Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 10th May 2009 by Bishop John Victor Samuel. The scripture readings that day were Psalm 22:25-31, Acts 8:26- 40, 1 John 4: 7- 21 and St. John 15:1- 8.


Today is 5th Sunday of Easter. Easter is celebration of life. It is celebration of life after death. We believe God gives us life at birth and life after death as well. Life is a gift of God. We humans love and are thankful for this gift life. We try our best to enrich this gift and make it beautiful and enjoyable. We, who who sit in the pews, make a powerful and profound statement to this fact and for our struggles and risks we take for this cause. Just look around and see how many nationalities, and races are represented here. We all came here to struggle, improve and better our lives. Each one of us have a dream as to what improved life means to us. Each one of us have a passion to fulfill our dreams. We all are accountable to our dreams. All of us and like us all humans have a dream of a quality life that we want to achieve. We take risks to fulfill our dreams.

I have said,The Easter is celebration of life after death. At Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of of Jesus- his new life – Life after Death.

We also celebrate life after death for every believer who goes through the experience of dying in Christ Jesus and with Christ Jesus. A Christian who is in Christ, experiences Death to the world and new life for the world. This is what makes us to live in Christ and the experience of God's grace.

Fani Badayuni an Urdu poet, who is not a Christian, wrote a beautiful couplet. A free translation of this couplet goes like this : Every breath I take becomes a life lived, life indeed is rhythms of breaths- life-death- life-death. Every Christin believer goes through this experience of life and death particularly when a believer experiences sin, confession and forgiveness- a new life. The entire experience becomes a deep spiritual experience.

Church fathers, for the benefit of believers, worked out a Christian Calender, to learn each year, all phases of Christian life and its teachings.

We celebrate life at the time of Christmas when child Jesus was born. We celebrate life after Death at Easter. Our confession at Easter is that JESUS IS RISEN. HE IS RISEN AFTER REMAINING THREE DAYS IN THE GRAVE. The forces of the world both religious and secular killed JESUS, and placed him in a grave. He conquered death on the third day and all the political and religious powers could not hold him in the grave. A faithful Christian overcomes death in Jesus Christ, because of Jesus experience of death and resurrection. The experience of life in Christ and death in Christ is a unique experience of believers.

Humans have always in search of a life which they imagine they would enjoy and be happy. All thinking people reflect on life and its nature and raise many questions. Three questions are noteworthy. What is the meaning of life? What is the destiny of this life? How can we be happy in life? The pursuit of happiness is the most common activity of humans. But the question of life's meaning and its destiny is also a common inquiry.

The events in our community in which we live, our country and our world make us happy or unhappy. If happenings are to our liking and all our needs are met adequately, we are happy but if happenings are not to our liking and our needs are not met, we become unhappy. I believe all of us here have gone through this experience and every day go through this all the times.

Some people write their experience in the form of confessions which narrate their struggles and their faith story and the story of their happiness and unhappiness. The world has a good collections of such confessions. I chose this morning to share with you, very briefly, one such confession of a very well known person. Leo Tolstoy was baptized in Orthodox Christian faith, belonged to the elite society, an intellectual who wrote several books who became classics in literature. He in his confessions states that he left his Orthodox faith in his youth and lived a wild life but later in life he returned to his faith. He says in his confession “ Without faith one cannot live ---------- I was prepared now to accept my faith Then I began to cultivate the acquaintance of the believers from among the poor, simple and unlettered folk, of pilgrims, monks,dissenters, peasants..........I began to love those people. The more I penetrate into their life, the life of the men now living, and the life of men departed of whom I had read and heard, the more did I loved them, and easier it became for me to live...... within me took place a transformation, which has long been working within me........the life of all the working masses of all humanity, which created life presented itself to me in its real significance. I saw that that was life itself and that the meaning given to this life was truth and I accepted it " Leo Tolstoy once again became a valued member of faith community of the Orthodox Church.

Tolstoy chose to look into the lives of simple people and not at the people from his own social structure and he found the meaning of life. So often we have the habit of distancing ourselves from the poor and suffering. We love them from distance. What is required if to be with them to look at their life closely. There are many such confessions of people which help and give strength to the faithful persons and help them to live a meaningful life. Such is a transformation from faithlessness to faith that we work for. This cannot be achieved by human struggle only. It is the gift of the Grace of God to those who are ready to receive and learn to interact with the poor, weak and suffering. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a free gift of God. Whenever the gift of the Holy Spirit is spoken in the Gospel stories, it puts man, the receiver in the center.

We repeat our creed, at every worship, and we will do this today as well. We do this to announce our identity as to what who we are and what we believe. We confess that we believe in God, Jesus Christ God's son- God0man and we believe in the Holy Spirit. We talk of God, God-Man( Jesus Christ) and Holy Spirit (man). The work of the Holy Spirit is through and in man, in his/her day-to-day life. When we talk about the life of a believer, we must talk about the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is explained in the Gospel to be helper, advocate and sustainer. The Holy Spirit is seen active every day in life of a believer, in all his/her struggles, joys and suffering.

The human struggle to find the meaning and quality of life in our world is a real concern. Jesus explains this in the Gospel story the meaning of life and its quality is the kind of fruit one bears. The fruit of life through the process of life is the main purpose and meaning of life. We heard this morning a very well known passage from St. John's Gospel, which was read to us.

"I am the true vine and my father is vine grower.,,,,,,, abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine,neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches." " Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing."

