Incarnation: an Expression of the Beauty of Body

Incarnation: an expression of the beauty of Body

John’s Gospel depicts incarnation beautifully as “the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1: 14). In our theological talks we usually make a distinction between spiritual and carnal dimensions of life. This is not a neutral way of seeing things, but as we make this distinction between these two aspects our existence we add value to each and make one superior to the other. As one would rightly infer, it is always the spiritual that is given a superior status over the carnal, which many a times is regarded as something that has a sinful inclination. The world could not ever think about the flesh becoming this beautiful as John reports it in his gospel.

But in the Old Testament narrations of bodily existence, especially when it talks about the creation, we come to realize life as a result of the indwelling of the divine in the body (Gen. 2:7). God breathes life into the body and thus human become a living being. And in this being Spirit and body has hardly any distinctions but they are seen as going together as a unit. But it speaks about occasions in which this divine breath is displaced by the evil (Genesis 6:3, 1samuel 18:10), which makes the human lose their divine image imprinted in them by the master Creator. We see the bodily existence becoming very ugly in such occasions. Therefore the OT presents body as a gift and blessing from God. Body is also seen as the medium that carries the divine mandates of caring for God’s creation as a whole. Body helps the human realize the interconnectedness of life. It speaks to one through the experience that life suffering at a point in the vast network on this earth brings sufferings to the whole created order. It is through the body only we feel that we are part of vast matrix of life created and sustained by God the Creator.

But it was the Greek philosophical thoughts that become widespread towards the latter part of the 4^th century BCE (especially through the conquest of Alexander the Great in and around Palestine ca. 322 BCE), which initiated a very negative attitude towards body. Gnosticism was one of the major Greek philosophical strands and it talked about knowledge (Gnosis) as the core of the existence of our being. And this knowledge was not something that the human acquired through the experiences of their bodily existence, but it was a knowledge that had to come from above and release the being from the captivity of the body. Therefore the Greek philosophical schools emerged to train the people in acquiring this celestial knowledge to lead them to salvation. Body or flesh in Greek thoughts were expressed as bondages that we experience as we exist and every being is said to be longing for that perfect knowledge to get released from their bodies.

John the gospel writer pens his gospel in a context like this, where the body was seen negatively as something that each being has to overcome. When the dominant philosophy of the dominant religion of the time talks about salvation and fullness as a movement away from the body, he wants to counter it by saying that salvation on the contrary is a movement towards body. God in Jesus moves towards body to make its existence beautiful and complete. The word“Incarnation” connotes this movement of God towards body (In-Carnation or into the body). According to John, Incarnation is an incessant movement of God towards the world (Ch. 1: 10). That movement keeps on happening eternally as God loves the world through God’s only son eternally (John 3:16).

John wrote the gospel in a world governed by a dictatorial government that unleashed horrendous violence on the bodies of the men and women of that time. And it justified such violations using the philosophies that negated the value of body. Many bodies were thrashed down, many were discriminated on the basis of their “imperfections” in terms of color, ritual impurities, disabilities etc. The time and cultural context of the writing of this gospel had an obsession with perfection of the bodies. The understanding that led to such an overemphasis on perfection of body was that only a perfect body in ideal ritualistic settings can contact the divine. People with bodily infirmities and ritual uncleanliness were not allowed to enter the temples and worshipping places in those times. The whole rituals and the worships were attempts do away with the imperfections of the body. While the animal sacrifices were done, they made it sure that no animal with any imperfections are sacrificed.

But incarnation brought new understandings on the bodily existence. Incarnation was historically experienced as a search of God after the shattered bodies. In his gospel John presents a lot of bodies which were broken, discriminated and declared ritually unclean. Jesus, God’s incarnation, depicted in the gospel renders healing, completeness and moreover holiness to all the bodies he touches or encounters. Incarnation makes God one among our bodies. It makes God vulnerable as we see Jesus’ body been crushed eventually at the cross.  But on the other hand God’s holiness and wholeness become something contagious and it presents body as a real blessing from God. Jesus’ acts of healing, casting of demons, forgiveness of sins, feeding of the bodies, touching the bodies, blessing the bodies were all acts that redeemed the blessedness of bodies that was created by God. Incarnation in short affirms the goodness of body and it declares that life becomes beautiful when bodily existence is taken seriously.

How do we deal with our bodies now a days? Many times we do employ a narcissistic approach towards body. Our body is our own and it has to be kept sanitized from all outside intrusions that pollute it. We hate pain and troubles, we hate proximity unless it benefits us and we love to resign from everything to remain disengaged. We love leisure than involvements, thus our attempt in these days is to make the body as much as “comfortable” as it can be. But incarnation left for us a paradigm of engagement, where we get proximate to our neighbors risking us to be hurt by the “harshness” of our neighbors in an attempt make our bodies as well as the bodies of our neighbor whole. This paradigm tend to ask the most pertinent question in these discussion, that is nothing but why we have our bodies? God’s gift of Body is definitely with a particular purpose of God. The biological nature of body is, it wears as it grows older. But as it grows and wears God intends it to contribute to the nourishment of bodies around. Jesus speaks about the wheat grains and says “unless the grain fall and die it will remain single and if it falls and dies it will bring forth many grains.” We are gifted with the body to live in this body as a living sacrifice to the Lord of the body, so that the bodies created by God in this world will be enriched. It makes the body and its existence meaningful and of course beautiful.

