Understanding the Reformation of Martin Luther

Martin Luther altered the face of Western Christianity more than anyone before or after him. The reaction to his work led to a split in the west between the traditional believers and the adherents of reformation. Yet it would be a distortion of the facts to charge Luther with the greatest Church schism of all time because the exclusion of the reformers from the Church was instigated by the Romans. In addition, the framework of Western Christianity had been experiencing tremors for some time before Luther. Since the work of John Wycliffe (1320-1384) in England and John Huss (1368-1415) in Bohemia, frequent criticism had been brewing against the centralizing efforts of Rome. In the century of Reformation, the struggle to regionalize the church reached new heights. Yet a regional church had always been presupposed in the Eastern Christendom. One could nevertheless accuse the Luther of destroying the doctrinal unity of the Church. But much more important was the positive influence of Luther. On one hand he noticed the similarity of his teaching with that of John Huss, while on the other hand he exchanged position statements with King Henry VIII, who aspired to create in England a Church which was independent from Rome. Also not to be overlooked in Luther’s considerable influence on the reformed wing of Reformation led in Switzerland by Huldreich Zwingli and John Calvin. Both of these reformers made great effort to come as close as possible to his teachings. Even his impact on the Roman Catholic Church is profound as at the Council of Trent there was ample of time given to the doctrine of justification.  So we understand at the outset the importance and centrality of Luther for Theology.[1]

1. The Dawn of Reformation at Wittenberg

Our analysis concerns the intellectual and spiritual development of Martin Luther (1483–1546) during the years 1509–1519 – particularly 1512–1519, which many regard as being a decisive phase in this process. During these critical years, Luther began to inch his way toward his own distinctive understanding of how sinners are able to enter into the presence of a righteous God, classically expressed in the doctrine of justification by faith. While the relationship between the emergence of Luther’s theological distinctives and the historical origins of the Reformation as a whole is somewhat more complex than some popular accounts suggest, there is little doubt that Luther’s theological breakthrough was one of a number of factors that proved to be of decisive importance in catalyzing the massive social, economic, political, and religious transformations of the Protestant Reformation.

This study sets out to analyze the emergence of Luther’s understanding of the question of how humanity is justified in the sight of God, focusing especially on his shifting views concerning what it means to speak of God as “righteous.” How can a sinner hope to find acceptance in the sight of a righteous God?  Luther’s changing answers to that central question set the scene for the great upheavals of the Reformation. Yet a second distinctive feature of Luther’s early thought emerges alongside these reflections on the nature of divine righteousness, and how a righteous God could accept and love sinful humanity. Luther’s celebrated “theology of the cross” is the outcome of the same process of reflection that led Luther to his doctrine of justification. The two themes are intertwined in his early writings, and can in some ways be seen as two sides of a single, related question – namely, how humanity is to live by faith in the shadowlands of sin and doubt. [2] But theological reflection never takes place in a social or cultural vacuum. To tell the story of the development of Luther’s ideas, we must explore the situation within which they emerged. We therefore turn immediately to consider the state of late medieval Europe on the eve of the Reformation – especially in Germany, which played a particularly significant role in shaping the contours of late medieval Christianity, as well as laying the foundations for the Protestant Reformation.

1. The Context and History of Martin Luther.

To understand the rapid spread of Luther’s ideas, a brief account of the role that the Church played in Medieval society is necessary. In the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church filled the power vacuum it had left behind and went on to enjoy nearly a millennium of institutional dominion throughout Europe. While its authority was at times imperiled, as in the Western schism of the fourteenth century), its teachings and rituals gradually embedded themselves in the daily lives of the faithful. Much like the Roman Empire before it, however, the Church’s overextension of both territorial domain and bureaucratic machinery ultimately proved a corrupting force. One such instance of corruption—and the principal target of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses—was the doctrine of indulgences, a practice predicated upon the belief that one’s journey to eternal salvation could be expedited by means of worldly works. In the hands of Church functionaries eager to pad their own coffers, these “works” all too often assumed the form of monetary payouts rather than pious acts. 

Enter Luther. Indignant at such abuses, he modestly aimed to reform the Church from within. Little did he know, however, that his criticism would ignite a conflagration of religious animus that was to engulf all of Europe. In retrospect it is not difficult to see why this happened, since ultimately at stake in this dispute was nothing less than the authority to determine legitimate interpretations of scripture and rituals of worship. Hence the crux of Luther’s thought is frequently summed up in two Latin phrases—Sola Fide (“by faith alone”) and Sola Scriptura (“by scripture alone”). In short, Luther argued that the relationship between man and God is a fundamentally personal one, nurtured by individual faith and subject to no greater authority than the Bible itself. Thus Luther’s critique led logically to the rejection of any intermediary authority that might stand between man and God. Moreover, no longer would mere affirmation of dogma or participation in ritual suffice to vouchsafe one’s spiritual health—rather, the individual took center stage, called upon to actively and directly participate in his faith.5 Solas were pervasive in Luther’s Reformation

• Sola Fide, by faith alone.
• Sola Scriptura, by Scripture alone.
• Solus Christus, through Christ alone.
• Sola Gratia, by grace alone.
• Soli Deo Gloria, glory to God alone.[3]

• Analysis of the Theology of Martin Luther .

The major criteria in analyzing the Theology of Luther is its struggle and refutation of the Scholastic Epistemology which will help us to clearly place the location and importance of Theology of Luther.

2.1)  Doctrine of God-

Martin Luther believed in the Trinity and incarnation. He consistently taught that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons in one divine essence and nature, is one God who created heaven and earth. Neither the father or the Holy Spirit, but the Son became a Human Being, and that the Father’s only begotten Son is one person with two natures, divine and human, that are not confused or separated. Till here, he is in continuity with the Catholic doctrine of God.[4] But the breakthrough came as God is not understood statically from God’s being as perpetuated by Scholastic theology, but rather God is understood dynamically from the perspective of God’s will. Luther sees in God the supreme will that can have no equal. God sets the standard by which his own will is measured. This emphasis on will makes God dynamic and action oriented where God is always at work. God is an engaging God who participates actively, decisively, and creatively in the events of this world.  [5]

2.1.1) Christology– Luther Shares a lot of traditional Christology. But to work towards his theological grounds of Justification, he developed what is known as communicatio idiomatum. The idiomata, i.e. the attributes by which the human and the divine nature can be described, are to some degree interchangeable in the person of Christ. For instance, God can be everywhere. A Human can be at one place at a time. In so far as Christ is God, he can be everywhere. But even in the human nature of Christ, even his body as seen and touched by the disciples after the Resurrection, shares the quality of the divine nature and now can be everywhere. Luther ascribes the communicatio idiomatum and omnipresence of the body of Christ even to the time before His Resurrection and Ascension. This doctrine on the omnipresence of Christ of both natures helps Luther shatter the medieval theology of heaven as a place somewhere above. This presence of Christ as real presence helped him destroy the magical powers of sacraments of turning the Bread and Wine into Body and Blood to prove that it was specially not turned at that point of time, but it was actually present as Christ is always present everywhere.[6] But it does not end there. This concept also says that the general attributes or idiomatum of human beings take part in divine nature in the concrete person of Jesus Christ and the reverse is true as well: in Christ, the human being, God suffered, died, and was victorious over death. In Christ, who is God, human being has become omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.[7] This again shattered the concept of Transubstantiation based on Aristotlean metaphysics of the medieval theology. Luther in his Christology, discards the metaphysics of Non-Communication of substance where two substance cannot remain the same with others co-existing. I.e. The bread and the wine does not remain the bread and the wine but becomes body and blood of Christ, as the form and matter cannot co-exist in the same substance.[8] Luther abandons this whole schema for the biblical understanding of God. The God of the Bible is a self-communicating and relational God. God’s righteousness is his right relationship with himself and with human beings (the actual meaning of the Hebrew word “Tzedek” is right relationship). Hence, it is intrinsically covenantal and relational. Righteousness is not a quality, but a relationship. God is righteous in that he fulfills his covenant promises both to enforce death on those who violate the law, and to give life and save through the gospel (i.e., the content of the Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants!). And because righteousness is a relationship, and not a quality, it can be shared. A relationship can be shared, a quality can adhere in two subjects, but it cannot be shared. Luther puts it in Freedom of a Christian, in God’s supreme act of loyalty to his promises, he shares his own righteousness with human beings (i.e., “the righteousness of/from God”, Romans 1:17) and in exchange receives their real unrighteousness into himself (i.e., the “happy exchange”). Christ does this by taking on and sharing the wrong relationship that unbelieving and fallen human beings have with the Father, and giving them his own right relationship to him.  And justification as the happy exchange is rooted in a real and not merely notional concept of the communicatio idiomatum. The divine person in becoming human incorporates within itself the death and suffering the human nature through the communication of actions. The human nature receives within itself the self-communication of all the divine glory, so that by the divine power present within it, it may by its redeeming and creative actions work salvation. Therefore, just as there can be a real exchange of realities in the Incarnation, there can be a real exchange of sin and righteousness in the happy exchange.[9] This helped Luther to discard the Aristotelian metaphysics in favour of the Biblical to root his theology.

2.1.2) Theology of Justification– There are two aspects in understanding the God and the above logical progression will help us. 1) The Justifying God 2) ‘I, the sinner’. In the first, Luther asserted that God is not a Goal, but is most active God, who never ceases to justify. The Justifying God reversed the normal pattern of considering God as one and three under the category of God as the greatest Good (Summum Bonum), to which humans are attracted as their final goal. God became for Luther, first and finally the One Who Gives, the subject of justification. What He gives is not an effect of a cause, but himself and the preached word is the way he bestows this gift upon creatures. The second part of the doctrine, ‘I, the sinner’, names the one to whom God gives himself. God’s active justification is given freely while sinners are yet ungodly-the passive righteousness of receiving rather than achieving.  For Luther, a human person is justified wholly for the sake of Christ (Propter Christum), which means that God does impute sin on him/her but forgives sin (Psalms 32:1). This means that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the sinner, which is alien to human possession  and she/he is considered righteous on account of Christ alone.[10] How? When a human being believes in Christ, Christ is present, in the very fullness of his divine and human nature, in that faith itself. Luther understands the presence of Christ in such a concrete way that, Christ and Christian become ‘one person.’ In this ‘happy exchange’ the human being becomes partaker of God’s attributes.[11] Luther categorizes righteousness into two kinds, active and passive and not just as one as tradition which had presumed on an active one. The active righteousness made scope for work and doing works to gain merit. In his exegesis of Paul and Psalms, he seems to have discovered passive righteousness, salvation through trusting God’s word of promise of forgiveness, imparting a new status, a new nature, a ‘clean heart’ for the believer.

This led to another break with the Scholastic Theology. Distinction between Law and Gospel. Law is not a manual that presents the steps to travel to eternal life, but is a tormentor attacking any self-righteousness one seeks to bring before God. Therefore the gospel is not ‘new law’. It is a gift-word of promise that assures terrified consciences of God’s mercy given only to sinners, a word which quickens the dead to new life.[12] Therefore the distinction between law and gospel is that Law places human beings under the wrath of God, but Gospel brings Grace and life, the law convicts the sinner to death, but the Gospel proclaims eternal life through the power of Christ’s redemption. But still Luther does not say Law and Gospel are in conflict. When we proclaim Christ as redeemer, it is also the proclamation of the Law, because redemption presupposes the existence of sin, which is based on the principle that whatever shows us what we ought and ought not to do and whatever tells us, we remain in sin is always Law. Faith moves from the Law to the Gospel, which is irreversible because the Gospel is the Word of comfort and promise for the guilty. Therefore the Gospel transcends the Law, and Law never transcends the Gospel. Faith means placing the Gospel above the Law and holding on to Gospel as God’s promise of accepting the unacceptable. Thus, in its deepest sense, such faith in the Gospel fulfills the Law because it is a Gospel of promise, which closely follows Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Justification. Therefore people are set free from the condemnation and demands of the law, transferring them from domain of law to the Kingdom of Christ.[13] Therefore the being of the human at the core is Faith as we who are killed by the law, which accuses sinners to death, are raised by the gospel promise, which grants forgiveness, life and salvation. For Luther, God became human so that we through faith might ourselves become human, in opposition to self-deification that one achieves through self-righteousness.[14]

2.1.3) Theology of Glory and Theology of the Cross.

