Episcopal Asiamerican Ministry

A story is told of a middle aged woman who had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While on the operating table she had a near-death experience. During that experience she saw her guardian angel and asked if this was her time. The angel said no and explained that she had another 30-40 years to live. Upon her recovery she decided to just stay in the hospital for a few more days and had a facelift, liposuction and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hair color from brown to blond. She figured since she's got another 30 or 40 years she might as well make the most of it. She walked out of the hospital after the last operation but on crossing, she was hit by the ambulance speeding up to the hospital and was killed instantly. When she arrived in heaven, she saw her guardian angel again and confronted him, "I thought you said I had another 30-40 years to live on earth!" The angel replied, "Sorry, Miss, I didn't recognize you." (From Beliefnet.com)

The story strikes a deep chord among many of us who belong to the category of “golden agers.” Female or male, we suffer from midlife crisis, from some kind of menopausal syndrome (pardon the term) of hoping to find the ultimate, the foretaste of the best that is yet to be. So we try to re-organize our lives, re-structure our activities, and even seek new relationships, new things to do, new ways of doing things, new meanings to satisfy the remaining years of our active life and maybe experiencing the best that is yet to be. And many times, in our search for such renewal and change, we are tempted to look for them in the wrong places.

Jesus has a message, “the kingdom of God is within you.” If we are searching for joy, for peace, for love or to experience the ultimate or the best that is yet to be, then we look no further because the beginning of it is right inside of us. If we are looking for a Messiah to answer our deepest

needs, mend our broken hearts and wipe the tears from our eyes, then we look no further, for He is in us and among us. As St. Paul agreed in the words of the Athenian poets, “for in Him, we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

I was in Israel two months ago and my pilgrimage experience in the Palestine of Jesus was indeed heart-warming and unforgettable. There is something in being to the places where Jesus was supposed to have physically walked, preached, taught, served, performed miracles. It was emotionally cleansing to bathe in the Sea of Galilee or even therapeutic to float alive on the Dead Sea. It was spiritually uplifting to walk the fourteen Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem, right on the spots where Jesus was supposed to have carried his own cross, Via Dolorosa. I had the rare privilege of preaching and celebrating the Eucharist at the Church of the Primacy of Peter near the Sea of Tiberias (John 21), the site where Peter affirmed his love for the risen Christ and received Jesus’ admonition to “feed my sheep.”

My experience in the Holy Land was indeed life changing but it was life changing only to the extent that I had a chance to look deeper into my self, into my soul, against the background of the Holy Land. For as I look deeper into my soul, I realize that despite all my years of existence, despite the many lands that I have traveled, the many people that I have met, the many churches that I have served, the amount of knowledge that I have gained---and despite the many changes and chances that happened in my life---I am still basically the same person.

I am still the same Adama, the man from the dust whom God has formed, and will return to dust by the breath of His nostril. I am still the same Adam who will be influenced by my own Eve or be tormented, tossed to and fro by the many serpents who would compete with my loyalty to God. The only difference between me and Adam and Eve is that God, by the action of God’s Son on the cross, has redeemed me from sin and has put eternity in my heart. C. S. Lewis wrote, “If you look for yourself, you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But if you look for Christ, you’ll find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” St. Paul expressed the same thing in his letter to the materialistic Corinthians when he wrote:

“We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it maybe made clear

that this extraordinary power belongs to God and not from us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed,

but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken;

struck down but not destroyed; always carrying in our body

the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also made

visible in our mortal flesh” (2Corinthians 4:7).

The kingdom of God, Jesus said, “is not coming with the things that can be observed,” but it is within us, working our inner transformation. The Spirit of God moves within us, to secure this genuine change, from one degree of glory to another. Ultimately, it will manifest itself in the perfecting of love, which is the ultimate goal of human transformation. Let me quote from Rainer Maria Rilke who said, “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

In the end, all the good things that we do are but preparation for the perfecting of this love, the love of God that covers the multitude of our sins and the bad things that we do. St. Paul again says in 1st Corinthians 13, “Prophecies will end; knowledge will cease but love never ends.” The perfecting of love is the ultimate; the perfecting of love is best that is yet to be; the perfecting of love is the work of the kingdom of God. And that kingdom of God is within us. Amen.

SEND TO A FRIEND