For Agnes C

Celebration of the Life of Agnes C

Love is amazing. It is the greatest human privilege to experience it and explore it. It is the greatest gift that God has given to us - as we grow in faith, we grow in love. Love transforms our lives; it refines and redefines our lives. When love makes its home in the core of our being, it changes us - we are never the same. With love touching and changing our lives, our being becomes like a jewel; it shines with a splash of new colour, previously unknown and now unforgettable.

The love that has been freely given to us never ends; it continues its journey like light, which traverses from one end of the universe to the other. When that light starts its journey from a star, even one far from our own galaxy, its speed is steady, its wavelength is set. When it reaches the earth, some of the particles reach us; the others continue, passing our planet. Either way, all the light particles continue their travel on the earth and in all known and unknown places, unseen, unstopped, unchanging, open to and through the universe’s holy time of the eternal. Love works in the same way light travels. It never ends; it lives in the lives of those who have been touched and will touch others when they show love, and act out of love. Love binds us all and opens us all.

We know what it is like to be loved unconditionally and accepted; this love is the sacred place where we find ourselves over and over. This love has the divine spark. Christian faith proclaims that we are all born with a true capacity for love; we all shine like a precious gem. Love calls us all to participate in the process of being and becoming.

When I first met Agnes last October, at her bedside in Victoria General Hospital, Agnes delightfully welcomed and hugged me. The colour of the red, wooly sweater she wore was as cheerful and bright as her spirit. When I read the third chapter of Ecclesiastes for her, she used her whole strength to lean toward me so that she could be as close as possible and hear me reading. If you can imagine, during the next few minutes, she tried to sit up as straight as she could, even in her frailty. I have never been good at “sitting up straight”, even when I was an elementary school student, so I know how very hard it is to keep one’s body upright and unmoving for four minutes. Agnes, however, did it without any complaint and with an impressive loving attention. Agnes responded to each word with such welcome. Her two eyes - excitingly awake - didn’t lose their focus on my face. All the ways that Agnes related to a strange minister she met for the first time were just astounding. That’s how she treated everyone she met in her life: with kindness, welcome, and truly genuine attention. I believe that such welcome and unconditional acceptance and her bright, cheerful and truthful spirit are what gather us all here as we remember her and celebrate her life and the precious gifts that she’s given us so freely.

Our reading for this morning shares that there is a season for everything: a time for giving birth. A time for dying. A time for tears. A time for laughter. A time for mourning. A time for dancing. There is also a time for love, the love which has the closest resemblance to God’s love, unconditional, life-giving and life-transforming - the constant stream that refreshes all seasons, in all lives.

I have recently learned a song that was composed by Weston Priory, a group of Catholic monks who write and sing music based on monastic tradition. When I first read it, it reminded me of the very warm time I had with Agnes and her daughter M last October. I hope that the words allow us a moment to remember Agnes, who is now on a beautiful journey of light, whose time is with the Holy One of the Eternity, surrounded by the steady beam of God’s blessings and God's awesome breadth of love.

When Someone We Love  (Weston Priory)

When someone we love so carefully grows

With courage and struggle to let love be their home.

We sing, yes, we dance and share our delight

To witness such beauty and a strength, oh, so right.

We love you dear friend, and we treasure your life.

We tenderly hold you in the palm of our hands.

The joy that you’ve found is gift for us all,

It glows like the velvet of a crystal moonlight.

Over the years the choices you’ve made

Have clothed you with freedom to nurture, to heal.

We love you dear friend, and we treasure your life.

we tenderly hold you in the palm of our hands.

And as we move on to horizons of light,

We hope for each other, drink deeply of life,

To know and to love, to choose and to share

This is the garden where happiness dwells.

We love you dear friend, and we treasure your life,

We tenderly hold you in the palm of our hands.

Amen.

Remembrance Sunday sermon: Remember to Heal (Nov 8, 2015)

Sermon: Remember to Heal

Text: Mark 12:38-44

Today, we are invited to the act of remembrance, together, as a community and as a nation. The act of remembrance has many different purposes; I believe that the remembrance specific to this time of year invites us to remember to heal: to heal the wounds and the scars that have been caused by violence and aggression of any kind, of any extent, born from any intention, in all places, and to reconstruct what has been destroyed, dislocated, disturbed by internecine or international wars, the bombings and the missiles, the terrorism and the drone strikes; I believe that Remembrance Day for Christians is to remember that our call is to heal, not to take vengeance; the Good News is that “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God”.