Conversion as a Transformed Vision of Power and Authority

Conversion as a Transformed Vision of Power and Authority

Homily on Acts 19:1-20

The narration of conversion of Paul is thrice repeated in the Acts of Apostles in chapters 9, 22 and 26. It means that it is an important model event of transformation that runs through the whole Lukan narration of the life and conversions of the early church and gives the reader a vantage point to see how a new power discourse rooted in the divine help the transformation of persons. The Conversion of Paul signifies very clearly a change of perception in the understanding of power. We read in the passage that Saul had secured power and authority to persecute the Christians living in the midst of diaspora Jews in Damascus. Power is an important theme that is substantially dealt within the Lukan writings on the history of early church. There are instances of misunderstanding the divine power in other writings of Luke in Acts. There is mention about a certain Simon the magician in Samaria in Acts 8: 18ff trying to bribe Peter and John to receive the power of God. This perception of commoditized and commercialized power stands against the biblical understanding of power as something coming from God and going back to God. Peter and John are seen rebuking Simeon for reducing God’s power of transformation as something transactional in monetary terms. For young Saul power and authority meant the official consent to destroy that which is different and hence threatening to the homogenized religiosity of Jews. His intention was therefore to manipulate the power entrusted to earthly institutions such as High Priest by God to torture the poor followers of Christ, which was originally meant to exercise its resources and power to the service of the poor and marginalised. The biblical revelation of divine always occurs in the context of persecution due to the hegemonic build up of power dictating the destiny for certain people by tampering with their future that God offers them. The divine revelation to Moses and therefore to the Hebrew people is an instance of a counter discourse of power rooted in the divine to that of the hegemonic power imposed on them by Pharaoh. God intervenes in such situations by blinding those who wield power to destroy people. This blinding is not simply to destroy them but to help them have self reflexive introspection to deconstruct the hegemonic notions of power. If somebody is not able to manage this blindness in creative ways that will lead them to total destruction as it had happened in the case of the Pharaoh. Here in this passage revelation of Jesus, whom Paul was trying to persecute, is the revelation of divine power that would counter the power that destroys the different expressions of faith other than Jewish, in God. The blindness that engulfs Paul is too symbolic that it primarily denotes a divine interference with the power discourses that unmindfully destroys the lives of innocent people. And it also signifies the veiling of common sense perceptions on power as something repressing the differences and the opportunity for self reflexivity and new insights for those who exercise power.

Paul’s conversion ultimately is a change in perception of power that he exercised. He could understand that it is not a license to manipulate situations to push through someone’s selfish agendas. But it is the resourcefulness God entrusts someone to fulfill the divine imperatives that is linked to the building up of lives of the poor and marginalised. Thus Paul a staunch practitioner of Pharisaic faith transforms to the apostle of Gentiles, a servant of God ready to sacrifice his very own life to extend God’s love to the people beyond the boundaries of Palestine to the ends of earth.

Our call as servants of God today involves this aspect of managing the power and authority in the respective responsibilities we undertake or going to undertake. What will be modality in which we are going to deal with such situations of exercising power and authority? Is it the modality of Jesus who had seen his authority as the freedom to cross the repressive boundaries that created and sustained by the hegemonic power discourses of his time and dared to be called the friend of the sinners? Is it the modality of Paul who saw power and authority as the freedom to reach out the people beyond the boundaries of the conventional salvation history in divine compassion and love and dared to be called the apostle of the gentiles? Power is bivalent in the sense that it is both repressive and creative. It is our perception of power that is going to decide how we are going to use power. Are we realizing divine interventions in our midst many a time blinding us so that we may respond with kind and constructive acts rooted in a transformed vision of power and authority that God entrusts us?  May the triune God initiate such transformed visions of power and authority in us.

Amen.

A Reflection on the Gracious, Nurturing Meal

Genesis 14: 17-24

Blessed be the name of the Lord!

