowers others by force?  This idea has never worked because it ignores the importance of peace of mind based on justice.  This is why no empire has ever achieved enduring peace.  And whenever an empire falls, 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 had any lasting effect.  Hatred that has been festering while being ruled by force demands a settling of scores.  Look at Northern Ireland.  Look at Bosnia and Kosovo.  Neighbours fiercely hate each other, simply because they belong to different religions and ethnic groups because of the histories of the empires that came and went.  Has the British victory at the Plains of Abraham produced an enduring peace in Canada?   It didn”t.  So we still live with the never ending threat of separation of Quebec.

When will we ever learn?  Haven”t we 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, hatred rules and there will be 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.  Maybe Mary was crazy.  Maybe Joseph was naive.  Maybe they were both unreal.  If so, maybe we should all be a little crazy, naive and unreal, and start believing in the power of love.  One day last month, I was walking on a street of Toronto with Alan Tysic.  Alan is a United Church minister who works with street people, alcoholics, ex-cons, drug addicts, prostitutes, and the like, in Victoria, B.C.  We ran into a few panhandlers.  Alan shook hands with each one of them saying things like, "Hi!  How”er you doing?", and gave them quarters.  I said, "Alan!  Are you crazy?  They will buy booze or drugs or worse.  You aren”t helping them."  Alan said, "I know.  Probably they will buy booze.  But if someday even one of them remembers that someone treated them like a normal human being, my quarter is not wasted."  I learned something that day.  If you can love one person, you will be able to learn to love the whole world.  If everybody learned to love another person, the world will be like the one Mary dreamed about.

We are going to celebrate the birthday of the one who declared the arrival of the new regime – the rule of love, who was also called the Prince of Peace.  Let us wait actively for the coming of peace – real peace based on justice and love, 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 Mary”s Magnificat sounded crazy.  But the dream of one unmarried teenage mother-to-be came true with the birth of Christ 2000 years ago.  It is possible.

REMEMBERING THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE

Joshua 24:1-3, 14-18, Psalm 78, Matthew 25:1-13

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY, 1996, by Tad Mitsui

Today we are honouring those men and women who died in the wars by remembering their sacrifices. Remembrance is an important lifesaving instinct for many living organisms. Cows do not cross an electrified fence, because they remember what happened the first time they touched it. If we do not learn from our past experience, we will not survive the future. Winston Churchill once said, "One who forgets history is condemned to repeat it." This is also why remembering Christ”s sacrifice is a very important part of Christian spirituality and the core of the sacrament of Holy Communion. By remembering God”s saving act in Jesus Christ, we live with assurance today and continue to live with confidence tomorrow.

The act of remembrance must be played out in three time zones; past, present and future.

First: We have to look the past straight in the eyes, and recognize what it is as it is. We must not sugar-coat it to make the horror of history palatable, neither must we exaggerate it in order to demonize it. We must not remember those who sacrificed their lives in the wars in any other way than by remembering how cruel their deaths were and how brave they were. We must thank those who risked or sacrificed their lives, mourn with their families who lost their loved ones, and promise that we will never repeat the same mistake, which may cause the same tragedy.

Secondly; by recognizing the awful nature of wars, we must learn to find a way to resolve the differences and problems in our lives and in our relationships in a peaceful way, instead of fighting over them. This is the challenge for today. We must give up the idea that there has to be a winner and a loser when there is a difference of opinions or a conflict of interests. History teaches us over and over again that violence never resolves a conflict completely, because the loser never forgets to come back for revenge. The horror of Bosnia is an act of revenge by a loser in the Ottoman Empire. Near genocide in Rwanda is an act of revenge by Hutus against the Tutsuis who ruled them brutally for many years. The means to resolve a conflict must be peaceful not violent, because violence always begets violence.

Thirdly: the memory of the past must also affect our attitude towards the future. The scripture today speaks of ten bridesmaids waiting for the arrival of a wedding party. It was getting late. One interpreter of the Bible suggests that the final negotiations about the amount of dowry often took place just before the reception. It often took some time to reach an agreement, as you can imagine. The job of bridesmaids was, of course, to accompany the bride and groom into the reception hall, in this case holding lamps to light up the passage. Five of them had spare oil, just in case. Five of them did not have spare oil, because they had not remembered the importance of carrying extra. So when they went out to look for a store to buy more oil, the bridal party arrived and the reception began without them.

What does "having spare oil" have to do with Remembrance Day? The memory of the past must teach us the way to prepare for our peaceful future. The oil of preparedness in this case is respect for others. If we respect others, we will never run out of patience to talk things over no matter how difficult the issues are. You never know; after lots of time talking, you may even end up liking the other people, whom you could have been tempted to fight because of some differences. Respect becomes a source of light to guide us through the darkness of disagreements.

So as I said at the beginning, remembrance is something that crosses 3 time zones. We remember the sacrifices of the past for the sake of the present and for the future, just like we remember the cross of Jesus Christ. Lest we forget.

IT”S A MATTER OF HEARTS

Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 119, John 12:20-33

April 9, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

I have had some fabulous jobs in my life. That does not mean, I got all the jobs I wanted. I received more rejections than acceptances. But in retrospect, I can now say I am glad that I did get those jobs. When I sent in my résumé, I had often followed my heart not my mind. My life could have been very difficult, even disastrous, if I had those jobs that I did not get. There is a saying, "Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."

We see in retrospect more clearly than in prospect. That”s why when we make decisions about future, we tend to follow our hearts, and they do not always tell us what is wise. Life would be a lot easier if we could see the future as clearly as we see the past. I often wish that our hearts and minds would speak in one same voice, so we have less grief. Often, I know what should be done, but I don”t do it, because my heart is not where it should be. I am completely in sympathy with Paul, who said in his letter to the Romans, "Even though I know very well what is good, I can not do it, and I do what is not right. What a wretched creature I am!" This is where Jeremiah”s "New Covenant" comes in. With the old covenant, God had to guide the people by the hand, but the new covenant would be written on the hearts of people.

Jeremiah lived at the time when the whole Jewish nation was facing a total disaster. Soon after, the Jews would become a nation without a country for three thousand years. Jeremiah said that it was the price they had to pay for breaking their covenant with God. They ignored his laws. But Jeremiah said, God would forgive them, and give them the new Covenant, which would be written on their hearts. Their minds could follow their hearts. Reason would be a tool for passion. They would want to do what was just and right.

The Bible uses the word "covenant" often. It is an important word to understand the relationship between God and people. A covenant is a solemn agreement like a contract. But there is a difference between a covenant and a contract. A covenant is a personal commitment. However, a contract is a legally binding agreement, that is enforced with the threat of a penalty, if it is broken. Lawyers say that a mere commitment without a penalty clause is meaningless, because it is not enforceable. But religion is a covenant with God, which is an agreement of hearts without the caveat of a penalty. In religion, mind should be an instrument of the heart. When the heart decides the destination, the mind will find the best way to reach it. Love is a matter of the heart, and the law is a matter of the mind.

The old covenant that God gave through Moses was often broken by people, because it had remained a matter of the mind – mere knowledge. When the rules remain only as knowledge, you will soon find how to break them because there is no commitment to abide by them. As a saying goes, "When you know the rules well, you know how to break them properly." All of us want to know the laws so as to find loopholes, which is the kind of thing that makes lawyers rich. Laws and rules without a commitment to the spirit behind them do not make sense, like following a map without having a destination.

The basis of the laws of Moses was the right relationship between God and people, and among people. We believe that the only right relationship is the one based on love. If there is no commitment to love God and others, then laws are meaningless. God demonstrated his love through the laws of Moses, because the laws showed the best way to live. People could return God”s love by obeying the laws. That was the covenant. But they broke it, because the laws had remained in their minds as mere knowledge. There was no heart in their understanding of the laws. There was no passion in their desire to keep a good relationship with God. They saw God only as a big scary guy in the sky with a stick, not as a loving parent.

So through Jeremiah, God offered a new covenant. In the new covenant, "the laws would be within them, because they were written on their hearts." God began by "forgiving their sins and no longer remembering their wrongs of the past," as the verse 34 put it. With the new covenant, the laws will be within people”s hearts, hence doing justice and righteousness will be their passion.

This does not make sense to the lawyers. To write a new contract by forgetting the past infractions and by allowing the offenders go free with impunity? Forgiveness does not make sense in law. But in a matter of the heart, it makes perfect sense. A father forgives and embraces a son, who wasted half of his fortune recklessly in a binge and on prostitutes. The father, like God, loves the son. Is this a sign of God”s incredible capacity to love or soft-hearted stupidity? In the new covenant, all the laws, all just and right things to do, are the protocols for love and caring. Then, what better way to make such protocols a matter of the heart, than demonstrating such love in an act of forgiveness? Foolish? Perhaps. Again Paul said in the letter to the Romans, "should you be wise in the eyes of God, you must become a fool in the eyes of the world."

When the laws are illuminated under the light of incredible love shown in forgiveness, your passion and knowledge become one. The knowledge of whatever pleases God becomes your desire. A psychiatrist once said to his friend, "I can help you find the source of your guilt. But I can never make you feel you are forgiven. Only God can." Jesus Christ fulfilled the promise of God”s new Covenant. He would finally performed the ultimate act of his divinity by forgiving those who made him suffer. This is why the crucifixion of Christ was the climax of the life of Jesus; the occasion of his glorification. When we can see clearly the cross as the climax of Christ”s life, we will be able to see justice joining love, and our hearts and minds speaking in one voice.

WE ARE BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS

Genesis 12:1-4a, Psalm 121, John 3:1-17

February 28, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

One day, a man asked me in a cafeteria, "Are you saved? Are you born again to Christ?" I said, "Yes." The he said, "When?" I said, "Everyday." It is a pity that some perfectly good expressions like "born again" get used as labels and the original meanings are changed or lost. "Evangelical" and "Born Again" are expressions that have become labels for some particular groups of people. But if we believe the Bible, we are all born again Evangelical Christians. I feel that we must reclaim those names as ours as they are used in the Bible.

The Christians, who live in the so-called non-Christian countries, have a tendency to idealize the countries like Canada which are considered to be "Christian" countries. A Japanese Christian came to Canada to attend an interdenominational meeting. He was shocked to see quarrels between "Evangelicals" and "Liberals", Presbyterians and United, Catholics and Protestants, etc. He was disappointed to find that Christians fought in Canada too like Japanese do at home. Someone asked him, what he was. He said, "I”m a Christian, and I thought you all were."

We are Christians before we are Baptists, Catholics, United, Presbyterians, or whatever the label we put on. Furthermore, we are "Born Again" Christians according to today”s Gospel reading. In the Gospel according to John, you find that the expression "Born Again" was first used by Jesus. He said that no one could be his follower and enter the kingdom of God unless one was born again. By this definition, we all are, or should be, born again Christians. The story has it that one night a prominent Pharisee leader by the name of Nicodemus came to see Jesus. He said, "Teacher, I know you come from God. No one can do what you are doing unless one comes from God." Jesus said to him, "If you really want to follow God”s way, you must first be born again." This really threw Nicodemus off balance, because he was a man of reason. "Born again? I am a grown up man. I can not go back to my mother”s womb." He was a man who used the brain to think. He was a scholar. Reason was the faculty he valued. He was not used to be confronted with things that made no logical sense. But he came face to face with the fundamental fact of faith; faith is the matter of both spirit and mind. He had to integrate reason with passion to start afresh in the life of faith – to be born again in spirit.

It is not easy for a person who has a superior mind to give oneself to emotion or passion. One is afraid to look silly. This is why Nicodemus came to see Jesus at night. He was the leader of the scholarly and righteous lawyers who took it upon themselves to be the watch dogs of the nation”s moral standards. He knew that Jesus was a very special man. He could tell that Jesus had to come from God, because Nicodemus was a God fearing righteous man. But his cool reasoning prevented him to make a leap of faith. He could not be seen as acting in a hasty manner, especially about a matter of national importance; people were calling Jesus the Messiah – the true king. He had to be careful. So he came secretly. But faith must involve a whole person. The whole person includes feelings, emotions, passion, and can be creative and impulsive, in addition to a cool mind that calculates and reasons. Faith requires both attributes, because faith requires a whole person. A whole person is a person who draws on both mind and spirit.

Dr. Helen Caldicot is a paediatrician who became famous in a movement to stop the spread of nuclear weapons during the height of the cold war in the eighties. She was once asked why she was so emotional when she spoke about the danger of nuclear weapons. The insinuation was that "Emotional people are not credible because they are not reasonable. Women are often emotional. Therefore they are not credible. If you want to be heard, stay cool and speak with reason. Be like a man." She answered that ”Yes, I am emotional about this. I am a woman and a mother. If my patient does not get emotional about the future of her child, she is mentally ill. I ”ll send her to a Psychiatrist." Any good parent is both emotional and reasonable about one”s own child.

This also means that faith is not complete if passionate belief does not seek reason. Our minds are God”s creation, as much as our spirits are gifts from God. Faith has to grow in mind and spirit, even when faith comes into our life through emotion and passion. And faith has to be fed with reason as it grows. Faith does not stay alive by passion alone. Sometime those who believe with passionate faith criticize those people who study the Bible scientifically, and examine our beliefs systematically. But those people too must be born again to integrate their passion for God with reason and scientific logic, because faith involves the whole person. And a whole person is a person with both passion and reason.

Abraham was already a rich man when he was still in the land of Haran, the present day Iraq. He had tens of thousands of heads of livestock of all sorts and an army of workers within his household. He was almost like a head of a nation. But one night, he had a vision. God spoke to Abraham and told him to pack up all his household and move. God did not tell him where to. He just said, "Pack up and go." The Bible says that Abraham went without knowing where he was going. Perhaps it was because he didn”t know where he was going, that he went so far. It was a totally irrational thing to do for a successful farmer and businessman who made virtually billions of dollars. It was not a rational decision. It was a decision made from the heart, out of his passionate trust in God. He was ready to start afresh. At that point, Abraham was born again into faith, both in mind and spirit.

We are also called upon to be born again. Made afresh today, tomorrow, and many more times to be born anew. There are some people who can pinpoint the time and the day when he/she was born again. But we are all very different. For many of us, like me, the process of being "born again" is a quiet process that repeats itself many times. I try to live everyday like a new person, refreshed by the belief that God loves me. We have to be born again, again and again. Sometimes, God will help us with an inspirational or emotionally high experience. After those experiences, we must settle down and become stable with reason, like a bowl of hot jelly cools and settles in a fridge. At other times, our cool rational belief system has to be shaken, perked up, and refreshed with stirring hymns or by the love of a friend. In either case, we are born again as a new Christian person.

TO LOVE GOD IS TO LOVE SOMEONE

I John 4:7-21, Psalm 90, Matthew 22:34-46

October 27, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

When you stop to think a little deeper about so-called "Great Commandment", you will realize that something does not quite jibe. Jesus said that the most important commandment of God is, "Love God and love your neighbours." One wonders, if one can command anyone to love. Love is impulsive and irresistible. To us, it is passion that hits us unexpectedly and surprises us. And often it dies against our wish. It is often beyond our control. Love comes and goes as though it has a life of its own. So to command someone to love sounds almost like there is something wrong with the grammar of this sentence.

Incidentally what is interesting about this passage is the fact that the sentences Jesus quoted were not new. Everybody, including the Pharisees who wanted to test Jesus, should have been familiar with them. They were part of what follows the Ten Commandments, "You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbour as yourself." The Pharisees, like many of our lawyers, lost a basic but simple priority of life because they made God”s world very complicated with too many technicalities. When you make too many exceptions and excuses, you lose the most important core teaching.

The great commandment is very simple and while being most profound. You can meditate on the meaning of the great commandment all your life without running out of the things to reflect on. This says to us that many good things of life are quite simple but rich, like motherhood or friendship. Love is one of them. But today let me pick three points that this commandment draws attention to, though you can easily pick hundreds more. First: Love is dynamic. Love can and must change and grow. Secondly, loving God and loving some person is the same thing. To love God is to love someone. Thirdly, there is no true love without healthy self-love.

First: Love is dynamic. It is alive. It changes and grows. In fact, it must change. Notice how the Bible says of our love of God. It says that we must love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We all know what loving with our heart means. It is the instinctive and irresistible force that draws you to someone or something. When we fall in love, we love someone with our hearts. Passion hits you with a nice, warm and fuzzy feeling. We love it. But we also know that a warm and fuzzy thing does not last every long, like any living thing without nourishment. So the Bible suggests that we must also love with our soul. This is a spiritual dimension of love. It is a matter of commitment and will. So our love that begins with a passion must make us commit ourselves to that love. Love of heart can take you so far but eventually the momentum weakens. There has to be a motor to continue. It often needs a kick start – a spiritual kick from God. Love has to grow to be a commitment. And this is a matter of the soul.

Our brain must work with our soul, too. Our spiritual life dies if we do not nurture it with constant mental support. God created us as a creature who thinks. Unless we give a mental support to our commitment to love, our spiritual motivation will eventually die. This is why some of us come to church and listen to the sermons and study the Bible.

Secondly, the love of God and of people are the same thing. John, in his letter, said it bluntly, "Those who say that they love God and hate brothers and sisters are liars." Unfortunately, among people who claim to love God and the church, there are those who do not like people. There are, among those who claim to be committed to God, people who hate and reject people of different ideas, life-styles, and religions. We must remember that to love God is to accept and love others. They are two sides of a coin. One does not exist without the other. We must see God in each one of our friends and neighbours. In the Old Testament, the word "alien" is used interchangeably with the word "neighbour". Neighbours include those who are not necessarily of our kind or among our favourite people.

Nobody has seen God. So if we must love God, we must love anyone who happens to cross our path. You never know who that person could be. This is another reason why loving someone only with your heart is not always possible, because that person who crosses our path may not always be our favourite person. We need divine intervention – a kick from God to love such a person. To love our neighbour is a matter of loving with our soul, and may not be of passion.

