It is the Advent season. Liturgically, it is the beginning of a new year. However, for all practicality, it is still the end of the year for us. Usually, this month invokes within us a desire to ponder upon all the valuable lessons we learned this year in order to carry them forth to the coming one. Needless to say, we have encountered a very different and difficult year. However, as religious people, we believe that the circumstances or situations do not change the nature of God. To the contrary, in this world that is constantly changing, it is our religious duty to discover the Logos which always remains constant and unchanging. Our reflections are based on discovering this constant presence that guides and gives us hope and peace regardless of the challenges we confront.
I posted some of these reflections on my newsletter but I know there are many who don’t receive it. There are readers who stumbled upon these reflections on the internet and have been following the lives of these young people who have become our family for some time. Also, the newsletter doesn’t give people an opportunity to respond to our reflections whereas here they can share their thoughts and comments. We begin our year end reflections with the most significant change in our ministry.
I have always described our ministry as bringing the church to the streets. Well, this year something changed radically. We began to have church in the streets. It happened at a time when almost everywhere in the world church buildings were closed to public worship. Our congregation is a tiny one of three. In reality, we never intended to have a church service. We just wanted to read and reflect on the Bible together with Felipe. We usually end with a short and simple prayer asking the Holy Spirit to help us live what we just learned. One day, we read the verse where Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) Felipe immediately looked up and remarked that this was about us. I read this verse so many times and I never paid much attention to this detail. Felipe was right. Jesus made church simple and easy. We have added many complicated components to it and now we are facing so many challenges to maintain it. It took a pandemic to bring us back to the basics.
Our “church building” is in a park in the midst of skateboarders and cyclists. No one notices that we are a congregation. Everyone is too busy adjusting their masks and trying to socialize to take any notice of us. It seems better this way. Occasionally a homeless persons approaches us and we are forced to put into practice what we just read in the Bible. It is perfect environment to be a church. We have a friend who lost her faith many years ago and she asked if she could participate one Sunday. I asked Felipe about it. He liked the idea. I think that she will bring something special to the group. However, we don’t want to grow too much. I think we will limit to membership to five. This is a perfect number for us. I sense that we will lose something precious if we have too many people. For now, it is just the three of us and it is wonderful.
Every Sunday, we read the gospel of Matthew. We haven’t got past the Sermon on the Mount yet. There is so much to reflect on here. Nevertheless, we are almost done with it. Eventually we will read all the four gospels. Felipe has never read the gospels in their entirety before. Last week, we read, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) I told him that this is sometimes known as the “golden rule”. He never heard about it before, neither did he understand what the “law and prophets” meant. I explained that Jesus used the “Law and Prophets” to describe what we call the Old Testament. In other words, everything sacred that was written up till then: everything is summed up in this rule. It is known as the “golden rule” because this same rule is found in other religious traditions even places as far away as China. We could see his mind working overtime. Frankly speaking, I had to stop and think about it myself. We have seen churches spilt over doctrines, ethics and politics. Christians have even killed each other over the nature of the sacraments. Yet, Jesus tells that everything boils down to this rule; if we only had listened to Him…..once again Jesus has simplified things. The problem is that whenever He simplifies something, it becomes harder to follow. Fighting over doctrines and ecclesiastic politics is much easier than living out the golden rule. I asked Felipe if he thought that people lived this rule. He smiled and said that it is a simple rule that everyone ignores.
After we say our prayers together, like good Anglicans we have our coffee hour chat except there is no coffee. Felipe wanted to know what we thought about heaven. I told him that I believe that the gospel news can only be good news if heaven begins here. I asked him what would he change in his past if he had the chance. We discovered that it was something that he has been pondering recently. He said that even though living in the streets was at times difficult and unpleasant, he learned many good things about life too. It has shaped who he is at this moment. Therefore, he said that he wouldn’t want to change anything in his past if it meant losing what he has now. This told me that he was beginning to grasp the idea of heaven now. It is not about changing our circumstances. We don’t have the power to do this and even Jesus did not do this at the Cross or prior to it. Heaven is not a place nor an ideal situation. It is a person or rather, a personal encounter with God. When we catch a glimpse of His goodness or presence in our everyday life, we have a fore taste of heaven. Felipe though about this for a moment and then he further added, “I want to know about nature and learn about the stars and all these mysteries of the universe, too.” He observed that he feels happy inside whenever he learns something about nature or the universe. “Well, then, heaven is becoming more concrete for you”, I replied.
