There is Power in the Light

Say, I will be short in my discourse as I am fatigued from the endless eating and late nights this Chinese New Year festivity. http://michaelckw.blogspot.com/2014/01/there-is-power-in-light.html This is a wonderful sermon. Father Michael is back to his usual eloquence and spirituality that I enjoy and feel privileged to read; just as I was privileged and honoured to be present at last week' congregation at St. Francis Xavier Church to listen to Father Albert's superb sermon. This week's sermon is about the geriatric Simeon and the Prophetess Anna and their encounter with Jesus in the Temple. The Holy Spirit 'rested' on Simeon and revealed things to him about Jesus. Anna was similarly gifted or blessed with the Holy Spirit. We too have to be similarly baptised with the Holy Spirit. For that is what Jesus told us was the second requirement after baptism by water. Mother Mary took Jesus to the Temple in what is the equivalent of our Chinese 'moon yuet' or 'muar gher' ceremony or ritual 40 days after childbirth. I wonder whether the Jews and the Chinese have a common genealogy? Anyway, let us concentrate on the 'encounter' that Simeon and Anna had with Jesus. Note that these are the 2nd and 3rd encounters of Jesus by strangers. The first and the most significant should be the 1st encounter by the Three Wise Men from the East, who were the first strangers to pay homage to the Lord. For they would have started their journey even before Mary conceived! Just think how great God is in omniscience! In his laudatory praise of homage and thanksgiving Simeon referred to, if I may paraphrase and reword it succinctly, Jesus as the 'light' and salvation of the world. After all the terms or words 'nations', 'Gentiles' and Israel are all comprised in the 'world'. We must think carefully when we use the word 'Christian' 'exclusively' retrospectively to mean those who already are when it should be used 'universally' as to mean those who potentially and prospectively are, i.e. those who will be awakened to the spirit son of God in them. Simeon's homage of thanksgiving is synonymous with the proclamation by John the Baptist 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the word'. For the 'Lamb' is synonymous with the 'Light'! And, salvation as used by Simeon is simply about taking away the sins of the world! Please note that metaphorically 'the sins of the world' in spiritual terms is not about our incessant individual worldly sins but to the Original Sin of Adam and our continuing incarceration as sons of Adam going up and down the proverbial Jacob's Ladder in the web of deceit of Satan. We should also in the same spiritual sense not take the expression 'light' used by Simeon in worldly terms. It is a different sort of 'light' and a different sort of 'darkness'! When the Spirit Father seeks his lost spirit Prodigal Son, when the Good Shepherd seeks his lost sheep, they do not see us as worldly sons of Adam (the darkness that we are enshrouded in) but see through us (see through that darkness) to the eternal spirit sons of God in us. The eternal seeks the eternal! It is like as if God has, metaphorically speaking, x-ray eyes. He sees through the 'flesh', that is of Adam in exile, Adam after the Fall, of Adam caught up in the separation that is 'mortality', in us as sons of Adam, sons of man. Mortality separates us from God. Mortality is the consequence of the Original Sin! Salvation is about reunion with God in eternity in our eternal being! In our eternal being we have always been with God from the beginning! Whatever we are in this existence, our eternal son of God being is just lost in it, lost sheep waiting to be found; but it is God the Spirit Father that is

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seeking the sheep in us; for as goats how are we to know that we are sheep and say we are seeking the Good Shepherd? It is in this sense that Christ is the Light, the Spirit Father incarnate as Jesus, to reignite the 'light', the eternal sons of God in us, the eternal life in us, to instruct the sheep in us to follow him, as light is to light, as spirit is to spirit, as eternal is to eternal, to turn away from the Sin City that is the darkness and the 'mortality' in us! We have to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and render unto God what is God's, which is the spirit sons of God in us! As Jesus said, a man cannot have two masters in one of his parables. We have to decide whether out of our own free will, just as Adam did in choosing to taste the tree of knowledge, but headed to his Fall or exile as a consequence, whether to do the reverse i.e. to return home as the Lost Prodigal Son. We have to choose whether to be a sheep or a goat. They both have different masters. A goat can only live his life in the darkness of death or mortality. A sheep lives in eternal bliss in pastures green where there is no need for want of anything. Do we want to continue to go from ashes to ashes or from lost to found, and thus from eternity in the spirit son of God in us back to eternity with the Spirit Father? Love and God Bless Chuan.

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