Sermon: Touching and Holding in Our Hands Each Other's Blazing Sun (at the MNWO Conference, 2015)

My Message I offered at Celebration of Ministries Service of the Annual Meeting of the Conference of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario (May 31, 2015)

Sermon
I guess by this time, you’ve got some idea about what kind of relationship Min-Goo and I have. As you may have well assumed, we are a couple, a quite loving couple, married in 2004. Our first son was born in 2006 in Korea. Since we moved to Canada, in 2007, we’ve shared an eight-year journey of studying, being ordained and working within the United Church of Canada. Our first two years of marriage, before we left Korea, started with life within a Korean church where Min Goo served as an assistant minister. During those two years, I was expected to play the role of the good, supportive wife of an ordained husband. I was reduced to being a silent angel, not telling anybody what I really thought or felt. I had become like the Moon which can only shine through reflected light. To be a good wife, I kept my inner Sun from blazing. The 8 years since I moved to Canada have been a journey to find my own Sun inside, and let it out to reveal its brilliance.

My painful experience with the Korean church patriarchy and the following journey to be the Sun again have given me two wonderful gifts: to understand what it is like to live under an oppressive structure that keeps individuals from living their true identity, and to temper my heart to see the thousands of Suns blazing within thousands of different people, both in this room and in the world.

Last May, I was ordained in the BC Conference with the Provisional Call to serve the United Church in Meadowood, Winnipeg. In the following month, my family moved to the prairies. The first day, when I found myself in the blazing summer sun that warmed the land with an immense amount of light, my inner voice spoke to me, saying “This Land and the Creator God have called you here.”

Since then, I have sensed a strong unity between this land and its peoples - and myself. I see now that committing to a place fully is a beautiful and spiritually strong practice. It lets us turn our vision and hearts toward each other, to make a strong heartbeat together, to follow the wisdom of the land - teachings of unity and harmony. The undividedness of the land helps us see the equally undivided call to make relationships with each other.

Of course, different people may have a different sense of place. In my congregation, which is located in a suburban neighbourhood, what I heard most often in the past winter was people sharing joy or even congratulating those who could escape from this land during the winter, fleeing to warmer places. It’s not surprising; in the first couple of months after we moved, my family were asked over and over, “Why on earth have you come to Winnipeg? Know that you pay for what you get.” In the meantime, I was always inspired whenever aboriginal people spoke affirmingly that we are welcome to “Treaty One: the ‘beautiful territory’ we share.” What a contrast!

When your life and identity is deeply rooted and shaped by what the land means and what it gives to us and shares with us, when you, your family’s, and your community’s pain has been generated and perpetuated by the traumatizing consequences of stolen land, your life with the land makes a different kind of statement about the land where your life-blood line flows. Your aching heart and love for your land will never allow you to turn away from the sufferings of your peoples and of the others who live equally with the land. You will be committed to revealing the blazing Suns in the horizons of people’s hopes; you will be committed to tackling the societal issues of racialized poverty and environmental racism, the issues of the toxic drinking waters of isolated first nation communities like Shoal Lake 40 and the persistent call for a national inquiry into the murdered and missing First nation women and girls and two spirited people.

These hopes also make me express my concerns for my dearest United Churches in our city and in other places. My deepest concerns for our churches come from my observation of our local congregations: how do our worship and congregational life in general, priorities and practices, governance and structure maintain or contribute to perpetuating the consequences of colonization and racialization? That’s a big question, and one that’s hard to face; let me break it down a bit.

Each local congregation seems to be getting more anxious for its own survival.  We seem to be getting more insular - like interlocking our fingers together very tight (gesture), concerned only with what we can see inside those locked fingers. Threatened by changes in society, by changes in church structure, we become self-centered, self-protective. We don’t easily open our minds and hearts, our boundaries and budgets to think and act in the places outside of our immediate radar of interest and benefit. We assign a budget from our finances to support inner-city community ministries and we send our volunteers and money. However, we rarely make ‘relationships’ with those we are commanded to serve and to be partnered with - those who have fallen through the cracks or been forced to live in poverty. We can’t truly say we believe in committing to eliminating poverty unless we truly commit ourselves, personally as well as institutionally.

