We are Unprofitable Servants

How easy it is easy for us to forget what God has done for us. Suddenly, God ceases to be our Savior and becomes our enemy. In the book of Numbers we read of Moses’ struggles with the newly liberated Hebrews. God saves them from slavery, but this is quickly forgotten. It seems to me that often trials in our lives are “wildernesses” that we must walk through before we can receive the peace and joy that God has promised us. The Israelites will soon forget what God has done for them: how He had mercy on them and by His own free love, gave them the Promised Land. Pride is something that many of us struggle with (at least I do), and trials teach us to humble ourselves. For, how amazing the Promised Land must have seemed to the new arrivers after wandering in the wilderness for forty years.  Let us not forget that the trials we face today do not compare to the joys we may face tomorrow."I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 18-21).

Moses is called to lead a group of stubborn, angry Jews who have quickly forgotten God’s goodness and love; they are not willing to make sacrifices because they do not really have faith that God will keep his promise.  In their wavering “faith”, they call God a liar. It is so hard to have faith when we are faced with challenges, but it precisely during those times that God is testing us. He tries so hard to remind the Hebrews over and over again that it is not because of their own merit that He has saved them, but because he cares for them. The Hebrews are really in debt to God, but they do not realize it. "The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession" (Deuteronomy 7:6 NIV). We, even more than them, are indebted to Christ because He sacrificed Himself for us. As Lent approaches, let us remember that our sacrifices are nothing in comparison to what God sacrificed to liberate us. The Hebrews were not willing to give up meat, a luxury they had probably taken for granted in Egypt. In Egypt, while slaves, the Hebrews overlooked all of their blessings; after they were liberated from slavery, they still overlooked them. They felt that God was their servant. They had gotten it all wrong. As Christ said in the parable of the unworthy servant, “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do’ “ (Luke 17:10). We are and will always be indebted to God. No sacrifice is too large. God always gives us much more than we would ever dream to ask for. Let us not overlook the blessings in our lives.

Happy Valentine's Day: A Counter-Cultural Message of Love

Happy St. Valentine’s Day everyone!!! I have been thinking a lot recently about this day. We all know the passage from 1 Corinthians 13 and the song based on this passage: The Gift of Love. However, I feel as if not enough people have defined love from a Christian perspective. Seeing that today is the feast day of a martyr for Christian marriage, I think that it would be a good idea to discuss Christian love vs. worldly love. Often, we cannot tell the difference, or do not know that Christian love is radically different, in fact the opposite of, worldly love. Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book that I am in the process of reading called Works of Love where he analyzes Christian love as defined in the scriptures. (People who wrongly consider Kierkegaard as the philosopher of doom and gloom may be surprised that he wrote quite a few books on love).

Kierkegaard asks us why we can say that Jesus is Love when He was not the liberating Messiah of Israel that the Jews were looking for and who’s controversial life led to the persecution and death of almost all of His apostles. From a worldly (secular) perspective Jesus is the opposite of love; He seems selfish and inconsiderate. However, as Christians we believe Christ and the teaching that He was and is Love. So what kind of love is He? Kierkegaard argues that true love requires one to help the beloved love God. This requires one to sacrifice some of his/her personal love for the other so that the other may know God better. Jesus is Love because His life, and especially His death, reconciled humanity to God. This was the ultimate sacrifice. Poets do not praise this sort of love, finding it selfish that a couple would place Jesus in the middle of their relationship. This is, though, what we must do. True love for another person never betrays the first and greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). From a Christian perspective, if a person does not help the beloved know God, he/she is actually selfish and really does not love but hates the other person. This is definitely not what people talk about and exalt on Valentine’s Day. But maybe this is the reason why promiscuity and abortion are misdefined as love in our culture. True love always involves obedience to God. Any relationship that leaves out God is not based on love but hatred.

What kind of relationship is Kierkegaard interested in? He asks us to listen to Jesus for the answer. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). This is a command that must be followed at all times, no matter who our neighbor may be. Kierkegaard argues that this is good news for those of us, like him, who do not have a “special someone.”

