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We continue with the appearances of Jesus to His disciples. However, the post-Resurrection experiences of the disciples is reminiscence of Deborah Kerr in The King and I, singing “Getting to know you”. In each encounter with Jesus, there is a feeling as if the disciples do know Him but they are still getting to know more about Him and to know Him intimately.
Today, the Gospel is the aftermath of the encounter of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus where they, while at table, recognised Jesus at the Breaking of Bread. In these post-Resurrection experiences, they are often startled or terrified by His appearances or just plainly dumb-struck which questions what they really know of Jesus and the Resurrection.
In each and every encounter, He had to assure them that He was not a ghost but that He has come back to life and is therefore the very fulfilment of all the hopes that they had inherited from their ancestors. All those who came before them had been looking for the Messiah and Jesus was the answer to that search.
Two questions for reflection on these encounters. Firstly, what does it take for us to recognise Him? Secondly, what happens after we have recognised Him?
Food was essential or central to the interactions of Jesus with the people. He was often described as having meals with people. While He was labelled a glutton by the Pharisees, the truth is He has always shown concern for those who lack the necessities that bring joy to communal gatherings. In John’s Gospel, at the behest of His Mother, He changed water into wine to save the marrying couple of embarrassment. And on the mountain, by multiplying the loaves and fish, He made sure that the hungry crowd did not go empty stomach.
But food and drink were never for themselves. They were provided in order to enrich relationships. The context that food is primarily relational can been seen in St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians. The early Christians were gathered around the Eucharist. And as such, there was food prior to Holy Communion. The scandal arose because the wealthy ate whilst the poor went hungry. The critique was not against consuming food. The issue was not that the rich ate but that they ate while neglecting the poor.
The providence of food and drink is in the context of the Eucharist as we see in John 6. Jesus had fed the hungry but they were still looking for more to satisfy their physical hunger. More than material satisfaction, Jesus proposed a food and a drink that would fulfil all their spiritual hunger and thirst.
Today the story continues from the encounter of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. These two had RECOGNISED Him at the breaking of bread. The action where Bread is broken is the other name for Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament and the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is the primary place to recognise Jesus. Even though the rite or the manner of celebrating Mass, as we know it today, is not recorded in detail in any of the Gospels, the outline of the Eucharist was already captured by Luke’s narrative of the Road to Emmaus. The second part of the Mass which the Church terms as the Liturgy of the Eucharist is enumerated by the four actions of Jesus as He sat down with these two Disciples after their walk where He took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them.
We hear this “retelling or recounting” from the Last Supper in a lyrical manner. “On the night He was betrayed, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to His disciples saying”, is a formula which directs our attention to the Offertory (took), the Eucharistic Prayer (blessed), the Fractio Panis (broke), and the distribution of Holy Communion (gave).
Interestingly, notice the attention paid to the “taking, blessing and giving”. Frequently enough, the action of “breaking” is missed out, either because the priest does it rather nonchalantly or the congregation is too engrossed with exchanging peace with everyone to miss out a key component of RECOGNISING the Lord.
They recognised Him at the BREAKING of Bread. As the Host was broken, they remarked, “Did not our hearts burn within us as He had talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?”.
This is where we join the two disciples whom, “as they recognised Him, He had vanished from their sight”. Immediately, they set off returning to Jerusalem so that they could tell the story of their encounter with Jesus on the road.
This is what should happen after we have recognised Him. The message of Easter is always about one running to another. The ladies at the tomb, upon knowing that Christ had risen, ran to tell the Apostles about His Resurrection.
The Eucharist of the Resurrection is never meant for “private” consumption. It has tremendous benefits for the soul, for the person who receives it. He is the answer to our spiritual hunger but it is never meant to stop at the personal. It has always been an interpersonal reality. When we have seen the Lord, our hearts must tell of His wonders.
This is the good news of the Resurrection. When the Jesus whom we have recognised is not made known, then it begs the question of whom we have really come to recognise. To eat Jesus is always to proclaim Him in and through our lives and if we keep quiet, the rocks will cry out. Our Cathedrals, Churches and Chapels, old and new, are rocks shouting out the Gospel of the Resurrection. Better not let these stones shame us.
