Ha Na’s journey to follow her calling and true path began when she encountered Korean feminist theologian Hyun Kyung and her book, Struggle to be the Sun Again. Creating accountable theologies from lived experiences resonated with Ha Na’s own call towards equity, authenticity and integrity. Ha Na emigrated to Canada in 2006 with her family where she studied at the Vancouver School of Theology, graduating in 2014. From 2007-10, Ha Na served on the Ethnic Ministries Unit-Wide Committee of General Council as a young adult representative, and also as a Student Steward for the World Council of Churches (2007). She served Chemainus UC, BC, as student supply from 2012-14. In 2013, Ha Na accompanied the UCC team to Korea as a translator, supporting this first conversation with the Presbyterian Church of the Republic of Korea on Mutual Recognition of Ministries. Ordained in 2014, Ha Na, her partner Min-Goo and their two sons moved to Winnipeg where she served The United Church in Meadowood, 2014-17. Currently, Ha Na is engaged in solo ministry at Immanuel UC, Winnipeg.
Ha Na states, “I have been trained and raised in the UCC with the growth of Intercultural Ministry. I have developed a keen interest, questions and dreams as well as critically looking at Intercultural Ministry through the lens of the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and feminism.” The gift Ha Na appreciates most living in Winnipeg is the journey of deepening her understanding of Truth and Reconciliation, asking what her responsibility is for this historical breakthrough as a racialized settler. Ha Na has a passion for building conversations to ensure the broader inclusion of leadership and new leadership. She also advocates with and shares the hopes of foreign-born ministry leaders who bring unique gifts to the UCC, especially ethnic minority women as they navigate and struggle to secure their true path through experiences of exclusion and marginalization due to unnecessary barriers and patriarchy.
Ha Na brings a deep faith and gifts for justice and equality to her work with the church. Her passion and desire for the church inspires her ministry towards the beloved community.
The last day of Friendship Kitchen, at The United Church in Meadowood, May, 2017
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#GC43 Some of you may already know that I am running for General Council Commissioner tomorrow at the presbytery meeting. If you can come and support with your presence, that would be great, regardless of who you vote.
My friend Linda Murray, who passed away this month, said during our last conversation, "When is the next presbytery meeting? I'll go and see, and support you." So I believe that she is here in spirit. I am nervous, and yet also very curious to see what this experience will be like.
I hope you can read my Bio, if you haven't read it, but for anyone who already has, this link shows my original version in 358 words, before being edited into 250 words by my nominator Barbara Marie Janes (barb amazed me with her skills to do it.) Winnipeg Presbytery is clear that there will be no mentioning of who's nominating and the nominee's speech in order to not risk it can be a contest or a campaign.
I believe my voice, my vote and my perspective will matter at the 43rd General Council, not just because I represent one particular aspect of diversity of the United Church of Canada but because of my strong passion, my calling and readiness to advocate for the hopes and dreams of the less-represented people of the United Church. Inclusion of one more voice like mine will help us continue to strive to be truly intercultural through the process of denominational restructuring, and onward, into the future.
I believe in the gifts of those who have been marginalized and outside the norms to effect the changes that will help all of us to grow and learn and be transformed. This is how we are called to be the church. This is the best way for me to continue to be excited for who I am and for the ministry of the United Church of Canada, and for this reason, I want to be an agent for for change; I wish to be elected for GC 43.
In today’s Gospel, we hear that Jesus went to a synagogue and taught the congregation. People there were astounded at his teaching, asking, “What is this? A new teaching - with authority.”
The questions I wish to share with you this morning are, “So, what was new, in his teaching, then? What is still new to us? In addition, what do we mean when we say “new”?
New information? A new style of presentation? Something we have never heard before? Something we have never known?
What do we know about Jesus? What was new about him and with him in the first century to the Jews? (Here, we must remember that Jesus himself was a Jew.)
We know that he was a healer, an exorcist, exactly as Jesus is presented in today’s Gospel reading. We hear that people who were at the synagogue and watched what had happened said, not only “What is this? It is a new teaching” but added “With authority!” because Jesus made the unclean spirit come out of the sufferer at once. The New Testament tells us that Jesus makes the blind see, the people who are possessed by demons find peace, and the paralyzed to gain full use of their bodies.
Healing is given importance in the Gospels because the body is important to Jesus (and to the church). We pay attention to the bodies because belief is not just a head thing. It is not just a heart thing, it’s also a ‘limb’ thing. Jesus is engaged in miracles, freely-given. Amy-Jill Levine (a U.S. citizen), whose scholarship has inspired today’s message, jokes in her public lecture, “How do we know that Jesus is engaged in a miracle? ‘Cause it’s free. Free health care is a miracle. We know that even today.”
What this tells us is that Jesus is concerned about human bodies. The proclamation of the church - Incarnation - means the taking on of flesh by the Divine. It means real flesh. Carnal - that kind of flesh. Jesus does not come back as the friendly ghost but comes back as the body. In all of these stories featuring the body, Jesus is teaching us to pay attention to other people’s bodies as well, so we make sure they have enough food, they have shelter, they have clothing, and they have health care.
We learn the important place the body and healing occupy in Jesus’ teaching. What was new, then, and what is new, now?
