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.

COMMANDMENTS AS THE MEANS OF GRACE

Exodus 20, Psalm 19, Matthew 21:33-46

October 3, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

 A boy went off the trail and got lost because he did not obey the first bush commandment, "Thou shalt not go into the woods alone." When he was found after two days and two nights, he was covered with thousands of mosquito bites, dehydrated, starving, and nearly delirious. He learned the price of disobeying the rules in a very hard way. He nearly lost his life.

Though rules and regulations exist for our own good, they have a bad name – "boring". Many people believe that it is more fun to break a law than to obey it. "Don”t get caught." is a slogan more people seem to believe in than those who obey the laws. The laws are normally the expression of God”s concern for us. But they don”t fully appreciate that the laws are intended for their safety and well-being. Ten Commandments were given to people, as the means for God to express his concern for people. But we don”t appreciate them as such. We think that the laws restrict our freedom and tie us down to a boring life. Therefore, many people think that the religion is a whole bunch of "Thou shalt not." So they think that religion is boring and takes fun out of life.

We must admit that, as soon as we see a rule, our first impulse is to break it. A story has it that one day a town council erected a sign with the inscription, "It is forbidden to throw stones at this sign." Guess what happened. Within a week, the sign became illegible because so many people threw stones at it. This story tells us about our ambivalent relation with the law. Nobody thinks that laws are bad. In fact, we will probably be very upset if people break the laws openly and get away with it. But why then do we cheat the laws – customs regulations, tax laws, and traffic laws, etc? I don”t think that there are many people who have never broken any of the Ten Commandments. Governments are worst offenders of the Ten Commandments. Paul described this problem in his letter to the Romans, "If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. If the law does not say "Thou shall not be envious.", I would not have known what envy is."

This is a unique problem for human beings. Animals can do only what nature tells them to do. They do not have freedom to choose, so they can only follow the laws of nature. They know no other way, so they do not need rules. Whereas humans are free. So we have options. We have knowledge of what is good for us. But we do have freedom to obey the law as well as to break it. God”s laws are the means of his grace. The knowledge of what is good for our well-being is revealed to us in a form of the commandments – the laws of God. So we have freedom to choose to live well, if we decide to follow the commandments. Freedom is a precious gift. It means that God respects us, and recognizes our dignity as independent individuals.

But we can choose to disobey the laws too. We can exercise our God given freedom by choosing what is not good for us. If we don”t have this option, we are not truly free. So the important question is; what is it that make us want to choose the God”s way, freely. What does it make what we only know in the head, into something we really want to do from our heart? What does it make the mere knowledge of what is good into heartfelt desires? What does it change the laws into the means of grace? The Bible says it is love that makes what is in the head into a matter of heart. Jesus said that love is the fulfilment of all the laws. Love makes the laws work. But without love, the law can be a temptation to break it, as Paul put it.

I can not name myself an excellent driver. But when I was young, I was worse. I was reckless. What changed me, at least into a more careful driver was the arrival of a child in my life. Though I am far from being an excellent driver even now, following the traffic laws began to have a whole different meaning with my child in the car. A concern for the safety of the child made me realize that the traffic laws were good things. And I began to hope that all drivers obey the law for the safety of my loved one. It is love that makes sense out of the laws. It is love that make you want to obey God”s commandments.

We are celebrating the Lord”s Supper today. It is a memorial of our Lord”s death. We remember that God who gave us the laws is the same God who forgave those who crucified Jesus on the cross. God commands and forgives, because he loves us. As we partake the symbolic meal to remember the love of God, let us also remember that it was the same God who loves us through the commandments. Remembering his love, let us appreciate the God”s way and give our best to live accordingly.

KNOWING A PERSON BY NAME

Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139, Philemon 1-21

September 6, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

I have a friend who made it big in business. He jets around the world these days. A few years ago, he and some of my old cronies invited us to a reunion in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Tokyo. After the dinner, we went on our separate ways by taxis and public transport; no sane person brings a car into downtown Tokyo. Muriel and I walked to our hotel with this businessman friend. He had his chauffeur and the Mercedes limo waiting for him, not in the restaurant parking lot but quite a few blocks away. I could kind of guess why my friend did not want to be seen with a chauffeur driven limo. He wanted to relive our good old innocent days, when none of us had money. When we needed a place to sit and talk, we went into restaurants and spent hours talking, pretending to have difficult time deciding what to order. We kept sipping glass after glass of water. In the end, we walked out pretending that there was nothing that interested us. We called ourselves "Waterman”s Club". We were poor, but we had lots of fun together.

The status symbols like clothes and cars can build barriers between people. A millionaire and a street person do not become friends easily. The letter of Paul to Philemon tells a unusual story of two Christians who broke a barrier between them. It is a letter Paul wrote to his good friend Philemon. He was a prominent leader of the church in Colossae. The letter was carried and hand delivered by Onesimus, who used to be Philemon”s slave. Onesimus, according to the letter, was a runaway slave, who managed to reach Rome from Turkey and became a member of Paul”s inner circle of friends. Paul was under house arrest waiting for a trial. Before he was executed, he sent Onesimus back to Philemon asking him to accept him back as a Christian brother.

If you know the status of slaves during those days, you realize how incredible this story is. Slaves did not have any place as a human being in society. They were regarded to be the same as domesticated animals, and were bought and sold like animals. An ancient Roman document has it that on one occasion an escaped slave, after being captured, pleaded with his master not to throw him into a crocodile pond as an entertainment for guests. Even as recently as the last century, the slave ships used to lose, on the average, a quarter of their cargo between West Africa and the U.S. Their cargo was African men, women, and children who were abducted and sold as slaves in the United States. Many died of disease and suffocation in the cargo hold. Also, the slaves were often thrown overboard during the storms to save the ships. We treat our cattle and pigs better than they used to treat slaves.

When a News paper reports about a traffic accident, it does not report the names of cows. They are just animals. So were the slaves. The price of a slave could have been cheaper than a prized horse. Today, we believe that the slavery is absolutely unacceptable. Slaves were people, not animals. But it took nearly two thousand more years from the time of the Bible for all of us to realize that the slavery is unacceptable. So, you see how amazing this letter is. How incredible it is to see Paul not only calling an escaped slave by name, but also calling him "my child". We know nothing about the friendship between Paul and Onesimus; how they met and how they became close friends. But the fact that Paul called him by his name alone, says a lot.

Paul didn”t have a grand scheme to abolish slavery as such. He was merely following the examples and teachings of Jesus. He accepted each person as a child of God just as Jesus did, ignoring the kind of things that normally created barriers between people. Jesus befriended the rich and the educated, attended their banquets and parties. He loved the company of children, too. Also he was a friend of social outcasts like sinners and prostitutes. He treated the untouchable like lepers and insane people just like he would the ordinary people. The lepers, in those days, were obliged to warn people that they were coming, so that the ordinary people had time to go inside of the house and lock the door. But Jesus talked to them and touched them as one human to another. Nothing came between Jesus and people.

Paul summarized Jesus” attitude towards people in the letter to the Galatians, "There is no longer Greek or Jews, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female. We are all one in Christ." You realize that even today in some countries you will be jailed for saying the same thing as Paul said. But Paul was merely following the examples of Jesus Christ.

When you follow the examples of Christ, and get to know people as persons by their names not as the adjectives like rich, poor, good, bad, healthy, sick, African, French, or English, all the barriers that divide people come down. You don”t have to start a revolution. The society will change when everybody gets to know and learns to love each other. I am not underestimating how difficult it is to ignore those barriers. There was an elderly woman in Vancouver who lived alone in a downtown rooming house, who became a good friend. I met her when I was delivering Christmas hampers. I always enjoyed visiting her. She kept saying that one of those days she should come to church. She had to keep me honest, she said. But she never came. Before I left Vancouver, she apologized for having never heard my sermon. She said, "I really wanted to come. I didn”t lie. But I had no clothes to wear to church." It was clothes that stood between the church and this woman who really wanted to come. I didn”t know whether I should cry or I should clobber her.