“[I]f your love for your neighbor remains unchanged, then the neighbor also remains unchanged just by the fact of existing. And death cannot deprive you of your neighbor for if it takes one, then life at once gives you another. Death can deprive you of a friend, because in loving your friend you are really united with the friend; but in loving your neighbor you are united with God, and therefore death cannot deprive you of your neighbor. If you have therefore lost everything in love and friendship, if you have never enjoyed any of this happiness: you still have the best left in loving your neighbor.”*

True love does not play favorites but loves all equally because each person was created equally by God. This is why Christians must love their enemies. This kind of love is not the charity that the world boasts of. True Christian love is thankless. True Christian love is considered hateful and selfish by many. Couples think that if God gets in the way, their relationship has been ruined. Each person wants the other exclusively for his/herself. What the world exalts, Christianity condemns and what Christianity exalts, the world condemns.  I must admit that I am utterly shocked and scandalized by this. Love is thus not the gushy feeling people have for each other but the desire to help everyone have a relationship with God. A lover becomes responsible, in a way, for the beloved’s soul. Now St. Paul can be better understood:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

Let’s be counter-cultural in our love for others. Peace.

*Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. Trans. David F. Swenson, and Lillian Marvin Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946. Print.

Søren Kierkegaard: What Does it Mean to be Christian?

I have not posted anything in almost a month it seems, but I will try to post a lot more in the next few weeks. Come back February 14 because I will have a post on Christian love.

A few posts ago, I wrote a reflection on Søren Kierkegaard's book Fear and Trembling, written under his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. This book really changed the way that I had previously viewed Abraham. I highly recommend others to read this book as well. If nothing else, it will make you to read the story of Abraham and Isaac with fresh eyes. Is faith always reasonable? We would like to think so, but Scripture does not reflect this claim. What is reasonable about Abraham being called to sacrifice his son (an act that would have been in direct opposition to the standards of the Ethical), Hosea marrying a prostitute, God coming into the world as a human, Jesus resurrecting from the dead, Moses leading a whole group of people from Egypt into the desert where they have to wander for 40 years with only their faith to guide them...? Kierkegaard argues, that faith and reason are different spheres and that when reason is overemphasized, faith is sucked out of Christianity. In other words, when we make reason a prerequisite to having faith, we do not have faith. Intellectual gymnastics is not faith. Once again, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 comes to mind. 

"For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" (v.25).

Kierkegaard lived in Denmark at a time when the Hegelian System was highly regarded. Kierkegaard noticed that the so-called Christians of the Danish National Church felt that they belonged to a sort of Christian ethnicity: Christendom. They felt that going to church, getting baptized and confirmed, and being "good" made someone a Christian. But they did not have true faith. They thought that because they followed the "Universal" (the Natural Law, whatever that may be), they were Christians. They never really thought about their individual relationships with God. They failed to realize that once they died, they would stand alone before God and it would be to Him alone that they would have to render an account of their lives. Sound familiar? We fall for this daily.

What does it truly mean to follow Christ? Kierkegaard argued that true faith requires one to surrender oneself totally to God no matter the consequences. He wanted to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom. The Hegelians made faith something that immature people cling to, and that mature people go beyond (outgrow faith and cling instead to a reasonable form of Christianity at best). Kierkegaard was strongly against this. As he wrote in Fear and Trembling, "Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further." Kierkegaard's works are very thought-provoking not because he necessarily says anything new but because he brings us face-to-face with the Truth.

The King and the Humble Maiden by Søren Kierkegaard

There once was a king who loved a humble maiden. This king was of uncommon royal lineage. He was a king above kings, with power and might to make all others humble before him. Statesmen trembled at his pronouncements. None dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all who opposed him. The wealth of his holdings was unfathomable. Tribute arrived on a daily basis from lesser kings who hoped to gain his favor.

And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden who lived in the poorest village in his vast kingdom. He longed to go to this maiden and announce his love for her, but here arose the king’s dilemma: how to declare his love? Certainly, he could appear before her resplendent in his royal robes and surrounded with the Royal Guard, ready to carry her away in a carriage inlaid with gold and precious stones. He could bring her to the palace and crown her head with jewels and clothe her in the finest silks. She would surely not resist this type of proposal, for no one dared to resist the king.

But would she love him?