We put the word Justice in our prayers every Sunday, and sing it in our hymns so often, but do we gather to set a date for starting social justice missions within our own congregation? We become numb to social justice issues, or decide to just be ‘neutral’ about them, acting on feelings of conflict, guilt or uncertainty. Or we love too dearly the privileges that have made us so comfortable. It almost seems that we are determined to look only at our small communities, our concerns, our wishes, our ‘busy-work’ agendas, without asking what God truly requires of us. (Micah 6:8)

I wonder why being obedient to the authentic teachings of the Jesus of justice, mercy, and openness to the outcasts hardly ever makes its way to the agendas or minutes of our board or Council meetings? Rather, we give ourselves permission to think or say, “It’s o.k. to think of ourselves first. We have so many things on our plates right now - we need to prioritize what we can do first.” We put our best thinking into how to attract more people from the outside community and incorporate them into church life and church work, but we are very quiet about the command to assist God in working to restore wholeness to the messy consequences (or, borrowing a word from Dr. Cornel West, “catastrophes”) of colonization: racism, poverty, violence, hopelessness, justice postponed and ignored. We hardly move our rocks to respond to the outcries of our own people in this land, in our city, even now when their patience has reached its limits.

With our desperate need to be secure in our own comfort zones, these voices never come through to our worship, fellowship, Christian education, Council or Board, without being filtered, diluted, muted, edited! We see them and hear them in newspaper articles, social media, Minutes for Mission, but we rarely get to meet these people who have such a desperate need to make their voices heard. What would happen if we were to listen to them, and be partnered with them to effect a change!

It amazes me how profoundly we are disconnected from the heartbeats of God and the Blazing Suns of the people in our own time and city and province! We have gathered in this service, this morning, to recognize and celebrate the ministries of our church - shouldn’t we ask why the ministries and missions of our own local congregations have been so complacent about the status quo, no matter the church’s size and finances? Can we do more than maintain the problems and poverty - to turn the “principalities and powers” that control them upside down? Can we ask each other to challenge our lifestyles and behaviours as individuals and as a community? Will you ask your ministers and leaders to change and shift the priorities of ministry, from focusing on our own needs to serving the needs of others? Why are our ministry and church life so self-centered and unchallenging? We need to challenge each other and our own congregations to say that these self-serving church priorities - attendance, building, cash - are not okay. My wish for us all, this morning, is to dream that our local congregations can be better than just being a "middle-class" church which mainly serves the spiritual and social needs of the White, middle-class majority.

My dear friends in Christ, what should be changed? What should be changed if we really want to see the realization of our commitment to Treaty One? How should we share this beautiful territory in a way that reveals God as the blazing Sun within and among all the peoples in it? Why have we, ministers, become so quiet and never risked, never challenged our congregations to advance the Kingdom of God in the lives of the poor, starting first within our neighbourhoods, city and province? What are our excuses?

What my experience of ministry in Winnipeg has taught me is that we will only achieve the ‘appearance’ of reconciliation, if we don’t really battle with the troubles and hard issues, the day-to-day struggles of many First Nation individuals and communities. So I repeat the first question I asked earlier; How do our worship and congregational life, priorities and practice, governance and structure maintain or contribute to perpetuating the consequences of colonization and racialization? Does our current church culture continue to marginalize God’s actions and aching heart for the oppressed? What we prioritize decides what we marginalize.

In today’s reading we hear, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” When we cry, “Abba! Father!”, this assures us that becoming adopted as a daughter, a son, a child of God means we will not fall back into fear. Being an adopted child of God means we all are equally challenged and invited to discover the compelling beauty and strength in each other’s humanness, and let this discovery make us fearless, touching and holding in our hands each other’s bright and blazing, fierce and fiery Sun.

The full text of Julia's Message shared at The United Church in Meadowood, on May 3, 2015

Good morning. My name is Julia Antonyshyn. For a little background on me, I’ve been a part of the United Church my entire life and I have been a full member of St. Mary’s Road United Church since February 2014. In recent years, the church has become very important to me. I’ve become more and more involved in St. Mary’s Road United through our youth group and youth band and the opportunities that stem from that. 

I’ve been blessed in attending numerous events for United Church youth, including Conference youth retreats, Rendezvous, which took place here in Winnipeg last August, and most recently the 42^nd General Council Youth Forum’s Winter Gathering in Paris, Ontario in February. If you want to hear more extensively about youth forum give me your email and I’ll send you the link to my Youtube video on that.

There are two important things to take away from it: the sense of community and the comprehensive review.

If you don’t already know, the Comprehensive Review is a series of six proposed changes to the United Church of Canada that will be addressed at General Council in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland this summer. This is super super important to the future of the church so if you want to learn more you can find the document on the Conference website or again just give me your email and I’ll hook you up.

So, the point of me being here is to emphasize the importance of youth ministry… so I want to open this with a question. Why are you here? If your answer is “well, I’ve ALWAYS gone to church” then let me rephrase that… what keeps you here?

Ha Na asked me a similar question when we met here over a week ago. The question was what has made me become so involved in the life of the church? For me? Three words: Conference Youth Retreats. Our Conference holds two youth retreats per year: ALF in October and Zeebu in February (shameless plug). They are open to youth in grades 7-12 and the gist of it is that you sleep in a church for a long weekend with 50 something other youth and leaders and you dance and sing and learn and laugh and just have a generally awesome time. 

