Saints and sinners are welcome to the Kingdom alike

That Jesus opened the Kingdom to sinners and saints alike is mindboggling.  Our experience of life is based on reward and punishment system.  The good require recognition and the sinful expulsion.  Our logic contradicts the action of Jesus.  There is no select club for God.  Will the good be saved and the sinful damned?  Jesus says no one claims righteousness because the Kingdom is a free gift.  There are those who appear prominent who will be missed and those that are least likely who will be celebreties.  The logical order of human thinking will be reversed.  The Kingdom’s door is narrow.  Many are used to the wide as we see it correct, right, perfect, and saved.  The truth is the entry is made through painful and unwanted ways which we would have rather avoided.

Peace is within more than without

The risen Savior offers his peace to us.  In his farewell to the disciples Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you” (John 14:27).  As mortals we understand peace as the absence of conflict, trouble, and turmoil.  Peace represents  a desire to escape from the harsh realities of life.  But Jesus means the opposite.  The external circumstances have nothing to do with his offer of peace.  It is internal, a sense of calm in the midst of a storm.  It means I will have to face fear to learn to become unafraid.  By going through death, fully trusting His Father, Christ destroys it by allowing it wreak a havoc on his body.  On the eve of His fearful passion, when anxiety had been weighing heavily on him Jesus calmly shares His inner peace with His disciples.  Because he was so trusting in the unfailing love of His Father and inseparable union with him, Jesus will take up the cross voluntarily without any sense of defense or vengeance.  No wonder many scholars of John’s gospel believe that the moment of crucifixion was simultaneously an experience of deep love called resurrection.  Would it be possible for us to hold on to unfailing love within when we experience a terrible, hateful situation?  Jesus says yes.  But this kind of peace is not within our making.  It can only be freely given by God, and we can only trust in this paradoxical sense of peace.

I am the bread of life

Jesus must have shocked the Jews when he claimed he was the bread that came down from heaven (John 6, 44-51).  They were used to the scripture regarding Moses performing the miracle of raining down manna from heaven in the wilderness to feed the people of Israel.  But his claim that he was bread from heaven that would satisfy their hunger must have literally unsettled them.  Seeking physical and material security for well-being is normal.  But it is hard to acknowledge that God alone can be our true satiety.  It is incomprehensible for humans.  Physical, psychological, and intellectual needs are symbolic of our true spiritual need, that is, finding God as the completion of our being.  Unless we prayerfully recognize and desire this it is easy to be lost,  locked into other needs.  God is the true need and fulfillment of our souls.  But we have to seek God more than praying to meet our wants and desires.

Do you love me?

Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”  Peter replies him three times, “You know Lord, I love you.”  Commentators say in Greek Jesus uses the word for love agape two times and the word phileo the third time.  Peter responds to Jesus three times with the word for love phileo.  Agape, generally translated as charity is self-sacrificing love that seeks only what is best for the other and lacks self-interest.  Phileo is used for the bond of friendship, a sense of loyalty in people who care about each other (Murray Watson).  Having failed in his promise to love Jesus better than others Peter cautiously offers now only what he is weakly capable of doing (John 21:15-19).  So Jesus condescends to his level of his offer and accepts it.  Eventually, he will convert his simple promise to self-sacrificing love by enabling him to die for his faith on the cross upside down in all humility.  Love of God is not something we can promise to God ourselves.  If we honestly promise the best we think we are able, Jesus will raise it to will only what is best for the other without any personal agenda.  Perfect giving and perfect receiving exist in the Holy Trinity.  God will help us experience that which we are not capable of experiencing on our own in our human relationships.

It is not about doing but being

God’s love is unconditional.  It is not deserved or earned.  The more we think of this the more one can be excited about it.  It is not about what we do but what God does.  The very coming of Jesus was free.  He offered eternal life for free.  Those that thought they were climbing up to God were upset.  They could not believe in the free gift.  They believed their righteous deeds were meriting God’s love.  If they recognized God’s Son’s coming was free they would have responded to it more abundantly than calculatingly.  Do I love God in my doing or being?

Let us not worry about having more or less

Easter calls us to think of the spiritual dimension of reality.  We get so locked into our material realities that we forget it is only temporary.  Jesus multiplies five loaves of bread to feed 5,000.  It defies our logic.  That is our eternal.  God provides only superabundance.  But we have to go through wants and needs before we come to see their temporariness.

How to trust God

I don’t see life any other way other than an opportunity to trust God.  It will mean then we will go through distrustful conditions whereby that trust will be shaken.

Love of God cannot be earned by being good.  If so the Kingdom is meant only for the good.  No, it is meant for saints and sinners alike.  Every one is saved only through the mercy of God.  What it means is that we will be tempted to associate the good with the blessing of God and the bad with punishment.  No.  It is precisely the opposite: when we seemingly lose the good and experience the bad then we become better able to or capable of trusting God.  What we think we gain comes from our ego self.  The true self will see as everything happening with the knowledge and permission of God, even the loss.  The apparent evil will be completely gone someday.  We overcome the evil not by avoiding it but by going through it with trust in God as God’s Son Jesus did on the cross

The greater that trust the greater the trust becomes love of God.  I already see that in you and your family.  Keep trusting even when everything seems to be to the contrary because faith is all about that you do not know.  It is about being sure of what you are unsure of. (Response to a friend who finds strength in trusting God the hard way)

Denial

I find myself learning more and more about denial I find in me.  How do you describe denial?  It is missing the obvious.  Many around you may notice something that you don’t yourself see as a problem.  It is like you push the problem to the back burner and not face what you are struggling with.  Denial may be more subtle and unconscious than consciously known.  Facing an issue will demand serious changes.  You are not ready for it.  So you brush it aside.  It is a threat to yourself and you compromise dealing with it.  It makes you feel numb towards the problem and keeps business as usual.

This happened to the Sanhedrin that condemned and crucified Jesus.  When they heard that the apostles were proclaiming in the streets of Jerusalem how God raised Jesus from the dead after he was condemned to death unjustly they arrested them.  They said by their preaching the apostles were holding the religious leaders responsible for the blood of Jesus.  In their heart they believed they were not in anyway responsible.  They did the right thing.  They claimed innocence.  What may have contributed to their denial?  Arrogance, a sense of superiority, unwillingness to admit and feel guilty for crimes, hardheartedness, being blind to their mistakes, tendency to be condemnational and judgmental–all these may have been the ingredients.  These characteristics will make believers unbelieving.  If these were the potential causes then being a Pharisee is not related to a job but to a state of being in the world.  Am I or am I not a pharisee?

Beginning the Blog

Hello every one.  Happy Easter to you.  What good news.  We have a new archbishop Timothy Dolan, a very endearing and amiable personality.  It was remarkable to see history in the making.  What I like about him is the pastor in him.  How comfortable I am made to feel when I see him shaking hands with people, smiling, hugging, and laughing and at the same time revealing truths which he proclaims firmly and boldly.  How extraordinary it is to combine hard and easy ways, represent principles with love, and the father and friend simultaneously!  Some people challenge us not only by what they say but more importantly by being who they are.