Lastly, an ability to love others grows out of our self-love. The commandment says: "Love your neighbour as yourself." It means, if you do not know how to love yourself, you don”t know how to love other people. You may think that it is natural and easy to love yourself. You can be so wrong. In fact, a big problem in our society today is self-hatred. The secret of many advertisements – I am sure you remember me saying this many times – is to encourage people to be dissatisfied with themselves, so that they buy things to make them feel better than they are now. We have difficulty accepting ourselves and thus often do not feel good about ourselves as we are. We believe that we can never be "okay". This is why we easily become so preoccupied with trying to be like somebody else instead of finding good in ourselves. We feel that we are never good enough. This is why we envy others for being what we are not, and covet what we don”t possess. In fact it is not too far off to say that we become self-centred and selfish, because of our preoccupation about our incompleteness. This is why healthy self-love can lead to genuine love of others.

If the love of others grows out of a healthy self-love, it is also important to remember that such self-love can come only from a strong sense of being loved. It is a gentle and kind circle: being loved by others leads to healthy self-love , and self-love enables you to love others. Of course, the other side of the story is that a vicious circle can result: not being loved enough can lead to self-hatred, and self-hatred can lead to selfishness and the hatred of others. So you see, self-love does not lead to a self-centered and selfish attitude. Rather it is self-hatred which does. Loving yourself and feeling good about yourself lead you to feel confident about yourself. When you feel confident, the whole world becomes a wonderful place to live in. That”s the basis of love.

So you see, we can follow the great commandment because of another core belief of ours. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son." We are Christians because of our conviction that God forgives us and accepts us, because he loves us. This is why it is possible for us to love someone, or anyone. And to love someone means that we can love God in return. Thanks be to God.

A CHILD AND A DOORMAT

Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, Mark 9:30-37

September 21, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

I have a book of traditional Swiss cuisine at home. It is a gorgeous book with pictures of many mouth-watering dishes. The front cover is a reproduction of an old painting of a rich medieval family at their dinner table. The mother and father sit at the head of the table. Four older boys sit on one side, four older girls on another side, and the youngest boys and girls are at the far end opposite their parents. The parents sit on the large padded chairs and are provided with all three kinds of cutlery on the silk covered trays. Obviously the parents were the most important members. Older children sit on wooden chairs, but only the boys have knives and forks. The older girls also sit on wooden chairs but have only knives. Finally, the little boys and girls, like the older girls, have only knives, but they don”t even have chairs. They stand at the end of the table. The girls and the little children, I guess, were expected to eat with their hands.

In various ways, the world has been ruled by the laws of the jungle. The old, the sick, the small, and the weak have been treated like doormats, left on the floor of the society to be trampled on, and in the end to be thrown away. Children, too, used to be treated like that like the Swiss family in the picture. It was a common practice in many cultures to see the best portion of dinner was always kept for the man of the house; women and children ate the left-overs.

We want to believe that today we treat children better. But I sometimes wonder. Today”s gospel reading still has a lot to tell us. Are we very different from those days? Remember what Jesus said, "Whoever welcomes a little child, welcomes me. This sounds like such a "nice" message, but I wonder if we”re really up to accepting, not just children, but all the weak and powerless in the way that Jesus was suggesting. It was a challenge that both the disciples and the early church struggled with.

One day, Jesus predicted the suffering and death that awaited him in Jerusalem. He had done that once before. It is quite clear that the disciples did not hear what Jesus had said, either time. The disciples completely misunderstood what Jesus meant. We must admit that, just like the disciples, we also do not hear what we do not want to hear. We hate bad news. As Jesus and his company travelled towards Jerusalem, their minds were fixed on one idea. Jerusalem was where their master would at last be recognized as the true messiah. He would take the throne of David as the king of the Jews. Their heads were swollen with the dream of sitting next to the king. They started to argue about who was more important than the other, and who would be closest to the seat of power. They had no idea that what Jesus had referred to as the kingdom was different from what they had in mind.

So, Jesus challenged their ideas about status and power. He picked up a little child and said, "Do you want to be great in my kingdom? Be like this child." A "child" represented a person with no power and a low status. Power or status means nothing in the world that Jesus had been speaking about. The kingdom of God is ruled by justice and love, not by money or power. The humble person like a little child would be the priority in God”s world. However, I have to caution against a romantic image of a child. As all parents know, children can be cruel, greedy, possessive, and selfish, just like any one of us. When we watch a few toddlers play together and fight over toys, we know that all of us are born with greed and selfishness.

By giving priority to a child, Jesus gave us two messages. First, we must treat any defenceless and helpless person as though each of them is Jesus Christ himself. Secondly, the most important person in the eyes of God can be like a child without any power or position. Many things that are important in this society have no consequence to God. Then, what is important to God?

I have a book by sociologist Rodney Stark that examines why the Christian Church grew so fast in the first few centuries. Though it was illegal to be a Christian at the time, the church grew from a group of a few hundred uneducated Jews into a great company of 33 million people from all classes and nationalities in the Mediterranean world. How did this happen? Stark”s book mentions a few interesting features of the early church that led to this rapid growth. Remember, Christianity was an illegal religion; they could not advertise and or hold public meetings. It was friends and relations telling others where to go to hear the good news, that spread the Gospel. One of the most intriguing phenomenon the book tells us about is how the attitude of the Christians towards sick people led to the rapid expansion of the church. During the first few centuries after Christ, several waves of the plague wiped out nearly a third of the population of Europe. It was during those spells of the plague that, curiously, the church grew faster. Why? Because Christians looked after the very sick, when it was the custom of the day to abandon those who were dying from a serious illness. Thus, the early Christians made their mark by looking after the weakest in society.

Bishop Dyonisius of North African, in his Easter letter during the plague of 260 A.D., gave a lengthy tribute to the heroic nursing efforts of local Christians, many of whom lost their lives while caring for others. But many people with the plague survived in the church, because they were lovingly cared for by fellow Christians. Seeing that the sick were looked after and survived better in the church, many people began to join the church to be saved. But it had not been the intention of the early Christians to bring in more members when they looked after the sick. Most of the sick people were beyond any hope of recovery. Many of the care-givers risked their lives or died while caring for them. And yet, the long term result of such devotion to the suffering people was a growing and lively community. The church grew, while the population was being decimated. A community ruled by the laws of the jungle, where the weak are treated like a doormat, may survive, but only marginally. But the community ruled by the laws of love, in the end, thrives.

You can judge the quality of a community by the way it treats its weakest member. In a caring society, no cost is spared for the disabled, the elderly, the sick, and the young. As Jesus said, "Whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me." But as we have seen this "nice" message is really revolutionary. It can upset the seating plan at the table of society in profound ways. Yet God”s message is such that we can only find our strength and power by caring for the weak and the powerless. In God”s kingdom, our place at the table depends on inviting the "children" to sit on our knees.

I LEARNED IT ALL WHEN I WAS A CHILD

Ruth 1:1-18, Psalm 146, Mark 12:28-34

November 2, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

We hope that we will someday live in a society where every person is respected and never snubbed no matter where he/she comes from. The problem is: where nationalism is strong, often one culture is considered to be more important than others like the situation in Quebec. Can we not respect one tradition without diminishing another? The book of Ruth is an attempt to answer this question by telling the story of three women caught between two countries. It tells us that simple respect for other people will solve much of the problem of conflict between different cultures.

I said "simple respect" but I am not saying that it is easy. Simple things are often difficult to do. We invent conditions and make exceptions to excuse ourselves from doing simple decent acts. Robert Fulghum wrote a book titled, All I really need to know, I learned in kindergarten. His point is that most of the basic wisdom of life is quite simple. We learned it all when we were children. But later we learn not to follow what we tell our children.

Fulghum recalls those lessons: "Share everything. Play fair. Don”t hit other people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don”t take things that aren”t yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush the toilet. (I like this next one.) Take a nap every afternoon…. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together." The list goes on. And it”s all very simple. You do not have to go to university to learn all this, because you probably have learned it all already when you were kids. It”s all the matter of respect and common decency. Note that these lessons do not discriminate. It does not say, "Share everything only with people you like." or "Don”t hit people of your own kind." But often we conveniently forget that we must respect everybody especially if we don”t like some people who look different. So what do we do to cover our hypocrisy? We say, "It”s not all that simple. Life is complicated." So children learn important lessons in their first few years, but spend many more years to learn that those rules are childish, naive and stupid. No wonder our world is in a mess.

The book of Ruth was written at the time of a great resurgence of Hebrew religion and culture. It was the time when the exiled Jews were allowed to return to Palestine after their captors were defeated by the Persians. The Hebrew nation was back together again in their homeland. The oppressors had tried to destroy the Hebrew nation by prohibiting the practice of their religion and traditions. But they were now free to worship their God, rebuild their temple, and re-discover their traditions.

Unfortunately at a time like this, when people enthusiastically take pride in their own culture, language and traditions, they tend to be suspicious of foreigners. They began to see foreigners and their influence as bad for their traditions. It was the reaction to the humiliation they suffered under the Babylonians. Racism begets racism. Consequently those who were keen to keep the purity of their culture and religion saw marriage with those outside of their race as unacceptable. They even told those men who had married foreign women to divorce them and to send them home. The book of Ruth was written during such a time. It was written to remind the Jews that the great-grand mother of their beloved King David was not a Jewish woman. The book was written to remind people that faithfulness to God is the same thing as being kind to every human being, whether friend, relative, or stranger. Preserving one”s own heritage does not mean the oppression of others who may be different. You will truly be able to respect your own culture when you know how to respect others”.

As the story has it, when the Hebrew people were still new in the land, they were fighting wars against neighbouring peoples all the time. During those difficult years, the crops failed a few years and there was a famine. A man by the name of Elimelech and his wife Naomi decided to migrate to avoid starvation. They went to the land of Moab on the east shore of the Dead Sea. Though the Moabites were enemies of the Jewish people, Elimelech and Naomi had no problem settling down among them. The Moabites exercised simple respect for their neighbours and extended their welcoming hands to hungry people. Today, we call Moabites Arabs who live in the kingdom of Jordan.

Elimelech and Naomi had a comfortable life in their adopted country. It shows: Both of their sons married Moabite women. The names of those daughter-in-laws were Orpah and Ruth. Now Elimelech and his two sons died one after another. The Bible does not say why. I don”t think that is a significant point of the story. Men have always died earlier than women, as they still do. The point of the story is the love between a mother-in-law and her daughters-in-laws. When Naomi decided to go back to her home in Bethlehem in the land of Judah, where she still had some relations, the two daughters-in-laws wanted to follow her, even though they knew they would run into difficulty in a foreign country. So the point of the story is the love that overcame cultural and national boundaries, and not so much about relationship between in-laws.

Naomi told the two young women to leave her and go home. She wanted to spare them the hostility they might run into in a country of former enemies. "No way." said the two. They loved Naomi and wanted to follow her. But after some persuasion, Orpah decided to go home. There were many tears and kisses as Orpah went back to her kinfolk in Moab. But Ruth stayed with Naomi. Ruth said, "Wherever you go, I will go. Your people shall be my people." So the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law went to Naomi”s home in Bethlehem. There they ran into a very kind person who was a relative of Naomi”s. He helped them to survive the first difficult days and saved them from going hungry. Naomi even taught Ruth a cunning way to find a husband. Thus the Moabite Ruth and her Jewish man Boaz got married, raised a family, and became the great-grandparents of King David.

It is a simple story of genuine affection between three women, who overcame the fact that they were from two different countries, cultures and religions. Even when it describes Orpah who decided to remain in her own country, there is no hint of condemnation for her decision. The story recognizes and respects the Moab people and their culture. That is why Orpah was described as someone who was following a natural course of action. On the other hand, Ruth successfully fitted into the life of the people she married into. She could do that because she loved her mother-in-law and her husband. Both Orpah and Ruth were affirmed in this story even though they took different courses of life. When people are bonded together in love, differences between them will not be obstacles to their relationship. Differences may not go away, but through respect may enrich the relationship.

Some scholars of the Scriptures asked Jesus what the most important commandments were. They challenged Jesus with a question, which they assumed to be very difficult for an uneducated man like Jesus to answer. But Jesus answered by repeating the simplest and oldest commandments from Leviticus. "Love God, and love your neighbour." It was incredibly simple. The Bible clearly says, "There is no other commandment greater than these." Those educated people, just like us, were so used to seeing everything in such a complicated framework that they could not remember the simple basic rules of life; "To love God and to love people." The more we learn, the more we make simple things complicated. Today we must remind ourselves that those simple rules of life can resolve the difficult problems like the ones where cultures and nations collide head on, like in Quebec, Algeria, Northern Ireland, or Palestine. We learned it all when we were children. "Share everything. Don”t hit other people. Clean up your own mess. Flush the toilet. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together."

WE ARE BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS

Genesis 12:1-4a, Psalm 121, John 3:1-17

February 28, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

One day, a man asked me in a cafeteria, "Are you saved? Are you born again to Christ?" I said, "Yes." The he said, "When?" I said, "Everyday." It is a pity that some perfectly good expressions like "born again" get used as labels and the original meanings are changed or lost. "Evangelical" and "Born Again" are expressions that have become labels for some particular groups of people. But if we believe the Bible, we are all born again Evangelical Christians. I feel that we must reclaim those names as ours as they are used in the Bible.

The Christians, who live in the so-called non-Christian countries, have a tendency to idealize the countries like Canada which are considered to be "Christian" countries. A Japanese Christian came to Canada to attend an interdenominational meeting. He was shocked to see quarrels between "Evangelicals" and "Liberals", Presbyterians and United, Catholics and Protestants, etc. He was disappointed to find that Christians fought in Canada too like Japanese do at home. Someone asked him, what he was. He said, "I”m a Christian, and I thought you all were."

We are Christians before we are Baptists, Catholics, United, Presbyterians, or whatever the label we put on. Furthermore, we are "Born Again" Christians according to today”s Gospel reading. In the Gospel according to John, you find that the expression "Born Again" was first used by Jesus. He said that no one could be his follower and enter the kingdom of God unless one was born again. By this definition, we all are, or should be, born again Christians. The story has it that one night a prominent Pharisee leader by the name of Nicodemus came to see Jesus. He said, "Teacher, I know you come from God. No one can do what you are doing unless one comes from God." Jesus said to him, "If you really want to follow God”s way, you must first be born again." This really threw Nicodemus off balance, because he was a man of reason. "Born again? I am a grown up man. I can not go back to my mother”s womb." He was a man who used the brain to think. He was a scholar. Reason was the faculty he valued. He was not used to be confronted with things that made no logical sense. But he came face to face with the fundamental fact of faith; faith is the matter of both spirit and mind. He had to integrate reason with passion to start afresh in the life of faith – to be born again in spirit.

It is not easy for a person who has a superior mind to give oneself to emotion or passion. One is afraid to look silly. This is why Nicodemus came to see Jesus at night. He was the leader of the scholarly and righteous lawyers who took it upon themselves to be the watch dogs of the nation”s moral standards. He knew that Jesus was a very special man. He could tell that Jesus had to come from God, because Nicodemus was a God fearing righteous man. But his cool reasoning prevented him to make a leap of faith. He could not be seen as acting in a hasty manner, especially about a matter of national importance; people were calling Jesus the Messiah – the true king. He had to be careful. So he came secretly. But faith must involve a whole person. The whole person includes feelings, emotions, passion, and can be creative and impulsive, in addition to a cool mind that calculates and reasons. Faith requires both attributes, because faith requires a whole person. A whole person is a person who draws on both mind and spirit.

Dr. Helen Caldicot is a paediatrician who became famous in a movement to stop the spread of nuclear weapons during the height of the cold war in the eighties. She was once asked why she was so emotional when she spoke about the danger of nuclear weapons. The insinuation was that "Emotional people are not credible because they are not reasonable. Women are often emotional. Therefore they are not credible. If you want to be heard, stay cool and speak with reason. Be like a man." She answered that ”Yes, I am emotional about this. I am a woman and a mother. If my patient does not get emotional about the future of her child, she is mentally ill. I ”ll send her to a Psychiatrist." Any good parent is both emotional and reasonable about one”s own child.

This also means that faith is not complete if passionate belief does not seek reason. Our minds are God”s creation, as much as our spirits are gifts from God. Faith has to grow in mind and spirit, even when faith comes into our life through emotion and passion. And faith has to be fed with reason as it grows. Faith does not stay alive by passion alone. Sometime those who believe with passionate faith criticize those people who study the Bible scientifically, and examine our beliefs systematically. But those people too must be born again to integrate their passion for God with reason and scientific logic, because faith involves the whole person. And a whole person is a person with both passion and reason.

Abraham was already a rich man when he was still in the land of Haran, the present day Iraq. He had tens of thousands of heads of livestock of all sorts and an army of workers within his household. He was almost like a head of a nation. But one night, he had a vision. God spoke to Abraham and told him to pack up all his household and move. God did not tell him where to. He just said, "Pack up and go." The Bible says that Abraham went without knowing where he was going. Perhaps it was because he didn”t know where he was going, that he went so far. It was a totally irrational thing to do for a successful farmer and businessman who made virtually billions of dollars. It was not a rational decision. It was a decision made from the heart, out of his passionate trust in God. He was ready to start afresh. At that point, Abraham was born again into faith, both in mind and spirit.

We are also called upon to be born again. Made afresh today, tomorrow, and many more times to be born anew. There are some people who can pinpoint the time and the day when he/she was born again. But we are all very different. For many of us, like me, the process of being "born again" is a quiet process that repeats itself many times. I try to live everyday like a new person, refreshed by the belief that God loves me. We have to be born again, again and again. Sometimes, God will help us with an inspirational or emotionally high experience. After those experiences, we must settle down and become stable with reason, like a bowl of hot jelly cools and settles in a fridge. At other times, our cool rational belief system has to be shaken, perked up, and refreshed with stirring hymns or by the love of a friend. In either case, we are born again as a new Christian person.

IS A SNAKE AN AGENT OF HEALING OR CORRUPTION?

