Sermon: Seeing Underwater
Amos 7:7-17,
Luke 10:25-37
What shocked me first when my family landed in Korea was that the summer sky was
not how I remembered it;
it was an unfamiliar hazy white, not the blue I remembered from my youth: the
well-loved clear, hot, steamy blue sky with beautiful towering cumulus clouds.
I remember walking home after school, looking up and enjoying the blue sky
and the fluffy white
clouds, licking an ice cream cone that melted too quickly in the blaze of sun.
In my memory, summers were hot, sweaty, blue and refreshing. But now the Korean
summer sky looks as if it were painted with white watercolours; the sky is
white all over, the same colour as the polluted air between me and the sky. My
oldest son and I played at counting the days until we could see any patches of
blue above us or even see the sun emerge from the haze of the white-blurry sky,
but we gave up doing that after a while. The blue returned to the sky the day
after a rain shower - not for long, but enough to assure us that blue skies
still existed in the world.
I think the description of Korea as a huge water container is quite right. When I visited
Korea, it was the rainy
season, but it rarely rained. The water seemed to be contained
up in the sky, trapped
in the humid air. And people seem to live or swim there - in their
own life container
without actual water. They live in a system, a custom, and a feeling of crisis
which stems from their need to survive in this container, in this air, in this
water. And I realized that I am also one of them, no matter whether I live in
Canada or in Korea. I have been swimming to survive.
If I sum up what I see consists of the system, the container, is first of all neoliberalism - politics that focus on a nation’s economic growth. Possession or lack of money determines people’s lives - whether they possess real estate, and how much they have in the bank literally determines people’s happiness. Korea was called ‘a nation of savings’ before its economy bottomed out in the financial crisis of 1997. Since then, borrowing seem to have become the basis of many families’ finances. Many people gladly incur credit card debt to show off how they live. The rich live in skyscraper apartments in Seoul or in fancy suburbs, literally separating themselves from less fortunate citizens, while the others drive past these new towns on their long commute into the city, looking up at the skyscrapers, wondering who lives there. ‘Mass production and mass consumption’ have been the principles that prop up unquestioned Capitalism. But we have a smaller and smaller population which can afford ‘mass consumption’ as fewer and fewer people have stable jobs. In the global ‘market economy’, wealth ignores borders, politics; transnational capital controls everything – even people’s movements.
An influx of labourers from nearby Asian countries is flowing in to Korea, which means the world’s pains and their desperate struggles are also coming in. But Korea does not seem to be ready to embrace them.
What are the churches doing? Just as in the era of Christendom in Europe, and like many mega- churches in North America are doing now, almost all the churches in Korea, mega-churches, smaller churches, all together, follow Mammon.
In these money-seeking, power-seeking churches, it is hard to find the Jesus who, in the wilderness, resisted Satan’s tests three times: the tests of power, money and using God’s name for one’s own interest and security. Why have so many churches in the world fallen into seeking wealth and worldly influence over seeking Christ? I believe it is because we’ve been taught the world and nature exist for our exploitation and financial gain and that following Mammon is a logical, even virtuous pursuit. The challenge for us Christians is that we are born into this world, we live in this world, and we have not yet experienced the alternative to life on this flawed planet. If we don’t give ourselves to be led by the Spirit so that we can be the embodiment of God’s works, we can’t resist the world’s tests of power, money, and using God’s name for our own advancement. If we are not baptised with the tests Jesus was tested by, if we are not baptised with the Spirit Jesus was led by, if we are not baptized by Jesus’ death on the cross, if we don’t carry our own cross, we can’t poke our head from the water we swim in and see the new earth and new heaven.
Canada has a brilliantly blessed blue and green nature - we have the blue summer skies to prove it. But Korea can be a relevant lesson for Canadians to see who we are, because we live in the same world where global Mammonism silently covers up countless people’s cries of pain, suffering and struggle as if they didn’t exist. This is the power of what we call ‘the system’. Jesus entered Jerusalem – the center of the Jewish world at the time, to choose the cross, as the only and right option for him, when he wanted to turn the wheel of human history back to the original point when God first created the world. It’s important to remember that when God created the world, the world meant the simplicity of Eden, the garden, not the ambition of the tower of Babel. But Adam and Eve made a choice, and its consequence was that they left Eden. Then, outside of the Eden, they gave birth to Cain and Abel, and Cain killed his brother Abel. Their troubled offspring constructed the tower of Babel.
In today’s reading in Amos, God asks the prophet Amos, “Amos, what do you see?” Amos replies, “A plumb line.” The Bible says, Amos saw God was “standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.”
A plumb line is a string with a weight on the end. When you hold the string at the top, the weight makes the line hang down straight, so you can determine the straightness of the walls you build.
God says to Amos, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.”
What does it mean in Amos’ vision that God is standing beside a wall with a plumb line?
We can consider this question and reflect on it in many ways, but one of the understandings may be this: the present tower of Babel, our world, in which the richest 20 percent of nations take 76.6 percent of the world’s total wealth and the poorest 20 percent hold just 1.5 percent of it is not sustainable. It also means that the world tower which is built upon the poor people, the exploited, the powerless, the countless people who fall into being transnational labourers, wanderers, this bulky structure that puts the wealthy upon the backs of the poor... can’t stand up vertical.
What saddened me when I travelled to Korea was that very few hoped, very few desired,
very few imagined the
‘new earth and new heaven’ God promises in the Gospel. Very few
knew that what God
originally wished for the world was a garden.
To God, the idea of ‘world’
originally meant a place
where justice and fairness rule, life and peace blossom,
love is the language,
and a person speaks to the next person, and they hear from one
another, ‘you are the
flesh from my flesh, the bone from my bones.’
For the first few weeks back in Korea, I asked my family and friends, “Why is the summer sky blurry and white? How did the colours of the air and the sky come to be same? The sky
used to be blue, with
beautiful cumulus clouds! But I haven’t seen the sun for almost 10 days!” Then,
they would invariably reply, “Ha Na, the summer sky has been always like this!”
People don’t seem to realize the weather has been changed; the dust of
pollution takes from them the memories of the clean and clear, blue summer sky.
May we always remember, may we always honour
that God created the garden first,
intending for us to live there, in tune, not at odds, with all living beings in
the world.
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