2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23/ Eph 2:4-10/ Jn 3:14-21
If we were to look at the little red book that is in the pews, it is called "The Order of the Mass".
On the cover there is a symbol of the cross, and on the spaces in between the arms of the cross are the letters IC, XC, NI and KA.
IC, XC are the initials for Jesus Christ.
But what about NI and KA? Actually it is one word NIKA. It is a Greek word, and it means victor or conqueror.
So the letters around the cross stands for Jesus Christ the Victor or Jesus Christ the Conqueror.
We may not have known what NIKA stands for because it is a foreign word.
And we may also not know what the name Nicodemus means.
It is a foreign sounding name, and not many people have that name, and maybe for a good reason.
In today's gospel, the man who came to look for Jesus at night is called Nicodemus. He was also a Pharisee.
Somehow the name Nicodemus doesn't give a good impression, and hence it doesn't find favour with people who what to choose a name for baptism or other purposes.
But what does the name Nicodemus stands for?
There are two parts to the name: nico and demus.
Nico means "victory", and demus means "the people".
So Nicodemus means "he is the victory of the people", or "he who claims victory for the people".
So it is actually a meaningful and also a powerful name.
Yet the Nicodemus in the gospel came to see Jesus under cover of darkness because he was afraid for his reputation and status as a Pharisee.
The man whose name means “victory of the people” has come to see the man who is the Victor and the Conqueror.
And out of the strange meeting in the night, a very profound and enlightening truth is proclaimed.
In fact, this truth is often called the summary of the whole Bible, the very gist of the good news of salvation.
And it is this: God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, so that anyone who believes in Him may not be lost but may have eternal life.
For God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world but so that through Him the world might be saved.
That is the powerful and profound truth. That is also the truth about God and His deep love for us.
Jesus shines His light on us so that we live in the light of truth and love.
Surely we are attracted to the light.
The problem is that we also like to linger in the darkness.
In the end, we settle for some kind of twilight existence.
Coming back to Nicodemus (whose name means the victory of the people).
Nicodemus had only three appearances in the Gospel of John.
The first was in today’s Gospel passage, when he came to see Jesus at night.
The second was when he tried to intervene by speaking up for Jesus when the Pharisees were plotting against Him ( Jn 7:51).
The third and last time was when he appeared at the burial of Jesus and provided a large quantity of spices for the burial (Jn 19:39).
So Nicodemus was not a great sinner but neither was he a great saint. He was not a great coward but neither did he have great courage.
Nicodemus can be said to be an in-between, neither in the light nor in the dark, a twilight kind of person.
And that’s what most of us are – in the twilight zone.
We draw comfort from the light, but there is also the darkness we want to hide.
Like Nicodemus, we are neither a great sinner nor a great saint.
We are not great cowards but neither do we have great courage.
We are neither all for God nor all against Him.
And we are also neither all for the devil, nor all against him.
But living in the in-between, twilight zone kind of existence, how are we going to stand before Jesus Christ, the Victor and Conqueror?
It is either we are with Him or we are not. It is either we gather with Him, or we scatter.
It’s either we are in the light or we are in the dark.
Yet, we must remember that we are created in love and we are created to live in the light.
When we sin, we walk on the dark side.
Lent is the time for us to move from being in this in-between twilight zone and come to the light.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is for us to let the light of God shine in our hearts and dispel the darkness of our sins.
It may be sleazy shadows like selfishness, laziness or ungratefulness, or it may be major black holes like unfaithfulness, viciousness and wickedness.
Whatever it may be, Jesus wants to conquer the darkness of our sins and claim victory over us.
We have to decide; we can’t go in-between or opt for the twilight zone.
Either we are for Jesus or we are against Him.
Either we are in the light or we are in the dark.
Either we live in love, or we rot in sin.
Click the links under My Blog List to get to Chinese and English weekday homilies.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
3rd Sunday of Lent, Year B, 11.03.2012
Ex 10:1-17/ 1 Cor 1:22-25/ Jn 2:13-25
We may have heard of this book, or we may even have read this book called "Who moved my cheese?" by Spencer Johnson.
Basically, it is about how to adapt and handle changes in one's work and in one's life.