Numbers 21:4-9, Psalm 107, John 3:14-21

April 2, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

I used to take a group of boys to camping in Lesotho, Africa. There was a 11 year old bully called Morgan Archer, who was a son of a Canadian Professor of Education. He could sustain one burp long enough to sing "Twinkle, twinkle little star." Naturally, other boys respected him. They followed him everywhere. He took them on a snake hunt. They all pretended that they were not scared. They carried their catch in cotton bags. In the middle of the night, a fight broke out. They were fighting over snakes. It seemed that some snakes crept into the wrong bags. So, I had to keep all the snake bags in my tent to keep the peace. Everybody managed to sleep a little that night, except me. Fifteen years later, I ran into Morgan Archer in Toronto. He was a manager of a Second Cup Coffee outlet near the church office on St. Clair Avenue. I asked him if he still loved snakes. He said he never did. He just pretended that he liked snakes. What a price to be a bully!

The snakes have a bad reputation. They are often seen as a symbol of evil. They bite and kill people. This is why today”s scripture lessons surprise us. A bronze figure of a snake was lifted up by Moses as a symbol of healing and salvation. The Gospel according to John compares Jesus Christ, who was lifted up on the cross, with the bronze snake. It sounds puzzling. A snake first appeared in the Bible as an animal who tempted Eve into eating a forbidden fruit, thus caused the first rebellion against God. This incident branded the snake as evil ever since.

Careful reading of the Bible, however, shows that this characterization of the snake as an evil creature is incorrect. Take the first account of the snake in the Genesis. It says that the snake was the most cunning animal God has created, but does not say that it was evil. Snakes appear 58 times in the Bible. But only two times in the Book of Revelation, the snake is called Satan. Even there, it speaks about a huge dragon referred to as "an ancient snake". The Revelation was speaking about a different kind of creature, not a normal snake. All other references to the snake characterize them as cunning or clever, though it may have to crawl on the ground and eat dirt. Christ even commanded us to be like a snake saying, "You must be wise like a snake, and gentle like a dove." A snake as a model of wisdom certainly is a different image from what we used to think of it as a creepy and crawly vermin.

Back in Lesotho, Morgan Archer and the boys knew that most of the local snakes were harmless through Prof. Thelejane”s research project. He was a biologist doing a research on the snakes in the region, and had a huge collection of them in a tank. Most of the poison snake bites happen when people accidentally step on them. In fact, snakes are the ones who avoid people. We are the most dangerous enemies for snakes. When you walk on the grass in a snakes infested country, you should wear heavy boots, cover the legs, and always carry a stick and beat the grass ahead of you as you walk. Snakes do not attack you, if you give them enough warning. Generally speaking snakes are safe, if you know how not to bother them.

It is interesting to notice that the people of Israel were bitten by snakes, after they started to complain to God and Moses about hardship that the life of freedom brought to them. They said, "Did you have to bring us out of Egypt to die in the desert? We have to find water and food here. In Egypt, we did not have freedom but at least we had lots of food." Food was more important for them than freedom. They had not yet understood that dignity which freedom gave them was the most important gift from God. That was a sure sign of immaturity. We expect babies to want milk without worrying about their nakedness or wet bum, because they are babies. But if adults do not see the value of dignity, they have a serious problem. The problem with addiction, for example, is the fact that things like alcohol, drug, gambling, money, or even work take over their lives, and dignity is forgotten. They become slaves of substance or habits, and abandon the marks of adulthood such as dignity and responsibility. If such immaturity dominates adult”s life, anything, even the good things in life can become poisonous.

This is why I think the image of a snake as a metaphor for salvation as well as poison is very meaningful. Venom from poison snakes makes serum – a remedy for snake bites. We know that all drugs are poison, if we abuse or misuse them. They are medicine, because we know how to handle them. A mature adult knows how to remain in control of our environment, things we consume, and our habits. A snake meant disaster for immature Israelites, because they couldn”t handle responsibility therefore couldn”t appreciate freedom. A child can not handle freedom, so do not understand why one has to take responsibility. An immature person hates freedom and responsibility, like darkness hates light. The immature people never understand the value of dignity. They do not understand what healing and salvation mean. The Gospel according to John spoke about the coming of Christ and said, "The light came into the world, but the darkness rejected it." This is why those who did not see the true meaning of healing and salvation killed Christ on the cross. They thought that Jesus Christ was a disaster – a traitor to their dream, like the Israelites who thought that God and Moses were killing them by giving them freedom.

Life is a life long process of learning. We never stop growing and learning until the end. When you stop growing, you become a living dead no matter how young you are. Let us keep growing towards maturity without stopping at any instant gratification of a superficial pleasure. When you can see infinite possibilities that freedom of the wilderness offers, and when you can see healing beyond the frightening appearance of a snake, you will appreciate the meaning of salvation Christ brought to all of us.

NINETY-NINE AND ONE

Luke 15 : 1 – 10

September 13, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

I misplace and lose things all the time. I can do a lot more in my life, if I don”t have to look for things. I am very happy when I find what I have been looking for. But the Gospel suggests that what is lost and found includes people. The lost persons are those who have problems. Then suddenly the innocent stories of a lost sheep and a lost coin become a little bit more complicated and challenging.

We understand how happy it is to find lost money. We also understand that bit about leaving behind ninety-nine sheep to find one who is lost. When we can not find something, we look for it almost in panic: "The key, the key." And the car is locked. We don”t worry about those things that are not lost at a time like that. Let”s apply this to people: The whole family unites when one member is in trouble. We don”t worry even about young children who are OK, and attend mother”s needs, when she is very sick, worry when father lost the job, or when a little Johnny runs into a serious trouble at school and the parents are called to the Principal”s office.

We normally accept it as given that we have to look after the troubled or the weakest first. We spend more time, energy, and money to take care of one person in need than we do on normal persons. A famous Anthropologist, Margaret Meade once said, "The mark of a healthy society is how it looks after its weak members." It is normal that we spend time to try to find the lost. We don”t worry about those who do not need immediate help. They are OK without our help: thank God. Jesus said, "a healthy person does not need a doctor." It is easy to understand the story of the lost coin. A coin has no mind or legs. It does not walk away to be lost. It has no responsibility for its own demise. Likewise, there are people who are in trouble for no fault of their own. Like disabled persons or the sick. Only a barbaric society that treats them like problems. Nazi society was the most barbaric in that sense, even though it was highly developed in science, strong militarily, and efficient economically.

It is also easy to understand the sheep who wandered away and lost. It was stupid, but it knew no better. Yes, we should be willing to spend time and to travel far to find the lost souls and bring them back. We should be happy when they are back, though they may need a bit of re-education. What is difficult for us, however, is persons whom Jesus called the lost people. Jesus spoke about people who have made wrong decisions and get into trouble. We think that it is their fault. It is difficult, for example, to be sympathetic with people, who got hooked on the drugs or threw away all money in gambling. It becomes even more difficult to accept the kind of people Jesus was talking about in today”s Gospel. You see, Jesus started all this discussion about ”lost and found”, when the Pharisees found tax-collectors and sinners with Jesus and questioned the wisdom of keeping such a company. They saw Jesus treating them like friends and eating with them. For the Jews during the Roman occupation, the tax-collectors were considered to be the most despicable people. You see, the Romans privatized the whole of tax administration. They gave the whole enterprise of assessment and collection of tax to a selected few people as their profit-making business. And the tax collectors made money, lots of it.

The Jews did not want to admit that such scum could be among their own people, and wished that they would just disappear. They were sellouts, traitors, blood suckers, people without any moral values. They became very rich. But nobody spoke to them nor wanted to be seen with them. Only Jesus did not reject them when they came to hear him. He even went into their homes, ate with them, and in fact, one of them became his disciple. His name was Matthew.

Jesus welcomed everyone who wanted to hear his teaching. He did not discriminate against people according to their reputations, names, jobs, nor their social standing. He accepted everyone, even the prostitutes. He believed in the potential of people, instead of blaming them for their past. He only saw their willingness to hear the word of God. This is because he saw the lost people as redeemable, so long as they had a willingness to change. No matter how immoral some of his followers might have been in the past, Jesus could see that some of them were willing to try to be better human beings. Serious intentions to change was good enough for Jesus. God is willing to forgive and welcome them back, when he sees seriousness about changing their lives.

In my father”s church, there was a retired Professor, who was Minister Emeritus. He was the Japan”s best known Old Testament scholar. He was not only a good scholar and a respected professor, he was also a powerful preacher. He preached a few times a year, and always attracted a standing-room-only audience from across the city. My father had a huge downtown church. The amazing thing about this man was that he was once a drug addict for many years in his youth. His hands trembled uncontrollably when he pronounced the blessing, because of that past. One day, as he told us, when he ran out of drug and he went into convulsion. When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying in a pew of a Salvation Army auditorium in a midst of an evangelistic meeting. There he sat and heard the good news about conversion and forgiveness. He decided to change his life right there and then to follow God”s way. He withdrew from heroin cold turkey, and went through several days of serious withdrawal syndrome alone all by himself. According to my medical doctor friend, this was almost impossible for a normal human being. Heroin withdrawal syndrome is so severe and physically painful that an addict usually wants to commit suicide.

This is an exceptional story which happened to one extraordinarily brave man. But my point is: yes, God is merciful and forgives all who repent and decide to return. He welcomes us back with open arms and there will be a great rejoicing. But do not think that it makes Christianity an easy religion. It is tough to admit one”s fault and change. But we can do it. Any ones can. There is always a second chance. It is up to us.

Isaiah 63 : 7 – 9, Psalm 148 #18
Matthew 2 : 13 – 23

Do you have an angel in your heart?  Apparently, 60% of Americans secretly think that the angels really exist.  I looked up the Gospel lesson for today, and I debated with myself for a while if I should speak about the slaughter of babies or about the angels.  And I decided on the angels, because they are badly neglected Biblical characters.  On three important crucial occasions, Joseph was informed by the angel what he should do.  Today”s lesson says that thanks to the angel, the Jesus escaped the slaughter of babies in Bethlehem.  I want suggest that contemporary equivalent of the angel is Hobbes in the comic strips "Calvin and Hobbes."  Hobbes may be for other people a figment of Calvin”s imagination, only a stuffed tiger.  But for Calvin, he is a best friend, a constant companion, a comfort, and an inner voice of honesty and wisdom.  He is what often angels are in the Bible.  If we have problems with the idea of angels we might want to ask, "Who can be our Hobbes?"

Angels play prominent roles in the Bible.  The word "angel" comes from a Greek word for "messenger".  Most of the world”s religions have the notion of angels.  An early medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas said that the angels were a metaphor for "pure intellect, neither male nor female but also assume whatever form they liked."  However nowadays we don”t speak about them.  We can comfortably speak about God.  But Angels?  No.  I wonder if we think the idea of an angel is too bizarre, lest people think we are crazy. 

There are more people who openly admit that they talk with cats or dogs.  My daughter virtually refuses entry into her home unless I talk to her two cats.  All the animal lovers understand that.  Some people even speak with gold fish.  I must admit I don”t understand that, but that is, of course, my shortcoming.  We all need something to help us think and sort ourselves out.  Some people talk to themselves aloud.  Why not?  They are not crazy.  We need a mirror to have an objective view of what is inside us.  An angel is a catalyst who can facilitate that reflection process.  I prefer to write down things to help me think; nowadays using a computer – it”s the same thing.  I talk to a computer to think.  Discussing things with Muriel helps very much, also.  While we do that kind of thing, we pause in a space and time between realities.  We are with the angels.  It allows God to intervene.  Non-religious people may want to call it serious thinking or something like that.  But it”s the same thing.

Angels keep you honest.  In the comic strip, like any six year old boy Calvin hates Susie and all other girls, at least that”s what he thinks.  But Hobbes loves Susie, he enjoys being near her, an honest but hidden feeling of any little boy.  Hobbes sticks with Calvin thick or thin, good time or bad, together in a terrible fear of that slimy man-eating monster who lives under the bed.    He also is not afraid to say the right thing, which Calvin hates, even though he knows deep inside that Hobbes is right.  Often the reader can never tell whether Hobbes represents another side of Calvin – an inner voice – or another person, a friend.  I think that Hobbes can be either – Calvin”s inner self or another person, just like an angel can be a hidden side of yourself as can as well as a different person.

Abraham and Sarah”s grandson, Jacob, wrestled with an angel by a river all night until the angel dislocated Jacob”s hip joint.  Jacob was going to return home.  Having stolen his brother”s inheritance by trickery, he had run away for fear of his life.  He married foreign women, Rachel and Leah, and settled down in a foreign land tending his father-in-law”s herd.  But he found no other place to call home except his own place of birth and decided to go back.  He was ready to ask for his brother”s forgiveness and meet the consequences.  It might have been a right thing to do but it was a dangerous gamble.  It is sort of like Calvin and Hobbes shooting down an untried hill on a toboggan.   When Jacob saw his brother ready to meet him with four hundred armed men, naturally he was afraid and distressed.  He was suddenly no longer sure whether he was doing the right thing by returning home.  He must have struggled with his angel all night by the river looking in fear at his brother”s men.  The angel in this case could have been his own conscience but also could have been another person like Hobbes who was trying to help him making up his mind.  Jacob would not let the angel go despite his dislocated hip joint until he received a blessing.  When one is making a decision, often one is looking for assurance not another opinion.  So it was with Jacob; that was why he was determined to get his blessing.

Angels are not gods, they are God”s messengers.   Angels bring often terrible but wonderful news.  Realities are often scary, but wonderful.  It was like the first Christmas.  Shepherds were terrified to see the angels.  Mary was forced into such a terrible but wonderful predicament by the Holy spirit.  But because of the angel”s assurance, she became brave and happy, and sung a song of praises and hope.  Helped by the angels, Joseph made a decision the kind that was incredible for men to make. In those stories, angels not only brought the messages from God, but also brought assurance and joy;  with lights and joyful sounds of music and singing.  You noticed, in many pictures depicting angels, you see them with trumpets and lutes making music. 

Last week”s Christmas carols and music are still ringing in our ears.  Our musicians and singers, young and not so young, brought magic to our Christmas.  They were the magic that brought the spirit of Christmas to us here in Howick.  They were the angels for us.  And I believe that it was our love for them that made them angels.  Seeing angels does not have to be so dramatic.  When a meeting is heated up and people are tense, someone brings in tea, juice and cookies.  Angry faces disappeared instantly.  No one eats cookies with angry faces.  An angel brings tea and cookies.

Angels come in many forms and shapes.  They can be wise and true friends.  Like Hobbes, some angels do not force the correct solutions and are ready to bless whatever you decide.   And they are ready to stand by you.  When Calvin is in a mood for dare-devil bravado like shooting down an untried hill on a toboggan, Hobbes does not hide his scepticism.  Hobbes knows there may be a cliff at the bottom, but he goes through the fall with Calvin and meets the inevitable disaster at the bottom.  An angel is ready to suffer the consequences with you.  An angel is a true friend.  A true friend is an angel. 

Like an angel, Hobbes does that sort of thing not because he is reckless but because he is an incurable optimist.  And he believes that there will be life after a spectacular fall from a cliff.  It was an angel  who sat at the entrance of the cave where Jesus was buried and informed the disciples about the resurrection.  "He is not here.  Don”t look for him among the dead.  He is risen!" 

An angel informed Joseph of an impending disaster to the babies in Bethlehem, and told him to pack up his family and to seek refuge in Egypt.  Joseph was helped by the angels in his mission of protecting and bringing up the Messiah so that Jesus could begin his ministry, when he was ready.  The angels help us to also engage in our mission, being our conscience, friend, wisdom, and protector.  God does not work alone in this world.  God”s deeds are often the collective actions of God, us, and the angels.  The world we live in and work in is often as cruel a place as Bethlehem under King Herod.  But God”s work does not have to be gloomy and heavy.  Angels may lead us down a different path.  With them there can be dancing and singing.  They will bring music with trumpets and harps.  With their help, doing God”s work can be as fun as building a snow castle with Hobbes.  And who knows, they may even lend us their wings.

GOD, A RISK TAKER

Judges 4:1-7, Psalm 128, Matthew 25:14-30

November 17, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

All of us have ups and downs. When I am up, I”m on top of the world. I feel so confident that I can bake the best pie in the world, run a billion dollar company, and wonder why people don”t come begging me to run in an election to save a country. But when I dropped Muriel”s treasured depression glass bowl handed down from her grandmother smashing it into pieces, I felt so humiliated by my own clumsiness that I could not even make a decent boiled egg. I feel like that every time I give a rotten sermon, too. In those times, you must not ask me to help you decide the colour of your curtain. If I put myself in a position of another person and look at myself from outside of myself, I wonder if I would trust a person like me who has so many ups and downs? Would I let him drive my brand new car, for example? I am not so sure if I would risk that.

Think about this man in Jesus” parable. Before he went away for a long trip, he gave a lot of money to three slaves and told them to look after it until he came back. Imagine the risk he was taking? To begin with, they were slaves. The slaves were not treated as humans in those days. They were never given any responsibility. Often they were treated wretchedly. So quite understandably slaves did not like their masters very much.

Secondly, value of the monetary unit used in this parable was an enormous amount of money. I estimate the value of "talent" today to be about a half a million dollars in our money. So this man gave one slave five million dollars, another one million, and the third a half a million dollars. Jesus was speaking about the situation which was almost unthinkable. No sane person would take such a big risk trusting a huge amount of money to some questionable people, who may be hating you inside.

As you may know, most of the Jesus” parables are about the Kingdom of God. They usually begin with a clause, "Kingdom of God is like:" So in this case, I believe that the point of the parable is that God”s Kingdom is in the risk taking, just like the man who trusted a huge amount of money to slaves and went away. God takes a risk trusting us. And that is what God”s rule means. I believe that the Kingdom of God is already here, though it is still in the making. Also I believe that we are participants of this project to create such a place. We are working with God to create a world, where the will of God is universally respected and followed. We are working with God to create the world where caring each other, love and respect are more important than winning and defeating others.

God takes a big risk in trusting us to work for his world. Imagine, a couple of guys who never handled big money before, played with millions of dollars of your money in risky business ventures or in a stock market. But if we look at ourselves honestly and consider our ups and downs, we realize the enormity of the risk God is taking. Those two slaves were lucky that they doubled the money. But the fact is; they gambled big-time with someone else”s money. It takes a lot of charitable spirit to give them any kind of credit, like the man in Jesus” parable. God wants us also to take risks and take part his project of building his kingdom. He does not scold us for taking risks, because we are participating in his work in the best way we know. He is pleased with us that we are sharing his risk. On the other hand, the one, who buried the money was scolded so severely, not so much because he was a coward, but because he did not share the risk the master was taking. He did not participate in a joint enterprise.