This is a strange or rather odd passage in the body of the patriarchal narratives. Strange in the sense that in no other places in the whole patriarchal narratives, Abram the great father of Israel’s faith in YHWH is presented as a warrior. Abram in the Patriarchal narrative is generally a figure that understands the contexts of life and avoids the development of a polemical relationship with the neighbors. The historicity of the persons and places in this narration is difficult to precisely fix. Four eastern kings go to war against pentapolis, ie, the five cities or five kings. These cities were said to been under the subjugation of Chedorlaomer, the king of Elam. Therefore it can be assumed that this war was a revolt to declare the freedom from political oppression. It also reflects the ancient west Asian history of frequent imperial aggressions, subjugations and spiraling violence. The mention of the five kings including the King of Sodom where Lot, Abram’s nephew, resided is to highlight the ruthlessness of the power of the four kings who defeat them in the war. But then they in turn are defeated by Abram with the help of only 318 odd men again highlighting the greatness of the deliverance act led by the Patriarch. This passage can be read in many ways, and mostly it has been read to highlight the nature of priestly vocation that Melchizedek represents. Since this passage is also seen as a precursor to the Holy Communion I would like to read it in that line. Abram and the accompanying men chased the kings and defeated them through strategic interventions. They could redeem all the goods and riches captured by the enemy Kings. Their arrival to the valley of Shaveh or the King’s valley was indeed a victory procession with all its probable pomp and pride. Now the team of victors is encountered by two people in the narrative; The King of Sodom and the king of Salem. Genesis 14: 17-24 deals with these meeting of kings with Abram.  The nature and outcome of these two meetings had been extremely contradictory. I would like to focus on the intricacies of these meetings to develop a few points for our reflection.

Holy Communion is the celebration of Reciprocal Circulation of God’s Blessing

Melchizedek as the etymology of the term denotes, combines two important offices in the ancient west Asian communities; the office of the priest and the office of the King. Melchizedek has mention at least in three places in the Bible including this passage. The other instances are Psalm 110; 4 and Hebrews chapters 5-7.  Melchizedek cannot be dismissed as a distant shadowy figure from the past. But it was an ideal type that was kept and celebrated throughout the history of the Israelites to counter the aberrations in the Levite cultic priesthood historically practiced in Israel and even in its political leadership. The etymology of King of Shalom can also be derived as the King of uprightness/righteousness and peace. This aspect is reflected in the prayer in our thaksa when he is characterized as “vedippulla purohitanaya melchizedek.”In the Canaanite traditions Kingship is understood as a sacral/political office. Melchizedek is viewed as the precursor of leadership in both royal and priestly lines. T. K. Thomas in BTF writes “by saying that the first priest ever mentioned in the Bible is neither a Jew nor a Christian; means God establishes God’s priesthood in a distinct order that will never be allowed to be captivated by any human made categories.”[1] Bible places priesthood in a more broad and general plane of the whole created order. The origin of Melchizedek’s line of priesthood pre-exists that of any Judaeo-Christian origins of priesthood. Melchizedek greets Abraham in the name of El Elyon- God Most High. The bringing of a meal to battle-drained Abraham by Melchizedek was followed by a blessing. That blessing was in fact a blessing on Abraham by the creator God. In verse 19 we see this blessing uttered as “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth.” It is interesting to note here the fact that Abram’s pride of a victor of the war was humbled by the presentation of a meal. The refreshing meal to the battle-exhausted Abram and his men points them towards God’s gracious providences that nourish life. Eventually it places the victory against the kings in God’s gracious providence and life sustaining power. Therefore the whole community is enabled to see the deliverance as a blessing of God. That means God is blessed by the worshippers for God’s mighty acts of deliverance. The power that worked the deliverance has really come from God. Abram reciprocates the blessing with the offering of the tithe. It is in fact an acknowledgement of God’s blessing in the life of his family and in the life’s of Amorite brothers and other neighboring communities who accompanied him in the battle. Here the blessing is seen to be circulating between God, Melchizedek, Abram and the people and environment associated with them. Therefore the meal in which Abram and his men participate becomes a precursor of the Holy Meal in which the circulation of the divine blessings in the life of the people is celebrated.  The liturgy of the Holy Qurbana, very well describes life as an experience of mutual blessing. When the priest utters the blessings of the triune God, the congregation reciprocates the blessing. The mission of the church at its core has been the extension of this communion to peoples and communities. Here the direction of the blessing does not privilege any one over the other, but a constant interflow of the blessing between God, the worshipper and the neighbor makes it a continuum. It can further be seen as a reflection of the perichoretic movement within the trinity.

Holy Communion is the Celebration of the power of God to provide always and in all ways

The first one to meet Abram and his men according to the narrative of the text is the king of Sodom. But the meeting of the King Melchizedek takes precedence over this meeting. The details of the former’s meeting are described later towards the end of this narrative only. It may not be an accident but a deliberate crafting by the writer to highlight the importance of the second encounter over the former. The king of Sodom in this text represents the imperial motive to capture, possess and subjugate than be open to share the blessings. According to Terence E Fretheim, the King of Sodom is concerned simply about the power of the men who won the battle and the disposition of the booty of the war. His offer of the whole booty to Abraham in exchange of his men may appear as his magnanimity to share the riches with Abraham. But Fretheim says that it is not the case. By putting claim on the men, the king of Sodom in fact is putting his claim on the power that brought the victory and booty. The possession of the men will be followed by the possession of the booty as a major share of it belongs to them. The empire desires that there should not be any power over its absolute power of dominion. The king’s attempt is nothing but to tame this new exposition of power to be manipulated lately to achieve his purposes. Here the power is conceived as self originating in the empire and not as something entrusted from God for common good, as is expressed through the words of Melchizedek. But Abram resists this attempt to tame the expression of divine power by refusing to accept the offer of the booty from the king. He spells clearly that the king cannot have the claim on the deliverance that he and the whole community has experienced but it is an outcome of the manifestation of power of God.