It’s difficult for me to try to explain to people just what youth retreats have done for me. To do it justice I have to go back to the beginning. I attended my first retreat when I was in grade 7 and, like a lot of kids, middle school wasn’t really my cup of tea. I was the nerd of my grade, constantly being bullied and harassed for daring, for having the audacity to care about my education… Sounds ridiculous now, huh? I assure you, this is reality for a lot of kids, and it got to me, a lot. I didn’t feel comfortable being myself… heck I didn’t even know who myself was! I felt like I was wearing a mask, like I couldn’t trust anyone to accept me. I built up a lot of walls and I was so paranoid that everyone was out to make fun of me.

So there I am, this insecure 12 year old, when two of my friends from church tell me about Conference youth retreats. They had been to one and really enjoyed it and they thought I would too. 

Now… I was not a camp kid. I never EVER went away from home. When I was eight I freaked out and had to go home during my friend’s first sleepover birthday party. 

So, it means a lot to say that I went and wished I could have stayed another three days.

It was incredible… I’m going to jump ahead to my second retreat, because that was the one that really got me. This was the one that had me hooked. It was a year later, so grade eight. The bullying situation had gotten a little better by comparison, but I still had a lot of hurt.

Every retreat has a theme and this one was called “Born This Way” (as in, the Lady Gaga song). The theme was learning to love and respect yourself for who you are and a lot of conversations centered around bullying.

This was EXACTLY what I needed at that point in my life. It was empowering to sit in a group of other people my age and hear that many of us had had similar experiences. Even more so to see a video made by the Planning Team, all of whom I admire, about how they’ve been through it too, and as cheesy as it sounds it DOES get better. It was incredible to see how youth retreats had shaped their lives for the better and to realize that they were doing the same thing for me.

So since then I’ve been hooked. I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to be both a home group leader and a planning team member myself. I remember when I was asked to be on Planning Team I got really emotional afterwards, which anyone who doesn’t know the story just I told you would probably think is pretty weird, but anyway being on planning team really got to me because I thought back to middle school me, insecure, afraid… and I realized that I now have chance to be that role model and that I can help other kids get through the same stuff I had to deal with. It’s my goal through being a Planning Team member to make sure that everyone who comes to a retreat leaves knowing that there is a place where they belong and where they can be themselves no matter what.

Ha Na asked me to think of transformation as a theme for today and I think that’s a good word to describe my story. Youth retreats have transformed me, made me even closer to the person I want to be, and I hope to share that experience with every new participant I encounter.

Ha Na also asked me to think about ways youth can get involved in the church… 

Now, I may be a little biased, but my first piece of advice is, if you haven’t already, come check out a youth retreat! It’s a great way to meet other youth and make friends to last a life time.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to get involved with the adults of the church… I’m 99% sure they don’t bite. If you hear about an opportunity that interests you, don’t let it pass by. I was unsure about Youth Forum at first because I had to miss a youth retreat for it, but it ended up being one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

Also if you have an idea for how to make the church better, don’t back down. Make sure you get heard! Even if the idea turns out to not work, it’s a great learning experience about how the church works and hopefully you can transform that idea into something that will work!

Like for me, I went to Youth Forum and DIDN’T get a spot at General Council. Did that stop me? NO. I’ve applied to be a Commissioner for our Conference and I’ll know either way on that at the meeting in a few weeks.

So don’t be afraid of trying to influence the church. Everybody always says “those youth, you know, they’re really the future of the church”… I don’t like that phrase. To me it implies that we don’t matter yet… when in reality we are the here and now of the church: learning, growing, sharing, loving. People can’t keep saying we’re coming, because we’re already here. God says “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43: 18-19). The church needs to change in order to survive. The church needs to follow God’s lead and “do a new thing”. Take risks. Contemporize the music, talk about things that matter to people TODAY, whatever it takes! We, the youth, we have the chance to stand up and be that change, to build a sustainable and relevant united church IF… if we accept the fact that we are the church of today… not just tomorrow.

Thank you.

Sermon: Youth - the Present of Our Church, Not Just Tomorrow (May 3, 2015)

Sermon (on May 3rd, one week after the Confirmation/Baptism of 9 youth at United Church in Meadowood)

Julia (Antonyshyn) gave us food for thought:

"We, the youth, we have the chance to stand up and be that change, to build a sustainable and relevant united church IF… if we accept the fact that we are the church of today… not just tomorrow."

Listening to Julia, I clearly hear the difference between “Those youth, you know, they’re really the future of our church” and “Our youth, they are really the present of our church.” Can you notice the difference?. How sad if we think that the youth don’t matter, ‘yet.’ Affirming our young people as the present of our church is to see, to acknowledge, that their time is  now, their influence is ongoing.