Luther distinguished the “revealed God”(Deus Revelatus) from the “hidden God”(Deus Absconditus),by which he meant, in different contexts, either God as he actually exists beyond the grasp of human conceptualization—particularly when the human mind is darkened by sin—or God as sinners fashion him in their own image, to their own likings. In addition, it must be noted that the revealed God hides himself in order to show himself to his human creatures. Luther observed that God is to be found precisely where theologians of glory are horrified to find him: as a kid in a crib, as a criminal on a cross, as a corpse in a crypt. God reveals himself by hiding himself right in the middle of human existence as it has been bent out of shape by the human fall. Thus, Luther’s theology of the cross is a departure from the fuzziness of human attempts to focus on God apart from God’s pointing out where he is to be found and who he really is.

These two differ in their subject matter, for one is concerned with God in His glory, whereas the other sees God in his sufferings.[15] A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A Theology of Cross calls the things what it actually is. He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly and good to evil.[16] Now let us historically place it. Theologies of glory presume something about God’s glory, and something about the glory of being human. Medieval systems of theology all sought to present a God whose glory consisted in fulfilling what in fact are fallen human standards for divine success.[17] A God worthy of the name, according to the standards of the emperors and kings, whose glory and power defined how glory and power were supposed to look. Medieval theologians and preachers wanted a tough, no-nonsense kind of God to demand that they come up to their own standards for themselves and to judge their enemies.  Second, out of his experience as a student of theology at the University of Erfurt, Luther suggested that these medieval systems of biblical exposition taught a human glory, the glory of human success: first, the success of human reason that can capture who and what God is, for human purposes. Gerhard Forde observes that this glory claims the mastery of the human mind in its investigations regarding both earthly matters and God’s revelation of himself.  The theology of the cross aims at bestowing a new identity upon sinners, setting aside the old identity, by killing it, so that good human performance can flow out of this new identity that is comprehended in trust toward God.[18] Therefore “the theology of the cross is an offensive theology because it attacks what we usually consider the best in our religion,” human performance of pious deeds. A theology of glory lets human words set the tone for God’s Word, forces his Word into human logic. A theology of glory lets human deeds determine God’s deeds, for his demonstration of mercy is determined by the actions of human beings.   Luther’s understanding of the cross as the iconic and symbolic center of Christian theology, worship, and spirituality clearly fits into this pattern. .  “Theology of the cross” mounts a full-scale assault on human preconceptions of God and the conditions under which humanity finds acceptance in the sight of God. . Luther understands the cross as far more than an instrument of theological illumination, linking it with the deep existential anxieties of humanity in the face of suffering, the radical ambiguity of a shadowy world, and above all the fear of death and damnation. The cross breaks down our inadequate and misleading prejudices and presuppositions, so that a “true theology” can emerge in their place. For Luther, the cross must be allowed to determine its own conceptual framework. Theology begins at the foot of the cross of the crucified Christ; it does not begin somewhere else, and then proceed to assimilate the cross into its predetermined categories. More   importantly, a “theology of glory” proceeds by prioritizing the rational – what the human mind can cope with. Where a theology of the glory depends upon the human capacity to understand, the theology of the cross depends on the human capacity to perceive – to observe what is happening, and reflect on its deeper significance, even when this cannot be fully grasped. A “theology of the cross” thus gives priority to what is experienced. As Luther famously put it, “only experience makes a theologian.[19] .  

2.1.4) Ecclesiology– This section is important as we need to recognize that Luther did not intend to develop a well-developed ecclesiology. His ecclesiological concerns were made manifest in works occasioned by specific controversies or practical pastoral concerns that he found in his exegetical works, sermons and correspondences. His reflecting upon the Church was shaped by his reflecting upon the nature and function of the gospel which broadened his theological horizons. Luther’s ecclesiology is not institutional or structural but soteriological and kerygmatic. It is a Christological community, created, preserved and united in Christ.[20] In his formulation of ecclesiology we need to be aware of two fundamental shifts. i) His central theological principle of distinction and integration or ‘unity of the opposites’ that gave him a dialectical lens to view reality which lead him to concepts such as “Sinner and a Saint at the same time” opposed to the medieval theology that used “Then sinner and now saint” which is opposition in unity. ii) His understanding of the Church as ‘the people of God’ or communion of saints over against the Roman perception of the Church as an objective order established by God on Earth to do God’s work. The basic difference between Roman Catholic understanding and Reformer’s doctrine of Church is that according to Roman Catholicism Church has its base on the authority Christ had vested with apostles and successively transmitted from Peter to the Bishop of Rome or Pope, who assumed the mantle of the sole legitimate head of the Church universal. But Luther based his Church on the proclamation of the Gospel, which creates faith in the believers and they in return form the Church.[21]

2.1.4.1) Church Visible and Invisible

The separation of the visible and invisible spheres is clear enough in his writings. It first appears in his Treatise on the Papacy of 1520. He says: “The primary reality which is essentially, fundamentally, truly the Church we call the spiritual, inner Christendom. The other, which is a human creation, we call the bodily, exterior Christendom.” One must not take offense at this distinction; it is not meant to disparage that which is called the exterior, visible Church. Luther’s point is that this aspect of the Church is accidental to the true nature of the Body of Christ.[22] The Church in its true essence is an object of faith. As Luther said, it is “hidden in spirit.” When one sees the actual working of the Church, the buildings, the ministers, the administration, devotions, liturgy etc., then you know that in this visible church, with all its shortcomings, the invisible Church is hidden.[23] External structure may vary with the various historical settings in which the word of God confronts the needs of men in a particular age. It is precisely this element of flexibility that makes possible the positive nature of Protestantism-the spirit of renewal. What it did was challenge the Visible Church concept according to Medieval Theology that gave Pope legitimacy, and standing. The invisible Church defined so based on the Scriptures that effectively took away the authority of Pope and rested the authority on the Scriptures which helped the Luther to not just rebel against the Church but gave theological foundations for His Ecclesiology. [24]

2.1.4.2) Church:  the Body of Christ– By stressing the word Christ, it means: Christ: the head of the Body, moves and rules His members by the Spirit. By stressing the word “Body” it means,: The Church is the Body formed of those who believe, who have faith. They form the Communion of saints.[25] The Church as Communion of saints means evangelical priesthood that is service that begins from the gospel. Luther is able to describe his understanding of Church as communion of saints in such a way that he can characterize priesthood as a law of life of the Church. When Christ bears our burdens and intercedes for us with his righteousness, that is a priestly sign from which the mutual upholding and acting on behalf of one another. The foundation of the Church is the priestly office of Christ, and its inner constitution is the mutual and the common priesthood Christians. Through baptism all Christians receive the portion of the priestly office.[26] This leads to the priesthood of all believers.

2.1.4.3) Priesthood of All Believers. The hierarchical, sacramental, and sacerdotal character of the medieval church was seriously threatened by Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. In his tract ‘To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation’, the first of the three papal walls which Luther attacks is the theory that the clergy (pope, bishops, priests, and monks) comprise the spiritual estate while princes, lords, artisans, and farmers comprise the temporal estate. Luther’s answer to this theory is as follows:

All Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office. Paul says in I Corinthians 12:12-13 that we are all are one body, yet every member has its own work by which it serves the others. This is because we all have one baptism, one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians alike; for baptism, gospel, and faith alone make us spiritual and a Christian people.[27]

Participation in the priesthood of believers entails connection with Christ and the Church, not autonomous individuality on a personal, spiritual quest.  Rather, the community of God is where the Word is found and the Word is where the community of God is found.

This distinction between salvation that comes from God through the Gospel and a cheap imitation offered by man establishes a dichotomy between the true and the false Church.  The priesthood of believers was only those that participated in the life of the true Church.  Scripture became the cornerstone upon which to judge what truly constituted the living Church.  Moreover, the validity of “tradition” (i.e., the councils, the papacy, etc.) was contingent upon its coherence with the Scriptural witness.

This debate intricately shapes and forms Luther’s conception of the priesthood of believers.  Deposing the papacy’s self-proclaimed infallibility led to a stronger emphasis on the communio sanctorum.  No longer could the pope, or any other ecclesial official, be allowed to operate beyond or outside of the community of believers.  After all, Christ alone was the Head of the Church.

In fact, Luther went so far as to deny ordination as a sacrament.  Of course, this was a radical equalization between clergy and laity.  This did not so much deny the important role of clergy, as much as, it promoted God’s call to all believers.  Sharing in that equilateral call suggested that everyone, including clergy, stood as equals before God.  If all believers have received this gift of priesthood, then what significance, if any, remains for clergy?

Luther posits both a general and specific call for all believers.  The general call consists of individual believers being initiated into the Body by faith through Christ.  Thus, everyone that comes to faith in Christ is a priest.  This is the general call to which all are invited to partake.  Luther asserts, “Faith alone is the true priestly office.  It permits no one else to take its place.  Therefore all Christian men are priests, all women priestesses, be they young or old, master or servant, mistress or maid, learned or unlearned  Here there is no difference, unless faith be unequal.”[28]

2.1.5) Sacraments:

Church was of non-sacramental nature as conceived by Luther. By “non-sacramental” is not meant the abolition of all sacraments, although Luther did reduce them to two (Baptism and Eucharist) or three (including the sacrament of penance). Sacramentalism refers to the use of the sacraments as the means of grace. Luther saw the sacraments as aids to faith and evidences of faith, but in no sense substitutes of faith. The Sola Fide doctrine recognizes faith as valid for grace and salvation quite apart from any works, whether sacramental or secular.[29]

2.1.5.1) Baptism– Baptism is an important area where Luther attacked the medieval theology. Luther believed that the whole medieval system of good works, vows, pilgrimages and an ascetic life were attempts to save by other means people whose baptism had become wrecked and meaningless. The idea of wrecking of Baptism was attributed to St. Jerome. But Luther contested that Baptism can never be wrecked. It stands on God’s promise, and our unworthiness can never destroy that promise. The ship of our baptism can never sink as it must arrive at the port of Heaven. Baptism is the basic sacrament that we need to return to it again and again to be reminded of it.[30] God makes a covenant with human beings in Baptism and agrees to forgive all their sins. The symbolic action in Baptism, being immersed or washed with water, is to be sure a one-time occurrence, but one which should be continuously actualized.[31] Luther underlined Baptism as an Act of God through human hands to undercut the power of clericalism existent in the Medieval Church. The acts of immersion in water and being raised again from water in the baptismal rite are identified with death of the old being and renewal of the new being. Under the cover of water God bestows power upon the believer and creates him/her anew by sanctifying, purifying, and vivifying both his/her body and soul. By this act, God intends to use the human creatures as effective instruments to fulfill God’s work on Earth. By elaborating here he challenged ritualism and moralism associated with Medieval piety. Duns Scotus had maintained that there was a magical power in Baptismal water to which Luther affirmed that in Baptism- purification from sin, deliverance from death, and new birth was wrought through the power of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and not the element of water. [32] Luther supported Infant Baptism in opposition to Anabaptists but that is beyond the scope of this paper. Three important principles can be deduced about Baptism.