Jesus Christ is Risen and yet the Gospel describes a situation we can resonate with. It is the experience of uncertainty. Ambiguity, confusion and doubt can corrode the mind and imprison the soul in fear. Issues of health and wealth, freedom and security can sow unsettling doubts in our minds. A concrete example is the fear of the Ringgit dipping below 4.00 vis-a-vis the Singdollar which devalues one’s savings.
The same startling scenario applies to the Disciples hiding in the Upper Room. They were afraid and unsure for they had left everything behind to follow this compelling leader but now, what to make of their charismatic leader’s death. He who walked on water, multiplied loaves and raised the dead was Himself powerless against death.
Into this turmoil and fear, Christ appeared and greeted them, “Peace be with you”. The Risen Lord’s greeting is so powerful that it is manifested in the liturgy. At the beginning of every Mass, the celebrant has a choice of three salutations plus “one more” to greet the congregation. The “one more” is what you heard in the Gospel just now. “Peace be with you”. This particular greeting is personally associated with Jesus which explains its reservation for use only by Bishops when they celebrate the Eucharist.
The person of the bishop expresses the fullness of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. In the hierarchy of the Sacrament of Orders, the bishop stands for the Lord, par excellence. Thus, as the Sacrament of Jesus Christ, the bishop greets the congregation as if the Lord Himself is present to say: “Peace be with you”.
To hear the salutation, “Peace be with you”, is to recognise Christ in our midst. The context of this greeting was of a man who, having suffered death, came back to life. Bearing the wounds of our sins on His Body, He returned to greet those whom He loved and bestowed upon them His peace. Even after betrayal, denial and abandonment, He did not come back to castigate or chastise. Instead, He unreservedly poured onto them His peace and breathed upon them His Spirit. Christ in the midst of their fear revealed the quality of His mercy. He loved them even when they did not deserve Him.
Thus, it is fitting that right after the Resurrection, we celebrate Divine Mercy. However, our grasp of the notion of God’s mercy can be skewed. What we think of as God’s mercy is closer to indulgence. One of the greatest acts of mercy that Christ illustrated is seen in the woman caught in adultery. The crowd that prided itself on being on the right side of the law, paraded the adulteress to humiliate, shame and also to force Jesus to prove His religious credential. He showed mercy by not condemning her but neither did He confirm her behaviour because He told her firmly to “go and sin no more”.
Just about 10 days before, Jesus hung on the Cross between two thieves. One was repentant and the other not. Yet both suffered the same consequence of their punishment. They both had their legs broken to hasten their death and Jesus who had promised the repentant thief heaven did not come down from the Cross to relieve Dismas of the consequences of sin, judgement, punishment.
Mercy is indeed an expression of God’s generosity to us. We are undeserving but He is nevertheless excessive in His forgiveness. As the woman caught adultery has shown us, what is written into mercy is always a profound invitation to correct our lives and to enter into a deeper filial relationship with God where we are also called to be merciful like God is. Mercy joins us to God and to other human beings because it breaks down the walls separating us from God and prevents us from the peace that flows from trusting God’s infinite mercy.
In 1927, a Jesuit priest, Miguel Pro, stood in front of a firing squad. Was he fearful? Maybe. Was he at peace? Definitely. As the shot rang out, he shouted out Viva Cristo Rey. It sounded like a cry of defiance but it was more a proclamation of trust in God’s mercy because mercy flows from a heart that is at peace, a heart that is sure that beyond temporal life, there is Resurrection.
Without Christ’s peace we will struggle with mercy. Without mercy we struggle with forgiveness because our idea of justice is heavy-handed. Our sense of justice is possibly closer to revenge exacted. To give an example, there are talks and whispering that a shameless kleptocrat and his scheming rapacious wife will be pardoned royally. Many still suffer the damage that these thieves have done to this country’s economy and how the future generation will continue to pay for the price of their greed and rapacity. Our idea of justice is that they should be locked up and the keys thrown away. If they were pardoned, many who hold dear to the principles of justice would be devastated and hopes shattered.
