Like God we Die

Now, my thoughts may look lugubre... because they are about death....but, no, they rather are about life.

First of all, our Christian faith tells us that our God died. Yes, God in Christ died on the cross. Then he rose on the third day, of course. The death of Jesus was evidence of how serious he was about life--our life. He preached about his Father's love--in the form of "kingdom"--and no rejection of that message was strong enough to make him withdraw from his mission. In front of the threat of the authorities of his time, he did not flee.

One striking teaching of Jesus was his invitation for us to be LIKE his Father, to be as "perfect" as his Father. "be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt5/48).This word "perfect" can be so misunderstood to mean something like a perfect geometrical shape. Jesus explained what being "perfect as the Father" meant. It meant a kind of dying. We tend to select those we respect and perhaps love from those we'd rather have nothing to do with. Take the example of human dignity. It is accorded to those who resemble me. Same class? Same ethnic group? Same language? Same political color? Those outside the sphere of resemblance do not deserve the same "dignity". We have to die from that. I may tend to limit "dignity" to my social class or ethnic group but I am told to respect the "other" whoever the "other" is and from whatever background the "other" may be.
Now, the Father of Jesus, "makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust" (Mt5/45). All have the same human dignity; all have the same dignity to be revered and respected.

This is not easy. This requires a certain death. I'd like to say, "death to being too full of myself". Look at the different passages in Matthew in chapter 5. Jesus speaks of death to anger, death to adultery, death to hatred, death to retaliation. But to die this way is to accept that the heavenly Father is my Father and I am a child of my Father. Hence Jesus says, "...that you may be children of your heavenly Father".

In Matthew we again find the same word "perfect" when Jesus talks about the poor. We read: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me (Mt19/21).” Imagine working for social economic equality! It means a lot of dying involved. This time, "perfection" is evidence of discipleship with Jesus.
Notice then that it is a dying in order to promote life. I die to my egoistic ways in order to promote authentic human dignity. I die to my hoarding in order to share.

The Father did the first step to die! The first creation story tells us that "he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation" (Gen2/2-3). Sabbath is a way of dying. The Almighty and Powerful God takes "absence" from that might and power. The Lord God, in this story, allows the created world "to be". One striking evidence is in the creature called the human being. The human being is to be LIKE the Lord God. How?

First of all, there is the move from being male/female to becoming man/woman. The human is more than just a biological creature; the human is to be properly human. Secondly, the human is to have "domination" over the created world. This word is so misunderstood. Luckily today some prefer the term "stewardship". Some biblists translate the word to "mastery". It is a mastery OVER MASTERY. LIKE God the human is also to go sabbath--take hold of one's own might and power, guide these to revere AND NOT DISFIGURE the created world. As steward therefore the human must operate with a sabbath distance FROM ONE'S OWN TENDENCY TO DISFIGURE THE WORLD AND SOCIETY. Remember the human is now man/woman. So to "dominate" is to be like God and learn to die--die from egoism and ursurping power and might!

In the Creation story the Lord God is telling the human, "if I can do it (the sabbath distance), you too can do it because you are LIKE me". This, I think, is authentic dying. God has no issues with his own ego, trying to be "big timer" over us human creatures. Already from the start--creation--God "humbled himself". Later, in the New Testament, we read that God "empited himself" in Christ: "he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness" (Ph2/7). God became like us to reaffirm that we are in the likeness of God. Like God we die so that life be.

A pond “in the beginning”

The first verse of Genesis evokes faith in a God who offered creation with so much life in it. God then wanted to live in covenant with this life especially since God created a creature in God's likeness, humanity, so to speak.

Biblists say that creation itself is an act of covenant that continues over and over again. It perpetuates itself. God wishes to be in relationship with creation--with all creatures, big or small--and God wishes that creation participates in God's own life. This explains why many Church documents say that the real goal of our own life is communion with God. For the Christian this is a Triune God. God has designed our existence to be in communion with the Trinity.

Creation is an act that continues--just like a covenant that is constantly renewed. I remember a good friend, Fr. Joseph Larsen CICM who told me that conversion is a covenant we do each day, each week, each year. Hence the first phrase of Genesis, "in the beginning", makes sense. Each moment is creative, "covenantal"...a starting over again, always a beginning. Yves Becquart, my tough mentor in studies, explained that the notion of parousia--or the final coming of Christ--is about a future that is constantly available. There is always something to look forward to in life and God refuses to opt for end and death. This is why parousia also means presence. God never opts to be absent. In Christ God is always present. Hence parousia can also be in the now!

So creation, covenant and presence are three terms that intertwine. We are not stuck in a pond, dark and immobile. We can always flow out, engage in and with the presence of God who continually invites us to life. This is easier said than realized, and I am not perhaps really existentially sure of what this means. Still I am thankful for those who taught me this lesson. 

"In the beginning". It is a fascinating phrase. Sometimes one feels like really caught in that pond as if life has stopped moving. But, "the beginning"...is always available...and the pond is just a corner of the stream.

Grapes and the New Year Celebration

Ezekiel was a prophet on exile. He was among those deported to Babylon and he did his ministry in the foreign land.

Ezekiel was questioned by the Lord God, "What is the meaning of this proverb you recite in the land of Israel: Parents eat sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge?" (18/2). It was an expression indicating that the faults of parents pass on to the next generations. A parent eats grapes, the kids face the consequences, so to speak. People following the traditional thinking believed that their exile was a consequence of what their parents did. Ezekiel went against this tradition. No transmission is involved, he said. For him whoever was at fault must be the one to face the consequences. Remember that Ezekiel was a prophet on exile, so he had to assure the exiled people that their situation was not a consequence of the acts of their previous generations. Ezekiel had to bring the light of hope and not despair to the exiled population. It was a tough job because it involved re-forming a tradition.

So the prophet said, "As I live—oracle of the Lord GOD: I swear that none of you will ever repeat this proverb in Israel. Only the one who sins shall die. The son shall not be charged with the guilt of his father...." (18/3 & 20).

Jeremiah shared the same view. He too was doing his ministry around the exile period. He stated, "In those days they shall no longer say, “The parents ate unripe grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge, but all shall die because of their own iniquity: the teeth of anyone who eats unripe grapes shall be set on edge" (31/30). The verse has complicated twist and turns that biblists will like to decipher. For us the whole point is that Jeremiah was concerned with the restoration of the people of Judah with the hope of a new covenant, so he wanted to drop all that crap about making future generations answer the faults of their past generations. Start everything anew!

This New Year season may be an occasion to re-think things over and accept that there is hope. The past may be so crushing and exasperating...but can we start anew?