1. Its close interrelation to the cross of Christ
2. Its efficacy on all human beings irrespective of their age.
3. Its work of gathering the believers as a communion or body of Christ.[33]

2.1.5.2) The Lord’s Supper– Luther to relocate the Lord’s Supper, rooted it in the scriptures. He starts from the Word “This is the New Testament in My Blood.” A testament pre-supposes three things. a) a Testator knows he has to die. b) He enumerates his possessions; c) he authorizes the receivers of his heritage. God makes a testament which shows God wants to die, but God cannot as only man can die. “The New Testament in my Blood” briefly indicates that God having become man, wishes to die for the benefit of others. The heritage he left is “Forgiveness of sins, life and salvation…” This heritage is the possession of those who receive the sacrament and believe God’s promise attached to it.[34] He refuted the concept of transubstantiation of the medieval church with that of consubstantiation which affirms the body and blood of Christ are present in unchanged bread and wine by displacing the Aristotelian metaphysics that we saw above. Important for Luther was that eating and drinking of bread and wine, union with Christ and all the Saints took place. As against the other reformers he maintained the “Real Presence of body and blood of Christ as it was a sign of Christ’s sacrificial death, it assures us of the forgiveness of sins.[35] He works out consubstantiation by saying that the sacrament is held by two rudiments- the promise of forgiveness and faith. In every promise of God, two essential factors are offered to us- the word and the sign- in order that we may grasp the Word to be the promise (testament) and the sign to be the sacrament. One of the major shifts Luther brings as against the Medieval Church is that Medieval Church understood Eucharist as individualistic, while Luther argues that the individual or egocentric gains are out of the purview of the Lord’s Supper because the basis as well as the fruit of the Eucharist is love.[36]

2.1.6) Two Kingdom-

The two-kingdom doctrine, which began with Martin Luther, was developed because of confusion in his day about the roles of church and state. Both the Catholic Church and the Anabaptist movement were confusing this distinction of church and state. In the Catholic church of Luther’s day, some theologians were insisting that the Roman church had temporal powers, while some political leaders were assuming ecclesiastical responsibilities. The separation between church and state was very blurred. In particular, Duke George of Saxony forbade the printing and reading of Luther’s works in his territory of ducal Saxony, and a few other German princes were taking the same line. This was a clear infringement on the rights of the church and the Christian believer. Meanwhile, some of the Anabaptists were trying to set up a temporal kingdom on earth, while others were completely rejecting the temporal government, teaching that the only legitimate government in the world was that of the church. It is in this context that Luther developed the two-kingdom doctrine.[37]

Luther’s understanding of the relationship between Church and state is usually stated as the doctrine of the two kingdoms. It does not mean the separation of Church and State as understood today. It is related to the Luther’s distinction of Law and Gospel. Luther says that God has established two kingdoms and both are God’s creation, standing under his rule. But one is under the Law, or “Civil” function- and the other is under the gospel. The civil order has been established by God to restrain the wicked and curb the most extreme consequences of their sin. Its ruler does not have to be a Christian as he governs from natural reason. But the believers belong to a different kingdom. It is the kingdom of the gospel where one is no more subject to the law. .In this Kingdom, the Civil rulers have no authority, just as believers have no authority in the civil rule. Believer is at once justified but still a sinner. And therefore as sinner subject to the civil rule.[38] So these were not water tight compartments and he followed the method of unity of the opposites. Therefore Christian lives in two kingdoms simultaneously.[39] Luther’s theology of two kingdoms was informed by biblical principles. The New Testament makes a distinction between spiritual and temporal authorities without dichotomizing them, because ultimately God is in control of both the realms (John 19: 10-11). But scripture demands absolute loyalty to God when Christians are in a compelling situation to make a choice between their loyalty to Spiritual and Civil Authorities. Christians must be ultimately loyal to God over civil authorities which is a direct inference from Matthew 10: 28. But God is in control of both realms. The temporal authority and the spiritual authority are preserved in a dialectic tension without letting them to be dichotomized or homogenized. The Church and the State are the two realms of God’s activity for the benefit of God’s people. This distinction emerged with a definite purpose of Challenging and resisting the corruption of the Church, which had assumed political power and used the same for selfish ends. It helped him challenge the authority of Pope. In that logic, indulgences was to be condemned as forgiveness was divine grace and could not be traded. This doctrine helped him add strength to his critique of the ecclesiastical structure, which had given rise to manifestly concrete system of exploitation.[40]

• Conclusion:

The analysis of the theology of Martin Luther was a very interesting exercise. My major focus was his debate with the Scholastic Theology and how he broke the strangle hold of Aristotelian Metaphysics on the ensuing Theology and added fluidity to it. The way he treated Scripture made something impossible in any other faiths. It made Bible come under scrutiny which led to Historical Critical Method which had major impact on 20^th Century Theology. The Shift from the static understanding of God to Dynamic understanding in accordance to the Will, helped the category of History and God’s intervention in history something to grapple with which had tremendous impact on the 20^th Century Theology, especially Liberation Theology. The Theology of the Cross helped in the critique of the status quo which was impossible with the epistemology of Scholastic or Medieval Theology. The transformation of structures became vital and it had great impact on the ensuing development of theology. Ecclesiology of Luther had in it the potent power for the quest for equality which was largely denied in the Scholastic Scheme of hierarchy. This quest for equality snowballed in the development of ethics of equality and search for Church as an inclusive community which was the undercurrent theme of many 20^th Century Theologies. The theory of Two Kingdoms which was entirely different as Luther envisaged, also became instrumental in the formation of separation of Church and State leading to the realm of Secularism and Tolerance in the context of Thirty Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia. This study helped in realizing the far reaching breakthrough that Luther made which he too did not envisage. His Theology was an Epoch that gave the lens for the epoch of Enlightenment, followed by Liberalism and many other trends in Theology. The fluid nature of Luther’s Theology makes it relevant in every context. The methodology of ‘Unity of Opposites’ gave a new methodology for the theological landscape which was formerly caught up in the duality of either/or. The dialectical methods made it more relevant to the contradictions existent in reality. The Theology of Luther helps us realize how important Theology is in influencing Society and course of History.

Bibliography

Bayer, Oswald. Martin Luther’s Theology. Michigan: William B Eerdmann’s Publishing Company, 2003.

Daniel, Daniel P. “Luther on the Church”. The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Gonzalez, Justo L.  History of Christian Thought: Volume III. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1975.

Kramm, ^.H.H. The Theology of Martin Luther. London: James Clarke and Co. Ltd., 1947.

Lohse, Bernhard. Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development. Fortress Press Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.

McGrath, Alister. Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough. West Sussex: Wiley: Blackwell, 2011.

Nurnberger, ^.Klaus. Martin Luther’s Message For Us Today; Perspective from the South.  Pietermatizburg: Cluster Publications, 2005

Paulson Steven . “Luther’s Doctrine of God”. The Oxford handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology. Edited by Robert Kold, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Saarinen, ^.Risto. “Justification by Faith: The View of the Mannermaa School”. The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology. Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Sahayadhas, R. Hindu Nationalism and the Indian Church: Towards an Ecclesiology in Conversation With Martin Luther. New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2013.

Schwarz, Hans. True Faith In The True God: An Introduction to Luther’s Life and Thoughts. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996.

Tillich, Paul. History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins To Existentialism. New York: Simon and Schutser, 1967.

Journals

Ebeling, Gerhard “Luther’s Understanding of Reality”.Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, 2013

^.Kolb, Robert. “Theology of Glory, Theology of the Cross.  Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, 2013

Webliography

Palmer, Timothy P. Two-Kingdom Doctrine: A Comparative Study of Martin Luther and Abraham Kuyper, in Pro-Rege, Volume 37, No.3 http://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1329&context=pro_rege

Duffy, Benedict Joseph. in “Lutheran Ecclesiology”, Dominicana Journal, Volume 50. No.3.https://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/old-journalarchive/vol50/no3/dominicanav50n3lutheranecclesiology.pdf

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[1] Hans Schwarz, True Faith In The True God: An Introduction to Luther’s Life and Thoughts(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996), 8-9

[2] Alister McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough, (West Sussex: Wiley: Blackwell, 2011), 9-10

[3] Klaus Nurnberger, Martin Luther’s Message For Us Today; Perspective from the South, (Pietermatizburg:: Cluster Publications, 2005), 2-3

[4] Steven Paulson “Luther’s Doctrine of God” in “The Oxford handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology” Edited by Robert Kold, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 187-188.

[5] Hans Schwarz, True Faith in The True God: An Introduction to Luther’s Life and Thought, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1996), 60-61

[6] H.H. Kramm, The Theology of Martin Luther, (London: James Clarke and Co. Ltd., 1947), 44-46

[7] Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology, (Michigan: William B Eerdmann’s Publishing Company

[8] http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.in/2013/04/how-aristotelianism-problematizes.html accessed on 19th August 2017

[9]  Gerhard Ebeling, “Luther’s Understanding of Reality”, Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, 2013, 63-66

[10] R. Sahayadhas, Hindu Nationalism and the Indian Church: Towards an Ecclesiology in Conversation With Martin Luther, (New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2013), 186.

[11] Risto Saarinen, “Justification by Faith: The View of the Mannermaa School” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014),254-255

[12] Mark Mattes, “Luther on Justification as Forensic and Effective”, in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 268-269.

[13] Sahayadhas., Op.Cit., 188-190

[14] Mark Mattes, Op.Cit., 270-271

[15] Justo L. Gonzalez, History of Christian Though: Volume III, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1975), 35

[16] ibid

[17] Robert Kolb, Theology of Glory, Theology of the Cross, Lutheran Quaterly, pages 445-447

[18] Alister McGrath, Op.cit., 202-204

[19] Kolb., Op.cit., 447

[20] Daniel P. Daniel, “Luther on the Church” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 334-335.

[21] Sahayadhas, Op.cit., 190-191.

[22] Benedict Joseph Duffy, in “Lutheran Ecclesiology”, Dominicana Journal, Volume 50. No.3.https://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/old-journalarchive/vol50/no3/dominicanav50n3lutheranecclesiology.pdf accessed on 21st August 2017

[23] Paul Tillich, History Of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins To Existentialism (New York: Simon and Schutser, 1967), 253

[24]Benedict, Op.Cit.,  https://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/old-journalarchive/vol50/no3/dominicanav50n3lutheranecclesiology.pdf accessed on 21st August 2017

[25] Kramm, Op,cit., 68-69.

[26] Oswald Bayer, Op.Cit. 257-258

[27] https://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/old-journalarchive/vol50/no3/dominicanav50n3lutheranecclesiology.pdf accessed on 22nd August 2017

[28]   Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development (Fortress Press Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 290.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Kramm, Op.cit., 56

[31] Hans Schwarz, Op.Cit., 119.

[32] Sahayadhas, opcit, 210-211.

[33] Ibid., 212.

[34] Kramm, Op.Cit., 58-59

[35] Schwarz., Op.Cit., 120-121

[36] Sahayadhas., Op.Cit., 213-216

[37] Timothy P Palmer, Two-Kingdom Doctrine: A Comparative Study of Martin Luther and Abraham Kuyper, in Pro Rege, in Volume 37, No.3 http://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1329&context=pro_rege accessed on 1^st September 2017

[38] Gonzalez., Op.Cit., 60-61

[39] Sahayadhas., Op.Cit., 224-225

[40] Ibid., 227-229

Bartimaeus? What is the Story?

From the Wayside to the Way of the Cross

Text : Mark 10: 46-52

It won’t be wrong to say that I have been preparing this sermon for 11 years. Let me explain. In November2010, when I was a BD final year student, I saw a book with my cousin Mathews George called the “Holy Ground.” I borrowed it from him and read in the Chapel. When I read it, I just could not contain my excitement. It was so wonderful. But I never got a chance to implement. Everytime I got the Text of Bartimaeus, I would always remember the insight, but was never confident to use in a sermon. There is a Book of Walter Brueggemann  which is “Text that linger and Words That Explode.” That is the feeling. The Text has lingered in me and will explode. So I hope I will be able to communicate the excitement that I first experienced 11 years ago. 

Recently on my whatsapp status I had put a very seemingly good post about the reasons to be polite to Waiters. There was a troll graph before that says “They are human beings therefore 50, and they can spit in your food and therefore 50 percent. So this post had a full graph as a response painted in blue with full circle graph saying I am polite to waiters because they are humans and not your servants. I put this and many liked the message. But two of my friends asked “Is it fine to be rude to your servants? I was dumbfounded. How I did not see that. I was exposed to my blindspot covered in my privilege. We all have a blindspot and we are blind metaphorically in many ways. Seeing is not just physical. There are many things that make us blind. Like our privilege, our bias, our prejudice and hatred.