It is interesting, isn”t it. Jesus spoke about putting the money in the bank as the next best option for the weak-minded who was afraid to risk. But he did not caution against a possibility of a failure to those who participated in the business ventures. I get the impression that, for God, taking risks is, even with a possibility of failure, preferable to none participation. We can say the same thing about relationships. In our relationship with other persons, the important thing is to be engaged and to participate in a joint project called relationship. We may agree and sometimes we may disagree. We love and also we quarrel. Either way, we are engaged with each other and are participating in a joint enterprise called relationship. Love and hate – both positive and negative emotions are ingredients of relationships. This is why we say that love and hate are two sides of a coin. But if we don”t care, there is no relationship. If you don”t care, you don”t hate. The worst enemy of love is not hatred. It is apathy. If there is no love, we don”t fight because we don”t care. Then there is no relationship. To hate is an emotional involvement, hence there is relationship even in hatred. Relationship is a risk. Loving is a risk. When you love, you are taking a huge risk. But without risk taking in love, there is no participation. The building project of the Kingdom of God is participatory. God and we are partners both actively working together.

By inviting us to take part in the creation of heaven on earth, God is taking a huge risk. When I consider the mistakes that humans made throughout history, sometimes I wish that God did not give us such freedom and responsibility. If we should be like animals, always behaving purely on impulse and natural instinct, the world could have been a little better. Granted, animals fight over food and mates. But those fights are impulsive, not like the wars we humans wage using our sophisticated minds and technology. Animals fight impulsively. But humans organize mutual destruction systematically. This is why the result of human warfare is so much more devastating.

By giving us freedom to participate in his work, God also gave us an option to abuse it. God is risking a lot and he knows it. It is such an honour to be able to participate in God”s work in this world. But it is a big risk that we are also taking. To live in this world according to God”s commandment and to love our neighbours are a dangerous business. Sometimes cost of loving is enormous. If we do not want to get hurt, we must not love. We should cut ourselves off from other people. We should only take care of ourselves. Non-participation is very safe. It may mean that you have to live with loneliness and constant suspicion of others. But it is safe. You don”t get hurt. But it is not what God is calling us to be. God wants us to join him in the building of his country, Kingdom of God, by loving our neighbours as we love ourselves. There is risks in loving. But reward is huge. The reward is a joy of loving, loving people and loving God.

LOOK UP. WAY UP. THERE IS A RAINBOW.

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

October 1, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

I moved quite a few times in my life, and worked in different places and in several countries. From that experience, I can say that it takes two years before one can start working effectively in another place. In the first year, you notice and only hate the differences from the place you lived before, and remember how good things were. In the second year, you begin to forget the old and begin to appreciate the new place. The third year is the time to start functioning effectively living in their language and loving the food. You don”t have to hate or forget the old ways. Your past is what has made you what you are, and without it you lose your sense of identity. The secret to a successful transition is seeing beauty in both the past and the future. Rainbow is a fitting metaphor for such a time.

A rainbow appears in an in-between time, as the sun comes out when the rain is not quite finished. It is beautiful, because the interaction between rain and the sun brings out all colours of the sun separately. After the flood, God showed Noah a rainbow as a sign of hope. Today, we are living in between times. We are still living partly in the past, though it is passing. And we are moving into a time zone we have never seen. It 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 of the past and the hope of the future. It is a time to remember and appreciate the old times and hope for the better times in future. 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. However, we must realize that the notion of the "good 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. Times are definitely better today in many ways. We suffer today because we live in a time between times, and not so much because we don”t live in the so-called good old days. The good old days were not as good as we want to brag about.

Noah and his family lost everything they owned in the terrible flood. 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 that the future was theirs to make. All they saw was enormous uncertainty. They could see only the vast wilderness of chaos and wrecked humanity, and could not look up to see a beautiful rainbow of hope and possibilities of the future. Noah was a good and righteous man. But he had difficulty coping with a normal life after the experience of terrible calamity and trials. Noah had difficulty coping with an enormous potential offered by future. After the first harvest, Noah 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. Time inbetween times was difficult for Noah. Even he had a hard time coping with the first bumper crop.

It is important to remember 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, hopefully, and joyfully. 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 wants 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 disaster, because this person does not know how to learn from past mistakes.

Jesus saw the rainbow of the covenant of God, when he was tempted in the wilderness. Satan offered some self-serving options for him. Money, power and popularity were attractive options for many past leaders. Jesus rejected those options. He saw God”s options differently. Jesus lived 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. 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.

GOD LOVES THIS WORLD, NOT ONLY NICE PEOPLE

Numbers 21:4-9, Psalm 107, John 3:14 – 21

March 9, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

In early years of the church, there were many rumours about Christianity. Some people even accused Christians of practising cannibalism. Disturbing and incredible as it may sound, there were many good reasons for outsiders to misunderstand some Christian customs. You see, Roman authorities banned this new religion because it did not recognize the divinity of Caesar. Even those, who did not like the Romans, the Jews and the Greeks alike saw Christians with suspicion. So Christians had to often meet secretly at night in places like underground cemeteries called "catacombs". When people met, they often observed Communion in which they broke bread saying, "Take eat. This is my body. Drink of this cup. This is my blood." Remembering the broken body and spilt blood of Christ is the essence of communion, which to this day is the most important and cherished sacrament of our faith. Of course, cannibalism was a totally false and unfair accusation. And yet the wording of the liturgy could sound upsetting to many people who did not know the Christian faith. We too have to come to grips with the language of sacrifice in our faith.

In order to understand the meaning of sacrifice, it is necessary for us to remember the ancient Hebrew belief about God”s justice and love. People of the Old Testament believed, as we still do, that God was just and loving. However, often justice and love, or righteousness and mercy could run into conflict with each other. What do you do when someone you love is unjust? Do you forgive and condone evil? Or would you fulfil the requirements of justice and deny the impulse of love? The notion of sacrifice emerged to solve this dilemma. To commit sin is like owing God a debt. The idea that someone could pay the debt for another person evolved into the idea of sacrifice. In the old Hebrew traditions, animals without blemish were sacrificed to pay that debt to God, so that injustice was properly dealt with. The innocent animals gave up their lives for the sinners. This was how the debts were paid and the books were balanced. The innocent one who was merciful paid a huge price. But through its sacrifice, justice was done. This is how the notion of Jesus being the ultimate sacrificial lamb evolved, to explain the love of God expressed in the death of Jesus on the cross. It was an first theological attempt to explain, in our limited human vocabulary, the mystery of God”s amazing grace in Jesus Christ.

When the Gospel says, "For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son.", it said "the world" without qualification. God loved the world of nature and human beings, the world where good and bad, material and spiritual, beautiful and ugly, are all co-existing. It does not say that God separated them and loved only the good people, only the one belonging to the spiritual world, and only the beautiful things. It says that God loved them all, as though they were all mixed up as one entity. This is a constant reminder for us who come to church. Yes, God loves us. But God loves those who are not in the church, also. Not only do we need to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones who are loved by God. We have to treat those outside of the church also as ones who are equally loved by God. We must never hold an "us v.s. them" attitude, because God doesn”t.

One of the difficult situations I, as a minister, face from time to time is the expression of guilt on the part of people who don”t come to church. Whenever people see a minister, inevitably some people begin to explain why they don”t come to church. I always have an urge to say to these people, "I don”t care. I like you anyhow." I understand some people don”t want to or can”t come to church. I did not go to church for a period for different reasons. For many of you, and for me, going to church is extremely important like breathing and eating. We get to show our faith in a safe place, and get fed with spiritual nourishment. But we do not have right to say that other people must feel the same as we do. God does not make a distinction between church goers and non-church people. God loves us all.

I like the attitude of medical doctors and nurses in this respect. They don”t judge people for their conduct. They treat saints and sinners alike. They do their best to treat a person even if the patient is ethically a hopeless case. Doctors and nurses do not discriminate about patients nor pass judgement about them. Likewise when God loves the world, and he does not discriminate. The difference from the medical people is: God is also the God of justice, who hates evil. In this context, it becomes all the more important to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The cross of Jesus Christ was the God”s way to love the world without compromising the principles of justice. When justice demanded retribution, God paid off our debts through Jesus Christ once and for all.

When I was a child, I heard a story of a dedicated and caring government official in Taiwan. Let us call him Mr. Song – a common Taiwanese name, because I forgot his name. He was sent by the central government into a remote region where mainly Aboriginal people lived to oversee its governance. He was a good man, and people came to love him dearly. Over the years, people came to regard Mr. Song as though he was the father of the tribe. But there was one problem even this good man could not solve. This particular people used to practice human sacrifice in times of great distress. They raided other tribes when plagues struck or crops failed, captured a prisoner, and made a human sacrifice and dedicate the head of the prisoner to appease angry god. The Government, of course, prohibited the practice of such a cruel custom, and meted out severe punishments whenever this happened and was discovered. But the barbaric practice never stopped. Once there was a great famine, and Mr. Song could tell that people were again ready to go back to their old barbaric custom. So he decreed that the government would overlook the practice of human sacrifice one more time – but henceforth after that, the practice would be met with an unimaginable and severe punishment. There was also a condition. Fir this last sacrifice, they would not be able to stage a raid into another people”s village: they would have to take whatever stranger who happened to pass the village. So the villagers captured the first stranger who came into the village. It was only after they beheaded him that they found this human sacrifice was their beloved Mr. Song in disguise. People wept for many days regretting their stupidity. As the story goes, from that day forward the barbaric practice of human sacrifice was never repeated in Taiwan.

For us, Christ was the final and ultimate sacrifice who paid the price of all of our transgressions once and for all. All we need to do is to believe this, and pledge to be forgiving and charitable to all of our neighbours. The sacrament of Holy Communion is our symbolic act to remember Christ”s final and ultimate sacrifice that paid off all our debts of past and future. Let us celebrate it joyfully and go out of this place as happy free people.

SEEING GOD FROM BEHIND

Exodus 33:17-23, Psalm 99, Matthew 22:15-22

October 20, 1996, by Tad Mitsui

I am fascinated by the image of Moses seeing God only in retrospect. Moses had his face covered when God Passed in front of him. A full view of God may be frightening, but the idea has fascinated the human race ever since its appearance on earth. The people of Israel also demanded to see God, because they were tired of hearing God”s plans only through a mouthpiece – Moses. But when they actually were allowed to be in the presence of God, they were terrified of the sight and the sound and begged to be spared of any further frightening experiences. Moses did not see God either. He only heard him. When at last he saw God, it was from behind. It was a rather limited view, you must admit. But it was enough to affirm the direction in which God was going.

Our society operates on the basis of "hindsight". We make choices consistent with past experience, based on known and already visible. It is more comforting that way. We resist change. In physics, this is called inertia. What is stationary tends to remain so and what moves tends to keep moving without changing direction. As a society and individuals we tend towards inertia. This is why we often reject visionary views of the future. We would love to know what future God has laid out for us, but are also terrified to know the truth. As hindsighted creatures, we can only cope with knowing so much. God alone possesses a complete foresight. Yet despite our limits, God keeps us moving forward, nudges us towards a better world, towards the kingdom of God. Our fear of change – of what the future foreseen by God may demand of us – is why we have often disliked and persecuted persons who had some sense of where God was leading.

Jesus was one of those people. He lived in occupied Palestine. When the Pharisees asked Jesus if the Jews should pay taxes to the Roman emperor, they were trying to trap him with a loaded question. If Jesus said Jews should, he was encouraging people to compromise their religion. But if he said they should not, he was inciting tax evasion and inviting wrath of the Roman authorities. For the Jews, it was a problem to use money which had images of the Caesar, because Caesar Augustus had decreed that he was a god. Caesar had claimed divinity in order to make his power absolute. The Jews naturally rejected that, because for them there was only one God: the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Moses. So they showed their rejection of the emperor”s claim for absolute authority by using traditional Jewish coins for their offering to the temple. But the fanatics argued that if they should remain good Jews, they must not use Roman coins even in business and commerce. So the answer Jesus gave was unexpected and ingenious. He told them to live like a good citizen while committing themselves to remain God”s people. This has been the norm of Christians in this world ever since.

To the extent that we are striving to be Christians by coming to church, we are distinctively the people of God, while living in this world just like any other people. We perform civic duties like any other citizens, but we keep our own unique values. We pay taxes and engage in business in the same way as any other persons do, using money with an image of secular authorities on it. But we do not worship that image. And this is the difference; state, business, and money are not absolute for us. In the mean time, we listen to the word of God, and try to live according to God”s merciful and just design. God”s ways are often different from the accepted norms of society. They are often inconvenient, and sometimes downright subversive to the existing customs and norms.

So people who follow the teaching of Jesus Christ seem a bit odd at times. Other times, they look outrageous or like fools. For example, why didn”t Jim Houden who willed so much money to our church, spend more money for his own pleasures before he died? We are surrounded by people, who did strange things like that, because they were Christians. No doubt, Jim Houden loved Howick United Church and its people. And I can understand why. But many ordinary people would not understand him unless they know what it means to follow God”s ways. Many prophets and saints not only were ridiculed by their contemporaries, but also were often badly persecuted. It was because they listened for the voice of God to tell them how things should be. They were ahead of their time; they knew things too early. They had strong sense of God”s foresight long before other people began to see the wisdom in divine visions.

Does this mean we can ignore the conventions and norms of this world in order to live according to God”s scheme? Jesus said, "No." He said that Caesar should receive what he deserved. Jesus said that because he believed that all authorities of this world should follow God”s path, even though they might be far behind God. Jesus did not believe in anarchy, though he believed that things must change according to God”s plans. We must live in this world as ones who know that things should change towards a better world. Yet we must not give up on this world. You must try hard to change it as a person who knows better, as someone who has glimpsed the direction in which God is headed. This is a tension we live with as ones who live in this world but know that there are problems that need solving.

As Christians, all of us live in this world with this tension. We are in the world but not of the world. We must pay taxes and give what is due to the state, but we do not completely belong to any country. Our real citizenship is of the kingdom of God. So we do not worship the image on the coin, even though we perform our civic duties by using that money. We do not believe that secular powers have absolute authority over us.

As people who have a sense of God”s plan for this world, we must constantly strive to move the world forward, towards God”s goals. Even if that glimpse of what lies ahead makes us uncomfortable sometimes. Seeing God only from behind seem like a limited view, but accepting that limit frees us from relying on "hindsight" alone to guide us. It is enough to give us an idea where God is headed – to turn our hindsight into foresight – and keep all the caesar of the world in perspective.

IF YOU HAVE NO PAIN, YOU ARE DEAD

Exodus 14:1-35, Exodus 15 VU876, Matthew 18:21-35

September 11, 2005 by Tad Mitsui

580, 635, 642, 641a

One day, a doctor was listening to a patient”s endless litany of aches and pains. The doctor had his turn. He said, "At your age, sir, when you get up in the morning and don”t have any pain, you are dead." Pains are God”s way of telling you that you are alive, but that you have to pay attention to a ceratin parts of your body. Pain is a warning. There is something terribly wrong with you, if you don”t feel any pain. Pain is a gift just like pleasure is a gift. A leper does not feel pain, because his body is rotting. Some of us try to ignore pain and wonder why disasters happen to us. Disasters like 9/11 and the aftermath of Katrina are the result of such denial.

The Bible teaches us to appreciate God”s gifts, be it a pleasure or be it a pain. The memories of the past can be good and bad. We all like the memories of good times that make us feel happy, and do not like bitter memories that make us feel angry or sad. You have to be able to take up the uncomfortable part of your live as a warning, just as much as you appreciate the joy of life.

On the shore of the Red Sea, the Hebrew people faced a difficult situation. They were caught between the sea in front and the enemy behind. They complained bitterly to Moses, "Did you have to drag us all out into this God forsaken desert only to be killed by the Egyptian army? Back in Egypt we aere slaves, but at least we were stewing meat for supper." Obviously, they had completely forgotten all the miracles God performed to free them from the life as slaves. Those who refuse to appreciate God”s gifts, can see only the negative side.

When you don”t like a challenge and do not want to see any problem as a warning in life, you see everything in front of you negatively. Future is always hopeless for those who can not accept a challenge, because they have no eyes to see the gifts of God. They cling to the nostalgic memories of the past and refuse to go on with life. This is what happens when you do not recognize problems and hate challenges. You see future only as a pack of troubles.

In the face of water on front and enemy behind, Moses took a walking stick and dipped it into the water. A strong wind blew the water away and they were able to walk across the bottom of the sea. Those who were brave enough to face an unknown future as a challenge won the day. They had courage to wrestle the bull by the horn.

The Hebrews remembered God”s mighty acts of the past with gratitude, thus could see a potential trouble as a difficult path but as an exciting adventure. They must have been terrified but they trusted God”s unchanging love and found the way out of the trouble.

The Jews could run fast because they were a bunch of escaping slaves carrying very little possession. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were a mighty army wearing heavy armours riding the horse-drawn chariots made of metal and wood that weighed tons. So the Egyptians got bogged down on the muddy sand. When the tide came back, they drowned. How true this is in our lives too. We surround ourselves with stuff. We love stuff. There is nothing wrong in that. But we must also be ready to let go of it. Otherwise, possessions may drag you down and will make you immobile when you have to move fast.

Of course, you must give thanks for good things. But do not dwell in nostalgia of good things past. You must also learn to appreciate the lessons that the difficult experiences teach us. Otherwise, you will end up hating the world, and everybody and everything in it. This is why forgiveness is a most essential life skill. Forgiveness allows you to let go of the bitter past and go forward in your life.

It is clear from the Gospel reading for today that Jesus thought forgiveness most important. It is letting go of the bitter past in order to get on with life. Jesus said that we must forgive not just once, but seven times, even seven times seven – 49 times. Forgiveness makes it possible for people to let go of the past and to accept each other. Our lives can not go on without acceptance and support of each other.