How we see our youth, and how they perceive themselves makes a whole different reality. How we see – our perceptions – and how we speak – our choice of words – can create either new possibilities or deprive the Spirit of its powerful influence on our lives as a community. Our growth and sustainability is totally dependent upon our reception and acceptance of the Spirit’s power over us. We love our children and youth, and we care for them, but really, are we ready to take the journey with them to be fully empowered disciples of Christ? Do we trust them with the teachings of the Gospel? Do we see them as being equipped to serve? Do we support their challenge of the social norms that perpetuate divisions, suspicions and injustices? Do we see our youth as being equals in Christ with their own call and focus, or as  junior, ornamental, members of our faith?

I originally came from the other side of the world where the churches are very hierarchical in every aspect. Korea has hundreds of mega-churches with 500, 1000, 5000, 10,000 people in attendance on any given Sunday morning. Imagine that among that tremendous number of church members, only one voice really matters. The lead pastor. You can think of the pyramid of power - the lead pastor on the top, with increasing numbers of assistant pastors, deacons, ushers, and group leaders serving their lead pastor’s leadership and needs. The church elders are mostly men. Many faithful, intelligent, and highly equipped female students in the theological schools are shown a separate path from their male counterparts, as many denominations have no policy for ordaining women. The few denominations that do ordain women make sure that it is a very hard path, discouraging them from seeking a ministry behind the pulpit. Why? Churches in Korea don’t give high church positions to women. That’s just how it is - it’s one of the main reasons I left. That being said,  there are some things that these churches do really well.

In spite of the rigid system of male-dominated hierarchy, these very conservative churches do everything they can to raise children and youth in ‘discipleship’. In other words, they see their youth as disciples of Christ who have the same capacity as adults to share the Gospel and live it out. In a very affirmative way, in every message they hear, children and especially youth grow up with the belief that they are ‘equipped’ to serve the community – of their church and of the world. Their participation in church life is, in general, voluntary, vibrant, youthful, joyful, musical, creative. The only expectation shown toward them by the church is to be “youthful” in every way they act out their expression of faith: Making mistakes, learning and growing, risking and challenging. All these attributes that are often attached to youth are just what youth are supposed to be, in the church! They are never expected to be like ‘adults’ - solemn, disciplined, quiet. They don’t live in an undesignated place - the unsettled, insecure, ambiguous, transitional stage of “in-between” - in between the children’s world and the adult’s world. That space exists, but they are given the space and permission that they are allowed to just be “youth” or “youthful”, in the church! They are, in every sense, affirmed to be in the place where they should be - the youth’s stage. In the church, they shout for joy, sing, play in bands, run, go outside in pairs or in groups to have some fun together or to have a simple meal together at the snack bar. They “gather” themselves. They “assemble” themselves. They are an “assembly”! They self-manage their team and create their own definition of who they are.

Some of the youth may conform to their church’s bad examples: hierarchy, patriarchy, but still they have developed their own identity, their own discipleship. And some of them , even in the more oppressive churches, have learned how the Holy Spirit changes everything - they learn that they need to fight for the Kingdom of God even if their society and their church muzzle the prophetic voices and try to hold back the changes that God wills. We should never forget that Korean democracy was only established thanks to the students’ dedication in protest and a passionate desire for change.

I grew up in my Korean culture in a particular way; I grew up with the messages of what I was not allowed (as a girl). However I also grew up with the best that Korean churches could offer in educating their young people. Young people were always given room to exercise their own autonomy. All of these memories, these gifts of trust and vision that I received as a girl,  influence how I see the youth of Meadowwood church. I see them as part of today, vibrant, active, gifted, joyful,  loving to learn the teachings that expand their visions – how they can see the world and how they can advance the Kingdom of God “by their own behaviour.”

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus says, “I am the real vine, and you are the branches.” Just as we all are, youth are the branches. One important thing to note is that in faith and in our understanding of discipleship, they are the branches that are attached to the true vine - Jesus - not attached to us - they are branches, not twigs. In faith, we must understand that Jesus seeks out our young people for a relationship that is intimate and organic and important. Faith is not just another extracurricular activity, something you can check off like the criteria for a Scouting badge. Faith demands all of your life to be changed and re-prioritized. In legal status, youth are considered to be the dependent children of ours, but in the status of faith, in fellowship with the community and the Holy Spirit, in the discipleship they have to exercise “hands-on” intervention and authority in the world, they are equal to us, in every power, in knowledge, and in the Spirit. God gives them all they need. God provides them with what they ask for. If we humbly ask God to help us to be conscientious, I hope we can ask of God, even if we are not formally bound by hierarchy, whether we are free of ageism. We are called to be the church of today - not the church of the past, or the church held in reserve for the future..