Let us now turn to the text of Mark 10: 46-52 where we see a Blind Man. Let me title the sermon as “From the wayside to the Way of the Cross.” This is the second time in Mark that Jesus heals a blind man. Both healings come at pivotal points in the narrative. The first occurs at the midpoint of the gospel, just before the critical incident at Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”, and then reveals his messianic identity. So the first healing acts as a bridge between the two halves of the gospel. Mark is not a careless writer. He does everything for a reason. “Pay attention!” he is saying.

Which brings us to today’s text, the Bartimaeus incident, the second healing of a blind man – and the last healing miracle in the gospel. Not at Bethsaida – via Caesarea Philippi Jesus has moved on toward Jerusalem, and now he is at Jericho, a suburb fifteens miles from the capital. But this healing too happens at a pivotal point in the narrative: it’s the last event before the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday. Again, Mark is saying, “Pay attention!” Indeed, pay particular attention: the blind man has a name, and Mark rarely tells us the names of the characters in his gospel. And the name Bartimaeus. [1]How is it that no other one has name? This one has name? Is there something more deep? Many say that Timaeus means unclean, which is a strange conjecture. So what is the story?

In a Colonized Palestine, there was Roman Administration and Greek culture also filled with Greek Cosmology. Cosmology means the inquiry about the social and personal sense of an ordered world which is an orientation that rules the public space and discourses which determines who is accepted and who is not, who is privileged and who is not.[2] Plato’s Timaeus is very influential in the discourse that had deep impact on the public spaces. Plato uses the character Timaeus who will talk about origins and it is divided into two halves. The First part considers the great , perfect pattern of all things (Plato’s ideas) and demiurge a lesser God translating these patterns into generated and visible.  In imitation of the great sphere, the human head was made, “being the most divine of us and the lord of all that is in us.”[3] And the rest of the body is the servant to the head. Therefore sense are important and the chief of the senses is the eyes or sight. The second part of Timaeus is more philosophical which talks about human senses.

So just at the juncture of two parts there is a speech that praises sight or seeing. “The sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the starts and the sun and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would have never been uttered. …. God invented sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply course to our own inetelligence….”[4]

So everything depends on sight. Sight is praised as the basis of philosophy. Timaues says “Do not wail in vain about the ordinary man who does not have sight as it is in vain as the ordinary Greek man who is blind is incapable to follow the discourses of the sky. There s statement that says “There is no use even if the blind man wails. It is in vain.” So this cosmology has place for the able, the male and the privileged upper class. Those who do not fit, do not matter and are sidelined.  So why ramble on with the Markan text here?

Timaeus is introduced in Mark at an important juncture of Galillee and Jerusalem, in Jericho, between ministry narratives and passion story. He is the man with name. His name is hybrid with Aramaic and Greek mixture. So Bar is armaaic and Timaeus is Greek. So this is turning the head where Timaeus glorifies sight, the son of Timaeus is presented as blind. , lamenting . Lathrop says presentation of Mark could be a mimesis and reversal of Plato and an alternative cosmology that decenters the privileged is being constructed through broken myths and broken rituals.. This reversal is stark as it follows Jesus telling James and John in the preceding periscope about sharing his cup and baptism and exhortation not to be like gentiles in leadership. The Leadership propunded in Timaeus is abour creating domination by treating others as inferior.[5]

Mark is a counter Cosmology. If Timaeus is interested in Heaven, Mark too is interested in Heaven, Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.” (Mark 1: 10) There is hole in the Heaven and Son of David in this scene amongst us, sharing our death, becoming our life.

1. Dangerous Wailing that creates a Hole in the Heavens: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” (Mark 10: 47). The people around were cold and did not care for a blind beggar. He was suppressed as he was disturbing the normalcy of a public domain, and protocol to adhere. But he refuses to be silent and cries loudly.  Son of Timaeus is shouting out to the  Son of David. First time the messianic lineage is portrayed here in Mark. But was He only a Son of David? We will hold on to that.  Apart from the Lord’s prayer, the oldest words of a prayer we can trace back to the time of Jesus are Bartimaeus’s (and one or two others in the gospels) – ‘have mercy’. In the Greek ‘eleison’. The Greek words were never translated into the Latin and Syriac liturgy as  ‘Kyrie eleison’, ‘Christe, eleison’.[6] A longer form of Bartimaeus’ prayer had the title of Jesus slightly expanded and some extra words added from the mouth of the tax collector in one of Jesus’s stories was taken into the desert by the Desert Fathers of the 3rd century and became what is known as the Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’[7] Church in repeating the Bartimaeus prayer, is crying out a dangerous prayer against the Timaeus of our times that glorify the privileged and the perfect world of spectacles.
2. Giving up the Cloak: When he refused to be silenced, his wailing was heard by Jesus. He was asked to come where he threw the Cloak, which is an important reference conventionally used to understand security. It is seen as a cloak that held his worldview and taking of that cloak, he comes to Jesus. He is throwing and  forsaking labels ascribed and stamped on him by the society through the world view of Timaeus which privileges the able bodied and the male. This is Jesus. Heaven on Earth. There is hole in the heaven, and heaven invades the earth, “On Earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus asks “ what do you want me to do for you?” (vs 51) He asked the same question in Mark10: 36 to James and John who want seats of position to sit on the left and right. Bartimaeus is contrasted to the Rich man who held on to his possosion and the disciples who cried for position, a craving for the world promoted by Timaeus. But Bartimaeus, asks Jesus that he wants to see. This taking off the cloak and coming to Jesus has early Christian baptismal overtones.
3. A Seeing that leads to Walking on the Way. Bartimaeus can see and Jesus tells him to go. But vs 52 says “ He followed Jesus along the road. Here Bartimaeus following Jesus shows his participation in the passion narrative, the road of the Cross and discipleship. Where did Bartimeus disappear after that? Since it is said, he came along the Road? Did he go home?

Did he lose his way? After Jesus was arrested there is a curious young man in Mark 14: 51-52 “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, ⁵² he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.” After Resurrection we see a young man in Mark 16: 5-7 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

K Hanhart says that the young man could be Mark’s “Son of Timeus” He has been presented as fully stripped as seen in his forsaking of the cloak and clothed in the manner of ancient baptism. . The second stripping where he is stripped naked shows that he is ready to risk as a disciple, to be naked while the disciples were hiding or were at a distance. He participates in the way of the cross and finally he the man who is in the white robes, clothed in resurrection life, where he is “Seeing by beholding Jesus when no one else can see, a seeing where Jesus has not returned to the heavens, but is among us, in the Galillee, going ahead of us, calling us to a seeing, to find Jesus in Galilee, he is found under the form of disorder, loss and brokenness, and inviting us to walk on the dangerous road.[8]

 Is it not interesting Peter when asked Who Jesus is “Says “You are the Christ” and gives the right answer but errs in faith when he hears about the passion and suffering. Bartimaeus Calls Jesus “Son of David,” which is not his ultimate identity, got his answer wrong, but his action right. The one who could not see, who was suppressed by the people, is showing the way for people to see. “Wisdom is not found in “seeing” the perfect world.

Wisdom is the  foolishness to “See” the Crucified Jesus and to be a co-traveller with the Risen Christ”

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[1] https://www.faith-theology.com/2015/11/the-bartimaeus-incident.html

[2] Gordon Lathrop, “Holy Ground: A  Liturgical Cosmology”, Mineappolis: Fortress Press, 2009, 30

[3] Timaeus 44d Jowett translation in Hamilton and Cairns, Plato, 1173

[4] Timaeus 44d Jowett…1174

[5] Gordon Lathrop, “Holy Ground:…. 32.

[6] Jeffrey John, Meaning in the Miracle (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2001), 79.

[7] https://www.standrews-chesterton.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Bartimaeus.pdf

[8] K. Hanhart, The Open Tomb, A New Approach: Mark’s Passover Haggadah (Collegeville, Minessota: Liturgical Press, 1995), 125-126.

P.S. Sermon Preached at Dharma Jyothi Chapel on 13th March 2021

“It is Finished? What is Finished?

I wish to address the most enigmatic statement on the Cross that Jesus uttered “It is Finished.”(John 19: 30). What is finished? Many times we have simply quoted this in a conversation implying “A task is over,” or a project is complete. It is important to see this in the Gospel of John which has a different understanding of human being (anthropology). Even the Cross is not seen as a satisfaction of blood done to save us. The death on the Cross is seen as an act of love. “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10: 17-18)

We normally wish to conjure the great pain that Jesus went through like the movie by Mel Gibson The Passion of Christ. But the gory details of the death on the Cross is not the focus of the 4 Gospels. But the movie focusing on “The gory pain inflicted on Jesus, elicits so much guilt in us, that we should be transformed.” If it was so, the writers of the Gospel would have focused on such details. But the death of Christ is important. Death on the Cross and the Resurrection brings a new life.

One of the most striking statements regarding what it is to be human, and certainly the most challenging, was penned by Ignatius of Antioch while being taken from Syria to Rome to be martyred there early in the second century. On route he wrote a letter to the Christians at Rome imploring them not to impede his martyrdom, telling them: ‘Birth pangs are upon me. Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die. … Allow me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I will be a human being—allow me to follow the example of the passion of my God’ (Letter to the Romans, 6). He is not yet born, not yet living, not yet human! Only through his martyrdom, he holds, will he be born into life as a human being.

Patristics scholar John Behr says that “John, in the very first chapter of his Gospel has Philip telling Nathanael, ‘we have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote’, followed by a string of titles—Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel—only to have Christ promise something more: ‘You will see the heavens opened and the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (John 1:45-51).

This apocalyptic vision is finally granted when Christ is on the cross. In the Gospel according to John, Christ’s final words on the cross were ‘it is finished’ (19:30), meaning not that his life has come to an end, but rather that the work of God is completed and perfected. What is brought to perfection in this way is indicated, unwittingly, by Pilate a few verses earlier, ‘Behold the human being’ (John 19:5)

  It’s the word “tetelestai”. 

Let us look at some parallels between Genesis and the Gospel of John.

 John starts out with the words, “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God…” (John 1:1) which of course takes us back to the very beginning of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1.1).

            And the first thing that appeared in the world that God created was, of course, light.  “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3).  And John also talks about light in the first few verses.  He says, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” (John 1:9).

            Genesis goes on to talk about God creating life – plant life, and then birds and fish, and then all the animals.  “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures.” (Genesis 1:24).  And the gospel of John is just filled with the life that Jesus brings.  The word “life” appears 43 times in the gospel of John.  For example, in John 6:33, “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

            But, while the first few chapters of Genesis are focused on telling us about the creation of the world, John is more interested in telling us about the re-creation of the world.  Or, to put it another way, John is telling us about how God is re-creating things to be the way he meant for them to be to begin with.

            And so, in order to restore that relationship, Jesus came into this world.  John 1:14 tells us that “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”The living Word who was with God, and who is God, became a human. The author of creation and life came to live among us.  And that was Jesus.  He came to rescue us, to redeem us, to reconcile us, and to restore God’s creation to what he intended for it to be.  Jesus came so that he could make it very good again.

 But, in this re-creation story, Jesus is actually playing two parts.  Because he is not only God, the one doing the creating; he’s also man.  And so, in this new creation story, Jesus plays both roles.  He is the God who has finished his re-creation.  But he is also the man.

            Look back to John chapter 19.  Pilate had Jesus beaten, after the soldiers mocked Jesus and hailed him as king of the Jews, Pilate presented Jesus to the crowd.  And then, Pilate said, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5).

            The Greek word that Pilate used there is anthropos.  What is significant about that word is that it doesn’t just mean “man” as in, “Here is a male person.”  It means “human being.”  Pilate was saying, “Behold the human being.”  Which is one of the last things that happened before Jesus said, “It is finished.”