On this Remembrance Sunday I want to remember that our Christian calling invites us to expand our visions of peace beyond the limited scope of a Canadian national identity. We need to remember who we are, where we are from, and where we find our home: on this beautiful globe, this singular planet, the earth. I am a permanent resident of this beautiful piece of the earth, Canada, but I am not a Canadian. I stand with you before God as a gathered Christian congregation, mindful of the Beatitudes Jesus proclaimed on the Mount, “Blessed are those who mourn.” This beatitude invites us to deepen our understanding of how mourning may bless us when we mourn and remember to heal. It certainly takes humanity, imagination and an open heart to enter into other people’s grief, to mourn truly and generously not only those whose absence puts a sword through our hearts, but those who lie in unmarked graves, whose names we will never know, whose lives we may think are unrelated to ours.  Marilyn McEntyre rightly says, “One way to mourn authentically the dead whom we may have come to regard as enemies… is to connect the dots that trace a path between us and them – the policies, the expropriation of resources, the forms of protectionism and attitudes of American exceptionalism that need to be renounced in order to recognize that the earth was their home as it is ours.” She also puts it, “Only when we grieve for those we have killed as well as for those we love who have been killed will we be able to enter into the mourning that links us to all humans who live with the aching agony of loss.”

Since my family moved to Canada in 2007, (my husband arrived a little earlier, on Remembrance Day 2006, to make ready our new home in Burnaby) I have seen the imitation poppies worn on people’s coats, sweaters and jackets around this time of year every year, yet I never realized what Remembrance Day really meant for Canadians until I joined the gathering around the cenotaph in Chemainus for the first time in 2011. It seemed like half the town had come out for the ceremony! Since then, I never missed standing by the cenotaph with my family, church members, and friends, absorbing what I heard, what I learned, and the emotions that were deeply stirred by the veterans’ stories and the plaintive notes of The Last Post. I feel like I understand Remembrance Day better now; the most important thing I learned is the primary value Canadians hold, longing for the peace of the nation, peace for the world.

At the same time, every year, Remembrance Day also leads me into deep pondering, even puzzlement to see how the Christian theology of atonement and the sacrifice of Christ is used to explain the sacrifice the soldiers have made - their lives. Here are three points that have me looking for answers each year: First, the Gospel is very clear in its proclamation of peace and Jesus’ choice of non-violence when opposing oppressive conditions and unjust rulers.  

Second, the context of war has changed since the early 20th century. In  2015, the just cause, the theology or the ideology that called men and women to fight in two World Wars cannot be similarly used to justify why contemporary wars should take place in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel and Palestine. In this era of armed globalization, we must find out and seek an alternative strategy to fight against deadly hatred and to achieve global peace, rather than immediately resorting to wars of convenience and vengeance.

Third, I wonder what it really means when we say, “For they have sacrificed their lives that we may live in this country peacefully or that we may be free.” This belief originates from our Christian confession that Christ bled and died on the cross so that God would forgive our sins and save us from punishment. My puzzlement lands upon the word “freedom”. When we say, “we”, who do we refer to? Who is free when, even with our best intentions, the real face of perpetual warfare never allows anyone to be free. War never can bring the peace we hope to achieve; violence begets more violence. The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria shows that there are terrible consequences to militaristic hubris; it allows continual violation of human integrity and breeds more terrorism than it eliminates.

Humbly and with respect, I would like to share the following three reflections as an invitation to an act of remembrance for us all, this morning.

Last November, I attended an open forum held at the Grand Mosque in our city: #Notinourname: Winnipeg Muslims Speak Against ISIS and Terrorism. Following the wonderful panel discussion, people lined up at the mike one by one to share their stories. The most powerful moment for me was when a young Muslim woman shared her story about the last time she saw her hometown - the stilled and captured picture of the place and the people she loved most. The completely destroyed buildings and houses, the rubble of the broken concrete blocks all over the place - she couldn’t recognize any building in that destroyed town, even the houses of her neighbours, relatives and family members. She spoke sharply, yet very briefly about the terrifying air strikes she experienced, and the anger she felt against the US. Then, she continued, in that period of anger, she had a chance to read the Koran. She read it page by page. She could finally find peace and forgiveness by reading the Koran. Her amazing story simply blew my mind. It was a powerful testimonial to the transformative power of faith. This morning, I remember her faith.

Second, I remember where I come from, and this year, again, I remember that to Koreans, the Korean War is most thoughtfully called “Our Great Tragedy of Mutual Killings of One’s Own Brothers and Sisters.” The phrase, “For they have sacrificed their lives that we may live in this country peacefully” does not translate comfortably into Korean.

Third, I remember all those who have freely offered their lives now and have gone before us for the high hope of peace and justice and for the peace of the nations and the world. In the Gospel reading today, the woman offered two coins out of her poverty. I imagine the act of giving changes her and transforms her even before it reaches the others’ lives. I think of that young Muslim woman, making a gift of her transformation from anger to forgiveness, out of the rubble of her destroyed town. What are our two coins that we can give, out of our poverty? On this Sunday, may we remember to heal, remember to transform, remember to care for all peoples, as a people of the Good News: Blessed are the Peacemakers.