The carefully crafted ascent to power of Narendra Modi was analyzed effectively by a report came in Pachkuthira. Written by Kamalram Sajeev and titled Maadhyamangalude Bimba Nirmithi. It speaks about the way people, media and capital have been manipulated to create an image of absolute and self originating power centre in the person of Modi to effect an electoral victory. The most dangerous and disturbing truth about this new politics is that the power of the ruler in a democratic political order is no more emerging from the constitutional framework or public morality, but from a combination of personal moral authority and the corporate and a majoritarian communal endorsement of that imposing morality.

Holy Meal is an occasion of encountering God Most High, one who nourishes life over the whole face of Earth. Melchizedek greets Abram in the name of God Most High. Here Holy Communion provides the faith community with an alternate vision of power that originates from God and extends to all creation. Holy Communion comes also as a pledge to God as Abraham points it out to the King of Sodom that “I have sworn to the Most High that I would not take a thread or sandal-thong”. It is a pledge to ever remain as the agent God’s justice and peace for the whole world. The occasion was not taken up as an opportunity to establish hegemony or to make one extremely rich. But Abraham takes it as an issue of justice as he talks about the just sharing of the resources to restore and refresh the broken lives of the people who had to bear the brunt of the excesses of the war.

If the communion is not bringing a vision of just sharing of resources, we become people who hold back the blessings. Who take pride in the deliverance but fail to replicate it in our surroundings. Let us take the vow to carry the energy of Holy Communion to the world to bless the world in the name of God Most High and also to be blessed by its goodness.

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[1] T.K. Thomas, “Melchizedek, King and Priest: an Ecumenical Paradigm?”, Bangalore Theological Forum, 31/2 (December, 1999)  

Worship Orders

Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Centre

Worship Order of the Community Worship

11^th August, 2010. Wednesday

Week’s theme: Affirmation and Celebration of Life

Theme of the day: From the Community of Saints to the Community of Friends

Call to worship

L:     The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwells therein.

All:   We are here to worship God the creator of life, we are not alone.

         We share this life with the heavens and the earth,

         With the waters and the land,

         With trees and grasses,

         With fish, birds, and animals,

         With creatures of every form,

         With the women and men

         With whom we share our dreams of a new earth and new heavens. Amen

Opening prayer

L:      Almighty God our parent, we praise you for gathering us here to worship you, your son and Holy Spirit. Help us to experience your revealing presence in our midst. As we worship you today, we humbly ask you to gift us with a renewed perception of your life eternal. Keep us ever in the joy of celebrating your gift of life to us. We commit each and everyone who participate in this worship into your keeping. Bless and sanctify us that we may reflect the radiance of your life to the world around.

Amen

Hymn 302 (Gurkul Hymnal)

Praise and thanks giving

L.   God, we thank you for the gift of creation and the miracle of life.

      We praise you for the earth; our warm home, for the rays of the sun, land and sea.

      We praise you for the atmosphere where we live, breathe and love.

We thank you for our neighbours; the web of relations and the community of friends, animated by your life energy to find meaning and goodness in all.

We thank you for life nourished in different contexts; for the inherent diversity of your creation and for making each one of us distinct and unique.

      We praise you for all these gifts that grant us life.

Lord we praise and thank you!

Confession

All:    O God Parent of our Friend and Guide Jesus;

         we confess that we have become badly accustomed to death:

         to the death of the soul, to the death on the street,

         to the death through violence in the name of gods and religions-

         to the death before life. Our ears are used to the incessant groaning of creatures and become numb; our hearts have accepted the fact that things cannot be any way different from what it is today. Often times, we find it convenient to withdraw from the scenes of violations on the sanctity of life.

         Thus we become indifferent to life; your invaluable gift.

         Still we claim to be the followers of your son,

         who dared to give out his very life out of his passion for life. Compassionate God forgive us for these our sins, we beseech you through your son Jesus. Amen

Absolution

All:   God our parent, who passionately loves life, forgives our sins and liberates us from the fear of death. May God make our life alive to the extent that it is mutually loved and affirmed amongst us.

Amen

Scripture reading

Matthew 5: 43-48 (Stand)

Reflection

Faith affirmation (stand)

We believe in God our creator and sustainer of our hope of abundant life, who shared the very life-breath with us in the act of creation. Who affirm life through the continuing embodying acts in the history of different people hoods around the globe.

We believe in Jesus our friend, who stooped down from the saintly halo of a rabbi to befriend with the ordinary fisher folk, tax collectors and “sinful” women and men, to inspire in them a love for life before and against death. Who does not point simply to a life without pain in a distant heaven, but heals the sick, frees the captives and forgives the sinners to affirm freed, redeemed life and divine life in this world, in our times and in our midst.