            It’s also one of the last things that happened in Genesis before God said, “It is finished.”  When God created human beings in Genesis 1, the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint)  used the exact same word that Pilate used to describe Jesus:

            “Then God said, ‘Let us make man [anthropos] in our image, according to our likeness’… God created man [anthropos] in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27)

            So, just as God created man on the sixth day as the culmination of his creation, Pilate presents Jesus to the Jews as “the man”, the new Adam if you will.  It reminds us of what Paul described in I Corinthians 15, “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam [Jesus] became a life-giving spirit.” (I Corinthians 15:45)

            And in Genesis, after the creation was finished, what did God do with the first Adam?  He put him in the garden.  The garden of Eden.  “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (Genesis 2:7).

            After Jesus said, “It is finished”, where was he placed?  The apostle John is the only gospel writer to tell us this, but it seems to be important to him, because he mentions it several times.  “Now in the place where [Jesus] was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.” (John 19:41).

            How fitting it is that Jesus was placed in a garden just like Adam and Eve were placed in a garden.  And then, after Jesus was raised from the dead, John tells us about a conversation that Jesus had with Mary Magdalene where she mistook Jesus as the gardener.

So, what’s the point? The point is this – I think John wanted us to see that the Cross, as it is finished, “The process of the birth of a new human being, is complete.” Jesus on the Cross says the act of Creation is now complete which was fostered by Jesus saying “Not my will, but yours be done.” (Matt 26: 39)            

            Which is why Paul is able to say in 2 Corinthians 5, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5.17)

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he was to “Born from Above”, the image is the birth Jesus gives us through his Cross. It is Finished.

This needs to grow in us. This new possibility of Jesus the Christ revealed needs to be born and needs to grow in us. 

This is what Paul says in Galatians “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” (Galatians 4: 19)

Like a mother, Jesus births us to a new possibility of becoming a human being and also waits to be born in us. It is finished.

Prayer: God we thank you for your love that you sent your Son Jesus the Christ who birthed us on the Cross and who waits to be born in us through the Holy Spirit. Amen

The Sermon is adapted from John Behr’s Book “The Gospel of John” and some of his articles and YouTube podcasts.

Sermon Preached at Dharma Jyothi Vidya Peeth Chapel for Good Friday on 2nd April 2021

Ronaldo vs Messi?So What?

1 Corinthians 3: 21- 4:7

So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours,  and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.  Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.

Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other.  For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?

 

Message

The social media across twitter, Facebook, whatsapp was abuzz with the debate of “Messi Vs Ronaldo”. Let me clarify that I am a Messi maniac. When I am truly low, I turn to youtube to see the videos of his best compilations of his goals. I just can’t get enough of it. 2010 when Germany literally humiliated Argentina in the World Cup quarter finals, I did not sleep that night. In 2014, I was sure the day of redemption is very bear as it was Argentina vs Germany in the finals and I would be alive to see Messi lift the coveted trophy. I was so confident about the victory that I decided to do a screening for all interested to come and see the match at the parsonage (place where a priest lives). But again I faced humiliation as Argentina lost. As a Barcelona fan, supporting Messi was awesome but not so with Argentina. But we all had one question that settled all equations “What has Ronaldo done for Portugal? How many World Cups or Euro has he won?” Things in the recent times got ‘messier’ when Argentina lost the Copa America 2016 to Chile which broke all the Messi fans’ hearts when in a fit of emotions the wizard of football declared his decision to retire from playing for Argentina. I honestly was shattered. My wife now has become used to such madness of mine and has made her peace with it. To make things worse, the jail term for tax evasion did nothing good for Messi or his fans. But we all had one solace. “What great did Ronaldo do for Portugal?” That too was snatched away from us on 10^th July 2016 when Portugal won the Euro 2016 and the inspiration of Ronaldo was instrumental for this victory, at least I cannot deny. Now I am just exploring this human phenomenon of just not being a fan, but also about denigrating the rival of the idol we admire. As a Rafa fan, I could not stand Federer. Because I loved Rahul Dravid, I neither liked Sachin nor Ganguly. Please bear with my rant on basis of the passage above.

During the times of Paul, is Appollos better or is it Peter or is it Paul, was a debate in the Market place. Therefore these apostles had their own fan clubs. If you are a follower of Appollos, you would detest Paul and Cephas (Peter). This rivalry was actually doing no good to the church and Paul addresses it in this passage. He exhorts them not to boast in human leaders. Vs 6 is very significant.  Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other.” Puffed up? Some translation says pride one over other. Normal word for pride in Greek should be hubris. But the word that Paul uses here is physioo.   It is an unusual word. Paul uses it here and another five times in this particular book and once in Colossians  You will not find it anywhere else in the Bible as it is used only by Paul.  By using this particular word, Paul is trying to teach these Corinthians something about the human ego. This word used here for pride literally means to be overinflated, swollen, distended beyond its proper size. It brings to mind the image of a balloon. There is a picture here. Imagine going to a shop. You ask for Balloons. You get a packet. You take one out of it. What is the size of the Balloon? Small and the texture of the balloon is opaque. Now blow air into it. It takes a larger size. It becomes transparent. It is full of air. Paul says that the pride we have in our lives is like the empty hot air in the balloon. So when we live a life of a fan to its extreme, we are living a borrowed life. We are not happy with the original size of the balloon. So we attach ourselves to heroes and derive self worth and self esteem. But this is still emptiness. It does not do any good. It gives an illusion that you are something with all the air. It is just that your ego is puffed up. An admirer of Messi will also admire the dedication of Ronaldo. If it becomes Messi Vs Ronaldo, it is an infantile ego game. Attaching ourselves to any human leader beyond a point is also similar. Why do you think that people troll each other so mercilessly over P.M. Narendra Modi. Some venerate him and some hate him. People derive their identity by associating with such human figures and their heroics. Paul reminds, it is like hot air inside the balloon. Now keep the balloon in your imagination. You have a filled balloon in your hand. Take a candle. Light the candle. Bring the balloon to the candle and there you go. The balloon will burst. Anybody knows that.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 3: 21 is trying to say, fill yourself with God in Christ. Keep the Balloon image intact. Pick another empty balloon. Do not fill air. Instead fill water into it. It is in your hand. Now take the candle next to you. Bring that balloon near the candle. Bring the water balloon even closer. It will burst, isn’t it? For a science ignorant like me, I was surprised when the balloon did not burst. It survives the heat. With God being the centre of our lives, we are like the water balloons, no matter how terrible the situation, we will not burst.

Paul gives us a timely reminder that humans and their heroics will fascinate us. We will enjoy it and venerate it. But in the end, it is just a borrowed life. Let us not be so fragile, so as to derive identity from such human icons. It is all hot air. Let the Holy Spirit fill you to live an authentic life where you take risks to be in the heat of the world and are driven to action to make this world a better place.

In the meanwhile enjoy the game. I have started to read up on Ronaldo and his inspirational rise. Similarly it teaches me, envy too is a game of pitching ourselves with our perceived competitor. In this, we trust that we deserve more than our competitor. We fill ourselves with hot air of pride to be burst by the circumstances of life. Let the Holy Spirit fill us to trust God and He will adequately fill us.

*If this is not enough, let me introduce you to Mummy Logic

She Says “They play, they earn, they win, they lose, they train, they live, why are you losing your sleep. Do what you can with your life.

Enough said. 

 

Mera Parmeshwar Chor Hai

Luke 23:39-43

 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him,saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Message

“Hello Rev Merin, how are you?” This was a phone call from an unknown number and whose voice I just could not manage to place. So I tried to act as if I know who this is. “I am fine. How are you?” I have highlighted the ‘How are you’ because I was just hoping the person across would reveal who it is and end the game of “Guess who?” But the person continued “So you remember who I am?” I was wondering if it was Malayalam Superstar Suresh Gopi as his favourite one liner is “Orme undo ee mukham? ” (Do you remember this face). Jokes apart this was not funny at all. “You do not remember right? You have forgotten us.” And this person disconnected the call. I was dumb founded. How irrational this person was? Why was he so offended? What is there to be so offended?

To be remembered is the basic need of all human beings. Our life is a consistent struggle to be remembered. When we are remembered it means we matter, we belong, we exist. There is life, presence and relationship in being remembered. Being remembered is to affirm of our wholeness. Remember is Re-membering. When you remember a person you say, you are a member of my life, you are connected to me, you are part of my story. And if you do not remember, the exact opposite is what happens. The person feels dis-membered, disconnected from your life and concludes that they are no more part of our stories and not members of our lives. That really hurts, there is an isolation that other person feels in being dis-membered.

The scene at Calvary with Jesus hanging on the cross with 2 thieves on both of his side has caught my imagination. Leonard Sweet at Maramon Convention said that the picture of Calvary is not that Jesus is alone on the cross. The scene at Calvary is the picture of 3 Crosses. Let us hear the prayer of one of the Thieves “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23: 42) The thief wants to be remembered. That is his prayer.

We have to now connect some dots. In Luke chapter 22 we see Jesus having Passover with his disciples.  And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22: 19) What was Jesus saying here? He was saying, I am giving you my body by being broken for you. Jesus is asking his disciples to “Do this in remembrance of me”. Jesus wants to be Re-membered in the story and lives of the disciples. Jesus wants to be part of our stories and wants us to be part of his body. So the Holy Communion is allowing Jesus to be re-membered in our lives, to invade our lives. Are you ready to re-member Jesus in your lives?

Is this always possible?  After the Passover meal Jesus is arrested and let us see what one of his disciples does.  Now when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. ⁵⁶And a certain servant girl, seeing him as he sat by the fire, looked intently at him and said, “This man was also with Him.”But he denied Him, saying, “Woman, I do not know Him.”And after a little while another saw him and said, “You also are of them.”But Peter said, “Man, I am not!”Then after about an hour had passed, another confidently affirmed, saying, “Surely this fellow also was with Him, for he is a Galilean.”But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are saying!” (Luke 22: 55-60).

Peter is denying him? So what? Peter is dis-membering Jesus from his life by saying “I am not with him, I am not a member of his group.” Out of fear, Peter wants to forget that he is a member of Jesus’ group, a follower. Peter does not want to be part of Jesus’ body as he knows He is headed toward the Cross. We too wish to forget that we are members of Jesus’ body. It is dangerous. It is inconvenient. It is boring and we do not want Jesus to be part of our lives. We want Jesus to leave us alone in some aspects of our lives. We too deny like Peter.

And it is here that we see the thief at the Cross who has a life broken in regret, in pain, in contradictions, revenge, sin and remorse. He is a dis-membered person. He asks Jesus to Re-member him. Jesus promises him “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23: 43). Jesus says “You will be ‘with me’ (joining the dots) in Paradise. Jesus keeps saying to us that we who are alienated from ourselves and our Creator, Jesus through the Cross has re-membered us into the eternal story of God. It is such a beautiful thing that Jesus says, that we will never be forgotten. Not because of who we are. We will be remembered, because of “Whose we are”. That is Paradise.  My dear friends Jesus promises to Remember you. You are important to him. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! (Isaiah 49: 15)

At an early age Sam lost his father due to an unfortunate circumstance. There were some people responsible for it. He grew up with hatred and a sense of revenge. But Sam was blessed with a devout mother who had faith in God and abandoned herself and her 4 children in the hands of God. She taught Sam the importance of faith and worship. When Sam became a youth the hatred deepened surrounding the death of his father. The sense of revenge got louder. He was entrapped in the cage of regret, hatred and revenge. It affected his personality. He attended the worship and took part in the Holy Communion but he could never let go of his deep seated wounds. The only comfort was the love and prayer of his mother. Rev K.O. Philipose who was the Vicar of his church introduced him to the love and grace of Lord Jesus through his pastoral care. One day when he took part in the Holy Communion, Sam was moved by the words of Liturgy said by the priest before he administered the Holy Body and Blood. “The Holy Body and Holy Blood  of our Lord Jesus Christ, broken and shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, is given to you for the health of body and soul.” When he received the body and blood of Christ he remembers being moved beyond words. This encounter led him to experience the Cross and his fragmented body of hate, revenge, anger and self pity was re-membered into the beautiful promise of Jesus. His hatred had forced him to forget the promise and offer of Jesus. But the Broken Body of Christ and Blood poured out  on Calvary saw his life being invaded by Jesus with his wonderful promise of being remembered.  It was this encounter that turned his life around where he let go and waited for God to catch him. It was this act of surrender that shaped his course of life. This story is the true story of my friend and mentor Rev Sam who is currently the Vicar of Kuwait Mar Thoma Church.

