TENRIKYO PEARL CHURCH SERMON – 2005 April
Good morning! I would like to thank you all for your kind support and sincere offerings. I am sure that God the Parent and Oyasama is pleased to see you today to participate in this April Monthly Service 2005. April is Oyasama’s birthday month. She was born on April 18, 1798 and this month we will celebrate her 207th birthday.
Our hearts and prayers go out to Terri Shiavo who passed away on March 31th at the age of 41, and Pope John Paul II who passed away on April 2nd at the age of 84. The Terri Shiavo case was in the news for a very long time and it brought to question, who is right as to whether Terri Shiavo should have kept on living with the feeding tube inserted or not. What would you do in a similar situation? How do you apply the Tenrikyo Teachings in this instance?
There maybe no right or wrong answer and some of you may have made your own conclusions on this matter, but I thought it would be helpful if I shared some of my thoughts on this issue.
Medical technology has advanced to the point where we can be kept alive even though we are considered “brain dead.” Even if our breathing and our heart stopped, we could be revived. If this happened a few years ago, this wouldn’t have been an issue, since she would have already passed away.
The court, through doctors’ examinations, has determined that she was brain dead and that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means. Terri’s parents claimed that she was responding to them and that with therapy and rehabilitation she could recover.
There are several issues to consider. Does “artificial” include the feeding tube? She was not on life support, meaning that her essential organs were functioning normally. Perhaps she could be compared to a baby that can’t feed itself.
What could be the husband’s ulterior motive be in removing her feeding tube besides honoring her request? If it was money, he could have accepted one million dollars offered by a private individual to divorce her. Some speculate that if Terri was to survive and regain consciousness, she might reveal alleged abuses by her husband.
Another issue is the family feud between Michael Shiavo and Terri’s parents who up until this problem began were very supportive and as mentioned before, agreed to his being Terri’s legal guardian. But they have been in a bitter court battle since 1998. Michael Shiavo trying to honor Terri’s wish to have the “feeding tube” removed and her parents disputing that. Now, perhaps for good reason, visits to Terri are arranged so that they don’t meet each other. Terri’s parents were banned from her room at the time of passing.
In addition, Michael Shiavo’s brother said that he will never forgive Terri’s parents for portraying his brother as a “murderer.” I would suppose God would be very disappointed at how the families have acted toward each other.
In Tenrikyo, to be born, to live through our various stages of life, and to pass away are all blessings and involve the providence of cutting. Cutting the umbilical cord at birth, the cuts or breaks that mark the various stages of our life, and cutting off the breath of life when one passes away for rebirth.
If you recall our sermon last July, we shared the importance of making “clean” cuts in our life to join or connect with promising futures.
The reason for cutting is that we expect a later joining. In other words we cut in order to connect.
For example: The clothing we wear is made by cutting sheets of cloth into pieces and then joining them together by sewing. A wooden house or wooden furniture is built by joining pieces of wood that have been cut and sanded. Gourmet foods we eat are prepared first by cutting vegetables, meats, and other ingredients and mixing or joining them all together.
Therefore cutting is necessary for the purpose of joining. What becomes important then is how we cut.
The way we cut and the conditions resulting from the cut becomes very important for us. When we fall and cut our skin for example, we normally treat the cut by wiping, cleaning and disinfecting. By so doing we receive the Truth of Kunisazuchi-no-Mikoto, the providence of skin and joining and the cut heals. When we try to glue two parts together we usually clean the surfaces to be joined. By experience we know that it is hard to join surfaces that are dirty. Such is the result of receiving the providence of cutting and the providence of joining, working together.
When we extend this line of reasoning to our life we find that we have many breaks or points of severance or cutting in the course of our lives; such as childbirth, going to school, adulthood, getting a job, marriage, retirement and passing away.
We have many such breaks in our lifetime. Therefore, the question for us is, how can we make each break a clean one? I believe, it means to add a feeling of gratitude at each breaking situation. Grateful and graceful acceptance makes such breaks a clean and pure severance. Handling the break cleanly with a feeling of gratitude invites in turn the providence of joining.
By being grateful to each other, we can make our breaks in our life clean and pure. This will make good connections of blessings of recovery, moving on to our next life, or moving on in our lives. By not making the cuts clean with gratitude it will be difficult to move on in our lives.
As to whether teachings point to discontinue the feeding tube or not is still very difficult to answer. My personal feeling is that we should be allowed to pass away naturally without prolonged medical care.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Announcements:
1. Once again I would like to thank those who have contributed to the Tsunami Relief fund. Together with your donations, from Pearl Church we were able to contribute $500 to Dendocho for the relief effort.
2. We are in the last year before the 120th Anniversary of Oyasama and I would like to ask all of you to participate by returning to Jiba in 2006. We hope to form a pilgrimage group for the children’s summer pilgrimage and hope that many of you can join us. However, you can return anytime during the year and I or Mrs. Nakao will accompany you. In order to help defray the cost we have started a fund drive from several years ago from our garage sales. We are continuing our fundraising by offering yard services, so if you know of anyone who needs yard cleaning, please let us know.
3. The Boy’s and Girl’s Association will be conducting Oyasama’s Birthday Activity on Monday, night, April 18th at Dendocho from 6:30 beginning with the evening service. We would like all of you to attend.
4. The All Tenrikyo Hinokishin Day for Oahu will be held on Saturday, April 30th at Honolulu Zoo at 8:30 am. Please take the opportunity to join us as group to express our joy of faith and of being kept alive and please invite your friends and family in this community service activity.
5. This being Oyasama’s Birth Celebration Month, with your support, three of us from Pearl Church will be returning to Jiba: Rev. Yoshinobu Nakao will be doing work for Dendocho, Mrs. Taeko Nakao will be attending Oyasama Birthday Celebration Service on the 18th, the Women’s Association on April 19th and Tengen monthly service on April 23rd. I will be attending the church headquarters monthly service on April 26th and Tengen’s 80th as church and 130th Anniversary since it was established as Tenrikyo’s first fraternity, on May 1st.
6. Today 4/10 we commemorate the 6th year since the passing of long time member, Mr. Hiroki “Mickey” Mitsunaga, the late husband of Mrs. Mitsunaga. We would like to remember him for his faith and support of the church.
7. We have just taken in a foreign student from Japan this past Friday who plans to stay for about 3 months. We will use part of his fee for the Jiba Pilgrimage fund.