She might say she loved him. She might be awed by his royal splendor and tremble at the thought of being blessed with such an amazing opportunity. She might tell herself that she would be foolish to reject such a marriage proposal. But would she love him, or would she go through the motions all the while living a life of empty duty, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she love him or regret the moment of being face to face with the overwhelming grandure of the king?

Or would she be happy at his side, loving him for himself and not for his title or riches or power?

He did not want a wife who behaved as a subject to his royal decrees, cringing at his word and unwilling to do anything but agree with all he said and did. Instead, he wanted an equal, a queen whose love knew no restrictions or limitations. He wanted an equal whose voice would speak to him at all times without hesitation. Love with his beloved maiden must mean equality with her. He wanted a relationship with the woman that had neither barriers nor walls in which he was not a king and she was not a poor subject of the crown. The love shared between them would cross the chasm that threatened to keep them apart, bringing the king and peasant together and making the unequal equal. In short, he wanted the maiden to love him for himself and not for any other reason.

He had to find a way to win the maiden’s love without overwhelming her and without destroying her free will to choose. The king realized that to win the maiden’s love, he had only one choice. He had to become like her, without power or riches and without the title of king. Only then would she be able to see him simply for who he was and not for what his position made him. He had to become her equal, and to do this he must leave all that he had.

And so one night, after all within the castle were asleep, he laid aside his golden crown and removed his rings of state. He took off his royal robes of silk and linen and redressed himself in the common clothes of the poorest of the kingdom. Leaving by way of the servant’s entrance, the king left his crown, his castle, and his kingdom behind. As the next day’s sun rose in the east, the maiden emerged from her humble cottage to find herself face to face with a stranger, a common man with kindly eyes who requested an opportunity to speak with her and, in time, to court her for her hand in marriage.

Day 1 of the 2011 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

 Every day for the next eight days I will post the prayers, readings, and reflections for this week of prayer for unity. The brochure from which I am getting my information can be found on the World Council of Churches and Vatican websites. This brochure was, "Jointly prepared and published by The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and The Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches."

The theme this year comes from Acts 2:42-47:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

(NRSV)

Day 1 sets forth the background to the mother church of Jerusalem, making clear its continuity with the church throughout the world today. It reminds us of the courage of the early church as it boldly witnessed to the truth, just as we today need to work for justice in Jerusalem, and in the rest of the world.

Day 1 – The Church in Jerusalem
Readings:
Joel 2:21-22, 28-29 I will pour out my spirit on all flesh
Psalm 46 God is in the midst of the city
Acts 2:1-12 When the day of Pentecost had come
John 14:15-21 This is the spirit of truth

Commentary:
The journey of this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, at the beginning of the Church’s own journey.

The theme of this week is “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” The “they” is the earliest Church of Jerusalem born on the day of the Pentecost when the Advocate, the Spirit of truth descended upon the first believers, as promised by God through the prophet the Joel, and by the Lord Jesus on the night before his suffering and death. All who live in continuity with the day of Pentecost live in continuity with the earliest Church of Jerusalem with it leader St James. This church is the mother church of us all. It provides the image or icon of the Christian unity for which we pray this week.

According to an ancient eastern tradition, the succession of the church comes through continuity with the first Christian community of Jerusalem. The Church of Jerusalem in apostolic times is linked with the heavenly Church of Jerusalem, which in turn becomes the icon of all Christian churches. The sign of continuity with the Church of Jerusalem for all the churches is maintaining the “marks” of the first Christian community through our devotion to the “apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.”
The present Church of Jerusalem lives in continuity with the apostolic Church of Jerusalem particularly in its costly witness to the truth. Its witness to the gospel and its struggles against inequality and injustice reminds us that prayer for Christian unity is inseparable from prayer for peace and justice.

Prayer: Almighty and Merciful God, with great power you gathered together the first Christians in the city of Jerusalem, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, defying the earthly power of the Roman empire. Grant that, like this first church in Jerusalem, we may come together to be bold in preaching and living the good news of reconciliation and peace, wherever there is inequality and injustice. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who liberates us from the bondage of sin and death. Amen.

A Knight of Faith has Faith in the Absurd

What is faith? The book of Hebrews gives us a definition of faith: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). What does that mean? Throughout the history of Christianity, different theologians have attempted to define faith. However, faith is not something that can be clearly defined because it is really a subjective experience. In his book Fear and Trembling*, Søren Kierkegaard attempts to explain why Abraham is one of the greatest examples of a man of faith, a "Knight of Faith". 