Leonard Sweet Says the story is of the Thief on the left, the thief on the right and the thief in the middle. What? Jesus also is a thief who robbed from us our shame, our guilt, our regrets and pain. He has robbed us from the world that easily forgets and dismembers us. Jesus is the Holy Thief who  re-members us. We are his Beloved and being remembered by him, we are eternally alive in Paradise.

Rev Merin Mathew

Bethel Mar Thoma Church

Kolar Road, Bhopal

Who Is Your ‘Onesimus’?

Who Is Your ‘Onesimus’?

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Philemon: 8-20.

For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty,  yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.  I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.  Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.  I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.  I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel;  but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever,  no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.  So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. ¹⁹ I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.  Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

 

Message-.

 

Let me quote a story illustrated by Stephen Covey in his book “Eighth Habit” which I have adapted to my convenience. “ In  a school a teacher declared to the Class 8 that the next day he would conduct a written quiz. The quiz would have a question paper with 20 questions. The students were all excited and surveyed encyclopedia, google, Wikipedia, etc. to do their best in the quiz. The day came. The teacher distributed the question papers. Their pen were in a ready, get, set, go… mode. The questions were tough but their preparations were great. Till the 19th question the sailing was smooth. But the 20th question was a stumbling block. Nobody knew the answer. One of the students stood up and asked “What kind of a question is this? Name the woman who helps in cleaning the premises of your school? Is that a question worthy of a quiz?” The teacher patiently replied. “Son, you know the name of the president of Belaruz. The name of the Fifa Player of the year comes to you as easy as breath, but the lady who has been cleaning the school premises seems invisible to you. When she walks around you don’t even acknowledge her. It’s a danger when we recognize and acknowledge people only on basis of labels and merits. We need to respect people as humans. Even if you have answered 19 questions, if u can’t answer the 20th one, my students you have failed the quiz of being good humans.” Let us ask who the invisible people in our lives are.

 

Now, how many reading this note has written postal letters? As some of my cousins were far away in Kerala and when there were no emails, facebook, Whatsapp,  to be in touch and when phone calls were strictly to be spoken for 3 minutes maximum, Inland letters were the only way to be in touch. My cousin Rev Mathews George was the best at writing letters and I was very lousy at replying it. During my seminary days, I used to wait eagerly for the letter of my mother who used to give all the details of our home and used to assure her prayers for my seminary studies. The personal touch of a postal letter cannot be recaptured. Of all the letters Paul has written, letter of Philemon is the most personal one in my reckoning.  Paul’s Letter to Philemon is a classic letter to a Christian who had a runaway slave. Philemon seems to be a very devout Christian, with lavish praises from Paul. But then the shift in the letter is very disturbing and intriguing. It seems Philemon had a slave who ran away from him. Running away from a master was a crime worthy of imprisonment. Paul himself was imprisoned for reasons not mentioned here. Prison seems to be the contact point of Paul and Onesimus. We can assume that this slave had brought Philemon huge loss in his act of running away. This is where the appeal of Paul to accept Onesimus as a brother and not a slave becomes very important.

Let us analyse Philemon. He was a very zealous Christian but his slave was beyond the ambit of the Gospel or communion. He needed a Paul to remind him about the dignity of a slave. It was not in the stratification but the communion of Jesus that makes us all brothers and sisters in fellowship. Philemon thought that the gospel was only for people in the church and the slave at home was away from it. Probably he even did not recognize the personhood of Onesimus. It is here that Paul reminds that Onesimus is a human worthy of being called a brother. We too are like Philemon. We need a Paul to remind us about the dignity of people around us. Let us look around and ask ourselves what are our attitudes towards our servants at home, peons at our work places, the auto rickshaw drivers, coolies et al, and we will find that our attitudes are abysmal, marred with suspicion and prejudice. It may have basis too. But Paul reminds us we have to rise above these prejudices and accept people and respect them as our brothers and sisters. We may answer that we do not mistreat them. That is true, we hardly ill-treat any of them. But the problem lies somewhere else. The problem is that these people have become invisible for us. We behave as if they do not exist. Ignoring the existence of the personhood of people is a sin comparable to no other.

The meaning of Onesimus is useful. But Philemon considered him useless. The idea of seeing people in the binary or category of useful and useless itself is demeaning. Onesimus has incurred heavy loss to Philemon and Onesimus sure was in no position to repay him. This part of the letter is the climax and the zenith in verses 18 and 19 If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. ¹⁹ I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.” Boooom. Did you hear that? This letter is just not about platitudes. Just not free advice. Paul is ready to vouch for Onesimus by saying all the debts Onesimus has incurred, Charge that to my account. Paul is saying, I stand for him, I take the guarantee. Charge that to my account. It sounds like a blackmail or arm-twisting tactic. But he is doing it for a brother he found in prison and who is no more a slave but a son of Christ. When we keep saying Jesus died for the debts of my sin, it is just platitudes as we do not understand the magnitude of the cost. Paul knows it and brings into action by being ready to pay a debt for someone who can never pay the debt. I do not know about you, I am deeply moved by the passion with which Paul ends the letter. If I may say, I see his eyes pop out when he is writing it with intensity. What a wonderful letter

 

There is a ragged lady who kept coming to our Church in Bhopal. After the service, I kept ignoring her and behaved as if she does not exist. But she kept persisting. I used to give her token amounts of Rs 5 and 10 just to shoo her off. But still she kept coming. One day I told her “Amma, baar baar math aaya karo.” She went away with a sad countenance. But she came again. The day she came, I was reading a book my Paul Miller who said, if we look at people how Jesus saw them, we would enter into their lives and stories. I thought of giving it a try. I called the lady that I kept calling ‘Bai’. I asked her what is her story. Her husband was an alcoholic and used to abuse her and he died in a road accident long back. She had a wonderful son who looked after her very well. She conducted his marriage with whatever resources she had. He had two adorable daughters. Life was very peaceful. Son used to work in a construction site and died in a freak accident. Her life came crashing down. Within a year the wife of her son ran away with another man, leaving the daughters with “Bai”. Her name is Geetha. She said “Beta, I do not want anything. These two granddaughters are the reason why I am alive. Their need to go to school is what keeps me working and also asking for help.” I felt overwhelmingly guilty at how I treated her. With the story of her life she was no more a nuisance but a human being with great resolve. And whenever we offer her money now for the education of her granddaughters, she showers us with a lot of blessings that we earnestly need. One day she came saying “Tomorrow is Makarsankranti, and I have to make Laddoos of Til for my bacchas.” I smiled at her and said, I will give but when you make, we also want some Laddoos for us.” I meant it as a joke. But she came next day with 6 laddoos. Soji and I were competing to hog it as the taste was awesome. Now she wants us to come to her juggi (hut) so that we can have lunch with her and her granddaughters. All she really asks is “Please pray for Priya and Swathi”

(Irony of the story is Geetha the real person in front of me, needed a “Paul Miller” -{Paul again} the author who I have never heard or seen, to knock some sense into my head to consider the lady with worth and dignity. This story is a testimony of the Persistence of Geetha and her triumph)

Rev Merin Mathew

Bethel Mar Thoma Church

Kolar Road, Bhopal

Nathaniel Factor: Aaaah Se Aaha Tak *(Are we Racists?)

John 1:45-51

Philip found Nathaniel and told him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” But Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true Israelite.There is no duplicity in him.” Nathaniel said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathaniel answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Message

We Indians have fought racism. We have fought it in the developed countries, in work places, universities and cities. We have also lost precious lives to this sickening malice of humanity. We have held dharnas and questioned this discrimination. Effectively all these dharnas portrayed us as people with unparalleled virtues who do not have a bone that discriminates. Something spectacular is always needed to shatter some well nurtured myths. In a shocking incident in Bangalore/Bengaluru, a 21 year Old Tanzanian Woman was attacked by 200-300 people where she was pulled out of her car, beaten and stripped and her car was torched. The reason was in an unrelated event, a Sudanese driver had a case of hit and run with a local woman and since the Sudanese man was elusive, the next most intelligent option is to hunt and find somebody similar and punish them. Wow. And we have tried to show it as a mob justice. Since then many African students have come out and expressed their horrifying experiences of racism that they encounter in the cities of India, just because of their skin colour. They have problems of finding accommodation, are subject to strange stares, abuses and taunts like “drug dealers and pimps.”But there have been many ‘patriotic Indians’ who have denied the accusation that we are racists. The fact of the matter is, we are racists and to accept it is the beginning of our healing process. Richard Rohr, taking clue from Carl Jung has explored the idea of Shadow Self where we like to project an idealized version of ourselves with all virtues and positive image. But we have our shadow selves where we like to hide the dark sides of ourselves which are part of us and keeps manifesting in our interactions no matter how much we try to hide it. Being racists is part of our collective conscience which we need to be aware and deal with.

In today’s passage we see Philip with a lot of excitement introducing the Messiah to his friend Nathaniel. But Nathaniel gives one of the most cynical replies recorded in the Bible where he says “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Wow. When we learn about Nazareth, it was an obscure town, populated mostly with manual laborers who didn’t have money, status, or power. So the assumption that a people from certain places because of their language, ethnicity, religion and caste are simply of no value, is only getting intensified. We have strong prejudices against people from Bihar and U.P. In my experience in the Northeast India, exposed me to the resentment people of Nagaland and Manipur have towards the people of so called “Mainland India” who discriminate against them in various walks of life. So some or the other way, we have a “Nathaniel Factor” in us that refuses to be hidden. The “all knowing” Jesus is aware of the prejudice that Nathaniel has harbored against him. But Jesus changes the equation in the encounter. In vs 47 we see Jesus saying “Here is a true Israelite, there is no duplicity in him.” This statement of Jesus opens up Nathaniel. The gaze of Jesus that penetrates through the shadow self of ours, reveals what we can truly become. Sometimes we are so filled with frustrations, complexes and hatred towards ourselves that we look out for the perceived inferior to find a scapegoat and hate her/him. But Jesus sees us. He knows who we are and he knows what we can become. Jesus’ opinion forms us. It reveals our shadow selves. He sees what our self is. That is the starting point. My Lord knows who I am. He loves me. That is the point of “Formation”.

Before the passage ends Jesus gives Nathaniel a promise. “You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him, “Amen, amen,[e] I say to you, you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (vs 50b, 51). Did he see anything as promised? The Gospel of John is known for using words like a painter. Now we come to Chapter 2 where we have the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11). Jesus and his disciples were invited to the feast. And as the story goes, the wine runs dry. We know the crux of the miracle is that Jesus tells the workers to fill water in the 6 Jars used for ceremonial cleansing. They filled it to the brim. It was taken to the steward who certifies the great quality of the wine. The Water was turned into wine. So what’s the story? Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him. Disciples believed him. Nathaniel was a disciple. Still not clear? Now if you see the question still lingers on “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” The answer is the miracle at the Wedding of Cana. Certainly a memorable event has occurred. But still what does it have to do with Nathaniel? “ Together were Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathaniel from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons,[a] and two others of his disciples.” (John 21:2) Boom. Nathaniel was from Cana. A person from a place of no good did a miracle in his own backyard in Cana. It is like the time when I was an expert at criticizing Sachin Tendulkar. I used to say “He has lost his touch. He cannot bat. He is past his prime.” And the next match he comes with a century. Baam. Slap in the face. As it was said “Tendulkar does not answer with his mouth. He lets the bat do the talking”. The miracle at Cana was a point of transformation for Nathaniel. Jesus made tasteless water to turn it into the most wonderful wine. Jesus who provides taste to our lives. A racist Nathaniel is transformed to a believing and life giving Nathaniel. With Jesus in our lives our bland existence with hidden prejudices and hatred is transformed to a life giving ministry and vocation for life.