When you think of our church, you realize that even in our small congregation, you have so many nationalities and people of different back grounds. But those differences are not barriers for us, because we think of each other as just friends. Thank God for that. We are all one in Christ after all.

THE WISE AND THE FOOL

Proverbs 1:20-33, Psalm 19, Mark 8:27-38

September 14, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

I once had a colleague who came from Cape Breton Island. She told me that there were eight Gaelic words meaning "fool." They were all graded, from the ordinary kind found everywhere to the absolutely hopeless case. According to her, the worst fool in Gaelic means an "arrogant and stubborn old man." The book of Proverbs lists two kinds of fools. My Bible has two words – "simpleton" and "scoffer". Others versions use words like insolent one, brazen one, ignorant one or one who mocks. It shows that there are many kinds of fools. However, a common feature in all of them is their inability to hear the voice of wisdom, either because of stupidity or of their arrogance.

I heard of a man who drove around and around the gas station that sold cheap gas until the tank was empty, so that he could fill it with cheap gas. He thought he was being smart, I guess. And the worst foolishness is an inability to hear the voice of wisdom. "Fools despise wisdom and instruction." says Proverbs. On the other hand, the truly wise person fears God. Proverbs says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." When you respect God, many human attributes fade into the background. In other words, a wise person is humble and sensitive enough to be able to listen and to see things beyond the surface. Humility enables one to discern wisdom despite appearances. On the other hand, a fool can not see beyond the surface.

If you fear God, you find wisdom everywhere. Proverbs describes wisdom by saying, "She cries out on the streets, in the town squares, and in the market places. But fools do not see her nor listen to her." When I was working for the church offices in Toronto, I used to change street cars at the intersection of College Street and Yonge. On that corner , there was a street preacher – a big black man with a beautiful baritone holding a placard that said, "God loves you." His booming voice could be heard on every corner of that noisy and busy intersection. He said simple things like "Repent. The end is near." Or something like that. Of course, nobody paid any attention to him including me. I was too embarrassed.

Imagine the same kind of a scene played at the market in St. Chrysostome on Friday afternoon? Of course, it might also be a fraud, someone who”s out to get you, maybe into some strange cult or suck you dry of money. You must be careful. Imagine that it is a woman who is crying out, "Repent." A woman, especially a woman, is not expected to do things like that….unless she is a well-known high profile person like Mother Teresa. They can get away with it, because of the special status we accord them. If it is an ordinary woman, probably we would look at her as though she was crazy. Maybe I am reading too much into Proverbs and making a big deal out of wisdom being referred to as a woman. A ship is referred to as "she", so is a country. Many people call their countries the "Mother land". Maybe it is significant. I, for one, think that Proverbs has very a important message to give us by referring wisdom as a woman.

When those Proverbs were written a few thousand years ago, the status of women was much lower than it is today. Women were virtually men”s properties. In such a situation, there had to be some important reasons to refer to wisdom in female terms. By presenting wisdom as a woman – a most unlikely metaphor in those days – it is saying that it would take a considerable amount of humility and open-mindedness to see something extremely important and valuable. If you truly respect God, you will be so open-minded as to see truth beyond any unlikely looking surface. Also when men see women, they often see only their appearances and can not see beyond sex. There is, of course, nothing wrong with appreciating someone”s appearance. What is wrong is men”s inability to simply acknowledge beauty, let go of it, and then see beyond the surface.

There was once a highly respected monk, known for his devotion to meditation and his wisdom. Many young men became his followers. One day, the sage was reading the Holy Scriptures quietly in the woods. Some of his disciples joined him in this meditation exercise. In the course of the day, a beautiful woman came for a walk in the woods and passed by those monks. The sage lifted his eyes and watched the woman as she passed by. He resumed his meditation after she disappeared from his sight. The disciples were very upset. They were very disappointed with their master for even looking at the woman during a meditation and told him so. But the sage said to them, "Can you not let go? Why should beauty bother you? Poor foolish souls. It is wonderful to appreciate the beauty of nature and the wisdom of God”s words." By referring to wisdom in the female terms, the writer of Proverbs challenges us to see truth beyond what is sometimes superficially attractive, as much as behind an unlikely or even ugly facade.

In Proverbs, wisdom expresses righteous anger towards people who do not see nor listen to her voice. People do not heed her warning, because meeting wisdom on the street is, at least, inconvenient, mostly annoying. When Peter was asked by Jesus who he thought Jesus was, he gave the right answer. But as soon as Jesus started to tell him the suffering and death that awaited him in Jerusalem, Peter was very annoyed. He scolded his master for saying such nonsense. It was impossible that people would reject the messiah whom they were waiting for, and make him suffer. Peter could not see the true nature of God”s love. He expected the good to meet an happy ending. He could see the end of the story of the prince of peace only in terms of "And he lived happily ever after." Peter is not any different from the rest of us. However, the anger Jesus showed to Peter at that moment was quite exceptional. He called Peter "Satan" for seeing things in a human way not in God”s way. It was just like the anger of wisdom in Proverbs.

God”s wisdom can be found often in the most unlikely places. Mother Teresa found God in the slums of Calcutta. I don”t know how many of you have actually seen slums in some of the poor countries. The worst slum I have ever seen was outside of Nairobi, Kenya called Mathare Valley. About a million people lived there, in an area about the size of Chateauguay. Skeleton like figures were walking about like living corpses in rags. Stench from all sorts of waste was unbearable. There was ankle deep mud everywhere. I could not stay there too long. And yet Mother Teresa took the hands of those dying in such a bog of human misery and looked after them in their last days of their lives. And there, she said, she "touched the face of God."

The wisdom of God is found by people who can see beyond day-to-day superficial values. This is why Paul said, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. For the God”s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom." God”s wisdom is beyond our wisdom. You may think it is impossible for us to attain such divine wisdom. Even Peter could not see it. You may think that it is only Jesus who could. And I say we can. In love, divine wisdom and our understanding come together. Think of Mother Teresa, think of any mother, who sees potential beyond the appearance of an awkward child. We can hear divine wisdom everywhere in the logic of love. Maybe that”s another good reason to describe wisdom as a woman.

Isaiah 7 : 10 – 16,
Psalm 80,
Matt. 1 : 18 – 25

Just imagine; if this is not a Bible story.  A man had a nightmare.  How could it be just a dream?  His young fiancé told him that she was pregnant.  He and she were the only ones who knew that he was not responsible for her pregnancy.  It took tremendous amount of faith, love, and trust for Joseph to believe Mary”s explanation. Stories around the first Christmas are full of faith and love.  And the story of Joseph is one of them.

A mother is the only reliable natural link between a child and the family.  This is why a Jewish person must come from a Jewish mother regardless of the father”s nationality.  The love of a father for his child begins with trust.  A father has to learn to love a child, he has not carried it inside himself for nine months.  And if Joseph did not trust Mary, Christmas would not have happened, because she could have been stoned to death for adultery.  The laws regarding adultery applied also to engaged couples.  What could Joseph do?  He was a law abiding man, but he also loved Mary dearly.  The child could not be Joseph”s child.  And Mary makes a preposterous excuse.    She says, "It”s God who made me pregnant."  Oh, sure.  Imagine?

So he was going to quietly annul the engagement to make it look as though it had never happened.  She might be branded as a loose woman by giving birth to a fatherless child, but her sin would not be labelled adultery.  Being a loose woman was shameful, but it did not signify she broke faith with her husband, or husband-to-be, because there was no such man.  This way, Mary”s life would be spared.  Then one night he had a dream.  An angel appeared and told him that indeed Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit and that he should name the child Jesus – Yoshua, "he who saves people."  He wanted to believe such a message because he loved her.  That was enough.  He decided to travel with her to Bethlehem to register their marriage and possibly their new born child.  According to the custom of the land at the time, when a couple of a man and a woman undertook a journey together without chaperon, they were considered to be legally  married.

