Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 23 October 2011 by the Rev. Phyllis Wong. The scripture readings that day were Leviticus 19:1–2; 15–18 and Matthew 22:34–40.


Open prayer:

Dear God, out of love, you have given your people the commandment to follow. May your spirit of love dwell in us and open our hearts to receive your Word.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you. Amen.

The greatest commandment declared by God to the people of Israel and reiterated by Jesus Christ to his disciples has been familiar to many of us.

How do we live a faith with this commandment in our context? This is a question I have been thinking about when I prepared the message today.

The film ‘Three Idiots’ I watched recently with Tong inspired me. This is a very good film. I am not going to say too much of the film as some of you may not have watched it but may be planning to do so.

In the film ‘Three idiots’, the main character has shared a key value in life – that is to live with our passion, to do something we love and accept who we are. Everyone should listen to her heart and live with it accordingly.

In reality, we are living in an extremely competitive world. In order to excel and succeed, many people have become more and more tended to live according to the expectations of others and the so called social standard. The world has commonly defined success as– obtain good education by going to famous universities and then find a good job and then become wealthy and assume high social status.

Because of this norm, many young people since their earliest age have got lost. Many children are forced to study and to study something they don’t like. Some of them eventually enter into a career that they do not like. I have come across students in Hong Kong telling me that they don’t like the programme offered by the University. But they went ahead to do it because they consider going to a university and get a degree is a must. Many people think a university degree guarantees a job.

People do well and excel only if they really have the passion in that particular area.

This is one of the challenges the film ‘Three idiots’ wanted to bring up.

God created each of us as very unique according to his image. Each one of us is called according to the purpose of God. God created us in different ways and we are asked to do different things according to our inner passion.

To love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind meant we live with our whole being and being true to ourselves.

Steve Jobs in his speech to the graduates of Stanford University shared that, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinion drown out your own inner voice. Most important of all is the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” To me as Christian, our heart and intuition are something from God.

Steve Jobs did not go to university but he was successful. He had a difficult life. He was an adopted child. His biological mother was an unwed graduate student when he was born. He had struggled with his career and deadly cancer for years. But after-all, he was a man of invention. He brought fundamental changes to the world and to many people’s life. He was not God, but he was an extraordinary man. I admire him for his persistence and perseverance to follow his heart with deep commitment to achieve it.

How about us sisters and brothers, do we listen to our heart? Our heart, our soul and our mind are all from God. The call from God to love him is to go back to this source. To love God is to honor his unique and precious creation in us. When we are able to accept our own real self and live according to our inner voice and passion, we are connected to God. We are in full communion with God.

To love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind meant also to understand God’s will for our lives and obey it. When we obey God’s will with faith and sincerity, we will then be transformed by God to an entire being which would reflect the image of God and God’s glory.

The main character of the Three Idiot is passionate of what he wants to do and confident of who he is. He does his best to achieve it without following the silly rules which create unnecessary competition amongst students. He has no fear of being different and rejected to do things which are against human dignity. He does not only excel himself, he has a loving kind heart to care for his friends. He helps them to recover their own passion and accept themselves as who they are without fear. This fear comes from fear of loss, the rejection by the family, disappointment of others, worries of not able to achieve.

This young gentleman has demonstrated his love to his neighbor by giving himself to other humans to live as God designed life to be lived, so that he helps them in their own transformation.

The biblical background for the gospel reading from Matthew was, the religious leaders had tried to test Jesus and wanted to find excuses to get rid of him. In today’s gospel account taken from Matthew, a lawyer came to Jesus and asked him about the Jewish law on God’s commandment. Jesus knew well the motives and the hypocrisy of the religious leaders. He did not only clearly point out the commandment of God, but also reiterated that these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.

The religious leaders in Jesus’ time had been side tracked by many other rules and traditions. Their faith practice had deviated from the essence of the laws of love. They became legalistic.

The love for power and position instead of God and His people, had turned the religious leaders’ heart, from a heart of human flesh to a heart of stone.

The first and the greatest commandment in the law: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind’. The second one is ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

Sisters and brothers, may we all examine and reflect once again today, what are the rules and norms of the world that deter us to live a life of passion and compassion for ourselves and others.

Let us now spend a time of silence to meditate on God’s commandment and the message we heard.

Closing prayer: God we give you thanks for a unique life and calling to each one of us. Help us God to live a life and truly be ourselves as you have created us. May we embrace our whole being to love you and others with a passion and compassion. Enlighten us by the power of the Holy Spirit to love and to serve. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.