It is true that there has to be a balance between mercy and justice. As St Thomas Aquinas rightly pointed out, “Without justice, mercy is indulgence. Without mercy, justice is cruel”. While not forgetting the necessity of justice, our hope must be tied to the Resurrection. It means that both mercy and justice do not necessarily find their resolution in this world. When we are convinced that there is Resurrection, we are at peace knowing that no evil will go unpunished and no good deed will go unrewarded in the after-life. Even if these two kleptocrats were freed, while deeply disturbing, we are at peace assured that their justice will be meted out not by us but by the Lord.
What possesses a martyr to face death peacefully or to accept the grave injustice of our kleptocracy, is a firm belief in the Resurrection. Without the peace of the Risen Christ poured into us, we will struggle to show mercy because our hearts will always be buffeted by the winds of revenge, not justice. The Resurrection gives peace to a martyr facing death and grants knowledge that beyond death both justice and mercy will always embrace. That was the reason Miguel Pro shouted “Long Live Christ the King”. He was at peace because he was convinced that the Lord’s mercy and justice extend beyond this world. Mercy flows from a heart filled with the peace of Christ because it is no longer fearful that justice will not be served in this world.
Cinematic thrillers capture our imagination because they skirt at the edge of excitement. How about visualising this dramatic movie scene? A man or a woman buried alive in a coffin. And the police and the loved ones are frantically trying to locate the trapped victim before the oxygen runs out for the buried person.
Hell is that buried coffin with souls trapped within. Souls held captive in hell’s bowels have no chance of escape until now. When Christ was brought down from the Cross on Good Friday and His Body ritually prepared to be entombed, we might think that He was laid in the sepulchre where lying there passively He awaits for the third day, His Resurrection. However, the Apostles’ Creed states that “He descended into the hell”. Tradition calls it the Harrowing of Hell and it refers to Christ descending into Hades to free souls trapped there from the beginning of time.
The idea that Christ entered into Hell makes a hell of a sense. Anyone born before the Resurrection of Christ does not stand any chance of going to heaven at all. They may have been righteous. People like Abraham, Sarah, Aaron, Miriam, Moses, Elijah, all the Patriarchs and Prophets of old and even Joseph the father of Jesus. They still need the grace of God which comes only through His Son, our Redeemer. This grace of redemption gives meaning to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Christ saved His mother at the moment of her conception precisely because every soul needs justification, either through Christ’s harrowing of hell OR Christ’s redemption won through His resurrection from the dead.
Just visualise Joseph, the father of Jesus, a man of honour, on Holy Saturday meeting His Christ as He descends step by step into hell to draw souls and allows them to be taken up into heaven. All righteous souls were not damned to hell but neither were they redeemed until Christ’s Resurrection.
During the hours after His death on the Cross, Jesus was not relaxing but was relentlessly busy with the mission of salvation. Take a look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Christ descent into hell was not an insignificant moment because the “Gospel was preached even to the dead” (1 Peter 4:6). In Hell, Christ “brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption” (CCC 634).
Tonight/today, the tomb stands empty. It is a sign of the Resurrection. Christ's bodily resurrection completes His victory over sin and perpetual death. The empty tomb stands as a symbol of our faith in the Resurrection. Faith begins with the senses but it does not end there. This faith in the Resurrection calls us to grow more and more comfortable with the reality of dying, of actual death but always in the light of rising to new life.
It is a life long journey and who better to represent us than Peter. He did not start as Peter the martyr. He started as one eager and later became a bit of a show off and when faced with difficulties, failed the Lord catastrophically by denying Him. Now all Peter sees is the empty tomb and he believes. This coward will soon gain the conviction to even die for the Lord. In Peter we have hope that our weakness may through the grace of Christ’s Resurrection be converted into conviction that courageously holds onto Christ until the end.
The truth of the Resurrection is found in the Harrowing of Hell and it teaches us that Christ died and rose from the dead that we might have a firm faith to know deeply that death cannot hold on to us forever. Our old and unredeemed history ends with the Cross. Our new and redeemed history begins with the Resurrection. Alleluia, let us rejoice for Jesus Christ is Risen.
