In Genesis Chap 32 verses 24 to 32, we read ‘’ A man came and fought with Jacob… they kept on wrestling until the man said ‘’ let go off me! … Jacob replied. You can’t go until you bless me’’. The man said, ‘’ …. You have wrestled with God and man and you have won ‘’. Jacob’s win in a duel means the other person failed. In verse 30 Jacob says ‘’ I have seen God face to face’’ So he defeated God! Incredible and inconceivable!
In 1Samuel Chap 8, people of Israel asks Samuel to give them a King just likes all other nations around them. Till that time, for around 300 years, God Almighty was their King, He was leading them thru Judges who were people mightily endued with the Spirit of God. God was leading and feeding them, protecting them and leading their battles. It was like God Himself was their King. The people who were so tenderly and meticulously cared for by God make a disgusting demand of dethroning the Sovereign God from His rightful position and want to enthrone a man in that place as their King, because they want to conform to the world around them. They prefers man, a fleshly king and rejects God just as the crowd who want to nail Jesus and yelled to set free Barabas. Let us see how the benevolent and merciful God reacted to this demand. In Chap 8: 7 The Lord asks Samuel to listen to the people and do everything they want you to do. The All Powerful God submits to the demand of his people even when they clearly rejected Him. He stepped down, took off His kingly apparel but never rejected them, kept on loving and calling them back. It is the love that forgives those who nail Him to Cross, the same love that submits to the demands of the Canaanite woman as we see in Mathew chap 15:21to26. It is the call of this same love that we see in Revelations 22:17 “ The Spirit and bride say, ‘ come, and let him who hears say, ‘come !’ Whosoever is thirsty, let him come’’
In all the above situations there is one thing in common, it is Lord, the All Powerful, whose power and might has no match , is the one who subjugates to the demands of ones who are meek and weak. This could be well understood by those of us who must have played with our kids and very younger siblings. When we play with our peers, we use all our might and tricks to win over them but when the opponents or other participants in the game are our own loved kids or younger siblings, we amorously and intentionally change the rule of game, we love to fail to please our loved ones.
In contrast to above what do we see in many spiritual leaders who profess to follow God and ordained to guide people to the Lord. While the attitude of Benevolent and Holy God is asking his prophet to listen to the people even when they rejected Him, the attitude of Marthoma Church leaders who betrayed and scattered the sheep in Kuwait was that of refusal to even listen to them to hear what the people had to say. While the merciful God asks His prophet to do everything the people want even when it is dethroning of the Sovereign God from His rightful place of preeminence, for the Bishops of Marthoma Church accepting a very legitimate demand of the people to restore their Parish which was illegally and roguishly abolished is quite out of question in their haughty eyes. While the Merciful Lord is calling and fervently waiting His people to come back even when it is people who rejected Him and wandered away , our leaders and their mouthpieces who schemed to scatter the folk are seen all the time shouting ‘why don’t you folk get out and get lost’? A leadership so intolerant to see the folk out of the church. While we see in God a loving Father who loves to fail to His feeble creations , Marthoma Church leaders in their zest to display their might, supremacy and swollen arrogance has no dithering to use any ungodly and despicable means to somehow see their flock defeated.
Lord tells Samuel, by asking for a king ‘’it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their King’’. Same is what our Church leaders are indulging in, they are not essentially rejecting or scattering the folk in Kuwait or elsewhere but are expelling Christ from all His rightful places in church. A Church is believed to be the body of Christ and each person in church is a part of that body as a brick in a structure or as the body parts of eyes, ear, hands, legs etc in a human body, and the leaders are expected to build up this body by adding more and more souls. By scattering and destroying the folk, the leaders are shrinking and ruining the body of Christ which is nothing but systematic dethroning of Sovereign and Holy God from His rightful position in Church and enthroning, enriching and entrenching themselves as human gods in place of God.
Sajan