Theme Conversation - The Thanksgiving Treasure Hunt

Theme Conversation – The Thanksgiving Treasure Hunt

Happy Thanksgiving!

Do any of you know where I originally came from? (That’s right! or That’s pretty close..) I’m from Korea, a beautiful country with a lot of green hills and steep mountains. (Show it on the globe.)

Thanksgiving Day in Korea (which we call “Choo-Seok”) begins every year with the image of the Harvest Moon; it’s a holiday to celebrate family and our happiness at being all together. For Korean thanksgiving, families get together and go out and look at the Harvest Moon in the midnight sky. That’s really different from Canadian Thanksgiving, but the feelings are just the same. 

Three years ago when my son was 6 years old, he remembered that tradition, and when I picked him up from daycare, there was a very full harvest moon, which was golden and beautiful, and my son pointed to the moon and said, “There! Mom! I see Korea! That’s Korea! I see my grandma and grandpa living there.” Can you imagine? He thought the full moon was a bright light that came all the way from Korea.

Did you get a chance to go out and see the lunar eclipse a few weeks ago? It was called a blood moon, because of its color. It was also a Supermoon - it looked bigger because it was at the closest point of its orbit around the earth. and- it was also the Harvest Moon! Were you able to go out with your family and look at the reddish moon through the telescope? The moon looked like a treasure! Many kids didn’t go to sleep at their usual bedtime that night, hanging on to that special moment of seeing that rare red moon for the first time. 

Today, we will hear the Gospel story in which Jesus says to a young man, “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor so you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  Jesus says to us, “You will have a treasure in heaven.” Like the beautiful, rare, unexpected, unique moon in the midnight sky, we can see the heaven, the treasure of life, in each person’s eyes if we take time to really look at each other. Today, we give thanks to God for our community, how we share our humanity together and pray that it blossoms like a beautiful full moon among us. So here’s the activity I hope to invite all of us to do with our children and youth. Let’s look around! In today’s Gospel story, we will hear twice that Jesus “looked around”. Imagine how Jesus looks around and looks at his friends and disciples with such intent love! Let us look around and look each other in the eyes. 

Friends (children), here’s your task before we hear the choir sing the Anthem. Do you know what colors your eyes are? When you get a chance to look in a mirror really carefully, you will actually see in your eyes more colours than you think there are! I invite you to go and find people, sit beside them, and look them in the eyes; you can do it with your mom or dad or brother or sister or your good friends. They have many different colours in their eyes as well - they shine like jewels! I hope you find out that the treasure of life, the treasure which grows in our hearts when we say our thanks to God, grows faster when we give thanks for each one’s presence here, today.

Sermon: Three Measures of Wheat Flour

Sermon: Three Measures of Wheat Flour

Text: Matthew 13:31-33

As we start our 2015 stewardship campaign, I want to take the opportunity to say thank you to Bev, for the ministry you’ve so energetically and wonderfully led with the other leaders and helpers in our gardening group. I am also very thankful to learn how we can not only count our blessings – a 294 lb harvest – but how we can make our blessings count. We, as a church, could easily choose to be quite insular; the world outside our walls is rapidly changing. Society is becoming secularized at a speed that’s hard to comprehend. If you have visited Vancouver or another West Coast city, you might have noticed that it’s much more secular than here in the heartland; it’s like living in a non-religious future. 

For many young people, even here, church is just a very odd place to be. They simply have no idea, concepts, or language that can help them understand what we do here or what we believe. The way in which people form relationships is changing: social media, the internet, handheld devices are now a major channel of how and where people get information – including the information that informs their own spiritual development. It seems like people are on the other side of a window, and we see them through the glass. We know we are visible to those on the outside, and we think that we need to be better at how we keep things looking on the inside and improve how we make our home here. As far as I know, most churches share the same anxiety: we need to establish some security for ourselves, so we focus on planning and sustainability. We try to make sure all our ministries are on the right track, even growing, with increased attendance, better financial statements, well-maintained buildings, a deeper pool of human and other resources. I can’t exaggerate the importance of all your efforts to ensure our sustainability and growth - they are deeply necessary. I would like to encourage us all to express our deepest thanks to all those who invest a great amount of time and energy in making sure that we are stable, self-sustaining and successful. 