In the corporate environment, some managements have been known to distribute this book to employees during times of structural re-organization and during cost-cutting measures.
It is an attempt to portray unfavourable or difficult changes in an opportunistic or optimistic way.
But the books is not just for the corporate and working environment.
It is about change, how to handle and adapt to change, whether it is at work or in life.
Basically in the book, there are these two characters called Haw and Hem, and they live in a maze and they have to find cheese to survive.
One day they managed to find a room filled with cheese.
Contended with their find, they began to establish routines around their daily intake of cheese, and they slowly began to be complacent and arrogant in the process.
But they were unaware that the cheese supply was depleting, and one day Haw and Hem came and found that there was no more cheese left.
Angered and annoyed, Hem demand: Who moved my cheese?
They had counted on the cheese supply to be constant and so they were unprepared for this eventuality.
Still thinking that someone moved their cheese, they went home hungry and angry and they thought that the cheese would come back the next day.
And of course, when they returned the next day, there was still no cheese, and that made them even angrier and also hungrier.
Haw begins to realize the reality of the situation, and he proposed a search for new cheese, but Hem was dead against it because he was stuck to his old routine and also frightened of the unknown out there (in denial too).
But Haw knew that they had to move on, and so he chiseled these words on the wall for his friend Hem to see: If you do not change, you will become extinct.
Those were simple but profound words of truth - if you do not change, you will become extinct.
It's a truth that applies to countries, to companies, to organizations, to institutions, and as well as to the individuals.
Yes we get stuck in our old familiar convenient ways and we get threatened and become defensive when someone wants to change the way things are.
Yet we do not realize it, that when we don't change, we actually stagnate, and anything that is stagnate is as good as deteriorating and decaying.
That was the situation that Jesus found in the Temple courtyard in today's gospel.
What started out with a religious purpose, slowly degenerated into a lucrative business enterprise.
And because it was a lucrative business enterprise with a religious facade, no one dared to change anything.
What Jesus was angry about was that besides this veil of hypocrisy, there was also injustice, cheating, oppression and extortion.
And of all places, it was happening right there in His Father's house.
We have to note that what Jesus did was not out of the spur of anger and let fly His fury.
He had observed, He had calculated His moves, as He tied those cords to make a whip.
His actions were intentional, and the impact was also intentional.
Jesus intended to cleanse the Temple, and it was also intended to create a reaction from the people.
This image of an angry Jesus with a whip in His hand is not the Jesus that we like to have in our minds.
We want the sweet and gentle, caring and loving Jesus; we don't want an angry Jesus with a whip in His hand.
Because when we see an angry Jesus, we know that there is something that must be changed, something that must be cleansed, and we are not going to like it.
One of the signs that the Church is deteriorating and decaying is when the goal of the Church is to simply maintain the way things are - don't rock the boat, don't upset anyone.
As long as people are happy, then just let it be.
But not for Jesus. In order to cleanse us of the filth and evil within us, He will even bring us down to our knees.
It is the common human experience that when something bad happens, as in a crisis, and we go crumbling down to the dust, there is always a cleansing.
Because the hand that hurts is also the hand that heals.
If God whips us, it is because God wants to save us.
God wants to whip out the sinfulness in us so that we can worship Him in spirit and in truth.
There is this story about St. Jerome. He was the one who translated the Hebrew scriptures into the Latin Vulgate.
One day he had a vision of Jesus, and he was in estasy, and so he exclaimed : Lord, I want to give You all my intelligence, all my time, all my energy, my life even.
Jesus replied : No, I don't need all that.
St. Jerome became a bit upset and so he asked : Lord Jesus, what do You want from me?
Jesus said : I want your sins. Give me all your sins.
Yes, Jesus want our sins so that He can forgive us and heal us of our sinfulness.
Yet in order to hand over our sins, we must be willing to accept to be cleansed so that we can change.
So whether it is an addiction to drinking, smoking, gambling, pornography, we must accept the pain of cleansing.
As that profound statement in the book "Who moved my cheese" said : If you do not change, you will be extinct.
If we do not want to be cleansed, then we will not change; then we will become extinct.
We may have heard of this book, or we may even have read this book called "Who moved my cheese?" by Spencer Johnson.
