Week 39—Monday Matthew 5:14-16
Matthew 5:14-16
“THAT GAS LANTERN IS TEACHING ME
MUCH ABOUT YOUR JESUS”
The Universal cannot be seen in a Universal concept. The Universal can only be seen in the Universal-in-Particular. In one of our Ashrams in Japan, a Japanese professor specializing in Buddhism was lecturing to our Ashram group on how to make Christianity really Japanese. He said, “Teach pure Christianity and it will be universal and will fulfill Japanese culture.” He was right. You do not have to water down the Christian faith to make it fit into other faiths and other cultures to make it more universalized. You do not universalize it by that process; you make it fit into the nonuniversal and thus it becomes nonuniversal in the process.
A Hindu said to a Christian speaker, “You talk about Christ. We can talk about God, but you must talk about Christ.” You really need to talk about Jesus before you can talk about God, but the Hindu was right. He saw in Jesus Christ something universal. For the real Christian is the most universalized person on this planet. A real Christian works by love and love in the universal language.
Some Christian boys were going out to the villages by night to inoculate chickens against chicken diseases. They had to go at night, for the chickens were feeding in the fields by day. A Muslim watched these boys doing this inoculation without compensation and said to the missionary, “That gas lantern is telling me much about your Jesus.” He saw through that lantern into the Christian faith and saw it was “the light of the world.” Through this particular, he saw Jesus who is the Universal-in-Particular. If you chemically analyze a sunbeam you can find out the universal sun. In a single act of love you find out the nature of the Christian faith. “The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him” (Luke 15:1)—here was Holiness that instead of repelling was compelling. Here was the Universal-in-the-Particular.
O Jesus, in you we see in understandable form the Eternal God. You are God simplified, approachable, lovable. We would never have known that God is love, unless we had seen it in you. You are the Speech of Eternity translated into the language of time. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: May my “gas lamp” of lowly deeds and attitudes tell others much about our Jesus.