Sermon: We Are Not A Christmas Store
If you were a worship leader today, and had searched for worship resources for this morning’s service, you would have found lots of prayers and inspirational writings which use the image of a highway from today’s reading in Isaiah: “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” I was delighted to find the image of fields of grass from the same text:, “All people are grass”.
I had a couple of reasons for my delight: The image of making a highway in the wilderness to prepare for the Lord’s arrival is wonderful; it tells us that we must open our hearts for the coming Christ like the open roads run endlessly under the open sky here in Manitoba. The image also reminds me of a project the last Korean government promoted, launched and temporarily completed, in my home country, just 3 years ago. I wonder if any of you have ever heard of “The Four Major Rivers Restoration Project”. This project was originally proposed under the name of “The Grand Korean Waterway” and, as such, faced substantial opposition from environmentalists and much of the population.
The Four Major Rivers Project was presented as a wonderful opportunity for economic growth; development projects on the rivers would prevent yearly floods and drought problems and create more jobs; eventually the rivers would be linked to become a grand Korean waterway, a canal from Seoul to Busan. In the president’s vision, the freighters would come and go, the commercial transport system would become faster, the riversides would be revitalized for tourism, and local communities would benefit from the profits. After Mr. Park became the president he was nicknamed Bulldozer, as his promised project was implemented right away. Riverbeds were dug up and dredged; shallow streams where children played in the summer became dangerously deep, native plants were replaced with garden flowers and oak trees as familiar landscape became a monotonous sameness.
After growing opposition from environmental groups and many public demonstrations, President Park had to give up the canal project. It was a shocking lesson of how people can choose the wrong actions, giving blind consent and allowing harmful consequences to our world’s natural environment in order to gain an economic advantage.
As I see what has happened in Korea and in many parts of our world, I see Isaiah’s image of highway in a less positive light. Instead, this week, I was intrigued to see that right after the highway description, Isaiah put out a more humble image: “People are grass”. If people are grass, we have roots, we are localized, we are close to the earth. We learn that we are not so much in a ruling position over the earth with control and power and exploitation, but are called to be humble and less violent. I imagine that in our truer and more transparent relationships with God, we would find ourselves to be more like native river flora than imported garden flowers. This alternative image of us tells us that in the space between God and us, no pretence can stand.
Some Koreans like to study the teachings of the religions more native to their own culture, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Some Christians do as well, because it gives them a much deeper sense of who they are in their relationship with God and their culture. I was one of those students; I appreciate the education I received in my university years. When I first encountered the image of people as grass, I remembered two verses from Tao-te Ching. It is the Taoist scripture which constitutes hundreds of verses of praising and talking about the Way. (with a capital W) One is that the space between Heaven and Earth is hollow like a bellow or a pipe. Because it is hollow, it makes a wind and sound. Emptying oneself of nonessential things is a very important quality of following and resembling the Way. Another thing I remember, because when I first learned this verse, it made me really ponder on its meaning, is that the grass-root people are ‘the tip’ of the mouth of a flute (Chinese flute) that God or Heaven blows. When God moves for justice, the grass-root people are the first who experience the fierce blow of the breath of God.
I hope that we can see this amazing similarity in the understanding of God - the breath of God - of the two religions: When the breath of God blows upon it, the grass withers, the flowers fades. Today’s Gospel also tells us that we must be the people of the Holy Spirit. John the baptist says, as he proclaims the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven and the Messiah, “I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
I thought up a catchy phrase for our Advent/Christmas event pamphlet last week: “We Are Not a Christmas Store.” When I wrote it, I was thinking about wanting to share my perspective on how I think of us as Christmas people. The Gospel of Mark, which is today’s reading, does not begin with the nativity story. It begins with the baptism of Jesus, and we clearly learn that the baptism is an event that occurs with powerful activity on the part of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not just a subject that we preach about in the season of Pentecost; the Holy Spirit had a role from the very beginning of our sacred story. The story begins: a baby was born to a very poor family in the occupied land of Palestine, meaning, he belonged to grass-root people who lived with the harsh reality of being oppressed - they knew both the danger and the hope involved with resistance to the oppressors of the time - Herod and Pilate -.
“We are not a Christmas store” may sound overly dramatic, but it means a lot to me, personally, because of my faith: I believe that we are not here to sell Christmas as a product, “made in Church”, especially during the Christmas season, when consumerism reaches everywhere. It is easy to use this season as a way to boost church attendance and revenue, to manufacture some fun Christmas events to attract more people to come and see us, to capitalize on this moment in the spotlight.
What if we used this moment to deliver a counter-cultural message? For example, I recently watched the 2014 Kairos Christmas message: "All I Want for Christmas is Mining Justice" and it really opened my eyes to see what is happening in Guatemala, the Philippines, and The Republic of Congo - ecological damage, conflict, and human rights violations - due to the mining of minerals such as tantalum, copper, gold, to make the iPhones, smartphones, and tablets that so many of us want to see under the Christmas tree this year.
We are not a Christmas store. We must not lose our groundedness in the Holy Spirit (like the deep-rooted prairie grass) which helps us to respond to our call to be the community of resistance, Sabbath, God’s shalom to bring justice and the good news to everyone.
This is my very first Christmas with you; I am still learning to see who the Meadowood people are. I am very glad that I already see some wonderful initiatives that have aleady been made in our midst, especially the Meadowood Market. Our outreach team helps sell justice-seeking items such as the Unsettling Goods Advent Peace Box. We have set up a mitten tree. We have piles of socks that will be delivered to the West Broadway Community. All of these individually small gestures multiply enough to show that we are acting on the poverty and troubling issues in our society and in our world.
As the wisdom of Isaiah tells us, we are the people of grass. When the breath of God blows upon us, we yield to the voice of the wind. The Tao-te Ching tells us that, because Heaven and Earth are hollow like a bellows or a bamboo flute, they make a wind and sound. The freedom of the Holy Spirit shapes the true meaning of Christmas: our sacred story is interwoven with the DNA of resistance, so we add the same DNA of prophecy to the stories we weave and make. Now, I invite you to ask a question for your own self-reflection: If you are God’s instrument during this Advent season, what song of faith and resistance would you like to make?
Photo credit: with courtesy of Shelly Manly-Tannis
Photo credit: with courtesy of Shelly Manly-Tannis
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