Evangelist Matthew told this story of Joseph to remind the Jews who were under Roman occupation of what happened about 800 years before to King Ahaz.  During the reign of Ahaz, the kingdom of Judah was under tremendous pressure from an alliance of Syria and Israel which was ready to invade and conquer Judah.  At first, Ahaz could think of no other way out but to enter an alliance with Egypt, though he knew that was a bad idea.  Egypt would surely absorb his tiny country eventually.  It was a Catch 22 situation.  The Prophet Isaiah agreed with Ahaz”s analysis that this alliance would be a problem and told him not to enter such an agreement.  But Ahaz needed a sign that he was taking the lesser of two risks by not entering into the alliance.  Isaiah gave him a sign from God as an alternative course.  The sign was, "A young woman becomes pregnant and bears a baby boy.  He will be called ”God is with us”.  He will bring people milk and honey, and other powerful nations will be no more."  

Who could have believed in such a preposterous sign?  King Ahaz didn”t.  Many of us still don”t.  But Joseph did, 800 years after Isaiah”s initial prophecy.  Joseph believed it,  because he loved Mary and wanted to believe in her faithfulness badly enough to trust God”s message.   He could believe that a baby of a questionable origin could be a sign of hope for the whole people.  Love is powerful.  Crazy?  Maybe, but it is the only way.  Joseph teaches us that love and trust are the only way to make this world work.  Even economic and military alliances do not work where there is a lack of the basic ingredients of human civility and decency, based on trust.  Where there is no trust even Empires will fall, because of the weight of the cost of maintaining a credible deterrent against possible betrayal.  [That”s how the Soviet Union fell.  Disintegration of our societies can not be stopped by toughened measures against crimes, where there is no trust between people.  When the police realized that they can no longer catch up with the rising crime rate at the time of shrinking tax dollars, they devised community policing.  They brought back foot patrol, and introduced bicycle squads and store front mini-stations to get to know people.  They want to restore trust between people and the police.]  A society that lacks trust is always under a threat of  disintegration.

Believing that the future of the human race rests in a baby, born by a young woman is not preposterous.  Giving birth to a child is a pilgrimage of trust and Joseph journeyed through that.  He can not be left in the background for he teaches us one of the most profound message in the Christmas story.  A sign from God that is overlooked can not change the world.  Incarnation alone means little.  But to believe in a dream, to act on trust animates that incarnation.  Joseph steps forward and shows us the path we must take as pilgrims who journey in trust.  It”ś his path that leads us to Bethlehem… and beyond.

JESUS CHRIST – SUPERMAN OR JUST A MAN?

Exodus 17 : 1 – 6, Psalm 78, Phil. 2 : 1 – 13

September 29, 1996, by Tad Mitsui

Paul was in a Roman prison writing the last letter of his life to the Philippians. He knew that his death was imminent. He was probably beheaded soon after he sent that letter. Despite the circumstances, the letter was filled with joy. He used words like "happy", "joy" or "rejoice" more than 20 times in a short letter, and asked the Philippians to join him in his happiness. How could Paul be happy in such a situation? Or was he just trying to be brave? I have no definite answer why anyone could be happy in a prison. But in this circumstance, he wrote the famous verses extolling the self-emptying love of Jesus. "Though Jesus Christ was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave being born as a human." But I think that in his belief in the self-emptying love of Jesus, there is a clue to know why Paul could be happy despite his imminent demise.

Paul was a well educated man of high society. Now he was sitting in a prison in Rome because of his faith in Jesus Christ. If he had any doubt about the self-emptying love of Jesus Christ, he would have been screaming at a prison wall out of total frustration. On the surface, it appeared that Paul wasted his life completely. He was born of a successful, affluent, and industrious family. He grew up in a foreign country and was fluent in the universal language of the day, Greek. Because of the prominent position they held, the entire family was accorded the rare privilege of Roman citizenship, though they were Jews.

He also belonged to the Pharisees – the elite class of lawyers and scholars in the Jewish society. He was educated in the highest educational institution in Jerusalem. Therefore, his promotion in the ruling class was remarkably quick. Even when he was a law student, he had already supervised at least one trial and execution of a heretic. A few years later, he was given authority over the entire region of Syria to arrest and imprison the followers of the heretical teaching known as Christianity. When he became a Christian he threw all those privileges away. I am sure that his past in the Jewish establishment must have made many Christians suspicious of him. Not only that, he had a hard time convincing other Christians about the legitimacy of his ministry, because of his more liberal understanding of the Gospel, which stemmed from his education and overseas experiences.

We have a bad habit of discrediting good people, when we find a few blemishes in them. We somehow feel familiarity gives us a license to discredit virtues. When you hear the praises of someone you know well, you feel that you have a right to diminish their apparent virtues by adding the inside story. I know this, because I do it myself. For example, I have had the privilege to get to know many saintly people in my life. On more than one occasion, I got angry at or spoke ill of such godly persons as Mother Teresa or Desmond Tutu, because I had seen first hand their idiosyncrasies and got impatient with them. Shame on me! Knowing this particular human tendency, Jesus said that prophets were rarely accepted in their own home towns. As people got to know the Prophets well, they always found faults in them. We must find ways to keep the respect for people with whom we have become familiar.

I suspect that the same psychology is at work when we think of Jesus Christ today. We might crucify him again, if he lived among us and if we knew him well. But because we have not lived close to Jesus in the flesh and do not know him as someone who is like us, it is easy for us to respect and praise him. We have no problem to say, "He is God." For us, he is someone like Superman, who came from outer space and could perform wonders. Therefore it is impossible for us to feel responsible for his death, because we respect him too much. We can not think of ourselves killing the son of God. "It was those bad people, not us, who crucified Jesus." We don”t realize that our presumed innocence is based on our unfamiliarity with the person of Jesus Christ. This is why, for many centuries, the Christians persecuted Jewish people as the nation responsible for the death of our Lord. That was, of course, totally unjust.

We have a real problem comprehending one of the important articles of faith. It is the humanity of Christ, because that makes him like us. If Jesus remained God, and stayed far away from the likes of us, there would not have been such a problem. We would not see him. We would not see anything we didn”t like in him. We would be able to continue to worship him, if he stayed away from us and remained God. But is this the real Jesus? What do we do with the verses like, "He emptied himself to become like us and lived among us."

Ralph Milton once did something very interesting, when he led a Bible study of the same passage we read today. He drew a long horizontal line, and marked one end as "100% undiluted God" and the other end as a "kinda nice person". In the middle of the line was "a saintly person". First he asked people to position Jesus on this continuum. The most of the people put Jesus on "100% undiluted God" or somewhere pretty close. Then he mentioned a few names of people they who were well respected and they knew personally. He also mentioned some godly people they respected but never met, people like Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Albert Schweitzer, etc. None of the people who they were familiar with made it to "saintly persons". They were mostly "Kinda nice people" including their own ministers. Only a few famous people, whom they did not know personally, made it close to the status of "saintly persons".

It is difficult to understand the notion of Jesus Christ being a 100% undiluted God and a 100% undiluted man at the same time, in the same person. Many Christians do not understand how Jesus could be human while being completely God. The people of Jewish and Muslim faiths do not accept that either; no human could be God, no way, no how. This is because we do not see God in people. Consequently, we are too quick to find faults in good people and reject them, as soon as we get to know them well. We must learn to see a bit of God in every person. Remember the creation story? God created humans, according to the likeness of God. We are not perfect, of course. But a bit of godliness is in every one of us. But often, because we know some people, we overlook their godliness. Disrespect increases rapidly, once someone you see in flesh does something you don”t like or something which goes against your interest. This is why the people in Jerusalem cried out for Jesus” death. They got to know him in flesh, and did not like what they saw in him, even though many of them thought that he was Messiah in the beginning.

Jesus was a human being. He was tempted to abuse divine power, when he was hungry. He was attracted by political power, and was even dazzled by worldly riches. He wept over the death of his friend. He cried and sweated all night, begging God to let him avoid the agony on the cross; he could not stand the thought of such extreme pain. On the cross, he even fell into the depth of despair and accused God of abandoning him. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!" One neglected clause in the Apostle”s Creed is, after Jesus was crucified and died, "He descended into hell." Jesus went to hell? We thought it was the place only bad people went. No matter how it should be interpreted, it is quite clear that Jesus saw everything any human person would experience, including that of hell.

