Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 12 February 2012 by the Rev. Phyllis Wong. The scripture readings that day were 2 Kings 5:1-14 and Mark 1:40-45.

Opening prayer:
God of compassion, may your words enlighten us and transform us. May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to lead a more faithful life to love you and to serve your world. Amen.

We make various kinds of choices every day. Should I have come to church, or stay home and sleep this morning? Which clothes should I wear today? What kind of food to take for breakfast? Then, there are the more far-reaching questions. For parents, they may have to think which school should they choose for their children? Young adults who have just finished school have to select career. For those who are ready to get marry, they have to think whom to choose as a spouse? The list is endless. There are choices in life that are relatively easy to make. And then there are those choices which are really difficult. There are choices in life that will involve great burdens once we make then.

Indeed, every single choice entails cost and consequences we have to bear.

In today’s lectionary readings taken from 2 Kings and the gospel according to Mark, we have heard about two healing stories. I would like to focus on the story recorded in Mark, though the same healing story of a leper has been recorded in Matthew 8:1-4 and Luke 5:12-16. According to the gospel account, a man who suffered from leprosy asked Jesus to heal him. Moved by pity, Jesus took a concrete action to heal the man. He said to the man who asked him to heal, “I do choose”. The story did not end there; it went on to tell us more about the man who was healed. He did not listen to Jesus about keeping the whole thing low profile. Instead he went out and made a big commotion. Jesus had warned him. What the man did was against the will of Jesus. He just wanted to heal and help the man but not to make himself well known. The result was that Jesus had to stay out in the country and could not serve publicly in the country.

Quite often, even though we try to do something good to others, there may arise some negative consequences that we may have to bear. A good intention of helping others can turn out to be a trouble to the helper. A compassionate heart to serve others can turn out to be nightmare to the people with commitment and righteousness. I remember a friend told me when she was a teenager, she took a child who was begging on the street home and gave him food to eat. But this young beggar in return stole many of her family possessions. She was very frustrated.

Recently I watched the ‘The Lady’. This is a film about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, focusing on her personal struggles in the relationships with her husband and children in the course of fighting for freedom and democracy in Myanmar.

Ms Suu Kyi is a mother of two boys. She loves them of course. But she does not only love her own children and family. She loves also her people in Myanmar. When she witnessed the brutal repression of the young people fighting for democracy by the junta during her trip back home in the late 80s, her heart was filled with compassion to her people. Perhaps her family background made her who she is as well. She is the daughter of General Aung San, the father of Burma who led the country to independence, Suu Kyi has a strong calling to serve her country and her people. When she was asked by her people, the National League for Democracy to lead the democratic movement, she accepted the mission with courage.

Aung San Suu Kyi has paid a great cost for her commitment to fight for a free and democratic Burma by non-violent means. As a mother and wife, Ms Aung San found it very hard not to be able to see her own children and husband for over ten years.

When Michael Aris, Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband was very sick and about to die, Ms Suu Kyi was told by the military officer that she could leave Burma and to go back to UK to see her husband. But she knew very well that she would not be allowed to come back to Burma once she left. She therefore stayed on. As a result she was unable to see her husband before he passed away.

Aung San Suu Kyi has made her choice for her country and her people. She has made a huge sacrifice. She was under house arrest and lost her freedom for nearly twenty years. When we look at it from the point of view of her family, not only did Suu Kyi pay the cost, her family, both her two children and her husband paid the high price too. They were deprived of the presence of Suu Kyi, a dear wife and a dear mother.

Out of sympathy and her love to the country, Suu Kyi has chosen to stand with her people, to fight for freedom and democracy in Burma. While she has paid an immerse cost for her choice, she has contributed to bringing new life and new hope for her country. Her release last year and the recent release of thousands of political prisoners are all positive sign of the country’s development.

Besides, I feel strongly that her love her her husband and her sons never dies. Love binds people together even though they are physically separate. In the film, when she mourned the death of her husband, it was a painful moment. I felt deeply for their sorrow. But when I go deeper to think of their relationship and their love for each other, I find the sacred love dwelling in them fully. Their hearts were so closely connected in the midst of human made separation. When they are truly in love, nothing can separate them apart. Their love for one another and their love to the people of Burma transformed their relationship, and their human love has been transmuted into love divine.

For an ordinary person, it is difficult to take any choice that is against our interest and require us to bear a cost that may take away our freedom and even take away our lives. It is only those who have strong compassion and faith will go ahead to risk themselves by making a choice that may go against their own interest. Jesus was definitely this kind of person.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a devout Buddhist with, yet in her I find the spirit of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was put death on the cross. Jesus did not choose to die. He chose to love. He chose to live a life with love and peace, and to adopt a non-violent approach in the midst of violent attacks against him. He did however, pay for his choice of love and peace. Suu Kyi has manifested God’s strong compassion and justice to the people in our time.

Similar to our suffering Christ on the cross, Aung San Suu Kyi, who looks very soft and vulnerable in her sacrifice by choice, has carried an immense power to transform the world and lives of many, in Burma and many different parts of the world.

Out of love, Jesus paid a great cost to care for all humanity and to save the world. Does the self-giving love of Christ ever touch your heart? As Christ’s disciples, would you choose the way that Jesus had taken and have the courage to bear the cost?

Every day we are making different kinds of choices. Every choice entails a cost and a consequence. I pray and hope that you are able to make a wise choice, a choice that allow you to be connected to God, a God of compassion who always makes her choice with mercy.

I would like to invite you to meditate on Jesus’ healing on the leper. “Jesus was moved by pity; he chose to heal the leper and bring back to him a life of wholeness.”