There are three parts in this one long service today. The first part is the Liturgy of the Word where we endure an excruciating enactment of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane, His dramatic arrest and shameful trial, culminating with His passion and death on the Cross. The second part centres on the veneration of the instrument of salvation and not of death. The third part is the distribution of Holy Communion.
The English-speaking world calls today Good Friday. In Slavic countries, it is the Great Friday. For the Hispanophones or Francophones, it is Holy Friday. Rightly so because at the heart of “Good” Friday is saintly and salvific suffering. Mandarin is true to what “Good” Friday is. It is literally named as “Jesus receives suffering” day.
Like the famous Simon & Garfunkel hit “Sound of Silence”, we have come to “talk to saintly silent suffering”.
We learn from science that nature abhors a vacuum. The nature of our challenge is not the abhorrence of vacuum but rather an addiction to its opposite. Our noisy world is unable to stay with silence. Do not even mention endure suffering since we have found it increasingly impossible to stay still. What we have done is to successfully drown every possible waking moment with electronic and entertainment noises because we are afraid of our own thoughts. Have you ever laid in bed, unable to sleep and scrolling through YouTube mindlessly and often tempted to go to sites which are more titillating? I have. We are afraid of what we might find in ourselves. Or we are afraid of hearing the Lord speak to us. As social creatures, we seek to interact and we crave connexion. We trawl the net, we scroll the tube, we “book our face” or “Face our Book” (internet, YouTube, Facebook). Thus, we run away from being with or facing ourselves or worst, run away from facing the Lord and in running away, we also want to escape from suffering.
Why?
As Isaiah poignantly pointed out. “There is nothing beautiful about Him. Nothing to draw us unto Him”. Just look at the Cross—a bruised and bloodied Body.
The only language we can have when facing the broken Body of Christ is silence for without silence we cannot understand suffering. With noises that constantly envelope us, our agitation will not allow us to contemplate and embrace suffering. For us suffering is a pain to be avoided at all costs. Yet on the quiet mountain Elijah heard God’s voice in the gentle breeze. In the silence of Gethsemane, Christ heard the Father’s will. In our silence we can hear Christ’s love for us.
On Good Friday, the only day in the whole year when the Eucharist is not celebrated, we hear God’s first language. His silence. Heaven is silent because speech loses its meaning in the face of the fullness of God. Perhaps it is why we now find heaven to be an impossibility because we have come to desire a heaven that echoes our clamour and our clang, our cacophony and our commotion. The silence of the Cross powerfully reminds us that whatever administrative adjustments we can achieve, whatever pastoral programmes we push, whatever political projects we perform or whatever social solution we can set up to save the world, they will all come to a standstill because we are in the presence of the Only Person who can save the world. Evil can destroy everything including the human Body of Jesus but it cannot destroy His silence. Evil dies before a Christ who suffers in silence to reveal His love for souls.
Before the battered, bruised and bloodied Body of love and salvation, we stand in utter silence so that our emptiness, devoid of din and disquietude, can truly be filled with the saving love of Christ. Right after this, we unveil and venerate the Cross and then we will partake of Holy Communion. As Saint Teresa of Calcutta says, “If you look at the Crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Host, you understand how much Jesus loves you now”. Come, let us adore our suffering Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ. He died to lose none but to save all.
There are two Holy Thursdays. Or better yet, there are two Corpus Christi celebrations. The first is this evening. The second should be 2 months later. The English title Maundy Thursday, derived from Latin “mandatum” highlights specifically that at the start of the Easter Triduum, Christ instituted the most sublime of all Sacraments. Yet, the liturgy this evening shines a spotlight on another aspect of THE Sacrament of Sacraments.
The focus lands on service. We are accustomed to preachings about Christ’s humble service as a model for us. After all, He bent low to wash the feet of His disciples. But is the humility of Christ’s service as King still a selling point for us?