Jesus Christ was a 100% undiluted human being. And people could hear, see and touch him. It was easy to hate him, because he was close to them and visible. Likewise, we can dislike people who are close and do something against our interest, even though they are doing the right thing. Yes, we can crucify Jesus all over again, unless we learn to see God in every human being. Unless you know how to see godliness in every human being, you will not be able to see this 100% undiluted human being called Jesus Christ, who was at the same time 100% undiluted God. Let us go back to Paul”s prison cell in Rome. I could see him saying something like: "My humanity – all the failures, wrong directions, thwarted projects, and warts – is what Jesus become when he emptied himself. And in doing so Jesus showed me the godliness in my humanity."

SEARCHING THE LIFE AMONG THE DEAD

I Cor. 15:20-26, Psalm 118, Luke 24:1-12

and John 20:1-18

April 19, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

There was a man, a lonely man. He was a senior civil servant in a city hall. His burning ambitions, passionate love, and sweet dreams all failed him, with nothing but bitter disappointments, a broken heart, and cynicism. He now lived by the recipe for a successful civil servant: "Never miss work. Never late to work. Do nothing." At forty-eight, he was only looking forward to retirement and time looking at his stamp collection. One day a doctor told him that he had only a few months to live. Despair and hopelessness overtook his life; he became pickled in alcohol.

One morning after a night in town, he found himself waking up on a strange bed in what looked like a shabby rooming house. A child brought him a cup of coffee. She was selling roses in the bar last night. Her mother had already gone to work, she said. He watched the girl playing with a cheap stuffed monkey he gave her. He picked it up somewhere in his drunken stupor. He was moved to see how the girl was absorbed in the play with the cheap dollar store stuffed animal. She looked utterly happy talking with a monkey in her pretend home. She looked so much alive. It was her very first toy in her entire life. He realized then that he was with people who lived in a slum area of town. A few years ago, the residents of this area asked the city to provide a playground for children. Their petition was sitting in his file for years. He had had no intention to do anything about it. But that morning, he became a changed man. He was late to work, because he had to look at all possible sites for the playground, before he got to the office. He ordered the Parks Department to draw up a plan and make a cost estimate, immediately. He encouraged the residents of the area to organize themselves and start lobbying the mayor and the key city councillors. He pestered his superiors to move things faster. He stepped on far too many toes and annoyed everybody. They thought that his thus-far-safe career in the city hall was ruined.

On the day of the official opening, the mayor came, gave a speech and cut the ribbon. After everybody went home, the now-very-sick man and the girl were on the swing, swinging back and forth, singing the old Japanese favourite, "Life is short, let us fall in love." Everybody remembered "that man" in the city hall, whenever they came to the park. Death made him more alive in people”s mind. But nobody remembered anything he did during his twenty-five year career in the city hall before the playground.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us that there are some dead people though may be dead, can still be very much alive and continue to communicate with the living. On the other hand, a person may be biologically alive, but is, in truth, as dead as the dry bones. We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was the first person who died physically, but is very much alive among us today.

The Jewish people believed that at death absolutely everything was over. Many people do not realize that the ancient Jews did not believe in the life after death. Life after death was an ancient Egyptian belief. Read the Old Testament carefully. You will not find the notion of life after death in it. At death one entered into nothing – void. This is why the Hebrew word "Hell" in the Old Testament is the same word for "Death – sheol." Because life ended with death, they treasured this life very much. They tried to live life – here and now as fully as possible, because to them this life was their only chance. So, they tried very hard to live this life in the best way possible. They enjoyed all the pleasures of life with gusto. But also they tried to do it right so as not to waste it. This was why the law became the very important guide to them.

This was how they came to the conclusion that the life that was wasted without joy and without purpose was not worth living; you might as well be dead. Also they decided in the same logic that sin was the same as death. Life is so precious that it had to be lived correctly and fully. Authentic life and death were not the same as biological life and death. Jesus Christ was the first fruit of the authentic life that did not die with biological death. He loved people completely. He enjoyed life, too. You notice how many times the Bible mentions about Jesus at the banquets, and about a dinner in his parables. He knew how to live fully and joyfully by loving people absolutely.

It is ironical. Isn”t it? Because he loved people unconditionally, he had to die. The society could not tolerate such love. So the people who had vested interest in the existing system had to kill him. People who hold power hate changes. But because Jesus truly lived by loving others, death did not have the last word. We can not prove this scientifically, but we know he is alive today. In Jesus Christ, we find a genuine life that travels back and forth between the biological divide of life and death.

There is not much point looking for the living among the dead. Mary came to the tome to embalm the dead body. But she did not find it. She was weeping by the empty tome. She didn”t know what to do; she was lost. It was only when she turned around in the direction of the voice of an unknown person, she saw a life truly living – the life that was not defeated by sin which tried to exterminate love; she met the risen Christ.

In the desert of the Western Sudan, many women and children were trying desperately to eke out meagre living on the perched dry sand. Their husbands and fathers are either missing or dead during the two decade long civil war. But life goes on despite the stupid greedy and power hungry men who don”t want to make peace. Men, who are determined to keep fighting for power, caused the two decade long civil war, which gave people nothing but misery, poverty, and death.

Women used to cultivate land when they were living among the green lush hills and fresh water lakes of the Southern Sudan. Now the dry sand of the refugee camps in the Sahara desert does not allow them to grow food as they used to at home. Only way they know how, to make a living in such a situation was to make beer out of sorghum and sell it. There are many thirsty men who buy it, though it is illegal under the Islamic law to consume alcohol. The prisons are full of women who were caught selling beer. So the church has been teaching them the different ways to make living; making soap out of palm oil and crushed lime stones, tie and dye cotton material, and sewing clothes. The church has a rotating loan fund providing them with money to buy sewing machines and start up their own businesses. Some of them started to crush peanuts into butter while waiting for customers and sold them besides dresses and materials. Others collect frankincense in the desert and sell it besides their tie and dye. Their children are now fed and have change of clothes now. There is life in the desert. Children are laughing and running in the dry land.

Jesus conquered death, not in the battle ground or in the forum of politics, but by loving people absolutely. That”s why Jesus is alive today, tomorrow, and forever. Hallelujah!

TENDER LOVE AND TOUGH MIND

LUKE 14 : 25 – 33

True love requires an intensely tough mind. Such toughness is so intense that sometimes it feels almost like hate. We should not ignore this, though this probably is one of the most difficult aspects in the art of loving. Jesus in today”s Gospel is telling us that if we do not deal with this love/hate relationship, we do not really understand his love. The lesson from Jeremiah also makes the similar point about the difficult demands God makes of people, like a potter who smashes up imperfect pots and remoulds them until he sees perfection.

The backdrop of the story in today”s Gospel was Jesus” final journey to Jerusalem where he died on a cross. By then he was an enormously popular man. He was always followed by a large crowd of people. But were they all truly dedicated followers of Christ? Some of them might have been. But, the majority were not. In fact, many of them soon turned their backs on Jesus and became the very crowd that demanded the death of Jesus. Jesus put a difficult test to them so that they would realize how tough it is to be true disciples.

The test was, indeed, tough. Most of us do not understand what he meant at a first glance. He said, "Anyone, who does not hate father and mother, brother and sister, himself or herself, and does not carry the cross with me, is not my true disciple." It sounds like a complete reversal of everything Jesus stood for. We don”t understand why he used the word "hate".

In the case like this, I usually look at the same story in other Gospels, like Matthew and Mark. They used a little milder expression to say the same thing. Jesus said, "If you do not love me more than you love your father and mother, etc." Difference in language shows that Luke felt more strongly about the point that Jesus was making than other writers of the Gospels. In other words, Luke felt it so strongly, that a negative word like ”hate” was necessary to make the same point.

