A sermon preached at
Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 19 February 2017, the seventh Sunday after Epiphany, by Timothy Chan. The scripture
readings that day were Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; Matthew 5:38-48.
Today we read in the book of Leviticus, the Lord says
“you shall be holy, for I the lord your God am Holy”. Then we read in the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father
is perfect”. When I was preparing the sermon, I struggled. For being perfect
and holy is so difficult. Then I realize talking about perfection and holiness
is much easier than being holy and perfect. That was when I started writing my
sermon. I think this feeling of powerlessness and helplessness is actually
helping us to be humble, and most of all, to realize how much we need the grace
and love of God. Before we go into the text, let’s pray:
Loving God, please help us to understand your
holiness and perfection. And teach us how we can be like you. Strengthen us to
love our neighbor as well as our enemies. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
What does it mean by being holy and perfect? I have a
little story to share. A few years ago, I came to know a girl in a dating app
and she is also a Christian. After chatting for a while, she found out I was
studying theology and was preparing to work in a ministry. Then she was so
shocked and disappointed! She said she could not accept me using a dating app.
For she thought a theology student should be holy, and should not be using any
dating app. For her, obviously, dating app is evil, anyways, I don’t know why
she was using it. And of course, we stopped talking.
Sometimes, when we think of Holiness, we think of a
white cloth, no dirt on it, so clean, so white and shiny. We think if we want
to be Holy, we should try hard to keep ourselves clean. If we don’t drink, then
we can be holy, if we don’t smoke, then we can be holy, if we do not have sex,
then we can be holy, if we do nothing, then we can be holy. Because when you do
nothing, you believe the possibility of making a mistake is ZERO. Sometime we
think God is a hygiene freak, or an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder patient, that
he cannot tolerate any of our imperfections and wrongdoings. We then perceive
Holiness as not sinning. We see Holiness as something which is measurable and
countable, and it would lead us to fall into a trap of comparing ourselves with
others and to self-righteousness and hypocrisy. “I am holier than you, because
I am heterosexual. I am holier than you, because you sin more than me! I am
closer than God because you smoke and drink!” These are what Jesus condemned
the most during his ministry.
Holiness is not about judging others and comparing
ourselves with others. Holiness is a nature of God. It is not something we can
obtain through our own righteousness, but it is a divine gift God has given to
us and shared with us.
In the scripture we are reading today, being holy and
being perfect is to extend our love to our neighbors and to our enemies. To be
holy and to be perfect, is to go beyond the dos and don’ts, go beyond
the rules and regulations. We can do everything right as a Christian, going to
church, reading the bible, fasting or praying, or offering our tithe, but if we
are not loving our neighbor, or trying to love our enemies, we are still far
away from being children of God. Just as Jesus challenges the Pharisees and
religious leaders taking pride of following the law, Jesus challenges us to live
out the law. Going beyond the law, and participating in what God is
doing, then we shall share the Holiness of God. To be holy and perfect is to
participate in God’s holiness just as we partake of God’s image.
We may not be perfect and holy all the time, but it
is a journey, a journey of becoming and perfection. In Orthodox Church
traditional, they call it sanctification. Salvation is a journey of becoming
like God. In this Journey, there are always ups and downs. There are
moments that we were so angry and we feel so tired to be perfect. Brothers and
sisters, God does not call us to be sinless, for we are all sinners, and we
need God because we are weak. However, when we are trying to love and to
forgive, we are participating in God’s holiness. Old Testament scholar Walter
Kaiser has a good remark on God’s holiness, he said "God's holiness
acts both as model and as motivating force in the development and maintenance
of a holy character."
Being perfect and holy should not be a pressure.
God’s holiness is an example for us, and is our goal. God loves and forgives
our enemies, so can we. God’s holiness and perfection is a sign of hope that we
can overcome hatred and vengeance.
That’s why Jesus challenges us to go beyond
our neighbor, go beyond those who love us, to love our enemies. Jesus
said “You have heard that it was said. ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate
your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Loving
those who love us is easy, but to love and pray for our enemies is difficult.
But this is what God has done for us. He died on the cross, surrounded by
people who wanted to kill him, but he chose to forgive and include them in the
salvation.
In this Journey, there is another hurdle we need to go
beyond, Fairness. “It’s not fair!” When Jesus said “Do not resist an
evildoer” and suggested “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the
other also!” This is unfair, this is just impossible. Some theologians and
scholars try to justify what Jesus said is to shame the evildoers. However,
what you gain by shaming your enemies? And by not resisting an evildoer, do we
actually give in to evil and injustice? How can we pursue righteousness and
justice, and at the same time, be able to love and forgive our enemy?