Now when the transformation happens, we stop at that. But our faith is like an obscure language. It needs translation. What happened to Nathaniel? Do you know what happened to Peter? It is said he was crucified upside down. What happened to Thomas. It is said he came to India and was martyred at Mylapore. Is this in the Bible? No. But Church tradition preserves their memory and contributions. So what happened to Nathaniel? It is said after encountering the resurrected Christ, he set to North India with a scroll of Gospel of Matthew. He opened up the gospel proceedings in North India though this is not popularly known. It is said, Nathaniel reached out to people. He travelled to many places as a witness of the Gospel. He was persecuted and hunted down. And finally it is said he was crucified upside down in Albania. A man who was full of prejudice and bigotry goes from Formation-Transformation-Translation. The Great Lent is a time to deal with our Shadow selves. The hatred, the prejudices that we have is making us turn into beasts. We are connecting ourselves to the Grand Story of Salvation where through Jesus Christ, God calls us his beloved Daughter/Son. He forms us in his love and we get transformed in our encounter with him. Our transformation through the Holy Spirit enables us to translate our faith from abstract belief to concrete works.

As a priest, I have talked enough on formation and transformation. But I always struggle with the translation part. One day when I was just checking FB, I saw a status update by my friend Rev Noble Abraham who is the Director of Wardha Mission run by the Jerusalem Mar Thoma Yuvajan Sakhyam, New Delhi. Rev Noble is a dear friend and a fellow parishioner in Pune and a co-travelling brother in faith. Let me verbatim paste his status

“I was on a casual talk along with Johny Uncle, Prabhakar and Valmik (all part of wardha Mission). That’s when the topic of the plight of people staying on the pavements of Sevagram hospital came into the focus. Our words matched and found meaning when we all vouched why not we initiate at least one time meal for the needy. We left saying let’s pray over it.

Then after days I watched an interview of Azhar Maqsusi. He had initiated a feeding program in Hyderabad and is successfully feeding more that 150 people for that past 1382 days and still counting. And to everyone’s surprise including mine, my wife and me were invited to hyderabad early this month to lead a children’s camp. To cut it short, I met Azhar bhai myself and also participated in his work to know and understand how he worked out this initiative. Also, this reminded me of my Kottayam Seminary days when we used to assist the Navjeevan staff to distribute food at Kottayam Medical College. And here we are on the 26th day of January 2016 joining hands with many such as Azhar bhai, P U Thomas sir of Navjeevan and many whom we don’t know. But all I know is one that in the Gospel of Mathew 25:35a it says, “For I was hungry and you gave me food….” I praise God that he choose Wardha Jmys Mission for this movement. Do pray for us.”

Jerusalem Mar Thoma Yuvajana Sakhyam (JMYS) Mission, Wardha has initiated a feeding program called Arpandhara that undertakes to feed more than 100 people from the Sevagram Hospital.

This example is just one of the examples of translating our faith. We need to make a conscious decision to combat the shadow selves in our community and us and strive to be translating our faith into action to be co-participants in the Kingdom of God.

*If you are wondering, what is ‘Aah Se Aaha Tak’ well it is a tag line of MOOV Pain Relief which shows transformation from being in pain to being relieved, alive and kicking

Rev Merin Mathew

Bethel Mar Thoma Church,

Kolar Road, Bhopal

He taught me many things…

Merin Mathew, doing my Master of Social Work, 2nd year in the field of medical and psychiatry. My fieldwork is in Chaitanya Mental Health Centre, a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill patients. I was trying to learn and get acquainted with the work. i really did not know what is was doing n at the verge of disillusionment

I used to attend the Psychiatrist’s consultation, observe counselling and participate in the morning session of patients. Attending the morning session my attention was drawn towards a man who said the morning prayers with a lot of passion and involvement. He was a very pleasant looking man. His hair was jumbled, he had heavy stubble on his face, and it was accompanied by a wide smile. A short man, who could be called fat and had a slight hunch back. After the morning session he came to me and told me his name. I could very evidently say he was the first person who made me feel welcome at the agency.

After the first meeting we kept exchanging pleasantries. Those were the days when I was growing an ugly looking beard. He came and asked “Sir, why don’t you shave?” I used to smile and pass. His smile was something I got used to and I mechanically kept smiling at him. One day when I had finished my tea, this middle-aged man stopped me and asked me” Sir, do you know my name?” I was caught unaware. I wish I could tell him I don’t know. I remember him telling me, but I was not sure. I was feeling very sorry and with a lot of reluctance and a low voice that was hardly audible, I asked ”Are you Vivek?” After saying I imagined him saying on now, you don’t know me. I thought you would remember I smiled everyday thinking you know my name. But you don’t. All this I viewed in a split second of his reaction. He said ”You are absolutely right”. His smile became more radiant. And was that smile rewarding for me? Oh! Of the highest order. There are times when we surprise ourselves and this time I surprised myself. I gifted a smile to a person. Let me ask nothing more.

After this day I made a special effort to say hi to him. Asking his well-being.

On another field workday I went and attended the morning meeting. The prayer today lacked the passion and had a certain detachment. The person saying the prayer was same, the prayer was same, but the state of mind was different. The radiant smile was replaced by an unpleasant frown. The man who was most participatory in the session was most pre-occupied with his own thoughts. The Counsellor conducting the session also noticed the evident change. The Counsellor asked him what was bothering him, Vivek did not respond. Then he abruptly said ‘I do not believe in God’. The Counselor’s effort to motivate him was a failure. This deeply disturbed me and I decided to intervene. I called Mr. Vivek for counselling. The session started with a lot of reluctance and silence. Then I broke the silence asking ”Vivekji, how are you feeling?” He answered with a frown ”What is wrong with me, I am fine”. His defenses were in place and his message was clear, don’t intrude into my life. After a little silence he told me ‘I have lost my appetite for life’. After sometime he said ‘I want to die’.

The man who was so positive, so pleasant, was such a man of smiles, is suicidal. What went wrong? ”My life is meaningless. Nobody cares for me” . He had flight of ideas. He told me ”Sir you have double standards” . I was shocked when he said that, my natural reaction was ‘why?’ pleasant. ”Sir, you only say we should be clean, should be But look at yourself. You don’t shave, you look so unpleasant , if this is not double standards then what is it ?” I couldn’t help laughing but at the same time I was humbled. He taught me the importance of congruence in speech and action. Did I learn? I am doubtful. On this light note, we continued. He said that ” All my education has gone waste”. He had some traumatic memories of E.C.T. He spoke of his hatred for food. He had a lot of negativity in him that he could not channelise. So he kept silent looking at the ceiling as if looking for answer from the ceiling. Then I said ‘Vivekji, I understand”. He very skeptically answered ‘What you understand?”. This taught me how lightly we use words. Did I understand his emotions, his helplessness, his feelings, his fear? Hardly. Then I told him ”May be I don’t understand Vivekji, but you understand. I think you like to write, why, don’t you write your feelings?” He said ”You cant make it compulsory? ”I wont do anything that is compulsory”. I assured him that it is not compulsory. He said ”I will try, but I can’t promise”. The counseling ended. The outcome was uncertain. Did what I say make an effect? Did I make a difference? Time will tell. I tried. My intentions were earnest.

After this I spoke to his counsellor who briefed me about his illness. Vivek is a schizophrenic for last 20 years and his chance of recovery was very poor. The counsellor told me that he was very close to his mother and his mother is dead and Vivek does not know. This disturbed me even more. Knowing this, I went and spoke to him. but i could not tell him about his mother. Seeing me he said “I am very sad, n i dont want to live. Sir, but whatever you said, I will try”. I will try. Am I ready to try? I just spoke to him about his interests and he spoke in length about literature. He really looked different and spoke as an authority. I was so happy seeing his revived spirits. Sometimes we don’t need to try too much. Just listen. Thats all we got to do.

Next field work when I met him He smiled at me but it was not the same smile that I was used to. He came to me and said ”Good morning Sir, I am trying”. That’s all he said and went.

After sometime he spoke to me about Marathi literature, its high points, the importance of mother tongue and how its losing its importance. I was ignorant about it and listened to him like a child. I was impressed about his conviction. I wished I had atleast quarter of conviction that he had. What a pleasant site. After all this, he said ”Sir, my mother is dead”. I was shocked that he knew all this and spoke this way. I was speechless. ” I was told by the Doctor. I am sad but I dint cry. I loved her a lot. She understood me. I will come out of my feelings of worthlessness. I will try. I am going to write. I want to write. My mother wanted me to write. Sir, you want me to write. But I will write because I want to.” What a lesson to learn. “I will do it because I want to do it.” What a resiliency. In a matter of 3 days this man changed so much, He still had little negativity. But he was trying to come out. How important it is for us to keep trying.

Vivek was upset the next time when I visited him. He said” Sir, what bad words these patients speak. Language is so beautiful, why do they destroy it, with so much of filth?” He was disturbed.

After sometime he came and told me” Sir, I am not going to let these things affect me. I am going to write an article on ‘Film and Industry’ from a commerce perspective. I want to write”. After this he told something that moved me the most. He said ”There is a creation in all of us that compels us to rise above the destruction of our negativity”. I was dumb struck. How true from a man who was battling with his emotions. I was fortunate to learn this from him. I started getting a new perspective for my field work and my life.

We kept meeting and I kept learning. He wrote his article and showed it to me. It does not matter how it was. He conceived an idea and he did it. He was determined to do it. He kept saying ‘I will try’. He tried. That is the most important thing.

He kept telling me how he made himself happy. He spoke of his experiments with diet and how happy he was. He said he wanted to write short stories for children. He said” Telling the right story to the child prepares the child for the story called ‘Life.’ He said at times ”I feel bad but I have a lot of things to feel good about. I choose to be happy”. I felt ashamed of myself. I have so many things to be happy about but I choose to complain. Everything is about choices.

‘In this life we have more pain than pleasure. Pain is pleasurable’. This is what he said. It made so much of sense. Then he smilingly asked ‘Sir, hope I am not boring you?’ We both laughed together. ‘I am very happy talking to you. Because of you I started writing and made, myself happy. Thank you’. This is what he told me. He could tell me this so easily. He taught me so much but I could not tell him. Why? I still need to learn from him. My teacher.

Next day he again spoke to me about his experiments with diets. He told me ”Sir, it is a great feeling to be married. What a feeling when my child would call me ‘Papa’. Why dint I marry? But it’s OK. I am happy. I still can marry with a widow or someone. But chances are remote. I was in love with a girl in my eighth standard. She was very intelligent. She looked very cute in her frock. I respected her but she never knew about my feelings. Wish I could tell her. If I would tell her, I would be happy and may be I would not have had schizophrenia. But it’s OK. If I had a physical illness I would take treatment, so I took treatment during my productive years of my life. Its OK. It was for my good. Still nothing is lost. I can still do a lot of things. I am just 51. I have more to do”. What an attitude ? He told me ‘Sir, my eyes can be taken, my hands can be taken, but nobody can take away my attitude’. I was awestruck. Was I counselling or was I learning ?

I told him to write and he made himself worth writing about. I am still learning from a man who does not know he is teaching me? Sometimes God helps you to give without you realising how much you are about to get.

#This was written on 21st January 2005, as part of my report to my Institute Karve Institute of Social Service

Baptism Reloaded: Listening to God’s Original Love Song

Matthew 3: 13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Message:

Early Church pictured Jesus going down or dipping in the River Jordan, and as he comes out of the water the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove and the voice speaks from Heaven: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17).Reflecting on this, they soon began to make connections with the Creation story which involved Water and spirit. At the beginning of creation, Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over the watery chaos, Holy Spirit was hovering. There is watery chaos, there is wind of God’s spirit. Out of the watery chaos comes the world. And God says ‘This is good.’ This is how St Paul connected Baptism of Jesus to the Creation account and therefore gave the apt title to Christian life as New Creation. So the beginning of Christian life is a new beginning of God’s New Creative work. Just as Jesus came out of the water, receiving the the Spirit and hearing the voice of the Father, so for the newly baptized Christian the voice of God gives a new identity saying “This is my son/daughter, whom I love; with her/him I am well pleased.”