We must realize that hate is not the opposite of love. Love”s opposite is apathy, or lack of care. Hate, like love, is a powerful emotion that takes over your whole being. Yes, hate is extremely negative. But if you don”t care, you don”t hate. It is why love often causes negative emotions like jealousy or hate. Some Old Testament literatures even describes God”s love by saying, "God is a jealous God." This is no puppy-love.

What then does it mean to love Jesus more than to love anyone else? If you love Jesus intensely, you will be shocked to see the contrast between his enormous capacity to love and our way. The difference shows up so starkly that it is like looking at yourself in a very sharp uncompromising mirror. If it is a good mirror, it shows us in detail. It does not necessarily flatter us. You can”t be fooled by what you think you look like and how you really appear. Jesus was an embodiment of perfect love and a perfect human being. By loving Jesus, we see an honest refection of ourselves in contrast to a perfect model of human being.

Likewise when we look at our parents, our spouse, our children, and ourselves in comparison to the best model of human being, Jesus Christ, of course, we will find them lacking. There are some people who are exemplary, but most of them are still far from perfect. Yes, we do admire most parents for the way they love their children. Yes, there are many saint-like people whose sacrificial dedication to good causes is amazing. But we still believe that God”s love shown in the life and death of Jesus Christ is far superior to any human examples, even of Mother Teresa or of Albert Schweitzer.

If we ignore what is lacking in us, we are in danger of making an idol out of something that is less than perfect. That would be very dangerous, because that lets us create a world of illusions and live in lies. But it is extremely difficult to name the problems in our intimate relationships, especially when we love each other. But an important test of relationship is whether one can deal with something imperfect in a loving fashion. Ignoring the problems of your loved ones is not kindness. Indulgence by ignoring problems is a weakness, a lesser love and a beginning of a dangerous relationship. Parents often make that mistake by ignoring the children”s problems and by continuing to believe that their kids are perfect. There are many extremely kind and loving persons, who ignore the problems and continue to be nice to people they love. It is very difficult to tell them that their softness in love, in the end, is unkind. True love is tender but tough. I know a woman in my family in Japan who is married to an alcoholic. It is so very difficult to tell her that she must be tough, because she is very kind and obviously loves her husband. I feel rotten to have to tell her the reality of life.

By telling us to love him more than we love anybody else, Jesus meant to tell us that if we truly love anyone, we must name the problems honestly and deal with them squarely. Because there is no human being who is perfect, by loving Christ as the perfect model of our life, we should be able to deal with the problems of our imperfection. Love is the tenderest thing. But a true love is also tough. It does not encourage cheating reality. It faces reality and deal with it. Love is courageous and tough. Tender love requires a tough mind. Loving is not cheap, not just sugar and honey. You identify the problems by looking at the Christ mirror, and name them and deal with them.

Remember; Jesus was led to the cross by those who believed in cheap love. They believed in him as a popular magician, or a politician who would give them what they wanted. They did not want to see the tough side of God”s plan and terrible sacrifice required by God. They wanted milk and honey without the wilderness nor the crossing of the river. Cheap love can turn one into a traitor overnight. This is why Luke felt strongly enough to use the word like ”hate”, to stress the importance of looking reality right in the eyes, and hating the shortcomings one is bound to see in any human being. It was an act of the hatred of sinfulness that Luke was talking about, and not the hatred of persons. True love does not allow for avoiding of reality. This is why Paul said, "Love rejoices in truth."

King Lear, in a Shakespeare”s play, did not understand this. He disinherited the youngest daughter Cordelia and banished her. He thought that she did not love him, because she said things he did not want to hear. Yet, she loved him truly thus spoke the truth without fear. He did not like that. Often truth is harsh. So he divided kingdom into two and gave them to the other two daughters, who were all sweet on the surface, but who, in the end, betrayed him. By the time the king realized the true nature of Cordelia”s love, it was too late. She was murdered.

We see from time to time some tragedies in relationships, not so much because people hate each other, but because their love was not tough enough to confront reality, and because they ignored their problems. Let us remember that in our journey through this life, we must learn love”s toughness as well as its tenderness.

WHO FOUND JESUS?

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

January 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHO FOUND JESUS?

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

January 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAVID AND BATHSHEBA

II Samuel 11:1-5,14-15,24 & 12:1-7 Psalm 14(VU735 John 6:1-21

July 30, 2006 by Tad Mitsui

There are some stories in the Bible which are not suitable for children; and this is one of them. It’s a story of adultery and murder. A woman is bathing nude on a rooftop, a man sees this and takes her to bed and makes her pregnant. The man was completely infatuated and wanted her so badly that he arranged her husband to be killed. How do you read a Biblical story like that? Especially the man in question is the most admired king of Israel, David. There are two different interpretations. One makes the woman a seducer, a temptress who used sex as a way of becoming a queen. The other interpretation makes David a bad one, who committed adultery and murder. In this case, the woman, Bathsheba becomes a victim of a forced sex by a man who abused power to satisfy his illicit desire. I take the second one. However, I believe that the story is not so much about adultery as it is about the abuse of power.

Let me begin with Bathsheba. A woman was bathing on a roof-top. The first interpretation that I spoke of assumes that she knew that she could be seen from the palace, and she wanted to seduce the king. I don’t think this was the case. In fact, Bathsheba was bathing according to the law. A woman was supposed to take a ritual bath on the eighth day of menstruation, according to the book of Leviticus. Bathsheba was going through a religious act. No one was supposed to see it. But of course except the king, whose palace is higher than ordinary people’s homes.

Also, anyone who has been to tropical countries can easily acknowledge that this interpretation which makes Bathsheba a loose woman is off base. It is not uncommon sight to see people bathing in public in hot countries. They do it in rivers and lakes, as well as in their back yards. They know how to present themselves discreetly to maintain modesty even when they are naked.

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

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

I believe it is a warning against the abuse of power. No one is allowed to use power in order to exploit other persons for one”s own benefit. David was getting old. He could no longer lead an army; that’s why he was back home in Jerusalem. He was aware that he was losing power. It is common knowledge that sex crimes are committed by people who feel powerless. For them preying on the weak – women and children – is the only way to feel that they still have power over someone else. The prophet Nathan skilfully gave that message in his story of a poor man”s sheep and a rich man”s greed. You see, our religious tradition has never been comfortable with the idea that any person should wield power over others. We recite "for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever" in the Lord”s Prayer, because we believe, since the time of the Old Testament, that ultimately only God has power. The power any human being holds is given in trust on a certain number of conditions. We believe that we are all children of God, hence we are all equal. Power is given to some people on the condition that they do some of the God”s work. If anyone abuses the God given power for one”s selfish purposes, one is committing a grievous sin.

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

John 20:1-18

A week ago last Saturday, two very important things happened on the new Star Trek series : Voyager. When two ugly but very scientifically advanced life-forms were beamed up and arrested, Captain Janeway was ready to kill one of them in order to recover the lungs which they stole from one of her crew members – Neelex and had used in a transplant operation. But she discovered that these life-forms were being driven to extinction, because of some virus which was destroying their organs. So what did Captain Janeway do? She decided to let him live and go. I don”t know what she was going to do with the dying crew member, who was being kept alive on a life-support system. The story never said. The second clip was about a crew whose lungs were stolen, thus he was on the verge of certain death. He was prepared to die, but didn”t because a woman offered to give one of her lungs to save his life. The story never made it clear but she had some special attachment to this particular crew member.

What did I get from those stories? Compassion and love win at the end of the day. Despair and hopelessness do not say the last word. We don”t know how it works, but love leads us to go beyond what looks like the end of all possibilities.

Mary Magdalene loved Jesus dearly. The Bible makes it quite clear that for Mary, Jesus was her life. So when he died on the cross, her life was also gone. She was in despair. Nothing mattered any more, there was no hope. Anyone who lost a loved one knows this. When my father died suddenly when he was 50 and I was in early twenties, I thought that the whole world came to an end. It simply was not possible to think of any future without him. Death in this case was more than physical end of brain or heart activity, and the beginning of the process of decomposition of our physical bodies. Death here means an absolute hopelessness.