I feel like I should mention the first positive impression I received about this congregation, when I applied for a full-time ministry position offered at Meadowood, last year. At the time I had sent my application to 30 different congregations across Canada. That’s a lot of congregations, but I wanted to cast a wide net. For about half of those churches, I read all the documents from their Annual Reports to the reports of all the committees and each church’s financial statements. To be really honest here, among those thirty congregations, the United Church in Meadowood stood out most decisively. This congregation really was outstanding; very organized, solid in its financial status, with a clear demonstration of who they are. I was amazed by the organization, effectiveness, passion about envisioning their future goals, especially their desire to become a truly affirming congregation. My heart was pounding for this congregation even before I had an interview. I really wanted to be part of the confidence that the ministry here expressed so clearly. Sometimes you become so familiar with yourself that you don’t know how great you are until somebody says to you what potential you have and tells you that you really can be confident about who you are and what you have achieved. This church has every reason to be confident. 

Over the past year, I’ve enjoyed many opportunities to learn and get to know more about our congregation. Even for a person who has been given the privilege to be in the center of ministry here, it takes at least a year to really know where I am. I am so thankful that I am in a congregation where I can confidently say that I trust the leadership here – how faith is expressed here in leadership – lay and pastoral – in a way that incorporates hard work, sincerity and true humility. When you see your leader bursting with really great, healthy, delightful laughter for the love of his church, for any small success we share at a Council meeting, the feeling is so infectious - it really helps you be confident about this community. knowing that you are in a good place. Confidence is such a critical factor; it helps us to move forward, and it helps us to take even more steps to amplify the positive impact we can have in our lives and in the lives of others.

I would like to suggest two things for us to ponder:

First, as for our visioning about our church, I hope to encourage you to let go of any sort of insular self-image. Remember my analogy of the window? Windows are transparent. You can see outside, and know what is going on, and you can still be indoors. (But windows also open!)

I don’t think it is an accident that most of Jesus’ parables describing the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven take place outside. Jesus likes to use natural symbols to explain the kingdom of Heaven and how the kingdom of God becomes real; how the kingdom of God is a place that begins now yet whose ultimate coming-into-being is yet to be realized: the tension between the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet’.  Stories set indoors can’t really be effective in demonstrating the stark contrast between the beginning and the end; between the mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds, and the greatest of shrubs, then a tree, which is, in reality, an exaggeration. However big a mustard shrub is, shrubs can’t be classified as a proper tree. What this hyperbole tells us is this famous parable is not about the gradual growth of a mustard seed to become a bigger something, but about a miracle, because the end is just unbelievable. It is not so much about the organic and biological development of a seed, or a church, but about how God works – germinating imperceptibly in the beginning, growing to an unknowable end. My son loves numbers, and his favourite number is infinity, because no one can count it. He likes that. I believe that the gift that our gardening group offers this morning is not really the harvest, but the parable. That’s what gives our ministry refreshing water and makes us alive – the connection that is open to the other side of the walls, and through the garden and harvest and the potential to feed people. 

I said most of Jesus’ parables develop their stories outdoors. The only exceptions happen in the kitchen. I am so looking forward to hearing Loraine’s presentation on behalf of UCW. Jesus’ parables never take place without an impact, hyperbole, stark contrast, the scale and the size being extremely exaggerated - it’s never just dinner, it’s a banquet or feast. The second parable about the Kingdom of God in today’s reading says “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” When you hear this well-known parable, we often focus on the function of the leaven. Yet, the secret or the keyword may be ‘the three measures of wheat flour.’ Can anyone guess how much wheat flour Jesus is talking about? Maybe we think it’s about three cups of flour, enough to make one decent loaf of bread, but experts in ancient cooking practices calculate ‘three measures’ to be approximately fifty pounds of flour - 22 kg. Enough bread would come from that woman’s oven to feed more than one hundred people. Isn’t that amazing? I get goosebumps, thinking about it. Imagine this gospel story with me. On an ordinary evening, no one really pays attention to what this woman does in her kitchen. They might think that she’s preparing a meal for her family, like any other regular evening. Yet, she’s preparing a feast to feed over one hundred people in her community. Who do you think this woman is? She could be God.She could be Jesus. Or she could be a disciple, like us. Now, please welcome the UCW to share their story on food that has been feeding many kinds of hunger. (Loraine P: Food that feeds Many Kinds of Hunger) 