To be fair, humility flies in the face of a culture built on consumption. How so? To keep up with consumption, companies depend on branding and marketing. If people do not know a brand or a product, how to consume, right? Even humans are considered “brands” or “products”. For example, priests also need to “market” themselves by rubbing shoulders with the Nuncio or the powers that be if they ever aspire to higher office. Given such an aggressive self-promoting philosophy, humility or self-effacement will surely struggle to survive in a market-driven environment. In fact, humility could often be regarded as weakness.
Beyond marketing or hard-selling a brand there stands a more profound challenge. When you think of online shopping like Lazada or Shopee or any of the platforms, they seem to be more our “saviours” than Christ can ever be. Why? Almost everything of what we want can be purchased online nowadays. Whatever material cravings we have can be satisfied because these platforms pander to our desires. But the satisfaction usually lasts until the next desire grips us. When we swing from one satisfaction to the next, it can also lose sight of eternal salvation or it ranks rather low on our list of priority needs. These momentary excitements top our agenda and not really salvation.
Hence, a “humble” King saving us is not really a saleable idea since society does not seem to care that much for salvation. I am not referring to this particular Mass because there is only one today and it is bilingual which means it is a bit more packed. But have you noticed that every Sunday the Cathedral is never full? It is sad that post-pandemic, salvation seems to be even less needed. So, when Christ bent down to wash the feet of His disciples, He may have modelled for us a way to be humble and to serve. Yet today, service is almost entirely based on money and as a general rule, we do not really trust free service. Somehow, written into our calculation, what is more expensive should be better. For many, the first thought of a hospital is never Sultanah Aminah or Sultan Ismail.
The care for salvation is central to what Jesus did for the Disciples. We need to know what salvation truly is so that we may understand why we need it. Here, our shopping experience can be instructive. Nothing can fully satisfy us. Is it not true that when we have acquired something our happiness is always short lived. The reason Rosmah and Najib or any of those kleptocrats like Marcos and Imelda are considered greedy and grasping is because after an acquisition or conquest, it is never enough. For those of us who do not breathe that kind of air, we are surrounded by things which we want but do not really need and the thrill for many of us is possibly in the buying or the unwrapping but never in the possessing. How much can we consume? How much can we enjoy? And most importantly, will we ever reach a point where we say enough and are satisfied and want no more?
Chasing after the temporary highs is like breathing but not living. A person can be breathing but not alive. Likewise, to have everything in the world but still dissatisfied proves that we have an existential hunger that cannot be fulfilled in this world. We hunger for the completion which only Jesus Christ can give and that is the meaning of salvation. Remember the multiplication of loaves where Jesus fed the thousands. He told the crowd who was still looking for tangible bread to satisfy their physical hunger, “I will give you the Bread which you will eat and never be hungry again”.
Tonight, the Institution of the Eucharist was meant for salvation. The focus on service is important because there is a link between Christ as the Bread of eternal life and Christ as the humble servant. In washing the feet of His disciples Jesus makes the link between grace and action. Through His action, Jesus lives out the great commandment which marries His Word with His action.
To love one another is to reach out and serve but we must always remember that when Jesus bent low to wash the feet of His disciples it was because He wanted to save each one of them. He was and still is prepared to go to the ends of the earth to save each one of us. In the face of His salvation, the question is this: Do you need Him? If yes, then you are in the right place. Why? When Jesus fed the 5000, the crowd wanted to make Him the bread King. He was not interested in that because He is the King of Bread who gives us His Body, the Bread that saves and leads to eternal life.
Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week. It could be the “whole” Holy Week itself because of the two Gospel passages. One is read earlier before the Procession. The other narrates the Passion of the Christ. Together, they encompass the entire drama of our Holy Week journey where we begin with a cheering and end with a condemnation. We mark the triumphal entry into the capital and end with the tragic execution on Calvary. The placement of the ase two Gospels is rather jarring but the readings can help us appreciate what we are celebrating today.
We are actually proclaiming the Kingship of Christ. Stating this does not make much of a sense because we already have the Solemnity of Christ the King at the end of the liturgical year. Given the surrounding drama, the theme of Christ’s sovereignty is easy to miss. The question is how to discern the Kingship enacted through these two Gospel passages?