We believe in the life giving spirit of God

Who communicates to the world, the joy of knowledge of God’s love for life in everyday languages and re-enacts the Pentecost in our midst. Who gives us courage to affirm life in the midst of raging powers of death. Who is the source of utopia, dreams and our sense of history that drives our lives forward and adds colors and meaning in plenty. Who broods over life to make it new and full.

We believe in the presence of kingdom in our midst, which is God’ outstretched arms-God’s initiative, offering life in abundance to all living beings on earth. We believe in God’s kingdom as God’s will that life, love and justice reign in history.

Amen

Intercession

L. Maili is one of the thousands Nepali girls trafficked to India for sex-trade. Maili too had to end up in the notorious red street called Kamathipura as the other numerous hapless Nepali girls do. In her case she was deceived by one of her neighbours whom she knew well from her childhood days. She was traveling from Nepal to India in search of better medical treatment for her child infected with pneumonia. She was eventually deceived and sold for 50,000 Indian rupees by her neighbour to a broker at Kamathipura. At the brothel it was all like a nightmare. First she was severed from her child and was beaten left and right to agree to the demands of the brothel owner. At last she had to yield to lead the indescribably horrendous life in the brothel, because of her love for her life and also to save the life of her child. She was fed only once in a day in the brothel and was allowed to have a shower only once in a week. Stabbing and cigarette burns were the order of the days. Her ordeal in the brothel continued until a humanitarian aid agency called Maiti Nepal, led by the bold Nepalese woman Anuradha Koirala came to her rescue. Maiti in Nepalese means, the mother’s home. Maiti rescued thousands of Nepalese girls from the brothels of Kamathipura by creating a network between human rights activists, police, advocacy groups and the victims. Many of the rescued girls were not accepted back to their respective families, because of the stigma associated with their betrayal and the life at the brothal. Hence Maiti was organizing an alternate home for these betrayed girls to feel that they are wanted and their lives are worth living. Many of the girls are tested positive for HIV/AIDS and are treated at the Maiti homes. One of the encouraging thing we see in the approach of Maiti in the fight against this evil is that they are not allowing the victims to remain in that state for ever. They are transformed into courageous activists in the caring ambience of the Maiti homes. Maili along with many other girls help in checking the trafficking by guarding the border check posts between India and Nepal, helping in raiding the brothels and even counseling the trapped girls to motivate them to come out of their captivity. Thus creating a community of friends, who support each other in their attempts to find meaning for their earthly existence.

Let us pray for the victims of sex-trafficking in India and Nepal. Let us also remember the programmes intended to liberate these girls from their captivity. Let us remember Maiti Nepal and similar agencies and activists like Anuradha Koirala, who dare to risk their lives in the passion for life.

 Let us pray for our community, our teachers, non-teaching staff and all the students.

Lord’s Prayer (in vernacular)

Benediction

L.   May the blessing of the God of peace and justice be with us;

      May the blessing of the Son who wipes the tears of the world’s suffering be with us;

      And may the blessing of the Spirit who inspires us to reconciliation and hope be with us;

      from now into eternity.

Amen

Worship Orders

Gurukul Lutheran Theological College, Chennai-10

Second Semester Opening Day

Order for Sunday evening worship-7^th November 2010

Theme: God of the Living

Call to worship

Opening prayer

God of the living, we are here to worship you along with all the living realities in the world which you have created. God we remember that when we join your other creations to worship you, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith help us to endure the crosses disregarding its shame, thinking always that you have taken the seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Inspire us with your life renewing spirit to think about the glory beyond the death experiences of our daily life, as we continue to worship you in truth and spirit. Amen

Opening hymn: Immortal, invisible God only… All Stand

Praise and thanks giving 

Confession

Lord we often assumed that human life is inherently and naturally eternal, but we forgot to understand that our faith responses to the revelation of your love make our lives eternal. We were too much focused on the salvific efficiency of your sacrifice on the cross, but we seldom theologised the resurrection. We meditated quite often on the blood you shed on the cross, but we failed to mediate very often on your resurrected body. Our affinity to scientific rationality made us hesitant to respect the mystery of life. The discourses on resurrection were for us naïve and boundary markers, which we used to distinguish ourselves from the rest. Lord help us with our unbelief so that we may have the glimpses of your life eternal and the life after this temporal life.

Absolution

C. God forgives us; forgive others; forgive yourself. Amen

Scripture reading: Luke 20: 27-38

Hymn (No 378 My faith looks up to thee…) All Stand

Reflection: 

Faith Affirmation-Apostles’ Creed  All Stand

Offertory (Hymn Jesus lover of my soul…) All stand

Intercession

Lord’s prayer (in vernacular) All Stand

Benediction

Finally, beloved, hold on to whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing and whatever is commendable in God’s sight. Keep on doing things that make your lives eternal and the God of peace will be with you now and ever.

