Title: History of Suffering and Joy of Salvation
People generally predict that if there is a difference between the past 100 years and the next hundred years of the 21st century, the new era will be an era of restoration of humanity and human dignity while the past was dominated by development and development. This is the anticipation of a new era of human creation, just as God created man from the dust of the earth as shown in Genesis 2:7.
We have many new experiences in today's situation. In other words, the enemies of the past have become comrades today, and the ideologies that have driven history in the past have declined. Bishop Bennet Sims of the Episcopal Church of America describes this change in three ways.
① Violence is now being neutralized. Experience has taught me that violence is never a solution to a problem, only a cause of destruction.
② From humans to nature, interrelationships are emerging as the most important value. In particular, it can be seen that the relationship between peace and respect has become the hope of mankind stemming from countless wars fought over the past thousand years.
③ Humanity should now become one. Despite race, language, and cultural differences, the human race is one.
William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury in England during World War II, used the terms disunion, disintegration, and ailenation as a term that made man into sin and the world into evil. It means the confrontation or severance between human and human, and human and nature. That is, such a situation is sin and evil. And it finally brings violence and destruction. In order to overcome this situation, Temple advocated for Christian socialism at the time and advocated equality, cooperation, tolerance and unity.
We are seeing signs of peace and tolerance that are evident in the second half of the 20th century. Who could have predicted the collapse of the Cold War system? Who could have dreamed that Nelson Mandela, who suffered the most from racism in South Africa, would become president? Who could have expected peace in the Middle East or the reunification of Germany like this? However, these historical changes are, in fact, natural. Because it is God's creation order. But still, human lust for domination, the influence of colonial rule, national or racial and even religious selfishness are causing tragedies and hardships everywhere. It is widely known that more than 1.5 million Hutu people have been killed in Rwanda, and Arabs and Africans are still fighting in Sudan.
Now, obviously, the 21st century must be different. A new world must come. Incidents such as the poison gas incident in Japan that hostile the whole world without any grudges and cause indiscriminate killing require new resolve from us. Paul is proclaiming to us that all things were created through and for Christ. This is to explain the relationship of Christ to all things. In other words, it represents the fact that the world is deeply connected with Christ. That is why Christ is before all things, and all things exist through Christ (Colossians 1:18).
Today's reading is the scene of the Last Supper. The flesh and blood of Christ here is the fact that his body is this world. Looking forward to a new world in which this world will be transformed into the Kingdom of God, Jesus organized a ceremony of sharing bread and wine with his disciples. Here, by sharing the body of Christ, we not only become one with Christ, but also with the world, and ultimately participate in Christ's work in this world. This is Christ's promise to this world, and that promise can be fulfilled in our remembering. Although the world forsakes Jesus, Jesus shows the way of reconciliation that the world is not only the object of his ultimate sacrifice and love, but that the world must become his body. It was not just a ceremony. It was the beginning of a new history. It was an act of deep love for this world.
At the Last Supper, Jesus demands full union with Himself, that is, full participation in His saving work. This was the second call to the disciples. If the first call was to show the future sign of the kingdom of God, the second call presents the ultimate responsibility for the world and the last way to transform it. But it requires complete self-sacrifice. It requires a time of hardship that is difficult for human beings to endure. The situation in which the Lamb is put to death by the powers of the world implies that it is the last time (Revelation 13:8).
The world is getting sick. Not only by the absolute power, but political ideology, economic violence, and social conflict structures are making the world full of scars. Human greed has led to the destruction of nature, and pollution is now driving the world to death. To save the world, it is now to make the world a new world in harmony with the body of Christ, and this responsibility is given to us today to carry on, just as it was given to the disciples of Jesus at the Last Supper.
Richard Hooker (1554-1600) prophetically said the following before the development of natural science: "God didn't make all things just for himself. Each one makes all things, and each one plays a different role. So the whole world is connected to each other and placed under the relationship of need." From this point of view, Hooker argued that when the Catholic tradition of ecclesiastical supremacy and Puritan's biblical absolutism confronted, when the church and secular society (the state) were in conflict, when the people and the king were in a situation of confrontation, "tolerance theology of ". Tolerance here is by no means a compromise between the two. It speaks of a new path.
To share the flesh and blood of Christ is to share in the work of suffering. It is not avoiding the history of suffering in this world, but rather deeply participating in it. And through that participation, a new work, the kingdom of God, the world of salvation can be accomplished. So to eat and share the flesh and blood of Christ is to be in communion with Christ and in communion with the world. It is a new mandate for us to practice Christ's reconciliation, the unceasing and absolute love through self-sacrifice. Here, we must realize that the reconciliation of Christ means sacrificing oneself at the cost of all suffering, and that it is the practice of Christ's love. Without that love, neither the resurrection nor the new history of the 21st century would be possible.