Abraham Sacrificing Isaac, Reims

Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym of Johannes de silentio), follows Abraham’s journey to Moriah and argues that there are times when faith requires one to cross the boundaries of the Ethical. According to the Ethical, if Abraham had sacrificed Isaac, he would have been a murderer, but because Abraham was acting in faith, he was justified. Many people dwell on the fact that Abraham was “merely being tested by God,” and fail to understand the grief and pain of a man who is called to kill the person he loves the most in the world. Abraham was a Knight of Faith, and not a Tragic Hero, because he had trust in the absurd. “It is not to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the State, that Abraham [goes to Moriah], not to appease angry gods” (p.88). Abraham does not go to kill his son because he thinks that he will get something in return, but because he has trust in God’s promise and has completely resigned himself to God’s Will. Abraham’s story can be quite disconcerting when read from the perspective of Abraham. It is true that a misunderstanding of the story could lead one to condone terroristic behavior. However, it is worth repeating again that Abraham does not go to kill his son for any reward or because of any hatred he had towards Isaac. He goes to kill his son as proof of his faith to God. Only Abraham can understand what he has been called to do, and others do not have the right to judge his choice. “When a person sets out on the tragic hero’s admittedly hard path there are many who could lend him advice; but he who walks the narrow path of faith no one can advise, no one understand” (p.95).

There are other characters in the Bible who are also called to do the absurd and sometimes to cross what is considered moral and ethical by the world's standards. For example, Hosea is called to marry a prostitute. Kierkegaard writes, “There was one who relied upon himself and gained everything, and one who, secure in his own strength, sacrificed everything; but greater than all was the one who believed God. There was one who was great in his strength, and one who was great in his wisdom, and one who was great in hope, and one who was great in love; but greater than all was Abraham, great with that power whose strength is powerlessness, great in that wisdom whose secret is folly, great in that hope whose outward form is insanity, great in that love which is hatred of self” (p.50).

And what about the Virgin Mary, called to be the Mother of God? What about her? Though the angel explains the situation to Joseph, who can really understand Mary and her calling? Mary, in her faith, her complete resignation to God’s Will, accepts to suffer in complete trust that her Son will save the world. “[I]t takes a paradoxical and humble courage then to grasp the whole of temporality on the strength of the absurd, and that courage is the courage of faith” (p.77). The most courageous of all was Jesus who allowed himself to be crucified in complete faith and trust in his Father. After all, if Abraham had indeed sacrificed Isaac, his sacrifice would not have been an atonement for the sins of the world, but the Father perfectly sacrificed his Son and saved the world. To have faith, one must be willing to tell God, “[S]till, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42b). Of course, most of us are not called to do radical things to prove our love to God, but let us not think that unconditional faith is easy to have. Kierkegaard writes, “[W]hat no one has the right to do is let others suppose that faith is something inferior or that it is an easy matter, when in fact it is the greatest and most difficult of all” (p.80). 

*Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin Classics, 1985. Print.

Side Note: The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity starts in a few days: January 18-25. Pray Pray Pray. God Bless!! I will post daily the daily readings and reflections that can be found on the Vatican (use search box) and the World Council of Churches websites.

You Can Be Sin's Master

What can we learn from the story of Cain and Abel? It can be summed up in one verse:
"If you do well, you can hold up your head; but if not, sin is a demon lurking at the door: his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master" (Genesis 4:7).
I have just finished reading the story of the Fall, and a demon (the serpent) was certainly lurking at the door; however, we are called to resist all temptations. Blaming the serpent is not a sufficient excuse for God. With God, we can overcome evil; with God, we take responsibility for our sins. We can receive forgiveness if we are truly repentant. Life is a battle, but we know that Christ has overcome the world. John writes,
"If we say, 'We are without sin,' we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. If we say, 'We have not sinned,' we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1:8-10).

Abel's blood is a dark mark on human history, but Christ's blood saves us and gives us hope. Since God is a God of second chances, we can approach Him with confidence. We have a new year before us. Let us focus on overcoming our weaknesses. With God alone is this possible.