During the umbrella movement in 2014, 7 police were
caught kicking and beating up a protestor in a dark corner by a news camera
man, and everyone in front of the television can see what was happening. It
enrages many people in Hong Kong. Last week, they were found guilty, and were
sentenced to jail for 2 years. Many people in Hong Kong are celebrating,
Justice prevails, read the newspaper headline. Many people were teasing them
and cursing them on the Internet. However, do the 7 police feel sorry for what
they did? The Commissioner of Police did not apologize for what they have done,
and the police supporters believe it is wrong to convict them. The 7 police
were found guilty and they are in jail now. However, does the relationship
between the police force and citizens improve? There is no reconciliation. The
tension between the police and citizens is still there.
To love our enemy is challenging us to go beyond
fairness, of course justice is important! we are not saying we can omit justice
when we are pursuing forgiveness. But justice without love and forgiveness
would not bring us reconciliation and redemption. In 1957, Martin Luther King
Jr. has given a talk on nonviolence. He said:
Another thing that we had to get over was the fact
that the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent
but to win his friendship and understanding… The aftermath of non-violence is
reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. It is merely a means to
awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation. The
end is redemption.
Only if we can go beyond fairness, we can
pursue reconciliation and redemption for both the evildoers and the oppressed.
When Jesus is talking about loving your enemy, he
says “for God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on
the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Is it fair or not? But think about why
we would feel unfair? Because most of the time, we think “we are the righteous
and they are the unrighteous; we are right, and they are wrong!” And we think
“God, why you chose to forgive him? He is such an evildoer, Why can’t you just
remove him from our community? So our church can be a better place?” Modern
theologian Miroslav Volf said in his book “Exclusion & Embrace”:
“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy
from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of
sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah
for long without overcoming this double exclusion”
One of the reasons why it is so difficult to forgive
is because we exclude our enemies from our community, they are not one of us
and we are eager to exclude our enemies from being part of us. And at the same
time, we exclude ourselves from the community of sinners, we think we are not
one of them, we think we are better.
To embrace our enemies and pray for those who
persecute us is an invitation for us to go beyond our
self-righteousness, to see we also need others to forgive us. If we victimize
ourselves all the time, we would always place ourselves in opposition with our
enemies. Only if we go beyond our self-righteousness, we would see the
common thing we share with our enemies, which is the fact that we are both
consumed by hatred and desperate for redemption and love whether we realize it
or not. Loving our enemies is never easy. German theologian Bonhoeffer gets
right at the heart of this passage he wrote in his book “Cost of Discipleship”:
"By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite
intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love, ... [but] ... Love asks
nothing in return, but seeks those who need it.
And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and
utterly devoid of love?" "The love of our enemies takes us along the
way of the cross and into fellowship with the Crucified."
If we can love our enemies, I am sure the love is not
from us, only the love of God can lead us to love our enemies. Only the love of
God can be so powerful to break down walls of hatred, and draw us together with
his love.
Brothers and sisters, God calls us to be Holy, for he
is Holy, and to be perfect, as our heavenly father is perfect. It is a mission
impossible if we rely on our own strength and love. However, it is always
possible if we surrender ourselves to God and participate in God’s holiness.
Only if we partake in the love of God, we can go beyond rules and
regulations to love our neighbors, and we can go beyond our neighbors,
to love our enemies, and we can go beyond our self-righteousness, to
seek reconciliation. Sometimes the love of God is not making sense to us! It is
not about how hard we try, but how much we surrender to God.
I would like to end my sermon with a Buddhist story.
One day a master is giving a challenge to his pupils. They were all given a big
broken vessel, and the master is asking them to fill the broken vessel with
water. Some of them team up and use all the containers they could find to fill
the water into the vessel, hoping they can fill the water faster than it leaks.
No matter how hard they try, how fast they bring the water, the vessel is never
filled. The other monk tries something different. He then sits himself inside
the broken vessel, and say: I am the water, the water is me, I am in the
vessel, so the vessel is filled with water. The master says “No, stop
pretending to be philosophical”. When they were frustrated and asked the master
how to fill a broken vessel with water. The master picks up those vessels, and
throws them into a pool and watch them sink, then he said “now they are filled
with water.”
Brothers are sisters, we are never perfect, we are
all broken, but only if we allow ourselves to submerge in the love of God, we
can be filled, so we can be Holy and perfect, not because we can be, but
because our God alone is Holy and perfect. In this journey of becoming holy and
perfect, we are not alone. Let’s walk in this journey together as a community
and as a church. Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, February 19, 2017