Sermon: Salt, Pepper and Heat

Sermon: Salt, Pepper and Heat

Mark 9:38-50

In today’s reading, Jesus says, “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

I think that what Jesus is saying here is that having salt in ourselves naturally leads us and helps us to be at peace with each other. Salt has some magic in keeping the peace, just as it is used to bring out a food’s harmony and therefore enhance the taste. I wonder what it means to have salt in ourselves and how this symbolic salt can help us to live out our call to love one another.  

Salt is everywhere. Salt is essential in almost all cooking. Most families keep in their cupboard at least one kind of salt: sea salt, refined salt, coarse salt, Himalayan pink salt, garlic salt. onion salt. Their flavours and nutrients may be slightly different from each other, but salt is salt: it helps make our food special.

For us, salt is ordinary. We can get it easily and cheaply from any nearby grocery store. Salt is salt, and it doesn’t have any more meaning than that. However, salt in Jesus’ time was not so ordinary. Hard to get, it even had a religious value. You may wonder what Jesus really means when he says, “For everyone will be salted with fire”. To Jesus’ audience, it would have been quite obvious that he was making an analogy with a common sacrificial ritual. In Jesus’ time, people came to the temple to celebrate or to remember the most special moments of their lives. They bought and dedicated what they could offer: animals and birds, ritually killed and burned on the altar fire; the smoke rising up to God as appeasement and thanks. Salt plays an important role in the sacrifice, as is written in Old Testament law: “With all your offerings you shall offer salt.” (Lev. 2:13) and “Every sacrifice will be salted with fire.” All offerings were salted first, then burnt. In this context, what I hear from Jesus’ message is that we need to be a holy sacrifice offered to God and one another. To make that happen, that symbolic salt should play an integral role in the process. We need that symbolic salt, and heat, and, I like to think, a bit of pepper - the spice of our individual personalities. 

With the images of salt, pepper and heat here, we are not imagining a recipe for chicken wings  but the recipe for making a disciple. Today’s story comes after the story we heard last Sunday. Do you remember it? The twelve disciples were arguing with each other secretly, (or so they thought)  about which of them was the greatest and who would be first when they all entered the new world, the Kingdom of God, which they believed Jesus would establish soon. Their ‘secret’ bickering was immediately challenged by Jesus, who said, “Whoever wants to be the first should be the last of all and the servant of all.” Then he provided a kind of ‘acted parable’ by welcoming a very young child to sit on his lap and saying that welcoming such a young child in his name is like welcoming Jesus himself. What amazes me is how he uses the image of being a servant and reverses its implied meaning. We who live in the 21st century tend to avoid using the image of being a servant as it reminds us of the terrible and painful history of slavery and of the oppressive nature of a stratified society. We strive to build a society that secures equality and equity. As far as I have observed, ‘being a servant leader’ has never been a favored theological concept among United Church folk; the idea has been rarely discussed. Yet in the Gospel, the image of the social hierarchy is, very vividly in Jesus’ words, overturned completely, upside down. “Whoever wants to be the first must be the last of all and a servant of all.” Discipleship, the idea of becoming a servant to all as a disciple of Christ is at odds with the modern, common concept of equality: everyone equal, nobody last, nobody first. 

