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May 2007
Insight is a monthly contribution on remarkable topics dedicated for thoughts, reflection and prayers. Please feel free to contribute to this page what you would like to share with others.
'It Is Finished'
After Easter, I was reminded that the last reflection I shared on Good Friday 'It is finished' was imperative and I should release the notes to the church for further reflection. I though about it and resolved that I release the summary 'It is finished' from John 19:30 for further reflection
'It is finished,' Jesus' last word from the cross. In Greek it is Tetelestai. This is very important last word that came from Jesus' mouth while on the cross. It means that things have reached their telos: their conclusion, and also their goal. It is fulfilled. It has been accomplished.
What an extraordinary thing for a 33-year-old person to say! Jesus was just coming to his prime: teaching people the way of love, social justice, healing people from illness, caring for the marginalised, developing a movement and new leaders.
Some Jewish people expected Jesus to free them from their Roman oppressors. Instead, his life is cut short by a brutal regime. I am very much aware of my experiences of living under a brutal regime where you know that the leadership is crude and politically blind - where there is no democracy. From my perspective this seems a tragedy, but Jesus spoke of fulfillment. Why?
The answer surely lies in a conviction that permeates John's gospel; that Christ's vocation was to do the will of his Father and to accomplish his work And somehow he had done what he was meant to do.
From hindsight now, I can see and understand why the cross of Jesus Christ has remained the core of Christian symbol and teaching over the centuries. And it is imperative to rest with these words of Christ on the cross, for we live in a world where Christians are still persecuted, where violence is still glorified, where terrorists still terrorise, where people still struggle to find community where Lazarus still sits in hunger at the gate of the rich man. So much of what we understand the will of God to be remains unfinished; unfulfilled.
The scope and depth of these and other problems can seem overwhelming, and beyond our ability to solve. We are tempted by exhaustion and despair, for we are human, we are not the Christ. We feel we are missing the power Jesus had to heal and transform; and the insight he had into the hearts and motives of others. Worst of all, we are missing the sureness with which he spoke of the will of God, and knew what he was called to do.
So the question remains: how can we accomplish the work God has set before us here at St Matthew's?
I am personally aware of many whose lives came to a premature end: Dag Hammarskjold Swedes, the inspirational Secretary-General of the United Nations.
He was killed tragically in a plane crash in Zambia in 1961 when in his mid-fifties, and when dedicated to working for peace and building up the UN in its formative years.
Then, John Tom Boya Kenyan, the charismatic talented Politician was assassinated in 1966. John was a gifted politician who was admired by his contemporaries and many hoped that he would be the next President of Kenya after Kenyata. His life was cut short by jealousy and human hatred of the Jaluo of Kenya. Just to mention a few.
There are some things I find common in these two men - Dag Hammarskjold Swedes and John Tom Boya Kenyan. Both men were well known public figures, known and admired in their countries and around the world. They were men of principles who dedicated their lives to serving their contemporaries and believed that social justice, law, and human love must be preached and practiced by all.
Their paradigm were seen in their social justice in action. According 4to politically correct tastes today, they were the wrong models, wrong gender, wrong colour, the wrong class, and both worked at the wrong end of the hierarchy. Yet God's call for people like Dag Hammarskjold Swedes and John Tom Boya to use their resources and positions of responsibilities for the service of others is not confined to any group or individual - it reaches out to all.
This may be part of fulfillment for both Dag and John: to tackle with conviction problems others think intractable. As Dag and John sought to bring social justice, so Susan B. Anthony and the Pankhursts for women's suffrage, Martin Luther King took on civil rights, Mother Teresa tended the dying on the streets of Calcutta, Desmond Tutu enabled the people of South Africa to forgive the unforgivable. Whatever is unthinkable, intractable, entrenched - what will take all of the love a person and community can muster - may also fulfil.
In our age of global communications, the potential for each of us to participate in activities to make for a better world is unprecedented.
A common task to which the international community is committed, announced by Dag's most recent successor Kofi Annan at the Millennium Summit in 2000, is to reduce by half extreme poverty worldwide by 2015 through the Millennium Development Goals . Others look further, to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide by 2025.
If we engage ourselves in working towards these goals, we're sharing in the work that Dag, John, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu initiated in their public lives.
We May not live to see these goals fulfilled but we can, like them, work towards them energetically nonetheless, knowing it is part of God's work and mission.
As we reflect on the impoverishment of the world at the foot of the cross, it leads us to consider the spirituality of the work we do on behalf of the poor in Christ's name. In articulating the connections between faith and struggles in his professional life, Dag leaves us insights into humility, into commitment, into the situations that tested his integrity, into his faith in a God who oversees these missions that too big for any of us. It shows us his need, through it all, for a room of quiet. We too here at St Matthew's need such qualities, and room of quiet within, to accomplish the work God is giving us to do. and to be fulfilled in death as well as in life.
A private prayer written by Dag in 1954, the year after he became Secretary-General of the United Nations, provides a fitting way to pause and consider our relationship with God and the fulfillment it brings as we seek to accomplish the work God sets before us:
"Thou who art over us, Thou who art one of us,
Thou who art Also within us, May all see Thee in me also
May I prepare the way for Thee, May I thank Thee for all that shall fall to my lot,
May I also not forget the needs of others,
Keep me in Thy love, As thou wouldst that all should be kept it mine
May everything in this my being be directed to Thy glory
And may I never despair,
For I am under Thy hand, And in Thee in all power and goodness."
©Dag Hammarskjold Swedes 1954
Modicum Okello (Rev)
Quote
"..Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Romans 12:2)
The Future of Christianity is in the Resurrection!
1. The whole matter of the resurrection and its amazing victory is summed up in the following story. A certain Muslim man was converted. This greatly upset his friends and family, and they remonstrated with him along this line: 'Why have you turned your back on the Faith of our fathers? Why have you become a Christian?' He answered, 'It is like this: If I were going down a road and came to a fork in the road and didn't know which way to take and if there were two persons there - one alive and the other dead - from which of them do you think I would ask the way?'
2. The story is sweeping in its implications. We cannot ask the way from those who are dead - the philosophy broke down at the place of death - death took them all. All except One. Only One has gone down into death and returned to tell us, 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades' (Rev.1:17-18).
3. Death has been described as 'Life's most threatening jailer.' It is the duty of a jailer to separate the sentenced person from his friends and family, to shut him up and keep him under lock and key.
Death acts in the same way: it binds us with icy bonds, tears us heartlessly from our loved ones, claps us in a cell and bolts the gates of life against us.
4. But death shall not be the Christian's jailer. It is not death that is our guard - Revelation 1:17-18. See what they say about death. The keys of this dark prison house are in the hands of Another.
Jesus has the keys! Hallelujah, praise the Lord. He is risen.
He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. Amen.
Modicum
Quote: "The colour line has been washed away in the blood of Jesus.."
'We belong to the whole body of Christ' is a phrase that might well be applied to the band of worshipers who gathered together in Azusa Street in Los Angeles Mission in April of 1906..... Seymour (William J. Seymour (1870-1922)) cannot be claimed only by the blacks, or the Pentecostals; he belongs to the whole body of Christ - of all nations, races and peoples. And the baptism in the Holy Spirit, with the accompanying gifts and graces does not belong only to Pentecostals, but to the whole body of Christ - indeed, 'unto as many as the Lord our God shall call' (Acts 2:39)
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