Jesus was a teacher, and he talked about law. Teachers in the first century weren’t just lecturing; they debated.
Traditionally, they wrestled with God, and they wrestled with the biblical text. Jesus engaged and debated with his fellow Jews (and it put him right at the heart of Judaism.)
When Jesus talks about the law, he doesn’t work to make it easier; he makes it more rigorous. When the Law says don’t murder, Jesus says, “Don’t be angry with anybody else.” When you are not angry, you are less likely to murder. “Don’t commit adultery.” Jesus says, “Don’t even think about it,” because the heart and head are inclined to do the things we allow ourselves to think about. Jesus makes the law more rigorous.
That was new. Another new thing: Jesus told his followers to love their enemies. Levine says that she can’t find that in early Judaism. “Jesus is distinct here.” Early Judaism taught that if the enemy is hungry, we must feed the enemy. Jesus took the law one step further and said we have to love them. Jesus taught, “Love your enemy” consistently.
Last Sunday, I shared with you about what parables do and teach, and today I will continue to share more about them. A parable is one type of story-telling, and this style was well known to people in the first century. Religion is designed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and Jesus used parables to do exactly that. Parables were not children’s stories although children could understand them. They were designed to do a little bit of heart surgery: to do some personal ‘excavation’ about what we already know but we simply don’t want to acknowledge. With such purpose in Jesus’ mind, parables are not just nice, sweet stories. If we think they are nice, we probably are not listening very well, because parables are actually designed to indict. They help us figure out what our major concerns are and what we need to let go of. They help us better relate to our family, better relate to our neighbours, better consider our opponents and enemies.
I shared with you last Sunday that when we let go of the traditional, evangelical frame of sinning and repenting and forgiving as the single correct interpretive tool for understanding the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, it is revealed to us that these two parables really may literally be about ‘counting.’ If the one sheep goes missing out of the ninety-nine, pay attention to that sheep. There’s one more parable which completes the set of the Rule of Three, (‘the first two set up the third’. i.e. Cinderella and her Two Stepsisters, or The Three Little Pigs) with the Lost Sheep and The Last Coin: The Lost Son: The prodigal son. This parable is so familiar, and so is the standard interpretation.
Rather than engaging in debate or conversing about “How do you understand this parable? I think it means this.” “No, I think it means that,” we are usually told to read the story one way: The prodigal son returns home. And the father, God, in allegory, welcomes him no matter what, forgives his sin. We assume that the forgiving and welcoming God is our Christian God. The prodigal son is us, or the Gentiles. The older brother is the Jews, the righteous, who do not understand the Grace of God, forgiving, free.
Levine invites us to listen more thoughtfully, to read between the lines. “After the prodigal son comes home, the father throws a feast with the fatted calf. The Bible says, the older brother was in the field and he heard the sound of music and dancing. Then he had to call a slave and ask what was happening, and the slave said, “Your brother has come back safe and sound, and your dad is throwing a party.” They had enough time to summon the band and the caterer, but nobody thought to call the older son because there was a man who had two sons and he didn’t count.”
In parables, Jesus often asks us “Who we have not counted, who we have overlooked, who we have left to the field,” and invites us to the hard task of conversation and reconciliation.
Today, we are asking, “What was new, then, and what is new with and about Jesus, today, to us?” Jesus taught us to pray, calling God father. It was eye-opening to me when Levine says this was not new to the Jews in the first century. Jews had called God father before the time of Jesus, when they prayed, “Our father who is in heaven.” When the Jews relate to God, God is not some distant father, God is not like a stone-hearted patriarch. The first century’s Jewish fathers are hands-on, connected to the family, and trust-worthy. Jesus taught us to hallow, to honour the divine name. So, once we put God in a box and say we know everything about God, we fail to hallow the divine name because no one tradition, no one church, no one religion has a lock on this particular God. The question becomes more challenging, more thought-provoking, deeper, when we ask, “What’s new?”, especially because we cannot say that Jesus’ teaching was new in the first century in the sense that he ended Judaism and started the Christian church.
What was new, then, and what’s still new today?
“Give us this day our daily bread.” In the first century’s context, probably meant something like “give us tomorrow’s bread today.” To the first century Jews, many of them, the image of heaven was a great banquet. A feast. The great feast. What are you going to do in heaven? You eat. And this is why the church meets people at table. This is why Jesus keeps feeding people. This is why communion or the Lord’s Supper is still celebrated. It is not told only in the Easter story, but in the Christmas story. You can fill this in. Mary gave birth to her first son, wrapping him in his swaddling cloth, and laying him in – what does she lay him in? (wait for answer) Yes- the manger; the feeding trough. This child is the person whom the church proclaims “the bread of the world.”
So what was new then, and is still new today? Jesus, who was the fabulous Jewish teacher and for us, in the church, more than that, the one whom we profess as our Lord, our Saviour, consistently taught and was infinitely concerned with how we love our neighbour, how we love our strangers, how we love our God.
Stewardship is the same. We all know why we are consistently encouraged to learn about what stewardship means and then go do it. We all know stewardship is important; it is at the heart of our faith. What matters is how we feel about stewardship in our hearts, how we welcome it, and how we are willing to go deeper with it and let God change our hearts.
Jesus shares with us a new teaching. What is new to you? Why is it still new to us?
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