Two things are sure in our lives. We can not go back to the Garden of Eden, no matter how wonderful it is. We can not look back on the pot of stew in Egypt and dwell on it. Also, we have to let go of the bitter memories of difficult times. Like Paul said, "When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways." Let us thank God for the good things, let us forgive the past while appreciating the lessons learned, and move on like adults. If you keep the balance of good and bad of the past, life before us is wonderful.

Isaiah 7:1-16, Psalm 80, Matthew 1:18-25

I don”t think I am the only father who squirmed when he saw his own newborn child for the first time.  It took me a little while to begin to feel real loving attachment towards a tiny, funny looking lump of flesh wriggling in an incubator.  Father”s experience with a new born child is different from mother”s.  Mother has nine months of bonding with her child.  But for a father, bonding is an art – a process to learn to connect with his child.  You may think that one does not have to learn to love one”s own child.  Love for your own child comes naturally, because a baby is the most adorable and lovable.  I suggest that it is not always like that.  Everybody does not love a new born baby.  A baby is very vulnerable.  I believe that God chose to come to be with us in a form of an infant child, because a baby is helpless, powerless, vulnerable, weak, and an easy object for abuse and exploitation.

Because we live in Canada, we have no trouble believing that all the babies are always loved and treasured.  But that is not always the case.  Children are in fact the most deprived persons in the world today.  They are not treasured as much as we think they are.  For example:  We assume that normally people die of old age, and that only a small number of babies die.  But this is not the true picture if you look at the conditions in which children live in the world.  Fact is; a much greater number of infants die than the number of old people.  On the average according to the UNICEF statistics, 44 thousand infants die everyday in the world.  We don”t talk about this awful statistics because infant deaths happen mostly in the poorer parts of our planet.  They die mainly because of malnutrition.  The weakest ones are always the first ones to suffer the consequences of poverty.  This was the situation of the children at the time of Isaiah, at the time of the birth of Jesus, throughout history, and I say is the case even today.  It is not the universal truth to say that children are always loved and treasured.

Yet, Isaiah dared to predict that a baby who would be born to a young woman would be called "Immanuel".  The word "Immanuel" means "God is with us."  Why did God choose a new born child as a vehicle to come to live among us?  I suggest that an answer lies, among other places, somewhere in the art of bonding with a new born child.  By coming to be with us in a form of a new born child, God demonstrated his love by becoming one of the least and the most humble.  You can understand the logic of this God”s action when you know how to love.  In other words, love is the eyes to see God. 

When a father holds an infant child in his arms for the first time, the power of love transforms a "funny little squirming lump of flesh" into the most precious and the most beautiful thing in the world.  You can hear him whispering, "I love you so much.  You are the most precious and the most beautiful thing in the whole world."   It is love that turns a most helpless and unattractive thing into the most precious and the most beautiful.  The real test of love is to love someone when that someone is most difficult.   When you learn to tolerate a squawking cat at 4 a.m. or a snoring husband who keeps you awake all night, you have begun to learn an art of love.   When a baby cries all night or causes all sorts of grief, when your teenage child is determined to annoy you, or when your aging parent is gradually falling into a state of dementia and doesn”t know who you are any more and tells you to get out of the room, and yet you love them dearly, you have glimpsed the sight of God.  Love is the eyes to see God.

Another important point is that a new born child symbolizes future.  There is no other power more powerful than a faith in the future.  When you can see God in the most helpless new born child, you have capacity to hope for the future no matter how it looks grim.  That kind of optimism makes the small and helpless the most powerful.  On the other hand, when you can”t see an enormous potential in children but see them only as powerless and useless appendix to a society, you are the most pathetic being, because you have no eye to see future.  It seemed easy for the King Herod to kill the Messiah when he was a baby together with hundreds of other baby boys as a preemptive action against a future rival, because babies are helpless.  But Herod also killed his own future, and is remembered as a most pathetic figure in history.  A society that does not put priority in children has no future and is doomed.

God did not come to be with us as an infant child because babies are naturally adorable and easy to love.  The child was called Immanuel, because he was vulnerable.  Also a baby is not always easy to love.  If you love a person who is difficult, you are in the presence of God.  During this season of Christmas, let us learn to see Jesus by learning to love the unlovable.  Let us learn to see God like Mother Teresa did.  She saw God among the poor dying on the streets of Calcutta.  After all, the Son of God was born in a form of a powerless and helpless child who did not even have a luxury to be born in a decent house, but was born in a stable among the bails of hay and the piles of manure.  God is with us, because He came to us as a baby in a stable.

JOB”S STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND SUFFERING

Job 19

We normally don”t think that doubting is a nice thing to do. Having said that, I must admit that it is dangerous to hide one”s doubt and pretend to be certain about something we are not sure. It is better to be honest and say "I can not believe it." Life is not simple. Simple answers to difficult questions of life may not be the answers at all.

There is in the Bible a story of a man who never gave up askig questions. His name was Job. He was a rich farmer. He and his wife had seven sons, and three daughters, all successful. He had many animals: seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, one thousand draft oxen, and five hundred donkeys. So he had many hired hands. That was enormous wealth. Not only was he rich, but also he was a good and righteous man, believing in God and his words. He was an extraordinary man.

But all of a sudden, serious misfortunes unimaginable befell on him. A messenger came to report that there was a massive invasion of the enemy forces. They not only took his land but also stole all his animals and killed all employees. As Job and his wife were listening to this devastating news, another messenger came to inform that a sudden gust of wind, like a tornado, hit the house where all the sons and daughters were having a party with friends. No one came out alive. Job was stunned. He was so much in pain and sorrow that he shaved his head and tore the clothes he was wearing. He fell down on the ground and did not move. The shock kept him silent for a long time. But when he came to his senses, in stead of cursing God he said, "I was born of my mother”s womb naked, and I will go back to earth naked. God gave us everything, and he took it away. Blessed be the name of God."

This is an incredible man. It would be natural for him to start cursing everybody and everything. We would understand it. What kind of a man was this man Job? Is he crazy or possessed by some kind of religious fanaticism? But a real breaking point came when he himself was hit by a terrible decease. Very soon after all those calamity hit Job, he became seriously ill and his body was covered with loathsome sores from head to toes, some kind of skin infection that is still prevalent in the Middle East. He was so itchy all the time that he had to sit in ashes. Scratching with his own finger nails was not enough to sooth itchiness. He had to use pieces of broken pottery to scratch himself until he bled.

He was miserable. He cursed the day he was born. However, he did not curse God even though he was beginning to show the signs of bewilderment as to why such calamity befell on him. In other words, he still trusted God, but he did not understand why God was allowing such pain and suffering to happen to him. Not only was he miserable himself, but also he must have been a sorry sight to watch. His wife, who had so far shared his misfortune as bravely as Job, could not stand to watch her husband”s pain any longer. She said, "Why are you insisting to keep your integrity? I don”t understand you. God has been so cruel to you. Isn”t it easier to curse God and die? You will at least be free of your misery." She must have loved him very much. There must have been enough trust between them to suggest such a terrible act.

Do you remember the case of Jean Brush? She was recently found not-guilty of mercy killing of her husband, who was degenerating into a vegetable state because of Alzheimer”s decease. For her, not-guilty verdict was somewhat irrelevant, because she loved him so much that she was ready to sacrifice her integrity and ready to be condemned as a murderer. St. Paul also said, "For the love of my people, I would willingly give up my salvation." I know I am on a thin ice here. I don”t want you to hear me as someone advocating mercy killing. I can not give answer to that tricky question, because I don”t have an answer. I am simply saying that it took courage and true love to suggest what Job”s wife did to save her husband of his misery.

But Job did not curse God nor did he take his own life. He stubbornly kept questioning God, "Why, why, why? What did I do to deserve this?" It”s like a dog with a bone in his jaws, Job did not let go. We don”t normally do this. We give up too easily, and lose hope, become depressed or get drunk. This dogged, obstinate persistence can only be the result of genuine trust. We give up often too easily, because we don”t love enough. For Job, God can not be wrong. So he kept on asking, "Why?" Children can be trying for parents at times. I am sure that the children will say the same thing, about their parents. But what divides successful relationship from not-successful one is, a true love relationship never gives up asking questions. This is because, love trusts and never gives up. So we keep asking why, though the answer does not come easy.

Job was visited by his friends who had easy answers. Three good friends came to comfort him. But seeing how desperately miserable Job was, they just stayed away from him for seven days while remaining within the sight of him. They did not know what to say. So they kept silence. They must have been good friends, because they did not go away. Only answer they could find was: Suffering is a result of guilt. Job is being punished for his wrong doing. He should admit his guilt and repent. Then he will be saved from his misery. So they started to suggest to Job that he should renounce sin and repent. They were desperate to save their friend from suffering. In retrospect, it would have been better if they stayed silent, and stayed with Job. Often a simple act of being with your friend in silence is much more comforting than an easy but inappropriate answer.

Job was not ready to accept such an easy answer. "So far as I know, I have not done anything wrong. How can I renounce what I don”t know." Besides, Job asked, "if what you say is true, how come the wicked people often prosper better than the honest people. What did I do wrong? Tell me about my wrong doing, and then I will repent." Friends could not find any guilt in Job, because he was a righteous man. So after long hours of argument, they fell silent. Then there appeared another friend, who was older and wiser than the previous three. He started to expound a theory that suffering is God”s way of testing and educating people. We learn something every time we encounter suffering. Job could not accept this easy answer either, because his suffering and pain are too great for a mere lesson.

At the end of the story, God finally spoke to Job directly, and that was enough for him. He now understood that God”s greatness was one that surpassed all understanding. Furthermore, he was satisfied that God did not abandaned him. So he said, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes have seen you." For an ordinary mortal like me, the story has no conclusion. We learn and admire the persistence of Job to go after God. We Christians believe that in the resurrection of Jesus, we have seen the solution to the problem of suffering. Love wins. Resurrection of Jesus proved that.

PASSAGES – METAMORPHOSES

Isaiah 25:6-9, Psalm 118, John 20:1-18

Easter Sunday, 1997 by Tad Mitsui (Confirmation Service)

They say, cats have nine lives. But when we think of the changes we go through in our life time, we also have many lives. We may not change our appearances as much as an egg does when it hatches into a yellow baby chick, and then grows into a full grown chicken. But when you pull out some old pictures of yours, you realize how much you have changed. These big changes in life are called metamorphoses. Those people who confirmed their faith and joined the church today are making a lot of changes. They may not realize it, but even in those five short months of confirmation class, they grew up so much. From birth to death, all of us go through many transformations, almost as often as once in every ten years. And we call each period of time of change a passage. The message of Easter is that death is also a passage, not an end to life but a metamorphosis. Jesus showed us the way through a difficult passage called death, making our transition from mere physical existence into a state of spiritual being.

Passages often feel like difficult tight spaces to go through, which we must pass. When I am not well, I often have a nightmare of a dark, endless and narrow passage like a tube where the air is tight and suffocating. I awake gasping for air. It is frightening not only due to the fear of suffocation but also for the fear of unknown at the end of the tunnel. I don”t know what”s out there, and that”s scary. Psychologists suggest that at some level we remember the first passage we go through in our journey into the world; from our mother”s womb through the narrow, dark, and suffocating tube into open air. We usually do not consciously recall this because it is too scary to remember. We forget something we don”t want to remember. But our body remembers – so it comes back in bad dreams. After the birth passage, we go through other difficult new experiences in the first few years as a baby. Babies cry a lot, because often they don”t know what”s happening. And that”s frightening. When they are hungry, they cry because they don”t know why their tummies hurt. When they are wet, they cry because they don”t know why they have that yucky feeling on the bottom. When a baby cries, it is calling you to pay attention. It is a God”s call to love.

Puberty is another difficult passage of life. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, we go through incredible amount of change, in our bodies and in our mind. I remember I stumbled a lot because I had not realized how fast I was growing up. Friends begin to look more important than parents, though we are still very much dependent on them. Suddenly you become aware that people begin to pay more attention to you. You don”t realize that you are more attractive in appearance. You are like fresh bread just out of oven. And the attention people give you is not necessarily the kind you want. It is a difficult time.

When Jesus was twelve, he proved to the parents that he was growing not only in height but also in spirit. The mind begins to work differently at that age. Jesus and his parents went to the big city of Jerusalem for the spring festival of passover, which for us is the same time as our Easter. When they started to head home, they lost Jesus. But they did not worry. He was a big boy now. He had begun to spend more time with friends and grown-ups. They travelled looking for him among friends and relatives who were also going home. They could not find him for three days. Now they were really worried. So they went back to Jerusalem. After a frantic search of the city, finally they found him in the temple. He was talking with teachers of the Bible and the law. They were so fascinated by the young Jesus who had so much to say about religion, that they kept him in the Temple for three days talking with him. Jesus said to the parents, "Why are you worried? Don”t you know I am in my father”s house?" When you reach twelve or older, mere facts and figures alone are not as interesting as they were when you were younger. But now you want to know the meaning of things. The factual world is not enough. Also openly or secretly, you begin to be more interested in the other sex. Relationships are suddenly very important. Your interest has shifted to what is emotional and spiritual. So you ask "why" more often. You are now ready to enter into adult world just like Jesus was when he was twelve.

This is why in many cultures, the special training period for young people entering adolescence is important to prepare them for the shock of adulthood. The end of this training period is celebrated with gusto. It is important to mark this period of passage, because it is important for them to feel welcomed by a community of people who care for them. The adult world they are preparing to join is not an easy place. They must know that there are people beyond family, who have same values and same outlook in life. They must know that there are people who share happiness, and help you and support you in times of trouble. It is a way of God to tell us that he loves us. Schools do not do this.

I wish there were more celebrations of our lives” passages. Not only baptisms, weddings, and birthdays, but also occasions to acknowledge and show support for our friends and loved ones when they go through a mid-life crisis, or serious illness, separation, or retirement. They are difficult times and important times. In all those passages, we change, just like a butterfly in its different stages of development. We must have a community to celebrate together and affirm together the fact that God loves us. The community of faith is a group of people who stick with you no matter what. When we live in such a community, even death can become believable as another passage of life just like it was for Jesus, who came back from death and promised to live with us forever.

WHY WE DON”T LIKE TRUTH?

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23, John 9:1-41

March 14, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

The other day, someone asked me about a meeting I attended last Sunday. She had a second hand report about it. What she heard sounded like quite wrong to me. According to this person who reported it to my friend, the result of one particular vote was a complete opposite of what I thought it was. When you run into a situation like this, you realize that truth can be so elusive.

Jay Ingram is a science reporter, who used to host a science program on the CBC Radio. He recently wrote a book about human brains. In it, he quotes an interesting market research done by a women”s clothing manufacturer. Volunteers were led into a room with a pile of pantyhose, and were asked to pick one pair of pantyhose they would buy. After careful examination, every volunteer picked one best pair they would buy. They were asked to give reasons for their choices. They mentioned such things as superior materials, more comfortable, more agreeable colours, etc. But unbeknownst to them those pantyhose were exactly the same; knitted by the same machine, in the same size, of the same colour, and using the same material. Objectively speaking, none of the reasons they listed could possibly be true, because all of them were exactly the same. But Jay Ingram was sure that all of those women were sincere and truly believed that everything they said was right. Could this be one reason to say that there is no such thing as the universal truth? Is it all in your mind? It is up to you. Is it? But we believe that there is truth. Truth from God. Trouble is that we can not handle truth. We can not even agree on a simple fact. The story of healing of a blind man in the Gospel according to John is a typical example of human behaviours that always manage to make truth all muddled up.

One day, Jesus healed a blind man. He had been born blind, but now he could see. He had had to beg for living, but now he had a chance to make his own living. Healing is not just a matter of restoring the eyesight or of correcting physical problems. It is a deed to restore dignity and wholeness. The blind man, when he gained sight, discovered faith in God and in himself. He was not afraid to tell the truth any more. But what a furore this simple episode of healing provoked! Neighbours did not believe that it was the same blind man who was healed. They began to say, "Surely this is not the same man, who was blind and a beggar." Many of them saw what happened with their own eyes. But they did not believe what they saw, because they didn”t see what they didn”t want to see, and they forgot what they didn”t want to remember. So they asked the parents of the man if it was the same man, and they said it was. So they turned to the man who was blind and asked him if he was truly the same man who had been born blind, and he insisted that he was. They could not handle the truth they did not want to believe. But he was not afraid to tell the truth, and he did not shut up. Healing gave him courage to tell the truth no matter how much it annoyed people. So in the end, they ran him out of town. They banished the man, when they saw the truth and didn”t like it.

Pharisees had other problems about the truth. Jesus healed the blind man on Sabbath. According to the laws of Moses, nobody should work on Sabbath. But what is work? It was left to the lawyers to figure out those details of the law. Healing was work as far as the Pharisees” interpretation. They tried hard to perfect the laws by defining fine points of the laws. But sometimes lawyers forget the spirit of the law, when they try to figure out the meaning of the laws. That”s how they grab more and more power over people. That”s how they can tell people, "It”s all complicated. Leave it to me." For Pharisees, Jesus violated the Sabbath law, and he was not a qualified person to perform healing either. So the Pharisees scolded the man for allowing himself to be healed by a sinner. They told him to "Give glory only to God. We know that the man who healed you is a sinner." But he said, "I don”t know whether this man is a sinner. Only thing I know for sure is, though I was blind, but now I can see." He didn”t know the fine points of the law, but he knew the truth that counted. The laws are God”s instruments. They are there to help us to know God and to live accordingly. God is not bound by those instruments. God is bigger than any of them. But if your job is to maintain those instruments, you are tempted to guard them as though it is more important than God. This is how you get trapped in a folly, "My mind is made up. Don”t confuse me with facts."

The Church, too, have made the same mistake many times as the Pharisees did with Jesus and the blind man. It is only recently, the church at last admitted that the mistake was made by the church, during the sixteenth century, when it condemned those scientists, including Galileo Galilei, who said that the earth went around the Sun. The church used to say that the earth was the centre of the universe and the Sun and stars went around the earth. Some of them were burnt at stake as heretics for speaking contrary the church”s teaching. Many women were also burnt at stake during the medieval ages and as recently as two centuries ago in Americas branded as witches. Often their crime was their knowledge of herbal medicine, which they acquired while looking for edible plants. They were looking for herbs and spices for flavour and taste in food, they discovered healing properties of some plants. But medicine was reserved for men. So those women had to be punished for stepping on to men”s toes, even though their herbal medicine worked and must have cure diseases. We know today that herbal medicine works sometime better than the chemicals.