So Mary was sitting outside of the cave where the body of Jesus had been brought in, and crying. What else was there to do, there was nothing in her life any longer. She asked two men to come, hoping that they would do something to recover the remains of her beloved teacher. But they went away as though they could solve the emptiness in their lives by being busy. We men often do that. But Mary stayed by the empty grave. What was she hoping by doing that? Nothing. She had no other thing to do, because life was impossible without him.

And he came, Jesus. She saw him. But she thought that he was a gardener. A person without any hope can not see what really is. She looked at him, and they even exchanged a few words. But she could not recognize the man in front of her as the dead beloved teacher, who came back to life. Despair inhibits the ability to see reality. Then he called her name. A very personal way to remind her of the nature of their relationship. And at last she recognized him. We parents all know that there is some unexplainable but special quality in the way your child calls you. My daughter is a grown woman. But she still calls me, "Daddy". Maybe its childish. But every time any body calls his or her father "daddy", I always have hard time controlling my tears.

There was no more despair. He was alive. How? We don”t know. We may never know how Jesus came to life again. I don”t think it matters. The main thing is that for those who loved him and owed their lives to him, they saw him and believed that the evil did not have the last word on their beloved teacher. He is risen, and lives among us.

It was obvious that Jesus came back from the dead beyond what we normally understand as physical realities. Perhaps, He came back in a spiritual form. So he walked through doors without opening them, appeared in many places at the same time. But you can not dismiss it, simply because it can not be proven scientifically, or does not fit our normal definition of what”s possible. That”s nonsense. The problem of today”s world is that many believe that spiritual world is less real than the scientifically provable world of facts. I believe that our society is sick because people dismiss the spiritual world less important than the world of science. We dismiss affection, love, beauty, joy and despair, goodness and evil as less than real. We must realize that this kind of common sense is the core of our problem.

But because Jesus loved each one of them, he came back and showed his love in a very personal way. For Mary it was calling her name. For a scientist like Thomas, he offered a physical proof. Thomas is a very modern man. He doubted everything, until it was proven with undisputable evidence. So Jesus said to Thomas, "Touch me, if you don”t believe me". For other disciples, that was not necessary. They sensed he was alive and this alone gave them new hope. Why should anybody need further proof? If you have to keep on giving expensive gifts to prove your love, love in that relationship is dead. True love does not need proof, it only needs to be expressed. So Jesus was sorry that Thomas needed proof. Jesus said, "Happy is the person who can believe without seeing and touching." But because Jesus loved each one of them in uniqueness and in their idiosyncrasies, he offered Thomas proof of this victory of love.

Mary saw risen Jesus beyond despair. Thomas saw Jesus which should have been impossible according to common sense. Star Trek may seem like a long way from the Easter story. But in both cases, Easter and Star Trek, we come to the same essential truth. Love leads us to go beyond what looks like the end of all possibilities.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah!

MERCY AND WORMWOOD

Lamentation 3:19-26

October 4, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

Instead of "the wormwood and the gall", which I just read, another translation of the Bible, the passage from the book of Lamentations, chapter 3 verse 19 had "the wormwood and poison". The difference surprised me because the one I read reminds me of how, when I was a child, my mother used to give me a tiny bit of black powder for indigestion. It was shavings from what was supposed to be "bear”s gallbladder", a dry black ball about the size of a golf ball. It was bitter. I hated it. "The thought of my affliction and homelessness is the wormwood and the gall." I looked it up in a book on herbal medicine, and sure enough, it says that a gall bladder produces bile which is good for breaking up hard-to-digest fat in the stomach. I am not sure if it was really a bear”s gallbladder that my mother gave me, but it sure was expensive medicine. There were stories of people selling pieces of property in order to buy "bear”s gallbladder" many years ago. So I looked up "wormwood" also in the book on herbal medicine. It says that dried wormwood has been used as a traditional remedy for indigestion. It is also very bitter. Bitterness seems to help digest food: an interesting idea, isn”t it? And one that gives the passage from Lamentations a very different meaning.

The Book of Lamentations is a book of mourning. The author was bitter about the demise of the Jewish nation, which was defeated by the Babylonian army. He spoke about the desolation of Jerusalem. He spoke about the city of Jerusalem as though it was once a proud princess who completely lost her former glory and dignity. She had had many admirers but now none of them could comfort her. Her friends turned out to be sellouts to the enemy. Even her own children deserted her. She was not just a princess of a defeated kingdom but became a slave of the former enemies. It is a book full of bitterness. Yet in the midst of all this grieving, the author remembers God”s mercy. He was reminding himself that there still was hope. He says "the thought of my affliction and my homelessness is the wormwood and the gall. God”s mercies are new every morning." It is bitter, but it is not poison. Instead, it is powerful medicine. And he sees plenty of hopeful signs in the midst of desolation and despair.

There are two periods in the history of the Jewish nation when they made a great leap forward in their spiritual journey. They spent forty excruciatingly difficult years in the desert after the liberation from slavery in Egypt. It was during those years, they were given the basic laws from God, and learned to live under the rule of law. They learned to live like a nation of decent human beings, and not like animals in the desert. That was how they survived as people. The second most important period was the 150 years when the leaders of the nation spent in captivity in Babylon. This period began with the defeat and destruction of Jerusalem, which the book of Lamentations was mourning about. It was a bitter experience. All the political and spiritual leaders, in fact anyone who could read, were expelled from their homeland and forced to live in Babylon. There, they were forbidden to use their language and were prohibited to practice their religion. The intention was to destroy the Jewish nation. When the spiritual tradition of the nation is lost, the nation loses its identity; the Babylonians knew that. But they didn”t succeed. The Jews did not lose their religion. They managed to keep the language through the Bible. In fact, it was during this period, the Jews collected the books on the laws of Moses, the Prophets, and other literature like poems, stories, and proverbs. Eventually they were bound together and became the Hebrew Bible – the present day Old Testament. The intention of the Babylonian captors completely failed. When the children of the captive Jews were allowed to return to Palestine, one of the teachers named Ezra took the collection of the Books and went back to Jerusalem. The Book, the Biblos in Greek, became the foundation of the faith of the Jewish nation. It was also the only Bible available to the early Christians for about four hundred years until the New testament was authorized as a part of the Bible by the Church. The Babylonian captivity was bitter medicine, but it was an effective medicine. It brought health back to the people and made them survive and thrive.

The God of the Bible is not one to praise the virtue of suffering. God does not want us to suffer. However, God does not stop it either. Often, suffering is caused by human failures and sin. God”s greatest gift to humans is freedom. So if humans choose the path of a sinful life, God does not stop them. God does not cause suffering but we do; for ourselves and for others. Suffering comes to everyone, just like rain falls on good people and bad people alike. The difference is: the faithful people never lose sight of the God”s mercy even in the midst of suffering, and find hope beyond. In other words, the faithful find strength to go through the difficulties, and are always able to praise God for his mercies at the end.

This is why the author of the Lamentations could sing the praises of God even in the midst of mourning the loss of a nation and the desolation of his beloved city. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning." When I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, I see signs of my aging process. But perhaps, instead of mourning the loss of youth, I should say to myself "Tad, you look wiser today. Thank you, God." I should learn to love myself anew everyday, and gain strength to face a new chapter of my life.

It”s easy to feel bitterness over losses in our lives – whether that”s youth, or health, or glory. It is a very human response. But remember, bitterness can also be medicine for renewal. Instead of just mourning the loss and dwelling in bitterness, isn”t it also time to remember how merciful God has been throughout the good days and how sweet those days were? Then we realize that his love and mercy are new every morning, even today. We swallow our medicine, and thank God.

POVERTY IS A PROBLEM OF RELATIONSHIP, NOT OF MONEY

Proverbs 22:1-2,8-9,22-23

Psalm 125, Mark 7:24-30

September 7, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

In Africa, my salary was $91 a month in 1968. At the time the minimum salary of a United Church minister was about $300. It was the policy of the church not to give the impression that a missionary was just another rich foreigner. I must confess, I was worried about such a small salary. However, I found that such a small income in Canada was very large compared to the local average income. We were fabulously rich people in Lesotho. The question of who is rich or poor depends to a large extent how rich or poor other people are. It”s all relative.