Palm Sunday’s liturgy feels very much like a continuation of our Christmas narrative. As Jesus began His ministry in Galilee, the 3 Synoptic Evangelists present that moment as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 9. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”. This verse is what we hear at Christmas. Now as Christ is near the end of His earthly ministry, He is presented as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah 9. Israel would be restored by a King, the promised son of David, who will enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.
Riding an ass, Christ now enters Jerusalem to reclaim the city for His own. His entrance is both a religious experience and a political manoeuvre but not in the manner we conceive politics. He was not entering to liberate Israel from Rome let alone wrest the kingdom from Herod.
The kind of kingdom brought about by Christ is both personal and social. In His person, as reflected in the 1st Reading. He will be a King treated badly. His beard will be torn because upon Him will be laid the chastisement of the world. He suffers grievously because He carries the sins of the world upon His shoulders. But that is not unexpected. The 2nd Reading provides the template to appreciate this King. “Even though His state was divine, He did not cling to His divinity but chose to enter into slavery on our behalf”. He frees us from the clutches of sin so that we can live a holier life.
To embrace sanctity, Jesus Christ cannot be only a personal Saviour. Our holiness, even though personal, has both social and political impact. The socio-political aspect of His Kingship challenges us to overcome the deep fissures caused by conflicting philosophies that currently divide society. It is easy to squeeze Christ into a smaller manageable concept in which He becomes my personal Saviour. Since no man is an island, the question that remains is “what” Christ should really be and where should He be apart from my “personal” space.
Christ as the universal King must pervade our social and political space. This is the challenge we face if He is not to be conceived narrowly as a Saviour of Christians. It does not make sense that He is simply the Saviour of Christians. Why? When God created, did He create the entire cosmos or did He create a narrow band of Christian space? The Creed clearly states that God is the Creator, presumably of all that is, which must mean He is also the Saviour of all and not just Christians. Therefore, we may have to ask ourselves if the neat notion of a personal Saviour may have reduced Jesus Christ to simply a “personal” butler, albeit, an exalted one. Perhaps it is the adorable, cute and pleasant idea of Jesus as personal Saviour that makes it so much harder for Christ to be proclaimed and accepted as the Ruler of the universe.
Many of us would know first hang what it means to be betrayed by family or friends. Palm Sunday’s liturgy with the two Gospels of triumph and tragedy illustrates for us how fickle the human heart can be. One minute Christ is exalted as King and the next, the world is ready to crucify Him. The idea of waving palms to welcome Christ and spreading cloaks for the King’s donkey to tread on should symbolise our desire that He be enthroned in our lives and more. The jarring placement of the two Gospels not only highlights the fickleness of the human heart but also a disposition towards the “pacification” of the Christ where we desire Him to be what we want but not really the universal Christ who stands for something more.
The exaltation of Christ on the Cross is not the narrative of a tragic end but rather a proclamation of Christ’s victory over all creation. Yes, the Cross may be a symbol of utter defeat for the Romans but for Christian it is the ultimate sign of victory. The King on the Cross shows that His sovereignty and His rule is achieved not through subjugation but through selfless service, not through conquest but through His crucifixion. He is truly the King of all creation which means that nothing is outside the domain of His salvation. He descends into Hell in order for man to ascend into heaven.
In summary, when the crowd shouted, “crucify Him”, it was meant to destroy Him. But we dare to acclaim “crucify Him” because we recognise the power of the Cross. From His victorious throne, grace abounds. Laws may prevent us from proclaiming Christ but cooperating with His grace our belief can blend with our behaviour, our conviction concretised through our conduct, we make His Kingdom can come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. All domains should come under the dominion or the Lordship of Jesus Christ for the only manner that Christ chooses to rule the world is through the Cross. In His flesh hanging on the Cross, disorder, sin and death come to die. Through His Cross alone, we stand a fighting chance that our travails through this world will not end in a hopeless defeat but will culminate in a glorious victory because Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. Christ conquers, Christ reigns and Christ commands.
