Reading: Mattew 6:25-34
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
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There is a Chan Taoist teaching story of an old farmer living in a sizable town among the mountains of inner China. The story was widely shared by Zen Buddhist monasteries in Asia, and it is also repeated all around the world in any context. The story goes like this:
The farmer cultivated a sizable land, having a grown-up son, and a lot of little ones, all girls.
A rainy day one of his horses ran away, probably shocked by a lightning. In the disastrous weather the farmer was not able to chase his horse, he was just hoping that the horse will come back next day when the storm is over.
The horse did not come back next day. What a pity said the neighbors, it is hardly any chance that the horse will not be eaten by the predators out there. The farmer replied "Certainly, happens what happens”.
The second morning the horse returned, bringing with it three wild horses from the nearby plateau. "It is a miracle" the neighbors claimed.
"Certainly," murmured the farmer.
The following day, his son tried to tame one of the wild mustangs, but the horse threw him off and he broke his leg. The neighbors said again what an unlucky day.
"Certainly," said the farmer.
A week later a military press party came to town to draft young men into the army. A lot of residents were taken, but the son with the broken leg was left alone. The neighbors said how lucky he was. "Certainly," said the farmer.
Usually the story stops here, suggesting the we never now where the events will lead us, thus we have to be patient and keep the cool toward happenings which look happy or sad first on the surface. After all the English saying maintains that everything happens for a reason.
The story originated in Zen circles, where the Chinese counterpart called Chan. They are trying to call upon the people to keep distance from the illusion world, which is the very material world we live in. They they do not connect to the spiritual world, we call Heaven, still their approach is methodically right, implicating that it is very hard to see the big picture always, in order to judge the events according to their real or divine significance.
For humans that judgment is almost impossible to form truthfully, because we should have always a little bit more information than the very subjective and existential perception of the very my here and now. We have to see also the short term and the long term consequences of the single events, and even the complexity of their interactions. This latter skill is usually a divine gift whenever somebody has it, because it is called the prophetic level of understanding and foreseeing.
However, pondering the weight of the Gospel, we have to continue the Zen story to make it more Gospel compatible.
A week later, after when the farmer’s son had broken his leg, and the military had taken most of the young men from the town, enemy troops encircled and raided their town, burning it down, and all the inhabitants died. The farmer was not among them, because he went on a business trip with his brother.
“You see, the conscription could have saved the life of your son” said his brother.
” Certainly, said the farmer. With great sorrow they went to the fortified city, only to hear the news that the training platoon of the young men from the town had been ambushed. The trainers had escaped but all the trainees had died.
The farmer’s brother cried and said: “There is no luck under the sun.”
“Certainly” said the farmer. A week later the fortified city was firebombed from the air. The brothers were among the few survivors.
“We got lucky at this time” the brother said. “Certainly” the farmer answered. The cruel enemy submachine-gunned the wounded and the weak down, and the able-bodied, among them the brothers, were sent captive to a prison camp for enforced labor far away from any civilization.The food was scarce, the mosquito were plenty, the workload was back-breaking.
After twenty years of slavery, the farmer bitterly complained:
“It would have been better to die with our families than to suffer here.”
“We did not have the luck” said the brother. “Certainly” said the farmer.
Next day the farmer fell into the flooding river. His brother tried to save him, but both drowned. The story may end here, but it does not.
They went to Heaven on the same day.
There was a great town reunion in Heaven, the farmer met his son and his wife and his children, his brothers and sisters, the cousins and other relatives, the town people, newly arrived or long time ago arrived residents in Heaven.
“All is well that ends well” said the farmer.
The thread in the Asian philosophy story is profoundly right. It tells the people that all the occurrings on Earth, seemingly fortunate or seemingly not-so-fortunate should be accepted with some emotional distance keeping from the events, with some resignation or with some stoicism as the Greek would say.
Their reasoning is that the visible world is an illusion, the permanent change in the visible world is an illusion, behind the superficially chaotic changes there is the unchangeable entity, the essence of the Universe.
If you recognize the unchangeable in your own being then afterwords you will be free from the illusion of this world, and the illusion of the changes. There is no more death or material life, no more disease and health issue, but the unchangeable reality, that is behind everything, though it is not visible, it is real.
However the Zen story stops here, it does not give meaning to live or to suffer or even to die. It does not give eternal prospective, except that the eternal is unchangeable.
The Gospel goes way further than that, as Jesus told the disciples:
“ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (...) “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Whatever happens on Earth we have to focus on Heaven, seeking what shall be done in order to merit the World to Come. Beside grace, we also have to earn the privilege of being accepted Heaven, the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father. Concerning of what we shall do, that it is clear that we have to keep the commandments, in order to earn the inheritance in Heaven.
According to the very advice of Jesus, as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19:
And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. (God)
If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” The man said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The Gospel do not belittle our needs in this life. Jesus said concerning food, clothing and shelter that the Heavenly Father knows very well that we need them here.
Still it sounds astonishingly utopistic when he continues that :
"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”"
However it is easy to comprehend how true it is. Just as the old quote goes from Leo Tolstoy: "Where there is faith, there is love; Where there is love, there is peace; Where there is peace, there is God; And where there is God; there is no need.
Comparing to Heaven, and only in comparison to Heaven what we have to endure or suffer on Earth is a small , temporary price to pay for eternal salvation, guided by the Holy Spirit, saved by the Grace of the Lord, drawn by the love of God, the Father of all.
As Apostle Paul says in his radical way to the Philippians, chapter 3 that
“7 But whatever were gains to me (in this world) I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, (...)” and he also summarized this view also in his second letter to the Corinthians:
“For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal....”
Whatever we do, we have to do it for the sake of Heaven.
That is missing from the Zen story, which says does not matter what happens, because ultimately nothing changed, nothing changes, nothing will change.
The Gospel says if there happens something unfortunate, sad, grim, or even like a nightmare, we shall focus on Heaven, because if You believe in God, Heaven can not be taken from you.
As Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10:
“28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Even when we may lose our earthly life, we can be assured, that the little suffering we have to endure here is just a temporary affliction, and the blissful weight of the eternal salvation exceeds all possible sufferings.
May the Lord be blessed for ever as we can understand his plans by the Holy Spirit as they are revealed in the Holy Scriptures in order that the understanding lead to observing of the Laws of the Creator God.