The book of Proverbs says, "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches. Favour is better than silver or gold." In other words, the question of rich and poor has a lot to do with happiness. Wealth can bring happiness when it helps to create good relationships with other people. There is not much point in being rich, if wealth causes unhappiness. Princess Diana found the purpose of her life working for unfortunate people. Royal title and wealth made her unhappy. Mother Teresa was a nun vowed to live in poverty, and dedicated her life for poor people. But her life was richer than those of many rich people. Where there is justice, wealth can create happiness. So to seek justice and to try to narrow the gap between rich and poor, is not just a matter of high minded religious devotion or sacrifice, but according to the Proverbs it is common sense wisdom. Today I am going to speak about two subjects in dealing with the sayings from today”s lectionary selection. I will speak about wealth, and about wisdom.

The book of Proverbs is a part of the Bible called "wisdom literature." Wisdom literature also is in a larger category in the Old Testament called "Writings", which are literally people”s writings, such as Psalms, creative stories like Job and Ruth, and sayings like the Proverbs and the Ecclesiastes. Though they are the words written by human beings and are not God”s words as such, those creative writings make very important points about our faith. This is why those words by mortals are in the Holy Bible.

There are some interesting things to note about wisdom literature. For one thing, Proverbs seldom quotes God”s words. They are the collection of many pieces of common place folk wisdom. The book is full of sayings like: "Watch the ants you lazybones." "Fools think their way is always right, but the wise listen to advise." You don”t need to refer to God to use your common sense. You don”t need to mention God to say, "Take your muddy boots off at the door." Of course, our ordinary day-to-day common sense wisdom is God given wisdom without saying so. Another interesting thing is that the word "wisdom" is referred to as "she" in Proverbs. It means that Wisdom is a feminine side of God. In fact, the Jewish book of Biblical interpretations called the Talmud refers to wisdom as God in a feminine term – something like saying "Mother God."

I am not quite sure how some ideas can be feminine and others male. I can see that "war" is male, and "nurture" is female. But that "wisdom" is female? I suppose that no-nonsense down-to-earth common sense can be female, and pompous sounding "command" is male. I can venture to say that an idea like "Good relationships with other people makes you feel rich." has a woman”s touch. It recognizes importance of emotions and feelings, with which men are often uncomfortable. Men like to refer to logical conclusions and commandments. The wisdom literatures like Proverbs tell us that it is as important to be common sensical as it is to be knowledgeable about commandments. In fact, I dare say that without wisdom, mere knowledge can be useless.

Speaking about knowledge, we know so much more today than any other time in history. With our television sets, we have access to virtually hundreds of channels from all over the world through cables and satellites dishes. (We could watch Diana”s funeral as it was in progress thousands of miles away.) With a modem on your computer, you have access to virtually billions of pieces of information about anything, anywhere, anytime. We are living in the information age. But are we wiser because we have so much information and know so much? I don”t think so. It is like keeping telephone books of many cities. They are absolutely useless to most people. No one thinks that a winner of the Trivial Pursuit is automatically a wise person who can run a country.

Information, no matter how much is available, is useless to us unless we know how to find what we need and use it wisely. Many forbearers of our faith did not know as much as we do. Prophets did not go to universities. Many disciples were illiterate, and Jesus did not have a University degree. We are better educated people than those in previous generations. But are we wiser than our uneducated fathers and mothers of our faith? I doubt it.

In fact, we are probably more unwise. We can behave more stupidly as we pursue more knowledge about everything. Likewise, we seek more wealth without asking what we are going to do with it. We want to know more and more, even though so much information is absolutely useless or even harmful to ourselves and to others. The recent tragedy of Princess Diana”s death is the result of the public”s desire to know more and more about everybody and everything. As we seek to know more, we have lost common sense respect. Respect comes from the true knowledge of other persons available only in relationships. Without relationship, the knowledge of another person is very superficial. Superficial knowledge without feeling does not generate respect.

I was once the spectator of a scene where a drowned man was being pulled out of a river. There were many other people like me who were watching the tragedy with morbid curiosity. The dead man was just an object of curiosity, it might as well have been a dead mouse, until we found that it was someone”s beloved husband. Suddenly we heard a shriek. A woman ran to the body, hugged it tightly, and started to wail as though the world came to an end. I was so ashamed of myself for being there watching a personal tragedy. I felt like a peeping Tom. There are many things that can be meaningful only in relationship. The life and death of a person are two of them. Wealth is another one of them. Wealth is good for you only in order to live with other people harmoniously. Otherwise, it can be a source of conflict and unhappiness. This is why it is wise to seek justice, not just because it is the right thing to do. Caring relationships make a whole world of difference.

Isaiah 2 : 1 – 5, Matthew 24 : 36 – 44

A period of four weeks before Christmas is called Advent.  It is the time of waiting for the arrival.  As children wait for Santa Claus, we look forward to the coming of the new world brought to us with the birth of Jesus Christ.

This expectation for the new world is expressed in one word in three languages; Salaam in Arabic, Shalom in Hebrew, and Khotso in Sesotho of the African Bantu.  They all have the same meaning, somewhat inadequately translated into English as "peace".  All of them are used still today as a 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 separate ways.  They don”t think  about the meaning of the word nowadays just like we don”t think about the meaning of our greetings.

It is a pity  because I believe that this is the world”s most profound way of greeting.  A theology professor at Harvard Theological School by the name of Harvey Cox once told a touching story about the use of this word for greeting.  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."   They ran into each other at the port of Haifa in Palestine five years later.  Miraculously both the mother and the child survived the death camps.  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.  Prophet Isaiah in today”s lesson described very succinctly this notion of shalom.  God will bring justice to the world.  And when that happens people beat the 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.  It also means there is justice thus no discord.  There is no violence among people.  When one comes into a village or into a home, one stands at the entrance raising both hands with the palms open showing that one holds no weapon, and says "Khotso."  This gesture means, "I come in peace, I am defenceless. Please include me in, and treat me like one of you."  In a society where everything is shared, being admitted into a community means one is treated justly.  They firmly believe that there is no peace without justice, and there is no want with justice.  You never starve unless everybody starves.

We can learn a lot from those nomadic traditions about peace and about justice.  On the other hand, 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 and controlled all of the Mediterranean region with its armies and wealth.  For as long as we know in human history, the idea has been firmly entrenched that peace could be achieved only when one dominates the others absolutely by force .  We still believe in it.  The idea never worked because justice and peace of mind were ignored.

When we lack inner peace we tend to resort to violence.  When one is frustrated or insecure, one tends to be violent.  Secondly, one is driven to anger and unhappiness, when one is treated unjustly or sees injustice done to others.  Humans have had this notion of peace combined with justice, for tens of centuries.  But we have not taken the idea seriously and have made the same mistakes over and over again. 

No empire has ever achieved enduring peace.  The longest lasting empire we have known in history was the Roman Empire, that lasted for about six centuries.  But the millennium that followed was a history of bloody conflicts, including crusades, 100 year war, 30 year war, the war of roses, etc.  The British one lasted not even two.  Domination by the Americans and the Russians has not even lasted one century and is already slipping.  And when they 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. The Roman Empire gave the Catholic Croatians upper hands over the Orthodox Serbians.  The Ottoman Empire gave upper hands to Muslim Bosnian over both Croatians and Serbians.  And the Communist Empire gave Serbians upper hands over Croatians and Muslims.  Consequently 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?  It seemed to have caused more enduring dissatisfaction on the part of one group of people than it solved, judging from the never ending threat of separation.

When do we ever learn?  When do we ever learn to beat swords into ploughshares?  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 peace of mind?  Where there is no peace of mind there is no love.  Where there is no love, there is greed and self-centredness.  And greed and self-centredness drive us into participating in a structures of injustice.  A vicious circle goes around and around.

