Sermon: Be Revolutionary Like Jesus
Luke 10:38-42
Loneliness, one of the pains which is pervasive throughout our society, is not just one person's feelings of being lonely. Extreme individualization, one-by-one recasting of individuals as simple consumers in the vast global market economy. We have called these 'alienation'. We are past the time of the Industrial Revolution, where, under the banner of ‘mass production and mass consumption’ men, women and children alike shaped long workdays around the machines that drove the new era. In this era of global free trade markets, the era of money as superpower, people become capital; their movements become the flow of currency. People feel lonely because the environment where they live and which surrounds them is no longer shaped for humans; it is shaped for economic gain. In the cities in Korea and in Vancouver, the only large city I have ever known in Canada, I have seen many transnational labourers, their families and children sometimes with them but often far away, individuals who surf the waves of a grand network of anonymity, and I have seen their loneliness.
Recently I found one phrase while reading Korean poetry, and immediately loved it: “The cold mercury measuring a life’s hotness.” In today’s Gospel, we meet two individuals who are expressing pain, and you can’t help but notice the heatedness, the passion of their pain. I read today’s story of Martha and Mary as if I were a cold mercury thermometer measuring the heat of their lives. They both were struggling with pain but each one’s pain was expressed differently. Martha was pained because she did all the housework, cooking, cleaning, serving the family and assisting male visitors all by herself and no one cared about how she felt about doing these tasks all the time, alone. Mary was pained because the vocation she chose as a ‘better part’ for her was not understood, not only by men but also by women, including her own sister, Martha. Her better part, her better career, her vocation was always being threatened to be taken away from her. Both Mary and Martha were in thrall to the patriarchy - each of them struggled to have control over their lives.
Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part for her, which will not be taken away from her”, Jesus’ words are revolutionary for that time – and it still is even now in many parts of the world. One scholar suggests that it is a mistranslation to translate Jesus’ words as “It will not be taken away from her.”, because it was translated as prediction, but in truth, in the 2000-year-long history of Christianity, the possibility of women’s ordination, of women being recognized as ministers with the same God-given authority as men, has been denied by men who claim the entirety of the vocation for their own sex. The scholar continues to insist that the correct translation is in the imperative voice; it should be “Mary has chosen the better vocation. Do not take it away from her.” This revolutionary story still resonates to this day. We see the same struggle and pain of Martha and Mary in many Catholic women who hope to be ordained in the church which they are deemed fit to serve, but have been forbidden to lead.
I chose to marry young and build my career later, unlike my friends in Korea. In the summer of 2006 I was holding my newborn baby, Peace, in my arms while I felt a crisis in my heart. I was very happy to be a new mother, to see my baby growing day by day, but I was also feeling a terrible sense of doom. Life in Korea at the dawn of this new millennium demands people run at super-speed, like you are speeding down one straight highway, eyes straight ahead. If you lose your focus, get distracted by possibilities beyond the straight track you will be crushed. The rate of unemployment reaches ever-higher; the most lauded goal of the nation’s youth is to secure a highly-paid, stable job. Only a few of my generation will get what all of us have been pushed to achieve. In a society where economic growth is the primary agenda, slowing down and pursuing other values and virtues means a permanent ejection from the high-speed, one way highway. My marriage, my baby meant that I would not be able to get back up to the speed demanded on the road to success. I knew that my major fields of study in university – religious studies, social studies, philosophy- would not lead to a splashy career in finance or politics. And I am a woman – which, in Korea means either elbows out to clear my own path or, ‘Stay at home and be a good mother.’
During those difficult days, I found my long-time hidden vocation – to be ordained – and moved to Canada to explore a new pathway for my family and for myself, enrolled myself in the Vancouver School of Theology, and studied very hard. But few of my Korean Christian brethren understood my dreams and ambitions. One day, a man I knew showed interest in my studies. He was very encouraging as I told him about my classes and my teachers, but ended the conversation by asking, “By the way, what are you going to do after graduation?” He knew that I was studying for my Master’s of Divinity, but failed to imagine that I would become an ordained minister. In Korean churches, the wife of a minister has a special role; she is expected to assist her husband, stay at home and be a smiling presence on Sunday mornings.
So I apply my past experience and pain to understand Mary and Martha, and Jesus. I am imagining how revolutionary Jesus was and how we who follow Jesus should be – revolutionary! Life-giving! In the places where oppressive rules and systems cover up people’s dreams with the thickness and the weight of black asphalt.
When you hear the word ‘revolution’, or picture revolution in your imagination, what images do you see? You may be reminded of scenes of fights, struggles, opposition, protest, violence. However, from the perspective of the Gospel, from the perspective of the good news, from the perspective of the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, revolution is the hotness of life. The heat of life. The heat which tells us that we do have pain inside us. When we get a pain in our body, we often know it by its heat. You can’t explain what causes it immediately, but you feel that it exists in you and in others – in our neighbours. And I would like to encourage us to try to measure it by ‘cold mercury’ – our intellect, our reflection, our reason, our study – to understand how the world creates the source of pain in us and in our neighbours. Believing Christ goes with understanding Christ – understanding the real Christ who walked on the real path on this earth. Why did He say the things He said? What makes Him erupt in fiery anger? Why did He weep for His friend’s death?
The Love preached in the Gospel is about loving the real people in our lives who are hurt, in pain, robbed, stripped bare, and left alone. Love is revolutionary. Love is liberating. And this love makes us who we are as Christians. We are individuals, but we are never alone. The world may tell us that we have to take the fast road, to focus on success, to become the capital that feeds the engines of a nation’s economy, but we choose differently. Be revolutionary like Jesus.
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