From Laetare Sunday, the pace will now quicken toward the solemnity of Easter Triduum. Last week, we covered the topic of God’s love for us. A profound recognition of our sinfulness is a necessary prelude to appreciating the salvation brought about by God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. If salvation is free but not cheap, then, the more aware we are, the more we may be able to cherish this hard-earned redemption.
To better appreciate salvation, we need to ingrain into our consciousness that to approach Easter, we go through Good Friday. In other words, we reach the Resurrection by going through Calvary. In Year A, both the themes of Death and Resurrection are covered through the story of Lazarus. In Year B, we cover them through the parable of the grain. “Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and died, it remains only a single grain. But if it dies, it yields a rich harvest”.
What lesson can we learn from this?
Firstly, it is natural and part of our survival instinct to preserve ourselves. We are by nature not suicidal. Normally, we fear death and nobody in the right frame of mind wants to die. However, the recent pandemic seemed to have heightened our fear of death to the point where we took measures to avoid death at all costs. Again, this is not advocating the wanton waste of life. But the death which Jesus refers has to be more than the “death” which no man can escape from. Not even Lazarus or the son of the widow of Nain. All those whom Jesus raised from the dead had to suffer death again. So, the grain that must die does not refer to the inevitability of death.
Rather, the death of the grain refers more to the kind of dying in which we must undergo as part of life after the Fall. This type of death is far from the drama surrounding the end of life. Instead, the death best exemplified for us is dying daily. The notion associated with this daily dying is called self-sacrifice.
To a certain extent, the people of this great city of Johor Bahru know first-hand the experience associated with sacrificing. Children get up when most civilised people are still asleep in order to get to school across the “Longkang”. The same for parents who daily leave home for work only to return late in the dark. They brave the congestions at immigration check-points both sides of the divide. Of course, JB is by no means unique as there are other major cities in this Federation where suffering citizens run the same gauntlets of traffic congestions. People suffer just to put food on the table.
However, such sacrifices revolve around the self. Sacrifices, even if linked to one’s self-benefit, can teach us to die to oneself. But what is crucially needed is a kind of sacrifice which goes beyond self-advantage. It is a kind of dying which benefits others.
Earlier it was mentioned that the Pandemic may have fostered a certain fear of death. This fear could very possibly be a symptom that our generation have lost the stomach for selflessness. Think about it. Daily we are challenged to die to our selfishness, to say no to our self-centredness. In our culture which is big on self-promotion, it could simply mean we become less self-referential. As C.S Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less”. Like fasting from having to be right in every pronouncement we make. Whatever I say is right and fasting from that is dying to pride.
When death terrifies, maybe it is because we have forgotten to embrace the daily difficulties and the inconveniences of life. We do not just “die”. Instead, we learn to die through self-sacrifices. It is this daily dying that gives us the freedom to follow Jesus closely.
One of the challenges Jesus issued to the Disciples was to take up the Cross and to follow Him. It sounds noble until we realise that it does not come from out of nowhere. Life presents us with countless chances to die to ourselves. Can you imagine Peter remonstrating with Christ when the Lord predicted His own death. “How can, Lord?”. This denial could have stemmed from not making the connexion between daily life and the inevitability of death.
Perhaps we can visualise this better with the image of a candle. To be useful, that is, to provide light, the candle must necessarily burn itself out. In summary, a candle is only as good as it is being burnt up.
To follow Jesus is to follow Him to His death. Martyrdom is not restricted to the shedding of blood. White martyrdom consists of the kind which is inescapable in life and which to a certain extent takes its toll on us. But we plod on because inherent in suffering is the very sense that we are not alone. It sounds too easy to state it because those who are suffering can feel terribly lonely. But our suffering makes sense because we, in Christ, endure it for the benefit and the sake of others.
Finally, the saying, “unless a grain of wheat should fall and die” refers to Jesus Himself. He is the supreme model of word and deed. What makes it better is to pair it with another great saying of Jesus. “No greater love a man has than to lay down his life for his friends”. Indeed, the Christian notion of life is premised on death but precisely because it is a death that gives life to others. Christ died so that we might have life to the fullest.