Today marks the beginning of the preparation time to for the imminent arrival.  We are waiting for the arrival of the gift from God.  What is this gift that we are waiting for?  We are waiting for the completion of the heaven in this world that began with the birth of Jesus.  We are going to celebrate the birthday of the one who declared the new regime.  How long do we have to wait?  Noone knows.  But it is coming surely because it has been declared and is here partially. 

Do we then just wait?  It all depends what sort of waiting you do.  You can wait by just sitting doing nothing.  Or you can wait actively.  When you wait for someone or something and look forward to the arrival, you do all sorts things for preparation and remain mentally active by letting your brain tick, tick, tick.  It is so exciting to wait though a bit anxious.  Likewise, when you wait for the gift of God, completion of the Kingdom of God, you wait actively by working for the Kingdom of God. 

When you are not keen on the coming of something or somebody like a dentist”s appointment, you wait passively and do nothing.  You even dread its arrival.  You hope that it goes away.  But when we wait actively, we prepare joyfully.  We can show our love of others with gifts to the loved ones and to show our concerns about the people who had set-backs, met misfortune, and are not well.  Those are good projects to participate in the building up of the Kingdom of God.

Let us wait actively for the coming of peace – real peace of shalom, salaam, and khotso, with excitement, joy, and determination, not just this season of Advent but also in our daily life always.

Salaam, Shalom, and Khotso – Peace

During the early stage of Intifada – Palestinian Uprising during 1980”s, I ran into a situation in Gaza Strip that changed my perception of the word "Shalom".  I still have a problem accepting the word as it is supposed to mean, whenever it is said by a good Church person.  Obviously I have not reached a resolution and am still troubled by use of a word which gives different messages.  

People should remember those days when Safari suits and Army fatigue types of casual clothes were popular.  Well, I was in one of those outfits, touring Gaza Strip with a friend from the Middle East Council of Churches, looking at Mothers” Clinics which were supported by Canadian Churches.  Young children began to greet me by saying "Shalom".  I responded innocently "Shalom".  My friend suddenly told me that we should go immediately and pulled me into the car.  There, he told me to go back to the Hotel and change clothes, and never say "Shalom" to anyone.

Of course, I should have known that Army fatigues were worn only by Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories.  Safari suits looked suspiciously like Army outfits.  And the word "Shalom" is a most common greeting in Israel.  It is almost like the way we say "Hi".  Most of the Israeli do not think of the meaning of the word, as we United Church people attach some profound significance to the word.  Of course, this is nothing unusual.  Most of us do not think of the meaning of the words we use for greeting.  Have you thought about the theological meaning of the word "Hi" recently?

Those two innocent actions on my part on that day in Gaza Strip, clothes and the Hebrew greeting, simply meant to young Palestinian minds symbols of oppression.  Israeli occupation of their home land and the occupiers.  A possible target of a sling-shot.  A Canadian friend thought that this was ridiculous.  She said, "Have you seen an Israeli who looks like a Japanese?"
 
My friend obviously did not know about a group of Japanese who migrated to Israel.  They believed that they were descendants of the remnants of the "Lost tribe of Israel" who supposedly ended up in Japan centuries ago.  They believe that they are Jews and live in Israel.

In some ways, I was pleased to find that the word "Shalom" became common usage, during my twelve years of absence from Canada.  People know that there is no peace without justice.  Friends conclude their letters wishing me Shalom.  When I left Canada to go to Africa in 1968, the word was understood only by small number of so-called progressive Christians in the same way as the Hebrew Bible writers meant.  They were the types of people who read Harvey Cox.  I learned also from him the meaning of the word which was far more profound and wider than what English word "Peace" would convey.  It definitely meant Peace with Justice.  

Even as late as 1982, however, people were still engaging in some fierce debates about whether peace is more important than justice, or vice versa.  At the World Council of Churches Assembly in Vancouver, I saw some pointed graffiti to indicate that many people still did not understand the meaning of the word "Shalom".  One of them on a bulletin board said, "Injustice kills thousands, but wars kill us all."  Those were the dark days of the threat of nuclear holocaust.

In 1968 I went to Southern Africa, and learned Southern African languages.  African theologians like Desmond Tutu taught me also how some of the African traditional spirituality  had commonalty with other nomadic traditions like that of Hebrew people.  Desmond often compared the Hebrew Bible with Bantu oral traditions.  He was an Old Testament professor.  I taught other things I was not trained for, but that”s another story.  The word for peace in Sesotho (one of the dominant Southern African languages) is "Khotso".  This is why the office of the South African Council of Churches is called Khotso House.  I learned that the meaning of Khotso is almost identical to Shalom, as it is to the Arabic word "Salaam".

They greet by wishing each other "Khotso", which also means, "I wish you, your family and neighbours full stomach".  They say the word with hands raised with palms open showing that they hold no weapon.  A very simple way of wishing peace with justice.  An agent of the South African government bombed the Khotso House during the late eighties”.  It is clear that an idea of Peace with Justice was subversive for the Apartheid regime.  

Problem is:  when some words are used daily as part of common expressions, their original meaning wear out.  People use those words not knowing what they originally meant.  They become mere labels of their culture – like famous "Gooday, mate" for Australians.  You can not ask people to think of the meaning of the word they use daily.   It may be asking too much to expect people to behave according to the ideal of Shalom, Salaam, or Khotso.  It is too bad, however, that a meaningful and perfectly wonderful language is spoiled by some social and political situation.  But it is a fact that languages change, and we have to be sensitive to people”s perception of certain words.  I was once asked to use an old Methodist Prayer Book for a funeral by the family of the deceased.  I followed the book faithfully except one word.  I found the word "intercourse" a few times in prayers, which I replaced with the words like "social discourse" and "relationship".

Another example:  When I was working with a Japanese Congregation, I took a group of teenagers to a United Church youth event.  One of my young people could not eat an orange which was offered to him by an innocent friend. "Hey, want a ”Jap orange?"  Obviously he did not know that the word "Jap" evoked a hurtful memory among Japanese Canadians.  Because of that kind of experiences, I decided that if any word offends other persons, it will not come out of my mouth.  Often I could not understand why they offend some people, but I don”t use those words.  It was easier to understand why people insisting on inclusive language.

As I have not found an alternative, whenever I want to wish my friend something meaningful at closing a letter, I write "Khotso, Salaam, Shalom!!" indicating my appreciation of those people who crossed my paths and  enriched my life while overseas.  Other times, I say Shalom to Jewish people, Salaam to my Palestinian friends, and Khotso to my Southern African former colleagues.  For Canadians, how about "Peace"?  

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO BE GOOD?

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

June 5, 2005, Picture Butte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY LOOK FOR THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD

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

April 23, 2000 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TWO BEGINNINGS

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

January 12, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHO FOUND JESUS?

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

January 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHILDREN SHALL NOT DIE

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

September 8, 1996 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOPE BEYOND HOPELESSNESS

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

March 21, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIFE IS NOT ABOUT REACHING A GOAL

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

October 24, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RAINBOW – BEAUTY OF IN-BETWEEN

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

February 16, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fruits of Wisdom

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

1 Cor 3:18 – 19, 4:10

August 20, 2006 at Southminster United Church

by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHO FOUND JESUS?

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

January 5, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THEY TALKED BUT DID NOT COMMUNICATE

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

November 23, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE OTHER PRODIGAL SON

Luke 15 : 11 – 32

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OWE NO ONE EXCEPT LOVE

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

September 5, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaiah 65 : 17 – 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 19, 1995

Tad Mitsui

Howick, Quebec

WHO”S AFRAID OF Y2K?

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

November 21, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAVID AND BATHSHEBA

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

July 27, 1997 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOBODY IS PERFECT

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

Voices United #229,264,504,651

October 30, 2005 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOD IS NOT FOR CHOOSING

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

August 30, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A STORY OF A TOUGH WOMAN

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

November 14, 1999 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MARK OF LEADERSHIP – CHRIST THE KING

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

November 22, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS ARE OFTEN FREE

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

March 15, 1998 by Tad Mitsui

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.