Amen

Closing Hymn (No.188  Lord dismiss us…)

Bible Study

From the Community of Saints to the Community of Friends

Prayer

Gracious parent God,

We thank you for your word which is indeed the light for our paths. Guide us with the counsel of your spirit as we meditate upon your word. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen

Greetings to one and all in the name of our friend and saviour Jesus of Nazareth! When I thought of preaching the sermon on a difficult theme like loving our enemies I thought of starting it with a very concrete picture of it from our Indian situation. And as my search continued I came across an article written by Arundhati Roy, the renowned writer and brave activist, which appeared in one of the issues of the news magazine Outlook dated 29^th march, 2010. The article titled “Walking with the Comrades” is a thrilling narration of her befriending encounter with the members of the armed resistant movement in the central India, usually named as the Naxal threat or the Maoist rebellion. Her journey into the jungles of Dantewada the epicenter of the so called Maoist movement in the state of Chhattisgarh was much risky at the same time much rewarding as a great learning experience. Her journey to the meeting with the greatest “internal security threat of India started at Raipur” the capital city of the state. She was informed to be greeted by somebody from the group at Jagadalpur bus stand the district headquarters to which Dantewada belongs. The understanding conveyed on a type written note to identify the meeter was that the person will have a cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas in his hands. And the Password: “Namashkar Guruji.” She was well in time for her appointment, waiting with the camera, red tika on the forehead and a small coconut in her hand, the features suggested for her easy identification by the group. And after some time there appeared a young boy and asked her whether she is the person going in. There was no greeting “namaskar guruji” as it was expected. The boy took out a note out of his pocket and extended it to Roy; it said “Outlook nahin mila” (couldn’t find outlook). And the bananas; the poor boy said he ate them as he got hungry. What a sarcastic yet thoughtful way of presenting the greatest security threat of India. Who are these people, whom we name along with the popular media, the government, the politicians and the police as the Maoists, the greatest security threat and the enemies of the country, to be exterminated without considering any other option of interacting with these people. They are none other than the ordinary villagers as we see in the pictures projected on the screen. Arundhati says the predominant thoughts of their minds are not about war and killing, and they are not nihilists either as we often think of them, but they are people who are very passionate about the life in their tribal dwellings. In her few days life within the jungle, she depicts how inspiring and refreshing the general ambience of the jungle of Dantakaranya was, which was full of activities to sustain life, a life threatened to be extinguished by the mega mining projects. Arundhati puts up reasons why she supports this movement even though it has a lot of violent repercussions. She says, “I am not supporting violence. But I am also completely against contemptuous atrocities."  What about the possibility of a Gandhian way of protest? Her answer to the guardians of peace goes like this, “Gandhian way of opposition needs an audience, which is absent here. People have debated long before choosing this form of struggle." She is much against severing the present struggles with the history of resistance of the tribals of central India that even predates Mao. She would like to link it with the history of the Ho, the Oraon, the Kols, the Santhals, the Mundas and the Gonds tribes, who have rebelled several times in history against the British, against the zamindars and moneylenders over their contemptuous treatment of the tribal people.

The rebellions were cruelly crushed, many thousands killed, still the killing goes on, but the people were never conquered.  The Language of genocide the media, the police and even the church leaders use like “Maoist infested”, reflects our lack of sensitivity and uncritical animosity, suggesting any infestation should be terminated. What made Arundhati to swim against the current of a consensual political opinion that, the Maoists in Dantewada and elsewhere have to be finished with. I think, in short spell, it is because of a very genuine passion for life.

Why did Jesus expect something impossible from us? That is to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Some say it is to drive us into despair by proving how incapable we are of satisfying God’s righteous demands. Was it a strategy then, like many of our mission strategies are, to win over our opponents, who hates and persecutes us? Or was it a humanitarian ideal meant to be used often in rhetoric, but seldom or never in practice? All these are improbable wild guesses for those who know who Jesus was. If it is so, how should this be interpreted in situations where we find our life is threatened by terrorism, extremism, communalism and so on?

The socio-religious life in Palestine in Jesus’ time was acted out in different complex planes. There were devout Jews, who stuck on to the Torah in all occasions of disaster and crises. They were expecting a retaliation on the enemies of the religion as God in God’s perfect justice is not going to spare the enemies. Even the perfection of the God was, for them very much related to the strict judgement God is going to unleash upon the evil doers. They too find their perfection only when they deal strictly with the enemies of their religion. There were people who were declared ceremonially unclean and they stood outside the perfect observances of the perfect religion. The tax collectors were despised by the loyal Jewish population because of their unpatriotic job and their constant contact with the Gentiles. The gentiles were ascribed with a sort of essential imperfectness, as they were not ritually perfect, as they could not fulfill the demands of the torah in their day to day lives. Thus the first century Jewish religious leadership indulged in a sense of perfection, which they could not find in persons with belongingness to any other cultural and religious communities. They were a community of saints with very limited contacts with a world of imperfect beings out side.