The meaning of life suggested by Jesus in this passage is to bear fruit. This can only be possible by abiding in him as a branch needs to be part of vine to bear fruit. The words of John 3:16 rings in every believers ears " for God so loved the world that he gave his only son , so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." The eternal life is everlasting life, a life where peace abides. The meaning of life and destiny of human life is best understood when one abide and live in Christ and bears fruit.. The act of abiding in Christ is best symbolized by the relationship of vine and branch. It is this relationship which bears fruit. Without this relationship there no chance to bear fruit both by vine and by Christian Believer. To abide in Christ and bear fruit is the function of the The Faith Community – the Church of Jesus Christ. How are we doing it? Do we know that this function is happening? Are congregations positioned to work and help members to abide in Christ and bear fruit? I do not expect any answer. But it is worth while to keep this question in our mind.

Make no mistake, organization is important as long as it help believers to abide in Christ and bear fruits. The quality of life and the real fruit expected from the life of the believers is to devote their lives for others. Those who abide in Him must live for the life of the world as Jesus Christ lived for the life of the world.

The life of Jesus Christ needs to be our Guide and worthy of imitation.
St Mark's gospel records that after Jesus baptism “ the spirit immediately drove him out into wilderness.” After forty days in the wilderness, he came to Galilee where he began his ministry by proclaiming the good news of God and and said “ The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” The good news is that kingdom of God is at hand. Kingdom of God is where God will rule. God Himself will set this kingdom by sending His son in the world in human form. The supreme and a great act of God is that – heavenly being coming down in the world to become human being. Truly becoming a God-man to be the life of the world. A Creator of the World and life giver now Himself sets a new paradigm for the believers in Jesus Christ – God-man. To set this paradigm required an act of love. This act of Love involved God to empty Himself to take the form of a man – God man and go to the point of bearing cross for the life of the world. This act of God is beyond human reason, beyond human rationality. The act of Love in not rational act.
As humans and depending of reason and rational thinking the act of love could be called an irrational act. Yes this is the reason that God's intervention in Love,we call this a mystery.

This paradigm is new and unique in human history and has no compromises and no substitutes. All the great exponents of this faith state in clear terms that basic action of believer in Christ is Love. The demands of Love is to empty one's self like God. Gospel of John 3:16 states that God loved the world and he sent His only son so that they( humans) may have life. Our reading this morning 1John 4:7-21 clearly states that God is love. Love comes from God. The nature of God is love and one who does not go through the experience of Love will never understand the act of God. The process to empty oneself(kinosis) is the act like God. It is the act of love. St. Paul wrote a great poem on the theme of Love when St. Paul came to know of in-fights in the faith community at Corinth.

We do not need to go in details of the misunderstandings and fights in the Corinthian community. But just see what Paul proposes for the faith community to do as solution for fights and misunderstandings. He asks them to love each other. Hear what he writes:-

“love is patient; love is kind;love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way;it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”
What a panacea for every hostility and hate. Let us look at the last words of this beautiful poem:-

“ And now FAITH, HOPE and LOVE abide, these three;
and greatest of these is LOVE.”

You know why the greatest is Love? Remember, Faith is a learned phenomena of the past. Faith is memory of the past. It is great to have faith as an anchor that we hold on to. Faith is important. Hope is future reality based on faith which is the product of past memories ( faith). But Love is present reality. It is related to present LIFE and its reality. It is related to us all and to the entire human community now, It is our present need, a panacea for all our hateful acts in the world. In our world arena we face hate and its manifestations day in and day out. It is here that Love is needed to counter the forces of hate. It is hear that we require forces of Love to build peace and reconciliation in our world.

Several years ago I read some short stories by Jean Paul Sartre, a French existentialist . All his stories were depicting some acute social realities. The story depicts human relationship. The synopsis of the story goes like this: A woman of a questionable character dies who was convinced that she would go to hell when she dies. After her death an angel led her to a large gloomy building and ushered her in a small room and closed the door. She was examining the place when she heard the footsteps of someone coming. The door was opened and Angel ushered in a man and the door was closed. He too was expecting hell as his abode after death. Both looked at each other in an effort to know the other. They heard some one approaching close to their door. The door opened and Angel ushered a women in and as usual closed the door behind. Three of them tried to stare each other to understand the situation. There was only one chair in the room. The women who came first felt she has the right to use this chair. After some time the other women claimed her right to use the chair. They argued which developed into the use of bad language and soon they started tearing each others clothes and using fists. The man began to yell at the top of his voice, This is our hell. Yes, this is a great realty of our world. We have not learned how to live with each other. Hate in us begin to explode because we have no patience to tolerate others and others point view. Just imagine how we are busy creating hells for ourselves..

If there is any thing that we love most, it is ourself and our life. All our struggles are to fashion our lives according to our dreams. We , in this church, come here from many parts of the world to improve and better our lives. We love our life. I wonder if we ever reflected on our dreams, our actions,our hopes and our life. With all our struggles, our heartaches and our frustrations, are we closer to achieving our dreams of quality life?

The way God wants us to have a quality life - eternal life, is in the way of love. The way of love is the way of God, The way of God-man, Jesus Christ. The way of love will not only transform each one of us. But begins the possibility to transform the whole world. The world in which shalom, peace will reign and this will be the Kingdom and rule of God. Do we want to claim this life, a life after death, a life after many deaths, a life which is emptied and a life which is devoted for others. A life which is devoted for the life of the world.