We too keep repeating the same mistake over and over again, and reject truth, because sometimes it does not suit us or threaten our vested interests. You can see how Jesus, as good and loving as he was, could end up being crucified as a criminal. During this season of lent, let us admit our prejudices and vested interests that cloud our mind. Let us start all over again and again with open mind. That is one way to know the truth about Jesus Christ, and how good and loving he was.

RICH AND POOR

Proverbs 22:1-2,8-9,22-23, Psalm 125, James 2:1-10

September 10, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

An idealistic young man went to Africa. He wanted to bring light into the darkness and to educate natives to have a better living. He was appalled to see how poor people were. He was sure that the cause of their poverty was laziness. He saw a young man having a snooze under a palm tree in the middle of the morning. "Wake up," he said. The man opened his eyes and said, "What?" The man from overseas told him, "Get up and get to work." "Why?" "You can earn some money." "Money? I have enough." was the response. "But, if you have more money, you can eat better food." "I can eat what I like. There are lots of bananas and mangoes in the tree." "You can buy things with money." "What things?" "Nice clothes, furniture, and stuff." "Stuff? What for? I have enough stuff." "But if you have more money, you will have security. If you have security, you will have no worry. You can relax." By then, he was quite fed up. He spat out, "Relax? What did you think I was doing before you rudely woke me up?"

This story illustrates an old debate about religion and wealth. Which is more important; to have enough or to be saved? Should the church work to eradicate poverty, or to bring people to Christ to save their souls? The United Church of Canada has always been strong in Social Gospel. Many people in our church consider bringing justice to the poor people a Christian duty. The former Moderator Bill Phipps represents that section of our church. He believes in helping the poor and the suffering, and fight for social justice everywhere. Meanwhile Evangelical Christians, (there are many Evangelicals in the United Church too,) emphasized the importance of the spiritual aspect of the Gospel and accused the people like Bill Phipps of being too much humanist not enough Christian. But

the Bible is not much of a help to solve this dilemma either. Compare the difference, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and Luke. Matthew 5:3 says "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Here Jesus, according to Matthew, is speaking about people who are in need of spiritual fulfilment, not about people who are poor as such. But Luke 6:20 says, "Blessed are you who are poor." There is no mention of Spirit. In other words, Luke seemed to have heard Christ”s concern for the people who were poor. What do you do when you find such radically different versions of the words of our Lord?

Social activists love the Luke version of the Sermon on the mount, because it affirms their concerns for the poor people. Meanwhile, the Evangelicals find an affirmation of their belief in Matthew, because Jesus was concerned about spiritual needs, not material needs. But when you become familiar with the way the Bible tells you about the relationship between what is material and what is spiritual, you will find no contradiction between Luke and Matthew. Body and soul are one in the Bible. In other words, our religion does not see separation of spirits from the material. We express our spiritual values in the way we use material things. This is why we are willing to spend a fortune for someone we love. Love is very spiritual, and money spent for the sake of love represents that love. If you don”t know the spiritual values, you will never feel rich even if you are a billionaire, because you don”t know where the goal of your life is. So you don”t know when to stop. This is why so many rich people are still unhappy, because they feel they never reach the goal in life and frustrated. On the other hand, people who seek spiritual values often know how much is enough, and often quite happy with what they have. Remember the African man snoozing under the palm tree? Persons like Mother Teresa never owned anything in their lives, but they died happy, admired, and loved by many people.

This is why today”s scriptures, both the Book of Proverbs and the letter of James, are saying that the question of the relationship between a rich man and a poor man is not just an economic matter, but it is an important matter of our faith. This also means that the Bible is very much concerned about those people who do not have enough to enjoy decent living. The Bible never says, "If you endure the hardship of this life, you will be rewarded in heaven." Everybody is entitled to a decent living here and now. We all have responsibility to work for justice, so that everybody has go in earning a decent living. A work for justice is a spiritual work.

I end with a story told by a man who spoke about his experience of poverty. He said, "Three days ago my brother Randy died. Two months ago, my first grandchild Jacob was born. The holiness and the beauty of those two events are gradually sinking in. I"m sure I will never fully understand the mysteries in them. But the Spirit has been speaking to me. Jacob came to us in the poverty of birth. He was so small, weak, and naked. He was completely dependent on others. He had nothing but his need. But one day, soon after he was born, I lay down on the sofa with him asleep on my chest. I wept for no reason. I can”t explain. It was just overwhelming. I guess I was overcome at the wonder of it all. Like the poor widow who gave all she owned – a few copper coins, Jacob had no idea the size of his precious gift of love and trust and joy he gave me. And my brother too, there on the hospital bed, the morphine shutting down his eyelids, we spoke to each other from the poverty of his dying and the poverty of my grief. All I could say was, "I love you Randy." And from the pain-racked poverty of his dying, Randy gave the most precious gift he had ever given me. "I love you, too," he said.

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God. They are so rich that they could give such a precious gift. They have nothing to give but themselves. So they give all they have – themselves. We should do the same.

YOU CAN NOT GO BACK TO EDEN

Exodus 14:1-35, Exodus 15, Matthew 18:21-35

September 12, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

One day, a doctor was listening to a patient”s endless litany of aches and pains. At one point, the doctor had his turn. He said, "At your age, sir, when you get up in the morning and don”t have any pain, you must be dead." Pains are God”s way of telling you that you are alive, but that you have to pay attention to a ceratin parts of your body. There is something terribly wrong with you, if you don”t feel any pain. A leper does not feel pain, because his body is rotting. Pain is a gift just like pleasure is a gift. Pleasure gives us the joy of life. And pain makes us realize that we have a responsibility to ourselves.

The Bible teaches us to appreciate God”s gifts, be it a pleasure or be it a pain. The memories of the past can be good and bad. We all like the memories of good times that make us feel happy, and do not like bitter memories that make us feel angry or sad. You have to be able to take up the uncomfortable part of your live as a challenge, just as much as you appreciate the joy of life. If you want to move on to the next phase of your life, you must appreciate both good and bad. Then you have dealt with the past and can let go of it. If you don”t, you will become obsessed with the past. You will be sucked into a bog of nostalgia or bitterness and get stuck there, while life passes you by.

On the shore of the Red Sea, the Hebrew people faced a serious predicament. They were caught between the sea in front and the enemy behind. They complained bitterly to Moses, "Did you have to drag us all out into this God forsaken desert only to be killed by the Egyptian army?" Obviously, they had completely forgotten all the miracles God performed for them. Because of those miracles, they were freed from the miserable life as slaves. Those who refuse to appreciate God”s gifts, can see only the negative side of things. A story has it that there was once a woman minister. She was kind and caring; she had visions, worked hard for the church; and to top it all, she was a mighty preacher. She was one of the best in the church. But no matter how good she was, always there were people who did not like women ministers. One day, she performed a miracle. She walked on water. But her antagonists said, "See? I told you. The woman can”t even swim."

When you don”t like a challenge and do not want any problem in life, you see everything in front of you negatively. Future is always hopeless for those who can not accept a challenge, because they have no eyes to see the gifts of God in what is not familiar. They cling to the nostalgic memories of the past and refuse to go on with life. They do not want to admit that they are conveniently ignoring the fact that what they remember is only half truth, because they forgot what they didn”t want to remember. This is what happens when you do not like challenges. You see future only as a pack of troubles.

Seeing that people were very upset in the face of a potential disaster, Moses took a walking stick and dipped it into the water. A strong wind blew the water away and they were able to walk across the bottom of the sea. A theory has it that the Red Sea in the Bible actually is what is known today as the Sea of Reeds on the Red Sea coast. It is a swamp full of reeds, which allows people and animals to run across to the other side when the tide is low. Some people, however, believe that it was a miracle – an act of God just like the Bible described it. In either case, the point is the same: those who were brave enough to face an unknown future as a challenge win the day. The Hebrews remembered God”s mighty acts of the past with gratitude, thus could see a potential trouble as a difficult path but as an exciting adventure. They must have been terrified but they trusted God”s unchanging love and found the way out of the trouble.

The Jews could run fast because they were a bunch of escaping slaves carrying very little possession. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were a mighty army wearing heavy armours riding the horse-drawn chariots made of metal and wood that weighed tons. So the Egyptians got bogged down on the muddy sand. When the tide came back, they drowned. How true this is in our lives too. We surround ourselves with stuff. We love stuff. There is nothing wrong in that. But we must also be ready to let go of it. Otherwise, possessions may drag you down and will make you immobile when you have to move fast.

You must give thanks for good things. But from time to time, you may have to let go of them to get on with life. Do not dwell in nostalgia. You must also let go of the memories of bitter experiences. You must learn to appreciate the lessons that the difficult experiences teach us. Otherwise, you will end up hating the world, and everybody and everything in it. What is the point of living if you hate life. This is why forgiveness is a most essential life skill. Forgiveness allows you to let go of the bitter past and go forward in your life.

It is clear from the Gospel reading for today that Jesus thought forgiveness most important. It is letting go of the bitter past in order to get on with life. Jesus said that we must forgive not just once, but seven times, even seven times seven – 49 times. Our lives depend on forgiveness. Forgiveness makes it possible for people to let go of the past and to accept each other. Our lives can not go on without acceptance and support of each other.

Two things are sure in our lives. We can not go back to the Garden of Eden, no matter how wonderful it is. We can not look back on Egypt any more either. We have to let go of the bitter memories of difficult times. Like Paul said, "When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways." Let us thank God for the good things, let us forgive the past, and move on like adults. Life before us is wonderful.

HONESTY OF A DIVINE FOOL

Isaiah 60 : 1 – 6, Psalm 72, Matt 2 : 1 – 12

Saturday, according to the church calender, was Epiphany when the some churches celebrated the coming of the men from the East.  They were the ones who followed the star to pay respect to the Baby Jesus.  Also on this day, Moderator Marion Best asked us to think about the plight of the vulnerable people in our country.  It is interesting to compare the two things that we are about to reflect on today. 

Those men who came to give homage to the baby Jesus were astrologers.  They should not have had anything to do with the Jewish Messiah.  Studying the movements of stars to tell fortunes was not quite the practice of the Hebrew people, thus those men were so-called foreign pagans.   Marion Best wrote a letter to all of us, commenting on the situation of the poor and the sick, and she was accused of stepping out of her line of work.  She was severely criticized by Canada”s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, for being naive about economy.  But the important question is:  "Isn”t Marion Best telling the truth, just as much as the men from the East revealed the truth about the birth of Jesus?"

According to the accounts by Matthew, those men came from the East following a star and looking for the king of the Jews.  Astrology was more widely observed by the Babylonians and the Persians, present day Iraq and Iran, not by the Hebrew people.  In other words, these men of the East were not familiar with the Hebrew prophesy; they were considered pagans.  This is why they needed help from specialists to know the exact location of the birth of the Messiah.  Of course, the specialists, priests and scribes – ministers and theologians, had all the tools for research and could tell them that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

But those priests and scribes did not go to worship the Messiah, even though he was supposed to be theirs.  Those foreign practitioners of a pagan religion did.  The political situation was too complicated for the experts to just get up and go.  The priests and scribes had too much investment in the existing order.  Knowing the kind of man King Herod was, they could not simply declare that the Messiah had come.  They had to carefully calculate the implications.  So they just sat and witnessed the slaughter of the infant children in Bethlehem by the jealous king.  It was too risky to commit themselves to another king on account of a mere prophesy.
On the other hand, those star gazers packed their bags and took off.  No one knows where they came from.  But surely they came from far.  And travelling in those days was not easy.  It was expensive and dangerous.  It was not like packing a few things to fly to Florida.  There were no seat sales in those days.  There were no buses nor planes.  You had to pay the full fare, and often pay with your own lives, too.  Those men from the East gambled everything and travelled many days to find the Messiah.  What were their rewards?  No one reported if they gained anything from this gamble.  Were they crazy?  Maybe.  But thank God for them.  They did not use political complications as the excuse to stop doing what they had to do.

Sometimes, the people who make amazing discoveries are not experts.  A large number of astronomical discoveries, for example, have been made by amateur star gazers, who watch the stars in their spare time, only for the love of doing it.  They have no preconceptions.  Everything they see through their telescope is a miracle and a wonder.  They take note of everything and check it, often to the annoyance of the experts at the observatories, who have to validate their claims of discoveries.    But because they do not take anything for granted, they find stars the experts might have missed.  They may be crazy, but they run into wonders of creation which until then were not known.

When Marion Best wrote to all United Church congregations asking us to think about and pray for society”s most vulnerable people, who were being affected by the governments cutbacks, she did not expect the thunderous wrath of the editorial board of the Canada”s biggest national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.  I don”t think she expected any big reaction by saying things that are almost customary for the church to say before Christmas.  But the Globe and Mail roared; "How easy it is for United Church Moderator to say such an irresponsible thing from a cosy protected pulpit, surrounded by pious like minded people, without having to cope with the reality of life!  How naive!  Doesn”t she realize that our social policy is bankrupting the country?"  The thunder was so loud that, I wonder if Marion”s argument touched the nerves of the advertisers in the Globe and Mail.  It sounded like an anger of an expert who was upstaged by an amateur.

How little do they know.  Marion Best is a nurse, who practised until recently and knows the sick and the weak.   More recently, she was a free lance consultant, helping hard pressed United Church congregations to readjust and reorganize themselves to survive  harder times with fewer members and lower giving.  She knows  finance from the perspective of the grass-roots and small struggling congregations.  How wrong they were if they thought that Marion Best was like a bishop in his colourful clerical splendour, living in a palace like the Pope.  She simply asked, "if the government is in a serious deficit situation, is it the fault of the poor and the sick?  Could it be because of years of bad government management and small minded politics?  She does not deny that the deficit is a serious problem.  What she is asking is:  "Is it the poor and the sick who have to pay for someone else”s mismanagement?"  In this case, an amateur, not the economic gurus, hit the sensitive truth.  It is like the time when those pagan practitioners found Baby Jesus because they were ready to gamble their own lives in search of him, while the experts who should have looked for him were not. 

We must remind ourselves that, just like the case of amateur discoverers of stars, the humane conditions of our society have often been improved by a few dedicated people who naively asked simple questions.  Like those crazy Quakers in Britain during the last century, who asked the question, "Is it right to buy and sell people like cows?"   They began, in effect, to dismantle one of the most established components of the human economic structure – slavery.  We thank God that there were some people, crazy enough to  ask the right questions.  It would have been much easier to not challenge the accepted order of things, and keep slavery.  Slavery lasted so long because it was so very profitable; it made good economic sense.  Like those priests and scribes who surrounded King Herod, keeping quiet and saving their hides, many people who felt slavery was immoral kept silence.  But those Quakers and other visionaries took the risk of appearing to be naive fools.  They asked embarrassing questions.  Were they naive?  Maybe.  But were they telling lies?  Definitely not.  Were they crazy?  Yes.  They were crazy enough to say exactly how it was, without avoiding the issue by saying, "it is rather complicated."
 
We should not forget the fact that among those Canadians, who dreamed up such a crazy idea as making health care available to everyone, were a United Church minister and a Baptist minister?  James Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas.  Were they fools?  Now Marion Best, a lay woman and faithful Christian has tried to raise the question of what will happen to our society if we risk doing away with such a social safety net.  Because of her concern for the vulnerable and her belief in justice, she too has risked sounding economically foolish.

Celebrating the role of the Hebrew people who would give the world its Messiah, Isaiah said, "Arise, shine, for your light has come."  Later the Evangelist John said in regards to the light,  "When the light shone in the darkness, the darkness did not accept the light."  Of course, light is the end of darkness.  Yet we often find it impossible to acknowledge the obvious and the inevitable, like the light which shines in the darkness.  We always say that abolishing something is not that simple; life is too complicated.  But often the so-called ”complication” is a smoke screen to hide something quite simple.  It is our task to join the ranks of other faithful amateurs like Marion Best to clear the smoke away, and challenge the opinions of the experts.  We are invited to follow an unpopular and unusual path with her in search of an epiphany for our present day.

FORGIVENESS

2 Samuel 12:1 – 13, Psalm 51776-777 John 6:25-29

VU 602, 608, 472, 662

August 6, 2006, at Picture Butte

We all suffer from guilt. We all need forgiveness to go on with life. Today”s story of David and Prophet Nathan teaches us that. It’s a disgusting story! King David orders the death of his brave and loyal soldier in order to go to bed with his wife. David”s behaviour was immoral. Pure and simple. How could he be so horrible? Yet David remained a God”s most favoured king in the Bible. The child from this unholy union grew up to be King Solomon, who was the most successful king in the entire history of Jewish people. What is going on here?

We will not understand the point of this story fully until we realize that David”s behaviour was no different from other kings. You don”t have to read the stories of Henry VIII to find out that the kings did the same kind of things, or even worse things, all over the world throughout the ages.

The point of the story of David and Bathsheba is not to highlight David”s sin. David”s sex life was no better nor worse than other kings. So, the point of this story is to tell us that everybody sins and even a king is in need of forgiveness like everybody else. It says that nobody, not even the king, can get on with life until one”s guilt is taken cared of. King David was a great king because he admitted his guilt, and not because he was a morally better human being.

I am not saying that David did nothing wrong. He was guilty for sure. But I am saying that everybody without exception makes mistakes and has a past history that causes guilt feeling. One must acknowledge that. It is a first step towards forgiveness. David was a sinful man like everybody else. But he was more honourable in his honesty than many people. Nobody wants to admit one”s fault. This is why so many of us are busy working too hard to escape from the deep menacing feeling that somehow we are not OK.

When someone touches that sensitive spot, you would get angry and hate such a meddler. If you were a king, you would probably kill such a person. Prophet Nathan had a superb skill to tell King David that he did wrong without making him angry. The story of a rich man and a poor man”s sheep Nathan used sounded so much like a day-to-day kind of court case King David would have heard in his court. Nathan had to be careful even though as a prophet he was paid to tell the truth. He could have lost his head. John the Baptist was virtually decapitated, by telling the truth about King Herod”s personal life.

