My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, greetings to you in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. As the new month dawns, I pray that the Lord brings new breeze of peace in our lives. May His grace, wisdom and joy abound.

As the political brinkmanship brings the world closer to a nuclear war now than ever before, it is imperative on us to kneel down and pray to the Lord. He who has been kind to us during the pandemic is capable enough to bring peace now too.

As I was meditating on the life of Jesus, this phrase caught me about one important character of Jesus : “Jesus walked about doing good” (Acts 10:38). The early life of Jesus is mostly hidden from us. It is written that during the early years, He obeyed His parents and stayed in His home (Luke 2:51). It is written: “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.(Luke 2:52)  Before He would start His ministry, He went into the wilderness for forty days, fasted and prayed and won over the challenges posed by the satan. (Luke 4:13). The Gospels document his ministry for the brief three years he went around all the places, preaching, healing and doing miracles. Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God, high moral values (tougher than the covenants) and universal brotherhood. He insisted on a good way of life rather than religious orthodoxy insisted upon at that time. Many complex ideologies were conveyed through simple parables. The best perhaps,  is the story of the good samaritan. Jesus told this story in response to a flamboyant lawyer who wanted to test Him. Finally Jesus asks the lawyer “which one of these was the neighbor ?” (Luke 10:25-37). He went on preaching about God’s love and our freedom with God as that of Father-children relationship between God and man. Read Jesus’ response to the samaritan woman,  that time has come for the true worshippers to worship the Father in spirit and truth (John 4:23). Contrary to what the Jewish Orthodoxy told about the Lord God to be feared and to be kept off far away from the common man and obey Him or else face the wrath. Jesus never preached or established any religion as it is presumed and stated by secular scholars. Jesus preached about God’s love for man and how man should respond to this love with truth and live a good life. But God the father is a righteous God and any sin is to be judged and punished. Jesus as the Messiah , came as the ultimate sacrifice and redeemed all of us from our sins by taking all our sins on Himself on the cross. His healing ministry was towards the neglected, poor and downtrodden. Wherever He went, people thronged  him : to hear Him and get healed of all their miseries.

And who else can summarize His ministry other than Jesus himself ? :

“18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”(Luke 4:18,19).” “ Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing “ (Luke 4:21).  Jesus was in Nazareth the place where he grew. He was seated in the “Moses seat”,  the stone chair in every synagogue reserved for theologians of Authority. It is written that all their eyes were fixed on him as to what he was going to read when the Holy Scripture was given to Him. For Jesus said : “ Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfil” (Mathew 5:17)

My dear brothers and sisters, I have serious reservations about the level of understanding with at least some of us  have today about what Jesus lived and taught. Yes, He lived and obeyed to all the Laws of Moses, tempted  and yet  remained sinless. In fact Jesus raised the bar regarding the compliance level of our love to the God above. That is why to show us how we should live, He went around doing good. That is,  what is “good” in the eyes of the Father above and not in the eyes of man. That is the gold standard Jesus has set in. And the Father above acknowledged Jesus by saying “He is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” ( Mathew 3:17). My question today is : First,  as people who know Jesus, do we fully comprehend as to what Jesus has taught us ? Or still we twist and intertwine His teachings and dwell in our own world of orthodoxy as the Jewish scholars of those days who did not understand what Jesus said ? Karl Marx (who himself a jew) once said : “Religion is like opium to man”. Do we only adhere to endless prayers, meaningless greetings, long worships, and fasting prayers as a general routine ? Do we or  not know in our hearts “who our neighbour” is ? Do we hold grudge and have a vengeful heart towards our own people let alone love them unconditionally which is what Jesus told about the good Samaritan. The good Samaritan never went into the credentials  of the injured person. He only knew that he had been waylaid by robbers and lying injured on the way. He treated him and  gave the Choultry keeper,  money to take care of him. Are we still asking like that proverbial lawyer who asked Jesus “ Who my neighbour is  ? “   It is written that the lawyer asked this question wanting to justify himself (Luke 10:29). It is more elaborately written in the Tamil Bible about the intent of this lawyer, who wanted to show himself as righteous !

About three decades ago, I used to know a great trade union leader in one of the leading public sectors Banks, who was simply  known as “GBC” by his initials. A great scholar of Marxian literature and a social activist. Even though younger to him, we used to have heart to heart conversations. Once he told me : See, I am an established leader. I am fighting for the genuine rights of people, good people. But I see that no one understands me including my wife and family. I am thinking of putting my Jolna Bag ( a small square bag with a long hanging rope, which was the indication that one belongs to the Intelligentsia those days !) and going to a  far off rural area and do this service, who may understand me. Something struck me in this, and without thinking I responded to him : “ The question seems to be whether you have understood your immediate neighbourhood of family , friends and colleagues and not vice versa. If you can’t understand your immediate colleagues working with you ( professionally similar) then how do you look forward to understand unknown rural people who are far off and don’t have any known similarity with you ? “ GBC did not respond, but patted my shoulder and left in a contemplative thought. I was wondering as to whether I have hurt him. Those were the days without mobile phones and both of us were busy in our own realms. After about six months I happened to meet him on a holiday in  a family get together. When we could get some private time, he leaned towards me and said : “ Emmanuel, you have shown me the truth. Thank you”. I nooded in agreement gratefully that time without understanding that my response has been  drawn from Bible and from the life of Jesus, about the central question of who our neighbour is !  We can do fervent prayers for an unknown sick person, but do I  show the same love towards all the people around me without prejudice ? Or is it true that familiarity breeds contempt ?  Jesus went around doing good. To all. Should we not emulate his life to show the love of Jesus ? To all ?    

Prayer : Dear Lord , we thank you for showing your abundant love by giving your only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”. Give us the strength to abandon our self righteousness and to go around doing good to every one.

We ask this in Jesus name.

Amen.

God’s Love Missions Family