Evangelical Gospel Message, "God loves you!"
Today's Bible theme is love. When we think of love, we might think of romantic love, brotherly love, or pet love. However, the love the Bible speaks of, especially the love taught by Jesus, is something special. I believe that if we study this concept thoroughly, our lives will surely be enriched.
As I've mentioned before, the word "love" was taboo in Buddhism. It was the influence of Christianity that led to the word's positive use. So why was "love" such an inappropriate word? It's because love is attachment and obsession. The more we love, the more our hearts are broken when we lose it, even if the object of our love is not a person but property or status. That's why Buddhism teaches that all things are impermanent, that nothing changes or disappears, so we must let go of attachment and let go of love. That is certainly meaningful.
What about the Olympics? During the Olympics, the TV broadcasts were late at night, so I ended up not getting much sleep. When I watch a game, I notice that athletes who thought they could win the gold medal are so attached to it that they look disappointed when they get a bronze medal. For us ordinary people, it's a joy just to be able to compete in the Olympics or, in the case of baseball, to go to Koshien. According to Buddhism, love, which is an attachment, is the cause of human unhappiness.
Jesus was not a Buddhist. Buddhism originated in India, but Jesus was born in a town called Bethlehem in Israel. Jesus was a Jew and believed in the God taught by Judaism. However, Judaism at that time was a temple religion, and God's teachings were centered on the Torah. The Torah was like a set of rules or laws, and it taught that there were various rules for daily life, and that breaking these would result in punishment from God. However, Jesus did not believe in an authoritarian temple-centered religion or a law-centered religion. Jesus believed in the religion of God's love, as taught in the Bible itself through the prophets. This was different from the love forbidden by Buddhism.
While love in Buddhism is defined as attachment, love in the Bible is, in Japanese, the "bonds" God gives us. Religion, as we know it in English, originally meant relationships or bonds. Come to think of it, aren't humans sustained by bonds? The bonds between parents and children, between siblings, between friends, and in social life—these bonds are love. When bonds are severed, humans fall, blown away by the wind like a kite with a broken string. Bonds are important. That's why, as a first-century Jewish scholar said, even if you know God's love, or His bonds, if you cannot form bonds with the people around you, your love for God is incomplete.
This love, or bond, is not an emotion. Mistaking love for an emotion can turn love into hatred. The love of stalkers, for example, is actually not love, but a selfish emotion. Rejection can turn to murder. This is precisely the dangerous attachment forbidden by Buddhism. Jesus also told several parables to teach about God's love. One is the parable of the prodigal son, found in Luke 15:11 and following. The younger son, who had been given a share of his parents' inheritance, went abroad and lived a dissolute life, squandering all his money. Eventually, he returned home with nothing to eat. His father, who seemed always to be waiting for his son's return, joyfully ran to him, embraced him, and welcomed him back, even though he had only just seen him in the distance, ragged and worn. He then celebrated with great joy, saying, "This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!" This illustrates the love of God that is shown when a person, who had turned his back on God's love, wasted his life, and was on the verge of destruction, returns to God. Another parable of God's love is also found in Luke's Gospel: the parable of the "good Samaritan" found in Luke 10:25 and following. A man was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers and found lying by the side of the road, seriously injured and near death. Since the man's location was on the highway, some Levites, who performed the temple rituals and temple work, passed by, but ignored him. They knew the teachings of the Bible, but they likely only knew the Law, which stated that one should not touch an unclean person. A wounded and bloody traveler would have appeared to be unclean. However, a Samaritan, despised by the Jews, happened to be passing by and took pity on the seriously injured traveler. He treated his wounds, put him on his donkey, and carried him to Jericho. He took him to an inn and cared for him. When he left the next day, he paid the innkeeper for the care of the injured man.
