[stephenkhoo]

Thursday, 22 March, 2012, 4th Week of Lent
ACCEPTING WOUNDED MEMBERS IN OUR COMMUNITY
SCRIPTURE READINGS: EXODUS 32:7-14; JOHN 5:31-47

We are a wounded community of sinners. Even though we have been baptized and given a new birth in Christ, the residues of sin and our past are not totally taken away. So we should not be surprised that within the Christian community, there are still many wounded members in need of healing. We should not be scandalized to find the reality of sin and division brought upon by selfishness and pride in our community, even though we might have experienced the love and mercy of God.

This was certainly the case of the Israelites. They, too, had just been liberated from the slavery of the Egyptians by the mighty hand of God. However, in spite of their new found freedom, they quickly became disgruntled over the fact that they were not having a good life in the desert. In the face of suffering and inconvenience, they began to become nostalgic of the good old days in Egypt. How quickly in the face of difficulties, one forgets the sufferings from one’s previous predicament. We begin to grumble and complain, finding a scapegoat to blame for our unhappiness. So, too, the Israelites became ungrateful towards God and Moses, His representative. They blamed Him for their woes.

Apparently, God was very disappointed with them, for He said to Moses,
“Go down now, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have apostatised. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them; they have made themselves a calf of molten metal and have worshipped it and offered it sacrifice.” How short-lived their love and devotion to God in spite of the many miracles and wonders they saw with their own eyes, when God protected them from the Egyptian Army. As the psalmist says, “They forgot the God who had saved them, who had done great deeds in Egypt, wondrous deeds in the land of Ham, terrible things at the Red Sea.” But are we better? After a God-experience, we, too, also so quickly apostatized and abandoned Him for false gods that we have created for ourselves. The calf of molten metal can very well symbolise all our worldly pursuit of things and attachment to our opinions, status and people.

So in our community, even though it might be a Christian community of born-again Christians, let us not be disillusioned if we find that there are many members who, although serving God and their fellow brothers and sisters, carry with them their molten calf. They still remain attached to their sins. Some have become self-righteous and live under the illusion that they are a super-class of Catholics, better than the others. As a consequence, there is much division within the community. In every Christian community and organization, we will disagree and quite often, we might hurt each other by words and actions, consciously and unconsciously. This is because we are wounded and still in the process of seeking healing. Wounds do not get healed immediately but gradually, through prayer, time and understanding. We must therefore learn to accept each other.

The complaint of God to Moses appears more to be a projection of Moses’ impatience of his people than of God’s actual anger with the people. Our God is a merciful God, patient and forgiving. This is what God revealed to Moses about Himself when He said, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. (Ex 34:6) More likely, it was Moses projecting his own anger towards them. Many times, Moses cried out to God in frustration over the rebellious and demanding people who only knew how to complain instead of being grateful. As a result we read that Moses was always tempted to quit in the face of such ingrates, especially when they grumbled that they had no food, water, meat etc. Endless requests led Moses to call it quits. Indeed, Moses called them stiff-necked and headstrong!

Well, we might also follow the same path as well in the face of difficult people in our community and organization. How often have we also felt like quitting! Otherwise, if we do not remove ourselves, we remove others. This is the easiest way to solve problems in our community apparently, getting rid of those difficult people whom we find problematic to work with. This has always been the way most people deal with wounded members in their community, by forcing them to resign through pressure. Instead of attending to their wounds, we seek to rid of them. This would be a great mistake. Wasn’t this expressed by God, through Moses when He said, “Leave me now, my wrath shall blaze out against them and devour them; of you, however, I will make a great nation.”

That is why Moses told God to relent, or rather, in truth God was telling Moses to be patient because underlying the wounds of each person is much goodness, love and beauty. When Moses said to God, “Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom by your own self you swore and made this promise: I will make your offspring as many as the stars of heaven, and all this land which I promised I will give to your descendants, and it shall be their heritage for ever”, he was actually speaking about the potentials of the so called stiff-necked race. So, too, if we are able to be patient and heal the pains of our wounded members, they too will become great leaders, just as what happened to St Peter and St Paul. They became great apostles only through their sins and the healing of their wounds by the forgiveness and compassion of the Lord.

As for ourselves, like Jesus in the gospel, we must realize that even when we are rejected or misunderstood for doing good, we have God on our side. As Jesus reminds us, perhaps our anger with the bruised members of our community arises more out of their rejection of us. Perhaps, we want to seek human approval rather than God’s. Jesus gives us the key to remaining loving and patient when He said, “As for human approval, this means nothing to me. Besides, I know you too well: you have no love of God in you.” If there is true love in our hearts for God, we would also have true love for all the wounded and hurting members in our community, seeing them not as nuisance and trouble makers but people seeking love and acceptance and desperate for healing.

We should remind ourselves that we come to each other in the name of the Father and of Jesus. Like John, we are called to be “a lamp alight and shining” for the wounded to see the love of God. God will ultimately be our witness to what we do. Because they are wounded “have never heard his voice … seen his shape”, they do not believe in Him. Our task, therefore, is to make God real so that when they see us, they will believe in Him. God will be proven by the same works we do for and with the Father, as in the case of Jesus. This is what Jesus said, “But my testimony is greater than John’s: the works my Father has given me to carry out, these same works of mine testify that the Father has sent me. Besides, the Father who sent me bears witness to me himself.” So let us be contented and seek the approval of God.

Finally, in our frustrations in handling such difficult people in our midst, we only need to cry out to God for mercy, “Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.” We can be sure that God will give us the grace to deal with the challenges we face in helping the lepers in our community to become integrated. Like Moses, if we intercede for them, God will hear us and heal them through us by softening our hearts and opening their hearts to us.