But the most important point of this story is that God does not demand perfection, but accepts those who honestly admit guilt and forgive them. David was a good leader, not because he was without fault, but because he was honest to admit his faults and accepted his guilt. He accepted equality of all people before God in their sinfulness. Greatness of King David was that he acknowledged himself to be just another miserable guilty man in need of God”s mercy. This was how he could get on with his life and move onto do greater things for the nation, trusting in God”s forgiveness and mercy.

A woman I knew well told me about her son”s recent divorce. My wife and I were very sorry to hear that, because we cared about the young couple and a baby girl very much. She was angry with her son. But she blamed herself more than anybody for bringing him up to be such a man of many faults, who could not make his marriage work. Not being able to see her grand daughter as often as she used to added injury to her anger. But eventually love towards her son and the grand daughter proved to be strong. Love did not allow her to dwell in a blaming game too long. She loved her son very much and had to forgive and accept him. When she could forgive her son, she felt that she was also forgiven. She felt forgiveness as she forgave her son. When she experienced forgiveness, strangely grudges she used to hold against some people had also disappeared. Experience of forgiveness changed her views of people.

It is indeed wonderful. We are forgiven people. We are not ashamed nor afraid of our past any more, because God has forgiven us and took care of our past. We can accept ourselves as we are. Christianity is not a religion of perfect people who never do anything wrong. It is a religion for forgiven sinners. A theologian once said, "Good News of Jesus Christ is like one beggar telling another beggar where to find food." Thank be to God.

LIFE IS NEVER SAME – EASTER

Acts 10:34-43, Psalm 118, Matthew 28:1-10

April 4, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

The changes that happen to human bodies between twelve and sixteen years of age, are exciting ones. Boys are transformed into young men, and girls into young women. Voices change, beards start to sprout. Curves develop where there was none before. Some changes may be embarrassing or even scary. But we know those physical changes are normal – not just normal but they are exciting and wonderful, because they tell you that you are growing up into a whole new world. We must celebrate those and many other signs, because your bodies have begun the preparation to join the grown-up society.

There are other big and normal passages into different stages of our lives. A fetus leaves mother”s body and changes into a baby, a child into an adolescent teenager and into full adulthood, and an adult into a senior and eventually into a next stage of life through a passage called death. There are also small changes that happen all the time in the normal course of life. New cells are born and old ones die in our bodies every second by the billions. We get rid of dead cells little by little, whenever we take a shower. Butterflies, dragonflies, and snakes shed their old skins only a few times in their lives, but we get rid of old selves bit by bit every second, everyday. Our bodies are completely new every three months, if you speak about them only as cells and their chemical components.

Life is like a river. It is never the same, and that”s normal. You wish that an adorable and cute a year old baby stays the same forever. Never mind, it will soon turn to be a little devil of a terrible two. When your daughter – a little princess – treats you like you are the most precious thing in the world, just wait a few years until she turns to be a teenager. She will treat you like a public enemy number one. But that too will pass. Life moves on.

When two women, both of them called Mary, went to the grave where Jesus had been laid, they could not find the body. They were told by the angels, "He is not here." Don”t look for a live person at the same place. He is not there. A live person moves on. That is the message of Easter. Jesus went through the passage of death, and moved on to another phase of his mission. And he showed us that we have nothing to fear from change; transformation is always about discovering new life. Death is never the end of the story. So, let us not mourn the passing of the old. Let us celebrate new phases of life, even if it is old age, or even death, because it is a normal passage of life.

This is why the church has a celebration for every passage of life: Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, and Funerals. I personally think that there should be more, maybe once in every ten years, because all of us keep changing through out our lives. We welcome babies into a community through Baptism, and promise to support the parents to bring up the new born in the best way possible, the way of Jesus Christ. We welcome adolescents into the adult community by receiving them into full membership of the church. We mark those passages of life and celebrate them as a community.

But life goes on. It means there will be many twists and turns, ups and downs, happy and sad, easy and difficult. Children leave home, and people may quit the church. But you must remember, Christ is alive and lives within you and me. No one will ever be able to be separated from the love of God in Jesus Christ. God bless you.

JESUS THE CAREGIVER

Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, John 10:1-10

April 25, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

I imagine that losing one”s memory with Altzheimer”s disease is like being lost in a strange place and finding yourself among total strangers. Every time I go to see my mother these days, she first looks at me puzzled. But then she extends her hand to take mine as she does to all visitors. I take her hand firmly and say, "Hello, Mama." She breaks into a big smile, "Oh, Tachan! (that”s how she calls me.) Thanks for coming. How is your mother?" Obviously she doesn”t quite know who I am yet, but somehow knows that I am someone very close to her, and she can trust me.

It is amazing what a mere touch of someone”s hand can do. We surround ourselves with all sorts of chemical and technological wonders that are supposed to banish all anxieties and discomforts. But I observe that we are not as happy as we could be. We in fact may have become lonelier and unhappier, because machines keep people away from each other. We still find that a smile, kind words softly spoken, or the touch of a friend works wonders where even pills fail to heal a wounded soul.

According to the church calender, today is designated as "Good Shepherd Sunday." It is the day to highlight Jesus as a kind and caring leader. However, "shepherd" is not a familiar image to us. In our culture, not very many people know what it means to herd the sheep in the badlands. I wondered what would be another image for us today that would fit the character of a shepherd of old. I decided to suggest the image of a caregiver. I am suggesting that Psalm 23 can be paraphrased something like "The Lord is my nurse in the recovery room." Or the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John could be, "I am the wife of a terminally ill person, who always stays with him, feeding him and changing him, holding his hands."

There are many images for God in the Bible. The Creator, the Righteous One, the Holy One, the Merciful One, the Redeemer, the Shepherd, the Spirit, the Lord, to name a few. God can never be known by us totally. So people described their particular relations with God using different images that fit their experiences. The most frequently used image, however, was the "Lord". It was an image of the powerful king. But Psalm 23 qualifies that image by saying that, "Yes, God is the most powerful king, but he is also gentle and kind like a shepherd." Like the hymn says, "Saviour like a shepherd lead us." And this is the image Jesus chose for himself too: "I am a Good Shepherd."

We believe in God who is the king – the powerful leader. But also this leader is like a shepherd who is kind, helps us find security and comfort, and stays with us even in the dark shadow of death. By adopting the image of a shepherd, Jesus clearly described himself as the kind of a leader who would not abuse his power for his own benefit. This leader is not like a despotic king you heard about in history, or a dictator like Hitler or Milosevic, who thinks nothing of sacrificing human lives to stay in power. One hopes that our political leaders are not like those despots and dictators. But watching political scenes around us, I sometimes wonder if even our politician”s top priority is to be re-elected and to stay in power. In a perfect world, you run for an office in order to serve people. But I have not known very many political leaders who have put people”s interests before the prospect of their own re-election. The image of the shepherd as the king makes it absolutely clear the true nature of Jesus” leadership. He leads like a caregiver who puts the wellness of people before all other concerns. We must recover the image of Jesus as the compassionate man who was not afraid to touch lepers, and washed disciples” feet like a slave.

Professor Rodney Stark is a well known specialist in the Sociology of Religion. He has studied the rapid growth of the Christian Church in the first four centuries. The speed with which the number of Christians increased was phenomenal. Beginning as just a handful of followers of Jesus, increased their number so fast that they overtook the Roman Empire within a few centuries. It is even more remarkable when you consider the fact that the Jesus movement grew so fast while banned as an illegal religion and the Christians were persecuted severely. Stark was particularly impressed by the fact that, when two devastating waves of plague (probably small pox) reduced the population of the Roman Empire by a third in the third century, the number of Christians increased even more rapidly in the same period of time. Stark attributes this incredible phenomenon to Christian charity.

During those days, people did not know anything about bacteria or viruses. All diseases were considered to be caused by evil spirits. So sick people, especially those with repulsive skin conditions like leprosy, small pox, and boils were thought to be cursed and were often abandoned and isolated as untouchable. But the Christians followed the example of Jesus, and stayed with the sick and took care of them, while even the doctors did not go near those who contracted plague for fear of the wrath of gods. In fact Stark quotes the diary of a doctor, who went away for holiday because everybody in his care got sick, and there was nobody he could care for. For sure, many Christians contracted the disease and died. But because the sick people were well looked after, a larger number of them survived in the Christian community compared to the population at large. Many outsiders thought that the Christians were practicing powerful magic, and joined the church in droves. But it was not magic nor miracle, not even medical science. It was simply the touch of a friend, kind words softly spoken, and the warm company of concerned people that gave the sick courage to live on. They were following the example of the Christ the caregiver, God the shepherd.

The power of Christ the king is not the force that conquers, it is the courage to love. That”s what the image of God the shepherd means. That”s why I think that the image of Jesus as a caregiver fits very well.

DOES GOD ALLOW SICKNESS?

Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Psalm 95, Mark 10:13-16

October 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

When you are sick, often you find that emotional questions trouble you more than the question of what ails you. Anxiety, guilt and damaged self-esteem is more serious than the actual sickness. I have recurrent migraine headaches. When I have a migraine, I feel useless and guilty staying in bed for a whole day. These feelings are worse than the headache itself. When we are seriously ill, we suffer as much from what illness does to our self image and sense of security as from what is does to our bodies. We often ask the meaning and reason for our sickness. I don”t think other animals ask such a question. When you ask "why", you are asking spiritual questions. The book of Job asks why we suffer.

The book of Job belongs to a category of old Hebrew scriptures that are called "Writings". Books like Job, Jonah, Ruth, Esther and Psalms, which belong to this category, are stories and poems written by people, who were seeking God”s plans in their lives. Because of their origins, it is OK for us to appreciate their good points, challenge some others, and sometimes say, "I don”t agree." The author of Job teaches us many important lessons about faith. But in the end, I, for one, don”t agree with his conclusions. I rather take the position taken by Jesus Christ, which is different from Job”s.

You see, the author of Job interpreted life as a stage where a contest between God and Satan took place. The story has it that God was proud of faithful Job. But Satan challenged God by saying, "Job is faithful to you because he is happily married, has good and hard working children, and is wealthy and healthy. But if you take away those good things from him, he will betray you." So they had a contest. God allowed Satan to take away the good things, one by one. After losing everything, Job contracted an ugly disease. His body was covered with boils and scabs. His wife thought that her husband was a fool, and told him it would be better to "curse God and die." But Job remained faithful to God. So God won the contest with Satan.

I don”t agree with the suggestion of this book because I don”t believe God, who loves us, will ever treat a person like a football in a game with Satan. God, who became like one of us and suffered for us, would never treat us like a pawn, a chessman, or a football. I wonder if the presence of Satan in this book is really the presence of our own self-doubt and frustrations with sicknesses that limit our energies and plans. Looked at in this way the contest that the book of Job teaches us about is not a contest between good and evil but a contest between our self-doubts and our faith in God”s love for us. The book makes clear that Job, who in the end accepted his suffering as the will of God, did not give up easily. He kept demanding an answer, pointing his finger at God and saying, "I did not do anything wrong. I never betrayed you. Yet you make me suffer so much. Why? Why? Why?" I do admire Job”s determination in asking questions. He never gave up, while many of us just give up and fall like a dead leaf. Job teaches us about the uniqueness of being a human. We ask, "why?" Animals don”t ask such questions. They just take whatever comes. Job”s refusal to stop asking why, shows his continued faith in a God who will respond despite all his other losses, Job did not lose his self-esteem and sense of being a valued child of God.

Buddhist philosophy stands in marked contrast to the lessons we might learn from the book of Job. Buddhism is based on the idea of "giving up" as the best way to solve of life”s problems. The founder of Buddhism, Gautama Siddhartha, knew that life was full of misery and suffering. As a wandering monk he searched for a solution to misery and suffering. After many years of search, he reached the conclusion that all sufferings came from desire. All suffering would disappear when we were free from all cravings. In other words, we must not expect anything from life and accept whatever comes to us as fate. Then we will no longer suffer. This is a philosophy that teaches people to accept suffering without asking questions. Job would make an bad Buddhist.

To accept suffering without asking questions can lead to a kind of fatalism that is damaging to ourselves and to others. To not ask why, means we may fall into the trap of seeing ourselves as our fault. Guilt is an enormous barrier to healing. To view our sickness fatalistically can also lead to discrimination against others. This is how our society justifies discrimination against mentally ill people, people with AIDS, and people with the kinds of sickness that generate feelings of disgust. We think that there is something wrong with them and they got what they deserve.

People in the Bible had a similarly fatalistic attitude towards the sick: they thought that lepers and mentally sick people were cursed by God. They made those sufferers outcast of society. This is why when Jesus touched and healed the sick people – those untouchable, it was a shocking incident. He refused to accept suffering as unchangeable. His miracles were the expressions of his concern towards people who were suffering. They were also a response to people who actively sought his help. Like Job who continued to demand an explanation from God, these people believed that their suffering was not the end of the story. From this, it is clear that God does not want anyone to suffer. He cares about us when we suffer. He expects us to have the same attitude towards sick people as Jesus did.

I can not tell you why God allows sickness. The Bible does not give a clear answer. But what is clear is that God does not expects us to accept suffering fatalistically – either the suffering of others or our own.

The book of Job reminds us that to question is to be human. It also teaches us that we must continue to believe that there is a God who will respond even if it is a response that we are not comfortable with. God does not play games with us. As Christians we have faith in a God who reaches out to us in our suffering. Believing this, not just patiently but persistently, means we may just hang in long enough for a miracle to happen.

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.

CRUISING DOWNTOWN IN A FERRARI

Proverbs 1:20-33, Wisdom 7, James 3:1-12

September 17, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

I had a stroll around the old Montreal last week. There were many people enjoying what seemed to be the last summer day. Cars were clogging the narrow streets inching forward their ways. I was so glad that I left my car in the Angrignon parking lot. Then I saw a red Ferrari. What a magnificent car it was! Everybody stopped to take a look at it. A young man in the driver”s seat was obviously enjoying the attention he was getting. In half an hour or so, I thought another red Farrari came around. No, it was not another Ferrari. It was the same one. He was just "cruising", I guess, showing off his two hundred thousand dollar Ferrari. He came around three times while I was there. If he wanted to be admired for his prized car, he did not do so well. He looked ridiculous. When I read today”s passage from the Book of Proverbs, I thought about that young man in a Ferrari – someone who should know better doing a stupid thing.

There is nothing wrong driving a beautiful and expensive car. I understand people who want to possess things that are beautiful and of good quality, though expensive. Cars, clothes, even pots and pans; anything can be a piece of art. When God looked at his creation and said it was good, I am sure that God appreciated its beauty as well as its usefulness. I enjoy looking at beautiful cars just as much as I enjoy looking at beautiful paintings. We should enjoy God”s creation in many ways; sight, smell, and sound as well as the benefits it gives. But some people possess beautiful things, and use them unwisely and managed to look stupid or even to harm themselves. Knowledge is one of those things that is good and valuable and makes us intelligent. But knowledge can make us unwise, too. Wisdom must be in a driver”s seat, when handling knowledge. That is what the passage from the Proverbs is telling us. "Listen, wisdom is calling out in the streets, at the city gate, and in the market-place…It is the Lord who gives you wisdom. Wisdom comes from the word of God."

You may think that knowledge always makes you wise. But the Bible says not necessarily. Today is an information age, and today”s economy is the knowledge based economy. Knowledge made Bill Gates rich. Young people are required nowadays to learn the computer and get on the "Information Highway", if they want to find a job and survive in today”s knowledge based economy. Knowledge replaced gold and diamond. Information is wealth, and knowledge is power today. You show-off what you know, just like you show-off your Ferrari in downtown.

But just like an expensive car, mere information is useless unless it becomes useful knowledge. Many people are proud of the fact that they have access to so much information and know so much. But they are silly. Mere information is something like a telephone book in your hand. It doesn”t mean you know everybody in Montreal and have many friends. Information must become your own knowledge to be any good. There is a internet site that shows how fast a piece of meat rots. Very slowly. Do you know that everyday 3 million people click on to that internet site and see how much it decomposes every hour everyday? Stupid, isn”t it? But there are people, who are proud of the fact that they have such unusual information, and make you feel stupid, if you don”t know what they know. But they don”t realize that information is rubbish until it is a useful knowledge. The Proverbs say, "Foolish people, who make fun of knowledge!" It is better to have a little knowledge and to be wise than millions of pieces of useless information.

My late father-in-law was a Canadian Air Force mechanic during the war. He was proud of his knowledge of airplanes. Every time a plane passed overhead, he said something like, "There goes DC10, 767," or whatever. Kids were mighty impressed. After he died, Muriel”s sister Lynne asked Mom how come he knew so much about planes. Mom just smiled. He was fooling them all the time. I was impressed. Dad managed to fool all those smart kids for forty years!

This story is interesting on two accounts. Men are usually the ones who like to show-off their knowledge of useless titbits, or to use things foolishly, like cruising on a Ferrari just to show-off. But women do not show off knowledge of trivia as much as men do. Muriel”s Mom just smiled at her husband”s innocent vanity. The Proverbs refers to Wisdom who cry out in the streets and in the marketplace as a woman. I find it fascinating that the Bible refers to the wisdom of God as "she". Chapter 1, verse 20 says, "Wisdom cries out, she raises her voice..At the city gate, she speaks,..etc." In fact, the word for wisdom in Greek is a female "Sophia". This not only reminds me of Muriel”s Mom, but also of my own vanity of wanting to boast the knowledge of useless trivia. Is the Bible hinting that women know something men don”t know? Do you think that”s why there are more women in the church than men? Something to think about, isn”t it?

Lastly, the Book of Proverbs says that mere knowledge without wisdom is not only foolish, but is dangerous. "Complacency of fools destroys and kills," says the Book of Proverbs. Scientific knowledge brought to us so many benefits. But don”t forget; our technology is also driving God”s creation to a cataclysmic disaster. Our highly developed technology that gave us unprecedented prosperity is causing the polar ice to melt, and driving many species of plans and animals to extinction. When the environment as we know is destroyed, we may be the next ones on the list of endangered species. But, like the Book says, fools who may possess knowledge don”t listen to wisdom.