Jesus’ words that the community of disciples is not equal are very clear. He doesn’t say that you and me and we are equal. Jesus’ words are very clear: “I” must be a servant of all, and the last of all. It is not just imagery - it should be practical. Two weeks ago, when I planned and prepared for the first morning of Interpreting Whispers, our Thursday Morning Bible Study, after a three - month break, I was quite delighted to find a guideline document which was written by a Christian leader who leans to the the Evangelical side of Christianity. I found it quite refreshing to read the recurring emphasis that “A leader always must remember Christ’s instruction to be a servant to the members.” Being a servant may sound like a strange goal - even thinking of becoming a servant to somebody sounds pre-modern. What I was reminded of first was my internship experience at Chemainus United Church. There was a church member who wished to challenge the church leaders to take the meaning of being a ‘servant-leader’ more seriously and to teach the concept to the congregation. And as you may rightly guess, I resisted. At the time, three years ago, I thought it wasn’t right to evoke the image of a servant when I had high hopes of sharing with people an enhanced awareness of ‘equity.’ 

“Being a servant leader has its point, for sure,” I thought. “But should we borrow the image of slavery or a hierarchy to help us understand how to be better Christians?” 

But, as that guideline showed, many Evangelical Christians still use the Biblical image of servanthood to convey the meaning of discipleship, and I’ve surprised myself by taking this old theological concept more seriously. I took some time to ask myself, “Have I become a servant of all, in ministry and in life?” 

That question resonates in my life, inspiring a deeper awareness, disturbance and questions, especially about whether I have been more concerned about myself, my dreams, my achievements, the security of my status, rather than sharing, expanding and delivering the life-giving love of Jesus.  I believe that we should take time as a community to ask ourselves whether we are more concerned about our success than we are eager to learn God’s missions and justice. We need to look through our hearts, minds and behaviours to discern whether it is “Thou” or it is “me” we truly care about most.

I confess that my personal character and my awareness of my own social status – an Asian young(er) woman – has driven me to prove that I am better than the way people see me. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes I feel I should always hold a sign in my hand - my degrees, my qualifications, my varied life experiences, my resumé, to insist that I not be considered as the last. Some of my experiences in Canada have given me a strong impression that I tend to become invisible if I don’t speak up and  insist on being seen. So I taught myself to raise my voice, blow my own horn, and make myself visible and known so that I don’t get lumped into that dreaded last group. 

And I do believe that all the efforts I have made to speak up and be seen have been valuable. Yet, now I am also aware that the call to follow Jesus is universal. I am given the same task as everybody else.  I am aware that I am called to serve God through serving others, helping others to grow, not me. Now, using ‘not’ may sound too strong, but here’s my point for today: The desire to promote oneself and to tend to one’s own need is quite natural. There is a great value in caring for yourself and it takes a lot of practice, yet knowing how to take care of oneself is also very instinctive. It is intuitive. We know the way somehow. Learning self-care is inherent, though it takes firm intention, self-awareness, some learning, and practice to separate self-care from self-indulgence. 

But - serving others, serving both the least and the powerful, loving my neighbours and my enemy, with wisdom, discernment and love, takes a path that may not necessarily be intuitive but even counter-intuitive. Sometimes it takes sacrifice. We need to value harmony. We need to appreciate unity, diversity, and the equal rights of others to live abundantly. For Christians, we need to open the Bible and learn the way of Jesus. Jesus believed in the power attained through embracing vulnerability and weakness – remember the way of the cross - .

So, back to ‘salt’. I have set my new motto for my ministry and life, recently, following my two month vacation in Korea. In other words, one dash of salt I have with me as I am invited to join in God’s new cooking class is, (remember, Jesus says, “have salt in yourselves”) that I will choose to be happier rather than just to be better. I choose to give less care and attention to who I am, my achievements, my success, status, power games, where I am ranked in life’s competition. I choose to develop a more keen awareness about how God engages with you and me and loves you and me and how we can all learn to be happier and enjoy the freedom of spirit that a genuine life of service brings. Jesus asks us to have a dash of salt with us. This week, I challenge you to find your salt that helps you follow the call to engage with the power of love and discipleship.