There is a tribe in Sierra Leone  called the Himba Tribe where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind.And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him.And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it. And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee,someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty, then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song. In this African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.
The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything to prove yourself or usurp what is not yours.

God is singing the original song at our Baptism where he says “You are my beloved son/daughter.” That is our identity and we should often be reminded of the original song.

What is the significance of Jesus’ Baptism. Jesus restores the creation to its purpose of ‘It is good’. When Jesus who restored humanity to the Original love song of God, entered into the river Jordan, symbolizing entry into the chaos of the human world. Jesus entered into our level, where things are broken, shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and risk, to give birth to a New Creation of humanity. So when we share in the baptism of Jesus, it is not going to be a life that is going to be successful and in control of things, but it is going to be a life that reaches out from the pain of brokenness and loneliness (chaos), to be touched by the hand of God. So where do we find the Baptized? In the midst of brokenness, pain, death, illness, risk, in short “in the neighbourhood of chaos.”Being baptized means to be lead to where Jesus is. Therefore baptism means being led to the chaos and neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its identity and destiny. But more so, Baptism touches the depths of not just outside chaos, but also the chaos of her or his own life. Because the chaos is not just outside but also there is a lot of inhumanity and muddle inside us. A baptized person should have the honesty and courage to look at the chaos inside and should combat the chaos outside. If this is so, baptism does not confer on us a status that makes us special or a claim of privilege. It is a claim a new level of soladiruty with other people through Christ. Therefore Baptism never is a convocation or graduation ceremony for the privileged elite, but it is an entry into the messy, needy, contaminated world with Jesus. When Jesus rose from the water, it symbolizes that, through the resurrection of Christ, we will also overcome the forces of death and destruction. Baptism opens us to the chaos of the world and at the same time it opens us to the Holy Spirit. Baptism opens up to the brokenness and pain of the world and also gives us the joy of communion, with the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. It helps us listen to the voice of God, constantly reminding our identity as His beloved.

Now we have wasted a lot of energy, debating the validity of infant baptism and adult baptism. We have turned baptism into a validity contest of who is right and who has the entry visa to Paradise. That is how we completely miss the point. Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:3-4) It calls for a complete identification with Jesus. . Church identifies Jesus to have lived a threefold identity: the prophet, priest and king. Baptism calls us to live a life identifying with these 3 roles. We do not see ourselves in such a perspective. Let us analyse these 3 roles

1. Prophet: We have reduced a prophet to just foretelling the future. But biblically if we analyze, the role of a prophet is to challenge the community to be what it is meant to be. So the baptized person, reflecting the prop[hetic role of Jesus Christ is a person who needs to be critical, a questioner. A person who asks, “Have you forgetten what you are here for?” “Have you forgotten the gift God gave you?” Prophetic role reminds us that we are God’s beloved and therefore questions the human practices in the wake of our identity. Prophetic role is a risky role as we pose uncomfortable questions to ourselves and to people around us, commiting ourselves to the identity that God has given us. We hold each other accountable to our faith and action. Prophetic role is not just about having a private life of faith, but a faith that overflows to combat injustice, discrimination and suffering. Let us remember our prophetic role.
2. Priest: The role of a priest in Old Testament is one who interprets God and humanity to each other. Priest was seen as somebody who builds bridges between God and humanity when that relationship has been wrecked; somebody who by offering sacrifice to God recreates a shattered relationship. This is the priestly role Jesus espoused and we can try to identify with that role of being peacemakers and bridge builders. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices (Romans 12:2). In a world characterized by brokenness and estrangement, Baptism calls us to the priestly role of building bridges between communities, races and people from different hues
3. King: King is a one who had the freedom and power to shape the law and justice of society. King is a one who had the power to bring to fruition what he wishes to see. While prophets are those who break dividing walls and dismantle new structures, kingly role calls to build alternative structures. Kingly role calls us to shape our lives and human environment in accordance with the justice of God. We are part takers of the freedom and liberty that God gives us to make the world a better place.

So Baptism is not just a vain speculation of whose Baptism is valid, but it initiates us to a life of playing the role of Prophet, Priest and King. We live in times of mediocre faith that makes us feel that one must just tag along. Baptism is just seen as a societal necessity. There is a theory called Pygmalion effect. In the Greek mythology Pygmalion is a sculptor from the city of Crete. His statues were very popular and he was deeply admired. There were many girls who wished to marry him but he refused to do so. One day he sculpted a beautiful woman. It is said he fell in love with this statue. He kept telling the people of the city that the statue of the woman is his wife. People thought he had lost it to call a statue a stone, as his wife. It is said that his constant love and affection on the statue gave breath to the sculpture and the lifeless body came to life. Pygmallion effect says that any person ordinary, if endowed with expectation, love and responsibility can rise up perform beyond expectation. Through baptism, ordinary humans like us are endowed the love and expectation of our Lord to rise up to live the divine-human life of discipleship consisting of the roles of Prophet, Priest and King.

Rev Merin Mathew

Bethel Mar Thoma Church

Kolar Road, Bhopal

Ps: This article is adapted from Archbishop Rowan Williams’ book ‘Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer

 

 

 

 

 

In Beirut, Paris, Syria, Yemen, Iraq……World in a Mess: Where Do I Run?

Jonah 1:1-17

The Lord spoke his word to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it, because I see the evil things they do.”

But Jonah got up to run away from the Lord by going to Tarshish. He went to the city of Joppa, where he found a ship that was going to the city of Tarshish. Jonah paid for the trip and went aboard, planning to go to Tarshish to run away from the Lord.

But the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, which made the sea so stormy that the ship was in danger of breaking apart. The sailors were afraid, and each man cried to his own god. They began throwing the cargo from the ship into the sea to make the ship lighter.

But Jonah had gone down far inside the ship to lie down, and he fell fast asleep. The captain of the ship came and said, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray to your god! Maybe your god will pay attention to us, and we won’t die!”

Then the men said to each other, “Let’s throw lots to see who caused these troubles to happen to us.”

When they threw lots, the lot showed that the trouble had happened because of Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us, who caused our trouble? What is your job? Where do you come from? What is your country? Who are your people?”

Then Jonah said to them, “I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”

The men were very afraid, and they asked Jonah, “What terrible thing did you do?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord because he had told them.)

Since the wind and the waves of the sea were becoming much stronger, they said to him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

Jonah said to them, “Pick me up, and throw me into the sea, and then it will calm down. I know it is my fault that this great storm has come on you.”

Instead, the men tried to row the ship back to the land, but they could not, because the sea was becoming more stormy.

So the men cried to the Lord, “Lord, please don’t let us die because of this man’s life; please don’t think we are guilty of killing an innocent person. Lord, you have caused all this to happen; you wanted it this way.” So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea became calm. Then they began to fear the Lord very much; they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made promises to him.

The Lord caused a big fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.

Message

Every tragedy reminds us “What a mess this world is.” The human evil manifested at Beirut in Lebanon, Paris in France, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Sudan, Russia show us the ugly side of what humans are capable of doing in the name of God and religion. We have senseless people in U.S. who want only Christian refugees to be allowed in U.S. We have a section of people who want Sharia to be implemented in U.K. We have tribal clans who wish to eliminate their rival. We have people losing lives for no fault of theirs, but just that one section believes the truth of their belief to be supreme and want all else to be shut and closed and eliminated. Everywhere we see fear, anxiety and paranoia. What a terrible, terrible world we live in, is our ruling thought. One question that bothers us all is the same. “If there is God, why do such things happen?” This question disturbs those who believe in God and confirms the belief of those who don’t. I am reminded of John the Baptist who was languishing in the prison of Herod, where he sets a question for Jesus through his disciples “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matt 11:3). Seeing that Jesus was doing nothing spectacular and also that John continues to remain in prison makes John doubt. He feels, Jesus is not Messiah enough for the messed up world he lived in. Such times we also feel, God is not God enough. The ways of God just does not work. We are tired of listening to, God is love, love your neighbours, love your enemies. Rubbish! We are fooled.

Let us now go to the text in front of us. The story of Jonah resonates in our lives. It is a call of God to go to Nineveh, to engage with messed up people. People, who are useless, wicked and evil. Jonah is too good to waste his life on such losers. So what does he do? He goes the opposite direction, where he runs away from God to a place called Tarshish. Now Tarshish is a wonderful and idyllic place with great port and wonderful people. It is like the Vegas, where the world can be damned and we can just have fun. But the journey to Tarshish is very stormy. And what does he do? He sleeps through? Jonah has chosen that the best way to avoid the mess and storm of the world is to sleep through it or to escape in the opposite direction that God is leading. This is exactly what I feel like doing. Just to escape to a place that John Lennon talks about in his wonderful song ‘Imagine’. By the way I have been listening to this song and it is the most shared and performed song.

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

We really wish that world be at peace. But there is no escape route. We cannot just imagine it. We have to engage with it. We cannot run or hide. We have to get into the mess. The Jonah in us has emerged. But let me introduce to you a person who is in contradistinction to Jonah. His name is Dietrich Bonheoffer. He lived in a time in Germany when all the Christians biblically justified the elimination of Jews and supported the Nazi vision. Along with Karl Barth and the Confessing Church, he challenged the Nazi regime and also criticized the Lutheran Scholars who were party to such madness in the name of religion. His friends saw that there was danger to his life and therefore seemed it best that he is transported to The United States of America. But after the long journey on ship, when he reached America, Bonheoffer was deeply disturbed. He felt he had run away from his calling. He asked his well wishers who risked their life to get him to America, to send him back to Germany. His well wishers thought it was insane. But Bonheoffer would not budge. And he sailed back to Germany. He engaged and challenged the Nazi regime through his sermons and students in seminary. The inevitable happened. He was arrested and was taken to Flossenberg Concentration Camp. He was ready to pay for his conviction. He was executed, hours before the Americans liberated the Concentration camp at the end of World War II in 1945. We could ask, what did he achieve? He lost his life. What good does that do? When and how, religion was bent to suit the oppressor, Bonheoffer through his life and death reminds us that discipleship is not about going where we wish to go and say it is God’s will. But it is abandoning, where we wish to go and to be led by God. I am sure this is what Jesus meant when he called Peter after resurrection in John 21:18 . “I tell you the truth, when you were younger; you tied your own belt and went where you wanted. But when you are old, you will put out your hands and someone else will tie you and take you where you don’t want to go.”

I was very overjoyed to know about the initiative of “The Game Changer Project: The Mar Thoma Youth Ministry of Mumbai” which is led by a dynamic Youth Chaplain Rev. Mathews George. On 14th November 2015, they organized an event called “Dumpyard Dare” in association with Navodaya Movement, an initiative of the Mar Thoma Church, Mumbai Diocese, which is led by the enterprising Rev. Mathew Philip. There are many aspects to Navodaya and one particular concentration is their work among the ragpicker colony in Kalyan and Bhivandi. Along with our church members we visited it as a part of our Edavaka Mission trip. Navodaya has a day care centre in the heart of the Dumpyard Colony and ensures that the children go to school nearby. It is a very powerful movement. Now the Dumpyard is not an easy place. Mind you, there is not one single NGO working there. The stench and the filth absolutely overwhelm us. It is said that when Rev. Mathew Philip Achen went for the first survey, he fainted. But that was his resolve that helped him, that something has to be done. Now the Dumpyard Dare focused on exposing the Youths to something they would never like to engage with or never wish to go. But as 40 youths entered into the world of stench, filth and ugliness, they realized, this is how the people and the children live there. It sure opened new vistas in their lives. A moment where the message of Christmas came early, where we celebrate that God did not abandon this world, but engaged with it, made himself lowly to be a human, lived with us, became a victim, suffered, died and was resurrected. This world is sure a mess. But we are called to engage with it, to embrace the brokenness, to heal the wounds. We sure want to go the other way, but we should not.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”

― Albert Einstein

Rev Merin Mathew

Bethel Mar Thoma Church

Kolar Road, Bhopal

To Know More about Navodaya Movement call Rev Mathew Philip- 9930914409

The Game Changer Project – Mar Thoma Youth Ministry of Mumbai: Rev Mathews George– 9769391772