Saturday, February 22, 2014

7th Ordinary Sunday, Year A, 23.02.2014

Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18/ 1 Corinthians 3:16-23/ Matthew 5:38-48

Whenever we look at nature, what comes to mind are beauty and majesty.

We would think of misty sunrise and sunsets, animals with their young moving in herds and the wonder of the animal kingdom.

But there is also the other side of nature and the animal kingdom.

There is the dark and devastating tornado or typhoon and there are also predators hunting down their prey.

And some animals and insects have in their nature the ability to inflict pain and even death – scorpions sting, snakes bite, bees sting.

And there are animals that we don’t want to cross into their paths, eg, tiger, leopard, grizzly bear. 

There is this story of an atheist taking a walk through the woods and admiring nature with its majestic trees, powerful rivers and beautiful animals.

As he was walking along, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look and saw a huge grizzly bear charging at him.

He quickly ran ahead with the bear closing in. He tried to run even faster but as he ran he suddenly tripped and fell.

He rolled over to pick himself up but saw the bear right on top of him, reaching for him with the left paw and raising the right paw to strike him.

At that instant, the atheist cried out, “Oh my God!” Time stopped. 

The bear froze. The forest was silent. Even the river stopped flowing.

A bright light shone on the man and a voice came out of the sky, “You deny my existence all these years, teach others I don’t exist and even credit creation to a cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?”

The atheist looked directly at the light. “It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a believer now. But perhaps you could make the bear a believer and a Christian?”

“Very well then,” the voice said. Then the light went out, the river ran again, and the sounds of the forest resumed.

And the bear dropped its right paw and then joined both paws together, as if it was praying.

It bowed its head and said, “Bless me, O Lord and this Your gift which I am about to receive from Your goodness. Amen.”

We believe in God. We also believe that Jesus Christ came to save us.

Oh yes, we need Jesus to protect and save us. This world can be dark and dangerous.

More than just scorpions that sting and snakes that bite,  we face wicked and evil people who cross into our paths.

And when they sting and bite and claw at us, what did Jesus say that we should do?

Well, these are His words in today’s gospel passage: Offer the wicked man no resistance. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

That sounds difficult, and it is indeed difficult. We would rather pray that the wicked will be whacked, and our persecutors be persecuted.

This is profoundly expressed in a moving and stunning book titled “The Railway Man” by Eric Lomax.

Eric Sutherland Lomax (30 May 1919 - 8 October 2012) was a British Army officer who was sent to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1942. 

He was captured when the Japanese conquered Singapore. He was then transported 1,200 miles to Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway.

At Kanchanaburi, he was starved, viciously beaten and horribly tortured.

Amongst all his torturers, Lomax was especially consumed with hatred for Takashi Nagase, an interpreter with the Japanese army. 

In Lomax’s mind, Nagase personified all the atrocities committed by the Japanese.

During the interrogations, Lomax memorised every feature of Nagase’s face: the dark eyes, the small nose, the broad forehead. 

He wanted to remember him, and someday find him and make him pay.

The war left Lomax with severe psychological problems which he never fully recovered from.

After more than 40 years, he eventually sought treatment. 

But, he remained darkly obsessed with his torturers, especially that interpreter.  

Then, in October 1989, a friend gave Lomax a newspaper clipping of a book written by Takashi Nagase.

In the decades after the war, Takashi has become a devout Buddhist and has dedicated his life to atoning for the treatment of Japanese Prisoners of War.

Almost 50 years after their first encounter, Lomax and Nagase agreed to meet at the World War 2 museum in Kanchanaburi on 26 March 1993 . 

The two men only came for this meeting because, almost after 50 years, on reading that Takashi Nagase felt he had been ‘forgiven’, Lomax became so enraged that he was determined to tell him that no, he hadn’t been. That he still hated him. That, even as an old man, he dreamt of strangling him.

But at the famous bridge over the River Kwai, Lomax made peace with Nagase, and it was a deeply moving moment for them.

Over the next three days, the two men talked about their lives since the war.  Their rapport grew easier with time.

On the day before they were to part, Lomax gave Nagase a letter, in it he wrote:  Although I can’t forget the ill treatment at Kanchanaburi, taking into account your change of heart, your apologies, the work you are doing, please accept my total forgiveness.

Both men were deeply moved to tears at their farewell.

And Lomax said, “I’ve learned that hate is a useless battle, and it has to end sometime.”

It is part of the human condition that somewhere on earth, at any time, there is a place as dark as Kanchanaburi, 1943. 

The world today is no stranger to torture. That the potential for unimaginable cruelty lurks in all of us, is certainly borne out by the evidence.

The Railway Man shows us something rarer; that a capacity for forgiveness - equally unimaginable – stirring in the depths of our hearts, and it cannot be extinguished, even if we want it to be.

And if God lets the sun rise on bad men as well as good, and the rain fall on honest and dishonest men alike, then the Christian response to evil and wickedness can be none other than mercy and forgiveness.

In the face of what is beautiful and what is ugly, let us do the one exceptional thing that the Lord God is calling us to. 

We hear that call in the 1st reading: Be holy, as I the Lord your God is holy.

And what does that mean? It means that we must not bear hatred in our hearts, and we must not exact vengeance or bear a grudge.

As Eric Lomax said: I have learnt that hatred is a useless battle, and it has to end somehow.

To be holy as the Lord God calls us to be holy means that we do that exceptional thing of loving our enemies and praying for our persecutors.

So that the response we give to what is ugly can only be love, and then forgiveness and reconciliation can begin.