What do these two stories have in common? It is the love and bond of God. Today's Gospel reading is a famous passage, and it shows us God's love, or the bond of God, that is, God's willingness to save us, even at the cost of the life of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Speaking of God's love, about 53 years ago, on November 8th, I happened to meet an American missionary on the train. At the time, I was studying English, so I would strike up conversations with foreigners I saw. We happened to be getting off at the same station, so I gave him directions and we stopped at a coffee shop along the way and chatted in English. The young missionary then wrote "God is love" in English on a napkin in the coffee shop. He then introduced me to a Lutheran church in Hongo, Tokyo. Until then, I had thought of Christianity as a strict, legalistic set of religious rules, so the teaching that God is love was a happy discovery for me. I realized I was lonely at the time. More than 50 years have passed since then, but I now realize that God is love and that He always maintains a bond with us so that we do not perish under the effects of sin. So, while Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote "An Recommendation for Learning," I would like to share "An Recommendation for God's Love." Finally, I recently read a book called "Satoshi's Youth" about the late shogi player Murayama Satoshi. The book chronicles the heartbreaking efforts of Mori Nobuo, a fourth-dan shogi player who took on a junior high school student with nephrosis, a kidney disease so frail he didn't know how long he would live, in order to somehow train him to become a professional shogi player. Murayama Satoshi was originally from Hiroshima, but since there were no more people to learn shogi from in Hiroshima, he was introduced to Mori Nobuo, a fourth-dan shogi player in Osaka, and lived in his apartment, where he attended junior high school. Although it was an apartment, it only had two rooms, one three tatami mats and the other four and a half tatami mats. It was a strange life for a poor, sick junior high school student shogi player in his 30s.
The title of the book is "Satoshi's Youth," but it could also be said to be about the youth of the young master and disciple, Murayama Satoshi and Mori Nobuo. When the ailing Kiyoshi said it was too hard for him because his junior high school was far away, Mori helped him practice his bike in the park late into the night. When Kiyoshi's fever reached 40 degrees, Mori comforted him by lying and saying it was only 39 degrees. Kiyoshi's parents also wanted to enrich their child's final days, so they made sacrifices, traveling far and wide to find his favorite shogi book, driving him to shogi matches, and waiting patiently for the matches to finish. This love between parent and child, and between teacher and student, is truly a bond—a warm bond of love. Unfortunately, Murakami Kiyoshi never achieved his goal of becoming a shogi master and passed away at the age of 29. However, I believe he left a great legacy. His short but passionate life has been made into a novel and a movie. It's also important to note that Murayama Kiyoshi spent much of his childhood in the pediatric ward of a hospital, witnessing children disappear one after another. He must have experienced firsthand the fading of all ties with death. His only joy was playing shogi (Japanese chess). On his 20th birthday, he rejoiced, saying he never thought he'd live this long. His life was short. However, I believe God bestowed upon him the wonderful love between parent and child, and between teacher and student.
We too are bound by the bond of love. However, this bond cannot be discovered without recognizing pain. Why do you think this is? It's because, under normal circumstances, various things cloud our inner vision, blocking our ability to see the bond. In that sense, the Buddhist concept of impermanence is useful. This is because the truth of life is that everything disappears and becomes empty.
Yoshio Osaki, who wrote "Seiji's Youth," a true story about Murayama Seiji, was also an accomplished writer who won the Yoshikawa Eiji Literary Newcomer Award, but passed away in his 60s. However, I believe that through the love between teacher and student and family, they came to know and share the most important thing in life: love. I, too, have come to know God's love, and I share His love through my sermons. God has given each of us similar bonds, such as those that existed between Murayama Kiyoshi and his family, and his teacher, Mori Yondan. Through these various bonds, God "will never abandon you." This is the core of today's Bible message.
As I mentioned before, this bond of God's love is most easily seen in times of trouble, pain, and despair. All things are impermanent, and emptiness is vanishing. However, what sets Christianity and Buddhism apart is that even when everything else vanishes, there is God's love, God's bond, that never fades. The greatest challenge in life is death. At the time of death, everything we thought supported us—our health, family, work, savings, hobbies, pets—will all disappear. However, if we have faith in God's bond of love, in those difficult times, we will find bonds of God's love all around us: the love of a loving father waiting for us, the love of the Samaritan who helped a wounded stranger. Let us be fully aware of this. And it begins now, today.
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