Gospel according to Matthew, Chapters 1, 18-25
“Father who will take care of me.” Pastor Yoshioka Kyoten
Last week, an article in a magazine said, “I will ask you the word ‘self-responsibility’ again.” Here’s what happened. “Where on earth are we going? Is it all self-responsibility? Is it the ‘self-responsibility’ of the workers to cancel the contract until next year and to deprive them of their jobs, housing and living from tomorrow? Is it all self-responsibility that old people need nursing care? I don’t remember ‘drinking and eating,’ but getting sick at a certain age is all ‘self-responsibility’?”
I think the world is getting harder and harder these days. The word self-responsibility is used as an excuse to cut people off, and it is used as a word to help them give up responsibility and pass on responsibility. In this context, I feel that our own minds are being dragged in that direction. People who seem to have made some kind of mistake can be hit coldly. We find it difficult to look at people from a perspective that cares about their body temperature, such as whether they are in trouble or not. You can judge right from wrong and look at people with cold eyes that impose such tests on them whether they failed or succeeded. It is easy to judge a person unilaterally from that perspective and to judge that you are wrong and that it is your own responsibility. However, it is a little different from the self-responsibility of those who have been judged. I don’t think that applies to self-responsibility.
But in such a world of cut-and-cut, human-to-human injury and division, we can see a beautiful sense of responsibility working at Christmas, not in such a cold sense, based on love.