Basically, it is about how to adapt and handle changes in one's work and in one's life.
In the corporate environment, some managements have been known to distribute this book to employees during times of structural re-organization and during cost-cutting measures.
It is an attempt to portray unfavourable or difficult changes in an opportunistic or optimistic way.
But the books is not just for the corporate and working environment.
It is about change, how to handle and adapt to change, whether it is at work or in life.
Basically in the book, there are these two characters called Haw and Hem, and they live in a maze and they have to find cheese to survive.
One day they managed to find a room filled with cheese.
Contended with their find, they began to establish routines around their daily intake of cheese, and they slowly began to be complacent and arrogant in the process.
But they were unaware that the cheese supply was depleting, and one day Haw and Hem came and found that there was no more cheese left.
Angered and annoyed, Hem demand: Who moved my cheese?
They had counted on the cheese supply to be constant and so they were unprepared for this eventuality.
Still thinking that someone moved their cheese, they went home hungry and angry and they thought that the cheese would come back the next day.
And of course, when they returned the next day, there was still no cheese, and that made them even angrier and also hungrier.
Haw begins to realize the reality of the situation, and he proposed a search for new cheese, but Hem was dead against it because he was stuck to his old routine and also frightened of the unknown out there (in denial too).
But Haw knew that they had to move on, and so he chiseled these words on the wall for his friend Hem to see: If you do not change, you will become extinct.
Those were simple but profound words of truth - if you do not change, you will become extinct.
It's a truth that applies to countries, to companies, to organizations, to institutions, and as well as to the individuals.
Yes we get stuck in our old familiar convenient ways and we get threatened and become defensive when someone wants to change the way things are.
Yet we do not realize it, that when we don't change, we actually stagnate, and anything that is stagnate is as good as deteriorating and decaying.
That was the situation that Jesus found in the Temple courtyard in today's gospel.
What started out with a religious purpose, slowly degenerated into a lucrative business enterprise.
And because it was a lucrative business enterprise with a religious facade, no one dared to change anything.
What Jesus was angry about was that besides this veil of hypocrisy, there was also injustice, cheating, oppression and extortion.
And of all places, it was happening right there in His Father's house.
We have to note that what Jesus did was not out of the spur of anger and let fly His fury.
He had observed, He had calculated His moves, as He tied those cords to make a whip.
His actions were intentional, and the impact was also intentional.
Jesus intended to cleanse the Temple, and it was also intended to create a reaction from the people.
This image of an angry Jesus with a whip in His hand is not the Jesus that we like to have in our minds.
We want the sweet and gentle, caring and loving Jesus; we don't want an angry Jesus with a whip in His hand.
Because when we see an angry Jesus, we know that there is something that must be changed, something that must be cleansed, and we are not going to like it.
One of the signs that the Church is deteriorating and decaying is when the goal of the Church is to simply maintain the way things are - don't rock the boat, don't upset anyone.
As long as people are happy, then just let it be.
But not for Jesus. In order to cleanse us of the filth and evil within us, He will even bring us down to our knees.
It is the common human experience that when something bad happens, as in a crisis, and we go crumbling down to the dust, there is always a cleansing.
Because the hand that hurts is also the hand that heals.
If God whips us, it is because God wants to save us.
God wants to whip out the sinfulness in us so that we can worship Him in spirit and in truth.
There is this story about St. Jerome. He was the one who translated the Hebrew scriptures into the Latin Vulgate.
One day he had a vision of Jesus, and he was in estasy, and so he exclaimed : Lord, I want to give You all my intelligence, all my time, all my energy, my life even.
Jesus replied : No, I don't need all that.
St. Jerome became a bit upset and so he asked : Lord Jesus, what do You want from me?
Jesus said : I want your sins. Give me all your sins.
Yes, Jesus want our sins so that He can forgive us and heal us of our sinfulness.
Yet in order to hand over our sins, we must be willing to accept to be cleansed so that we can change.
So whether it is an addiction to drinking, smoking, gambling, pornography, we must accept the pain of cleansing.
As that profound statement in the book "Who moved my cheese" said : If you do not change, you will be extinct.
If we do not want to be cleansed, then we will not change; then we will become extinct.
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