Comments on: This Song Sounds Familiar…

By: Ellen

Ellen — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:32:25 +0000

Here's a great sermon, related. About doing new things in Christ. Worth a read. Making a pilgrimage means setting out in a particular direction, travelling towards a destination. This gives a beauty of its own even to the journey and to the effort involved. Among the pilgrims of Jesus’s genealogy there were many who forgot the goal and wanted to make themselves the goal. Again and again, though, the Lord called forth people whose longing for the goal drove them forward, people who directed their whole lives towards it. The awakening of the Christian faith, the dawning of the Church of Jesus Christ was made possible, because there were people in Israel whose hearts were searching – people who did not rest content with custom, but who looked further ahead, in search of something greater: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, Mary and Joseph, the Twelve and many others. Because their hearts were expectant, they were able to recognize in Jesus the one whom God had sent, and thus they could become the beginning of his worldwide family. The Church of the Gentiles was made possible, because both in the Mediterranean area and in those parts of Asia to which the messengers of Jesus Christ travelled, there were expectant people who were not satisfied by what everyone around them was doing and thinking, but who were seeking the star which could show them the way towards Truth itself, towards the living God. We too need an open and restless heart like theirs. This is what pilgrimage is all about. Today as in the past, it is not enough to be more or less like everyone else and to think like everyone else. Our lives have a deeper purpose. We need God, the God who has shown us his face and opened his heart to us: Jesus Christ.

By: David Park

David Park — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:18:24 +0000

Daniel, great post. And a great comment from Wayne as well. I wholeheartedly agree. I think we have perhaps kept everything in the realm of the Platonic ideal, that somehow incarnation doesn’t equate into direct change, that our mere presence and confrontation of our internal demons addresses the external reality.

By: daniel so

daniel so — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 06:00:55 +0000

Wayne — Thanks for sharing your insights here. Lots of good stuff. I really like that phrase, “True holiness should birth justice” and your idea about getting our clean hands dirty in the mess of injustice. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one growing weary of holy-talk that doesn’t really do much to change who we really are or the world around us.

By: Wayne Park

Wayne Park — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:38:33 +0000

well spoken – if I am understanding everything right – I think there is a sentiment in religious circles that if we will just be holy enough, the world will become a better place, as if our holiness determines change in the world.

THere’s a kernel of truth there, but this is in extremis; we can’t sit on our laurels saying “holy, holy, holy” w/o activism. True holiness should birth justice – and not blind us to it, which happens with Asian Christians often (which I think is a cop-out from confronting the uncomfortable realities of being a minority).

It’s almost a “Torah-intensification-will-bring-back-the-Messiah” kind of thing – which excuses us from the duties of justice, mercy and compassion. True we have to have clean hands and pure hearts, but once we do, we have to get our hands dirty again in the mess of injustice……