Jesus’ life and practices in Galilee challenged this notion of perfection of the cultic leadership in a very bold way. Jesus redefines the whole concepts of God, religion, love and enemy on the basis of a new organic vision of life, which was his faith response to the ethical exigencies of the time. The Matthean Jesus defines the religion as simply as the love of God and the neighbour, the fundamental ethical practice on which all other relationships depend. For Jesus love is not something to be grasped as a utilitarian principle, where it benefits the person who loves because he pleases the person whom he loves. But for Jesus love is our positive and creative openness to life in all its varying forms. In other words it is the passion for life. Some one has to start seeing his/her enemy in the light of life. Jesus further tells that the act of loving your enemies make you the children of God. To become a child of God is to participate in the divine nature. Here Jesus draws the picture of God, which is not based on God’s abstract moral perfection, but on concrete indiscriminate goodness. When God is thought as a moral perfection, God appears to withdraw from the sinful worldly affairs, but when God is thought as indiscriminate goodness, God appears to involve very actively in the material world to share life with all without any reservation. This is the difference that Jesus intends to make that by conceiving God as indiscriminate goodness, he conceives a religion which is indiscriminately good and by doing that he expects the followers of that religion to be indiscriminate goodness.

I know I cannot stop my homily here, without addressing one more probing question. Does indiscriminate goodness mean a humble submission to all the injustices we face? The scripture portion read to us today is the culmination of Jesus’ admonition starts in verse 38. Most difficult verse comes in verse 39, that is, turn your left cheek to the person strikes you on your right one. For Jesus turning the other cheek was an act of symbolic resistance whereby some one invites the striker for other respectful means of interactions than the present contemptuous one.  Differences usually frighten us, we fear that we may not be able to manage the differences. For the Jews whatever things not conforming to their religious practices and cultic values were irreconcilable and hence their enemies. But Jesus never seemed to have frightened by the differences and always thought of them as reconcilable, which he encountered in his mission. When he was put in situations to encounter people like the Syro-Phoenician woman, he could really avoid the temptation of dealing contemptuously with them. Jesus’ initial words affirming the Jewish ethnocentrism was a slap on the woman’s face and she turns the other cheek by saying that there are other respectful ways of interactions that are possible between them. He was transformed by her faith to see in her the perfection of the perfect God, which he proclaimed in public without any hesitation. He stoops down from the halo of a Jewish Rabbi to be a friend and companion of ordinary people like her. The tribals in Dantewada by offering their bodies to be blown up by the sophisticated weapons of the Indian military invites the governments and the public for interactions which may really affirm the sanctity of their life in the tribal dwellings.

The church by analyzing her missionary experience of the past is today overwhelmed by the feeling that what we need to do at this juncture is not a missionary practice, which recruits people to the club of saints by considering their respective cultures as worthless. But what we need to do today is to create communities of friends which transcend all human made divisions existing amidst us on the basis of caste, gender, religion and cultures. Friends, as Christian ministers undergoing training in a theological college our responsibility is to take initiatives for creating communities of friends where the differences of the people are reconciled, but never cancelled. We can definitely start it here from this college. Let us open our clenched fists and release all the thoughts of self righteousness and get engulfed by the vision of divine life, which throbs in every living being. Let the love for life prompt us to endeavour this precarious yet meaningful mission in our times.

Amen

 (Sermon done at Gurukul Chapel on 11th August, 2010.)

meditation and practices of cross

Meditating the Cross to Equip the Practices of Cross

We all yearn for a saintly life. We all love to be remembered as saints. But what does it mean to be a saint in a Christian way of understanding. Both biblically and ecclesiastically viewing at the issue, one should say saintliness in the Christian sense involves “Christ likeliness.” “Christ likeliness” points to the likeliness to his cross. Therefore it is the cross of Christ, which forms the ultimate criteria for the assessment of saintliness.

Unless it apprehends the pain of the negative Christian theology cannot be realistic and liberating (Moltmann, Crucified God, 1974).

 It makes hope more concrete and adds to the power of resistance, power of its visions to actions. In Christianity the cross is the inner criterion for everything.

Cross as Identity-Involvement Dilemma

Moltmann speaks about two crises in the life of the Christians especially the Christian theologians that come up when we engage in developing a theology of cross. They are the “crisis of relevance” and the “crisis of identity.” These crises are complementary. When a church and its theology attempt to be more relevant to a particular context its identity may start facing crisis (here identity is understood as the fixed essence of something). The more they try to assert their identity through their traditional dogmas and moral vision they become more irrelevant. Therefore he says this crisis can be more accurately described as the “identity-involvement dilemma.” Because the involvement of the church that makes its faith relevant always challenges the conventional identity of the church. If put other words, we could say that it is its oversensitivity to its identity that prevents the church from having meaningful involvements as disciples.

This dilemma can lead us to a withdrawal into a defensive and fearful faith. Here we may seek protection for our faith as our faith is preyed upon by fear. We also seek to protect our God, Christ, doctrine and morality as we feel that they are not capable of protecting themselves. Instead of confidence and freedom, fearfulness and apathy dominates us.

Christ is remembered as crucified because he has attempted to make the faith relevant. It is more clearly a double process of identification; God identifying with the godless in Jesus Christ and human identifying with the crucified Jesus. Cross is a powerful symbol that reflects God’s constructive involvement in the affairs of the world.

