Friday 1 March 2019

HAPCHAR KUT MESSAGE


(1 Kor 5:6 – 8)



Note: A short CHAPCHAR KUT 2019 PROGRAME was organized by Serampore College Mizo Christian Fellowship (SCMF) on 01.03.2019 (Fri) @ 8:00AM, in CLRC auditorium. It was being observed and celebrated by the entire community of Serampore College. However, here, in this programme, we, both Ms. Lalngaihsaki Hnialum (Ngaihtei) and me, were being favored  and offered a great honor to act as KUT NU & KUT PA which as i believed, would never come to me again during my life time. Therefore, as i was assigned to deliver CHAPCHAR KUT MESSAGE, this  message has come into existence as follows...
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To all of you,… ‘chapchar kut chibai’.

I take this privilege to express my sincere gratitude; first of all to Almighty God for this wonderful moment. & secondly, to all of you and & to all my mizo friends, particularly to our leaders of Mizo community, for this kind of honor being given to me and to Ms. Angaihi as ‘Kut Nu and Kut Pa’ which as i believed, will never come to me again during my lifetime. Therefore I feel honor and feel very privilege to take and to have this kind of opportunity as a ‘Kut Pa’.

‘Kut Nu and Kut Pa’, in its literal sense, mean ‘Feast lady and Feat gentleman’, or ‘guest of honor’ given to a particular individual in a particular festival where a Mizo community observed and celebrated community festivals. Therefore, as a ‘Kut Pa’, I wish you ‘all the best’, and at the same time wish you all ‘to have a blessed time’ as we observe and celebrate this chapkar kut today.

For chapchar kut message, a humble contemplation i would like to bring out and share with you is a very short reflection on ‘an exhortation given by Paul to the church of Corinthians’ mentioned in 1 Cor 5:8.

If we recollect some records of the OT, God has given 7 feasts to the people of Israel to be observed and to be celebrated. Therefore as they (people of God) have taken very seriously, observation of different feasts among the people of God have become an important event within the community of God’s people.

During the time of Jesus and during the period of the early church, we also could see number of records of different occasions/events where people of God have gathered together to observe their feasts in a specific times and places.

However, my point of interest from this short reflection is – it is likely that, people who have gathered together to observe and celebrate their feast, probably have gathered together with their old leaven, i.e. an old leaven/cloth which is no longer suitable at all for a new community of God’s people; a leaven/cloth of wickedness, a leaven/cloth of envy, a leaven/cloth of slander, a cloth of hatred, a cloth of prejudice, etc.

As Paul says, ‘since Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us’; he further said, “let us therefore keep our fast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Therefore, though it is unsuitable to make comparison between the Passover feat and the fast of chapchar kut, for both have their own meanings and purposes. But in spite of all its differences/variances, one important point for our meditation, what I would like to mention from this chosen text is –
As every festival have their points of significance, for e.g.;

-    To relief us from monotony of life
-    To create an environment of cultural harmony.
-    To promote social interaction and friendliness.
-    To teach us to forget our enmity and embrace one another in a bond of love.
-    And to give us some inspiration to remember the important things and moments in life.
-    And to help us realize the salvific action done and demonstrated by God through Jesus Christ.

**Let us, therefore consider the life that can lead our whole life honestly and uprightly. Let us celebrate God’s giving life to every individual with a sense of purity and sanctity. Let us keep ourselves free from the feeling/attitude of discrimination, hatred, communalism, narrowness and nasty politics.

Whether the lives we enjoy coincide with the fast we suppose to celebrate and observe; our entire life, every moment we spend must go or in line with God’s standard. Therefore by doing so, we all will produce a more meaningful life, a life that can please God, a life that will bear more fruits.
Let the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, love and support, unity and cooperation, a spirit of peace and harmony be our top priorities to make us observe every single moments and days of our life.


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