I believe that it is about time to slow down and listen to the wisdom coming from the love story of Jesus Christ. I have nothing against loving a nice car. But for God”s sake, let us put wisdom of God in the driver”s seat and travel towards the love of God. Then, incredible human achievements will shine, and sing the hymn for the glory of God. Then, a red Ferrari may be worth the money.

Isaiah 42:1-9,
Psalm 27,
Acts 10:34-43

We just saw in Asia the worst natural disaster in known history.  Outpouring of generosity and support for the victims is truly admirable.  I am proud to be Canadians. But we must go further led by today’s scripture lessons.  We must remind ourselves that conflicts between peoples kill, by far, much more people than natural disasters.  For example, one bomb dropped in Hiroshima during the second world war killed 200,000 in a split second – more people than the total number of dead victims of the recent Tsunami.  The second world war killed tens of millions of people in mere four years.  We have to ask ourselves if the question of who is right and who is wrong is so important that so many people must be killed?

We are all different just like each of our faces are different.  So, if you think you are always right and others are always wrong, you will be the cause of conflicts and the menace to the world.  We all wish that other people would accept our ways, but they don”t.  We will not be able to live with other people, if all of us insist that “only my way is the right way.”  All of us eventually have to compromise in order to live in harmony.  Only immature people can not learn to compromise and do not accept other people’s ways.

We just lived through the most destructive century of conflicts in history.  And we continue to live in dangerous times, because we still don’t know how to live with differences.  The human race made amazing advances in science and technology.  But we also committed incredible acts of stupid self-destruction, because technology made the result of violent conflicts catastrophic.  The two great wars in the 20th century were the bloodiest and the most murderous in human history because of advanced weapons.  Millions since have been killed in Africa, Asia, Balkans, and Middle East.  All sides of conflicts believed that God was on their side.  Today the main cause of conflicts is three religions which believe in one God of Abraham, and follow the same book – the Old Testament.  Many Christians, Jews, and Muslims kill each other because of the difference in interpretation of the Bible.  Many think that Muslim terrorists are trying to kill Christians.  Many Muslims think that the war in Iraq is the new Christian crusade against Islam.  Some Jews believe that Arab Muslims are trying to destroy their country. 
The scripture lesson from the Acts records a sermon Peter preached in the Palestinian city of Caesarea.  Simon Peter spoke about Jesus to a group of people who were not Jews.  He baptized them right there after the sermon.  This event was a shocking event because Peter went into a house full of non-Jews and ate with them.  In those days, Jews were not permitted to eat with non-Jews because they were considered to be unclean.  The early church always met for meals, which later became our Communion Service.  Furthermore, Peter baptized those so-called unclean people without first making them Jews through circumcision.  By this action, Peter made it clear that the Jesus movement was a new religion.  Peter indicated that everybody was welcomed as soon as he/she accepted the teaching of the church.

It was unacceptable to the first generation of Christians because they didn’t believe that Jesus started a new religion.  They thought that the way of Jesus was a reform movement of Judaism.  But Peter declared that Christianity was a new religion.  Many people could not accept this.  So the church was split.  There was a faction based in Jerusalem, who still insisted that non-Jews had to be circumcised and become Jews before Baptism.  Peter believed that the church was open to all people as they were.

The conflict ended when the Church in Jerusalem disappeared.  But the other churches, which opened up their doors to all people, continued.   Peter didn’t ask "Is God on our side?" but asked "Are we on God”s side?"  Are we ready also to compromise for the sake of harmony and peace?  That is the most important question.  Those Christians who  followed Peter were Egyptians, Ethiopians, Jews, Romans, Greeks, and many other nationalities.  They were willing to give up what they held dear and compromise.  We must also be ready to give up something in order to follow what is real and true.  We should do the same between husbands and wives, between friends and co-workers too.  We must ask, “What can we do to resolve the difference?” not “I’m right, and you’re wrong.”

The three wise men who came to worship baby Jesus were astrologers – star gazers.  They didn’t know the Bible nor did they worshipped God of Abraham.  But they gave up everything and travelled in search of truth.  God led them to find the new born baby.  God will lead anyone to the truth if they earnestly seek to find it.  So, the question is:  "Are we ready to give up our ways, and follow God?" 

Whenever we run into a conflict situation, let us not think of my way or their way.  But let us think of God’s way not so much the way to win others over to our side, but of the way to find God’s way together.

WE ARE ALL BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS

Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 29 (VU755 John 3:1-17

VU 315, 375, 509, 661

June 11, 2006 by Tad Mitsui

Once I went to a hypnotism show. He led a whole crowd in the theatre through an exercise to divide us into two groups: those who could be hypnotized and those who could not be. I found that I was I was too sceptical and could not easily be hypnotized. So the show went on only with people who could be receptive to suggestions, and I was a spectator. I had a lot of fun watching people making fool of themselves. There are people who are more affectionate and emotional, and others like me who think a lot and are more sceptical. There is nothing wrong with either of them. Today’s story from John tells us that we need both kinds.

A young woman asked me one day in a cafeteria, "Are you born again to Jesus?" I said, "Yes." Then she asked, "When?" I said, "Everyday." She looked sceptical, obviously didn’t accept my answer. But I believe if we believe in the Bible, we all have to be born again Christians. Today’s story tells us that thinking people need to be born again to be more passionate and passionate people need to think more.

In the Gospel according to John, you find the expression "Born Again" first used by Jesus. He said that no one could be his follower and enter the kingdom of God unless one was born again. The story has it that one night a prominent Pharisee leader by the name of Nicodemus came to see Jesus. He said, "Teacher, I know you come from God." Jesus said to him, "If you really want to follow God”s way, you must first be born again."

This really threw Nicodemus off balance. "Born again? I am a grown up man. I can not go back to my mother”s womb." He was a man who used the brain to think. He was a scholar. He was not used to be confronted with things that made no logical sense. But he came face to face with the fundamental fact of faith, that is: faith is about life and life is one with both mind and spirit together. He had to integrate reason with passion to start afresh in the life of faith – to be born again in spirit.

It is not easy for a person who is used to logical thinking to give oneself to emotion and passion. For a thinking person a passionate person looks silly. This is why Nicodemus came to see Jesus at night. He was the leader of the scholarly lawyers. He had a hunch that Jesus had to come from God. But his cool reasoning didn’t allow him to jump to such a conclusion. He had to be careful. So he came secretly at night. But faith must involve a whole person. The whole person includes feelings: emotions, and passion, in addition to a cool mind that reasons. Faith requires a whole person. A whole person is a person who draws on both mind and spirit.

There was a paediatrician who became famous in a movement to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. She was once asked why she was so emotional when she spoke about the danger of nuclear weapons. The insinuation was that "Emotional women are not reasonable. If you want to be heard, speak like a reasonable man." She answered that ”Yes, I am emotional about this. I am a woman and a mother. If my patient does not get emotional about her child, she is a psychopath. I ”ll refer her to a Psychiatrist."

Faith is not complete if passionate belief does not seek reason. Mind is a God”s creation, as much as spirit is a gift of God. Faith has to grow in mind and spirit. When faith comes into our life through emotion and passion, it has to be fed with reason as it grows. Faith does not stay alive by emotion alone. Sometime those who believe with passionate faith criticize those people who study the Bible scientifically, and examine our beliefs systematically. But those people must be born again to integrate their passion for God with reason and logic. A whole person is one with both passion and reason.

We are all called upon to be born again. Made new today, tomorrow, and many more times being born again. There are some people who can pinpoint the time and the day when he/she was born again. But we are different. For some of us, "born again" is a quiet process that repeats itself many times. I try to live like a new person everyday, refreshed by the belief that God loves me. God will help us with an inspirational or emotionally high experience. After such an experience, we must settle down and think, like a bowl of hot jelly cools and settles in a fridge. At other times, our cool rational belief system has to be shaken, perked up, and refreshed with stirring hymns or by the love of a friend. In either case, we are born again as a new Christian person.

HE IS NOT HERE

Matthew 28:1-15

Tad Mitsui, Easter, 1996

One day, I ran into a crowd of people who were watching a dead person being dragged out of the water. It was a long time ago. I was on the way home from school. At first, I was afraid to look. But curiosity got the better of me, and I joined the crowd of spectators. It was not a pretty sight. Suddenly there was a shriek. A woman was running down the river bank. She grabbed the body and hugged the lifeless figure, while she cried aloud. She could have been the mother, or maybe the wife. Whoever it was, it was obvious that the drowned person was someone special to her. I felt ashamed, watching this tragedy as though it was a spectacle. For those who did not know the man, it was just another dead body. But for the woman who loved him, it was an entirely different experience. It was the body of a person she loved, from whom separation was an impossible nightmare.

We can not understand resurrection, unless we love someone dearly. We can not understand resurrection unless we know that there is difference between the spiritual body and the mere physical body. We can not believe in resurrection, if we think that we are just flesh on some bones. But when we recognize spiritual elements of our existence as reality, we will be transformed into another being. When I became a father, for example, it was a spiritual experience. When I saw my daughter for the first time, she honestly looked to me like an ugly lump of flesh. But soon a something hit me inside. The realization engulfed me; it was my own child. That same lump of flesh was transformed into a being with an entirely different significance. She had become someone who would always remain an integral part of my being and for whose safety I would even exchange my life.

When we speak about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are speaking about this special aspect of life, which turns a mere physical entity into a precious being with infinite significance. When two women, both called Mary, came to the tomb to put spice and ointment on Christ”s body, they found it empty. An angel told them that Jesus was not there. He had risen and went to Galilee. The angel also told them that there was no use looking for the living person among the dead.

When you love someone, there is an added dimension to the physical body of the one you love. That extra dimension goes beyond this visible world. When someone you love dies, for you, this person changes appearance. It is difficult to adjust to the new manifestation, because your love has been attached to the physical body you became familiar with. But soon you will know that a spiritual existence lives on, even though it is not visible in this world. Even if your memory fades, spiritual life goes on in God”s love. This is how we believe in eternal life. Eternal life is the life that lives on in the realm of God”s loving care. Science says that there is no evidence to prove that there is spiritual reality, and that life goes on in another form. It does not matter what science says, because science deals only with the physical aspects of this visible world. We know that there is a lot more to our existence beyond the mere touchable and visible reality.

So if you look for loved ones only in this visible world, there is no end to grief. The angel said to the women at the tomb, "He is not here. He went to Galilee." In other words, there is no use looking for the living person in this perishable world. He went ahead of you to your home in Galilee. Some students of the Bible suggest that Galilee traditionally meant a frontier, beyond which there is an unknown territory. It was not the known world of politics and religion like Jerusalem. He went to the frontier, into the future, in his new form of life. Jesus was the first one to put on this new life. When Mary said to the dispirited disciples, "I have seen the Lord.", she was testifying to the new form of reality. It was a spiritual experience but real. I can say it was real, because that is the only explanation for how a group of people in absolute despair suddenly turned into a band of brave, even reckless, evangelists, people who dared to talk about the one executed for blasphemy as Messiah.

You can not mourn the dead for ever. You have to get on with your life and venture into the future, into an unknown territory of living. Then you will find your loved one there – in the future. He has preceded you to Galilee – to your future. It is difficult to forget the body which the loved one used to wear, because that is what you knew. But the real person you loved has simply changed into another attire and has preceded you into the future.

When risen Jesus appeared before Mary Magdalene, she first thought that he was a gardener. It was only when he called her name, she realized that it was her master, the one she loved dearly. The shriek of a woman changed an ugly drowned body into someone”s loving husband or son. When I saw my own daughter, first I only saw a lump of flesh, until magic of love triggered a whole chain reaction of mind and emotion to make me realize that it was my own flesh and blood. It is only when a gardener changes into Jesus Christ, that the spiritual body becomes visible to us. Death is not the end. It is a door into another reality, into the spiritual world. Jesus Christ is not here. He is no longer with us in this perishable domain. But He is risen and lives with us for ever.

THE CHURCH”S HONEYMOON

Acts 2:42- 47, Psalm 23, John 10:1-10

April 28, 1996, by Tad Mitsui

In the beginning of married life, we only think of our spouse and do romantic and silly things. We call this period the honeymoon. Most of us move beyond it in a few years. But some people never do. Secretly we may envy them, because it is kind of nice. But we know that we all have to grow up sometime. Ideally, the initial love matures, and we grow wiser to avoid excess and to start looking outward. The Christian Church went through a phase similar to a honeymoon after the first Easter. But the church in Jerusalem never matured beyond the honeymoon phase and consequently almost disappeared, and the active Christian church developed outside of the Holy Land.

After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, his followers were so excited and happy that they got together all the time and talked about their encounters with the risen Jesus. It soon became their custom to come together weekly on the day of resurrection. This is how the Christian Church began to meet on Sundays, the day after the Jewish Sabbath when Jesus rose from the dead. When they met, they followed the custom of the Synagogue: reading the Scriptures, singing Psalms, and listening to the followers of Jesus tell stories of Jesus Christ. After that they always had a meal together to remember the last supper Jesus had with his followers.

In the beginning, they did not think that they were starting a new religion. So they met in the synagogues, and called themselves people who followed "the Way". Soon it became difficult to meet in the synagogues, because other Jews began to suspect that the people of the Way were practising heresy. Some fanatical scholars, like Saul – who later became Paul – began to persecute the Christians by harassing them, putting them into jails, and sometimes executing them for advocating blasphemy against Judaism.

So those who followed "the Way" began to live in the new way of life especially in and around Jerusalem. They began to live in the communes eating together and making each meal like Holy Communion, and sharing all earthly possessions. Archaeologists dug out the ruins of similar communities in Palestine. One of them was called the Essenes and is well known today, because of its likelihood of being a community where John the Baptist or even Jesus himself might have lived. The Essenes located their communities in the mountains and deserts, in order to safeguard the purity of their belief.

This communal living might have been necessary. It was too dangerous to live alone as Christians in a hostile environment. But it was not just due to a need for security that they lived like this. It was mainly because of their enthusiasm and passion for their belief. Perhaps it was excessive, but they were so happy to be together, sharing the knowledge that Christ had risen. They lived in ecstasy. It was their honeymoon in their new faith.

They believed that the way of loving that Jesus taught could only be put into practice through a total sharing. They believed that if they loved their brothers and sisters in faith, they should share everything they owned. So they abolished private property. Some people kept a few possessions for themselves secretly instead of giving them all up to the communities. But they were made to feel ashamed. The Bible recorded the story of a couple who did not give everything away and secretly kept a portion of their money. They died of a heart attack because their deception was exposed. Some people stopped working for living, and devoted themselves to a life of charity and prayer. Some of them even stopped paying taxes, because they believed that Christ would come soon and establish a new kingdom of God. So they were prosecuted for tax evasion by the Roman authorities. They may have been idealistic and their devotion touching, but they were naive and not very practical.

This is why the first Christians who lived in Jerusalem became very poor and destitute. Those Christians who lived outside of Palestine, in Turkey, Greece, North Africa, and in Italy had to support them by raising funds to help them. But many of the Jerusalem Christians remained the same and stubbornly stuck to their ways. They did not fully accept those later converts who were not Jews. They insisted that these Gentiles convert to Judaism first through circumcision before they became the people of the Way. They became a cosy little group, never changing their ways and not wanting to welcome newcomers. Because of this obstinate attitude, the Church in Jerusalem nearly disappeared. The active Church, in its stead, developed in North Africa – in Egypt and Ethiopia, in Asia Minor – in Turkey, and in Europe – in Greece and Italy.

This is a classic case of people who never grew up. They never moved beyond the honeymoon. They remained inward looking and exclusive, like a newly married couple. They did this in the name of Jesus Christ. Love that does not mature becomes stale and poisonous. Their "way" became a huge boulder that blocked the road to growth rather than a highway on which to journey to maturity. The way, like a road or a street, is useful only when it allows you to move and go somewhere. The Christian way is an avenue for a movement. It challenges us to grow and move with change.

There are two lakes in Palestine, Lake Galilee and Dead Sea, which are connected to one river system – the River Jordan. One is alive and the other is dead. One can drink water out of Lake Galilee; fish are plentiful. But the Dead Sea has no visible life form living in it. One can not even stay in the water more than a few minutes, because water is too salty. The lake, as its name implies, is dead. What makes them so different though both of them get the water from the same river? Lake Galilee takes water in and lets it flow out. So fresh water moves through it continually. On the other hand, the Dead Sea is located below the sea level, and water has no place to go; it sits stagnant and evaporates leaving chemicals behind. So the lake died and killed other living things. Christ”s way of life, the way of loving is like a flowing water. It involves constant movement – that movement allows life to grow and thrive. Change allows love to become more mature.

But how? John”s Gospel today gives a very interesting hint. A true guide who leads you to safety is compared to a shepherd, but the one who leads you astray is called a thief and a bandit. Shepherding and thieving are both ways to make a living. But a shepherd makes a living by looking after others. A shepherd lived with the animals rain or shine: the welfare of the animals was the welfare of the shepherd. Shepherd made a living by caring, loving, and sharing. We know a lot of people like that. They make decent living, but equally they give well. Thieves on the other hand make a living by exploiting others without giving back in return. They certainly aren”t concerned with looking after the welfare of the victims. Their goal in life is to look after themselves, and nobody else. Others are all potential targets for exploitation or enemies. Their goal in life is strictly taking, and absolutely no giving. This kind of living will eventually leads you to self-destruction.

Just like the love life of honeymoon eventually dies and becomes poisonous unless it matures, the church that remains inward looking concerned only with itself also dies. I believe that, like the hymn we used to sing in Sunday School, "There”s a church in the valley by the wildwood" language of the church says too often "Come, come, come," and not often enough "Go, go, go." It is good to create a lovely caring community. You have in large measures succeeded in making such a community in Howick United Church. I would much prefer to be here than in a large and prosperous downtown church with bells and whistles, a paid choir and a large salary. But we must keep growing up. We must remember to consider what to do and how to do it when we leave the church building, just as much as remembering to come together for worship and fellowship. Do not forget, our guide and our teacher is like a shepherd who calls us out to journey through green pastures and dark vales, as often as he brings us back to a comfortable home through his gate.

It is he who shares the honeymoon with us as well as calls us forward to a more mature love.

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.