What is Cross for us Today

What are the present day crosses in the lives of our people? Are we able to identify those people living under the shadow of the cross?

We read in the Gospels that cross was a locus of Godlessness and horror. 'We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself the Son of God' (John 19.7). jesus screamed reflecting Pslam 22: 1, “Oh God! why did you forsake me?” Even the disciples were fearfully fleeing from it. But for Jesus, cross was also an ultimate locus of resistance. Resisting the hegemonic power of the Roman Empire and the symbolic world it created to sustain that power. Thus cross was projected by Jesus, into the history of the human living, as a powerful symbolic fulcrum around which a new meaning system is built up to affirm the ultimate authority of God over all earthly hegemonic powers.

But what happened to the symbolic energy of cross in the course of the witness of the Church in the world? As Moltmann says, cross nowadays has just become a habit in the lives of the Christians. We put cross in the Church to mark that we are Christians. We wear golden crosses as we are traditional Christians following the practices of our foreparents. All these acts are simply catering to our sense of a rigid identity. Though cross was a historical event that made our understanding of God flexible, it nowadays makes the Christians more rigid and exclusive.

Who put roses on the cross? This question was asked by so many people like Goethe, Nietzsche and Marx. Choang-Seng Song in his book Jesus: the Crucified People raises similar concerns cross being reduced to an object of worship. The draping of the cross with roses has made it a religious thing. Cross originally is not something religious.

Cross as Reality and Cross as Solidarity

While reflecting on cross, we can have different perceptions such as “Cross as a reality” and “cross as solidarity” (Moltmann). Cross is a reality in the lives of a great multitude of people not only in our churches but also in our country. Because of the very experiences of the cross that they bear, they are pushed away to the margins.

There are also people who withdraw themselves to some undisturbed comfort zones. Because, they don’t want to be disturbed by the sights of crosses in the lives of their neighbors. They also want to keep off from any kind of involvements that make their theology of cross relevant for our times. We would say that their cross is “sanitized” from all the horrors and pains associated with the cross of Jesus.

In that sense we could say that cross as marginalization and sufferings at the margins are very much present in our ecclesial life, whereas cross as solidarity with such sufferings is very much missing in that life. They are in a “dishonorable peace” with the powers of the evil and hence made the church less Christian.

For further reflection and meditation

“Church is less “Christian,” because it is losing its Saintliness or Christianness, as it looses its cross from its life.

A church which has lost its Cross is less credible and less attractive.

Then what is the relevance of cross today?

Cross becomes meaningful in the historic contexts!! What is our context and what are our crosses?

Cross for us is a commitment to the original event of incarnation and the cross as its zenith, which is the basis of our faith.

Some of the images of the cross the students of Gurukul presented in their worship evaluation classes were really touching. Someone represented cross with the broken peaces of a plough: pointing the crosses in the lives of Indian farmers inflicted by debts, climate changes globalization. There was the picture of a sprouting cross symbolizing hope for a world haunted by the threats of an early exhaustion. Black cross: representing the struggle of the dalits for centuries. Therefore, new images of crosses that reflect relevant theologies of cross for our times are real need.

The way of Cross

In this second part of the meditation on cross let us have our focus on the way of cross. The way of cross is nothing but the road of discipleship. Discipleship is more precisely Orthodoxy (right beliefs) following orthopraxy (right practices).

Discipleship is all about following Jesus and following very much involves cross-bearing. In the medieval church suffering was thought of as bringing honor to the persons who voluntarily suffer. Thus it was celebrated. It happens in the tradition of mysticism of cross. But suffering and rejection promised in the discipleship is a unique combination. Constant rejection in suffering makes it dishonorable. It is not that easy to be in dishonorable suffering for long. The truth is that discipleship involves this dishonorable suffering. Jesus asks John and James to be part of this dishonorable suffering to be his true disciples and also to be part of his glory in resurrection. Paul speaks about this dishonorable suffering of the disciples as he himself experienced it every moment of his life as a disciple. Paul’s sufferings are not his choice, but something comes to his life as part of his apostolic sufferings and the suffering of those who bear witness to crucified God

Discipleship is thus dieing in fellowship with Jesus who died alone on the cross. Martyrdom is not the passionate will to assume sufferings as it prevailed in the medieval church. But marturia is the readiness a disciple has to maintain every moment of his/her life to bear witness to the crucified one.

Marturia the attitude required on our way to cross

It is our attitude of marturia that sustains us on our way toward the cross. The evangelists’ story of the way to cross is an engagement with the world and not a withdrawal from it. Jesus on his way to cross takes heed of the cry of the poor Bartimaeus. He spares time to engage the rich young ruler trying to reproof him and loving him. Discipleship does not end at the dispersal at the foot of the cross; it is also a reinstatement of the disciples who have fled from the scene of crucifixion. Jesus through his post resurrection appearances to the retracted disciples, love them and reinstate them back to the way of the cross. Therefore this “passion-week” will be experienced by all of us as a time to put us back into the love of God and to the way of cross as a response to Jesus’ call to discipleship.