Wilfred Yeo is unique. He is not one to be subjugated into accepting dogmas and beliefs that fail to make sense. He loves his food and fresh produce. He loves his family. He cares for his friends. He shares his life and faith with others in his utterly distinctive ways. Not of glamour and crowds, but of personal encounters person to person, cutting across fixed boundaries and fossilised beliefs. Most of all, he loves his Lord with his entire being. He has only one kungfu stroke — Jesus Christ.
Wilfred has witnessed Christ to those he was appointed to meet in ways that speak of relationship and grace, full of personal anecdotes and inimitable idiosyncrasies. Wilfred’s witnessing of Christ was real, down to earth, and often surprising. Regardless of ruffled feathers, he speaks truth to power and grace to legalism disguised as “grace,” false grace. Both of us have no time for the false prosperity pseudo-grace ideology of megachurch preachers who give off more smoke than anything else, least of all God’s Word in spirit and in truth.
Wilfred walked alongside me in the aftermath of my unexpected faith encounter with the Lord in 2014. He introduced me to the works of Thomas F. Torrance whom I soon adopted as my theological mentor. He lent me a book by Masao Abe whom I had read in the past but whose ideas became salient in my interfaith and inter spiritual adventure — reconciling and integrating my deep Buddhist background with my new faith in Christ. Now, my journey has seamlessly interwoven all these elements in the crucible of the cosmotheandric Christ in whom I live, love, move, and have my being. Through his encouragement, I have delved into Protestant theologies and expressions in the Reformed, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic variants, and revisited Roman Catholic teachings as well as its contemplative traditions.
My journey of faith has taken me into pastoral internships and finally into my alternative missiological ministry in which I now engage. Through Wilfred, I have come to understand and appreciate the deeply personalised and contextual nature of walking alongside others in faith, not as an imposition of set dogmas and rote habits but as a fluid unfolding of the human soul in dynamic relationship with another soul and with the Spirit of God, held lovingly in and by His Spirit, into the absolute interiority of Father. To me, church is not a building but the dance of love in the self-emptying perichoresis of Triune mystery, where two or three hearts are gathered together in an outpouring flow of word and spirit in His Name. What appears is not necessarily what is.
Thank you for your shining light and generous spirit, Wilfred. Thank you for being you. And thank you for testifying to the power of love and faith in the way you embraced the sufferings of your mortal life. You will be missed but also celebrated. Enjoy your immaculate wholeness and timeless joy in the Lord as you abide forever restfully in That which has no name but is also He whose name is Yeshua. For right there and then, which is here and now, all dualistic notions of the linguistic brain dissolve into the wordless ecstasy of God in Christ where love abounds and all suffering ceases without remainder.
Some call it Parinirvana. Let us settle for Silence.
朋友，走好。
Chris Kang
Upali Passaddhi | Lozang Tanpa
法鼓: 宽中 | 梅村: 进慧月
Brisbane and Singapore,
27 November 2024.
