Sermon: What are You Bringing to the Circle? (Based on Circle and Cross: Dialogue Planning Tool) Feb 24, 2019

Sermon: Circle and Cross — What are you bringing to the Circle?

Last October, when the United Church General Council Executive had its first meeting in Toronto as the Executive-elect, I participated in it on-line. When people were having the larger group discussion, one of our members asked, “Can I say I am ‘more’ Christian than my other indigenous people who follow the ancestors’ path?” I found out later that she is very willing to ask good questions from her lived experience as an Indigenous woman and Christian church minister; her question at the time was a very interesting one which might well have led us to engage in a deeper conversation on so many levels. At that moment, I think we didn’t use ‘Christian mindfulness’ fully to take time and engage with the question and open “a heartfelt dialogue of learning and healing together.” 

Then, in the next discussion, I learned from the indigenous member that the Trinitarian view of God (God, Christ, the Holy Spirit), especially the concept of ‘following Christ’ as ‘discipleship’, could be understood to be “honouring the Earth”. 

This way of creative merging and meeting of the two spiritualities — Christian and the Indigenous ancestors’ path — delightfully stimulated my theological thinking and faith. 

Today’s reflection I have prepared and share with you is based on this small booklet, Circle and Cross: Dialogue Planning Tool, published in 2008 by the United Church of Canada. Circle and Cross is a process for dialogue among Aboriginal/Indigenous and non-Aboriginal people in the United Church of Canada. It is intended for people who are seeking ways to live out the desire for healing and reconciliation expressed in the 1986 Apology to First Nations Peoples. 

“Apology to First Nations Peoples 

Long before my people journeyed to this land your people were here, and you received from your Elders an understanding of creation and of the Mystery that surrounds us all that was deep, and rich, and to be treasured.  

We did not hear you when you shared your vision. In our zeal to tell you of the good news of Jesus Christ we were closed to the value of your spirituality.  

We confused Western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the gospel of Christ. 
We imposed our civilization as a condition for accepting the gospel.  

We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.  

We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God’s creation healed.  

The Right Rev. Bob Smith, 31st General Council 1986, The United Church of Canada” 

14 years later, the 36th General Council, in receiving the study document on Jewish-United Church relationships, Bearing Faithful Witness, asked that the model of Bearing Faithful Witness be used to explore relationships with Islam and Aboriginal/Indigenous spirituality. In the page that explains the background and purpose of this document, Circle and Cross, the following statement stood out to me personally: “It [Circle and Cross] also recognized that Aboriginal spiritual traditions were not separate from or outside of the church but integral to the lives of many First Nations people within the church.” 

In indigenous understanding and tradition, we must be a circle if we truly engage in dialogue. In other words, if it is to be considered a dialogue, truly, it must be a circle: “The willingness to sit together for a significant period to listen carefully to each other and to bring our vulnerabilities.”

Right now, as we sit in the holy circle here at Immanuel, my hope is that we can experience the circle as the action, rather than as the knowledge. The starting point today is that, as I am a newcomer to this land, and not indigenous, and have not been trained to be a circle keeper, it is better not to teach, but to experience as much as we can, the sacredness of being in the circle, surrounded by people who yearn for healing, justice, interconnectedness and courage. 

Let us have a couple of minutes of silence before we listen to Evelyn Broadfoot who inspired Circle and Cross, with her vision. 

(Silence)

Evelyn Broadfoot’s Circle and Cross Vision 

“In the spring of 1988 I had a vision that had a profound impact on me. I was a student at the Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Centre and was asked to attend a course on Native Spirituality and Christianity offered by St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba. While I waited to register for the course, a pamphlet caught my eye. On the cover was a picture of a big cross and a small circle. This troubled me as an Aboriginal woman - how were we supposed to have a balanced discussion about these two spiritualities when the image used was a cross that clearly dominated the circle?  

This picture continued to concern me until one day when I was driving to my ministry location. I was thinking and praying and asking for clarity about why I found it so troubling, when suddenly it became clear to me - the images were out of balance.  

We, who are created, believe in many forms and many ways. … At the centre of the Medicine Wheel is the Creator; at the centre of the Christian faith is God. One faith expression cannot overwhelm the other. If we are going to talk about spirituality, we have to talk as equals.”

We, who are created, believe in many forms and many ways. One faith expression cannot overwhelm the other. If we are going to talk about spirituality, we have to talk as equals.

There was an article, published in 2006, in the United Church Observer, and I remember I read it when I was in Vancouver and a student at VST. I still remember how meaningful I found the article, as I, too, have various spiritual roots that have slowly found a way of creatively merging with European Christianity over the years. The title of the article is “How can the spiritualities of Indigenous and non-indigenous people co-exist in one church?” (Link)

How can the spiritualities of Native and non-Native people co-exist in one church, when our ways of being are so deeply different, when one cherishes sweetgrass and tobacco and the other bread and wine? 

One piece of wisdom from the author, who had experienced the deep learning and respect of her friend, Kimberley Robinson, (Algonquin - her grandmother was from the Golden Lake First Nation and a member of St. Andrew’s United Church in North Bay, Ontario), is that, “You don’t have to be Native to be open to that spirituality.” 

Remember, Christianity is largely composed of non-Christian elements from various spiritual roots, traditions and cultures. We need only a “Willingness to be challenged, to see spirituality in a much broader sense than we might have previously learned through Christianity.” 

And, (as an important ‘and’; the idea continues to evolve, to stretch…) “Knowing each other well means we don’t ignore either spirituality.” 

The former moderator, David Giuliano, whose congregation was near the Pic River Reserve, remembers an elder at a sweat lodge and healing circle to which Giuliano was invited: “When non-Native people come to learn,” the elder said, “I want to ask ‘What are you bringing to the circle?”

“What can I contribute,” Giuliano recalls thinking at the time, “if I don’t bring my own tradition as well?” What is required is offering that tradition “With humility. The mystery is much bigger than we can enact symbolically; two conflicting things can be true. That kind of humility makes the conversation possible,” Giuliano says. Then, well-acquainted, we are able to “Trust that we want good for each other,” and we can be “Citizens of a place we imagine together.” 

Now, you are invited to find a pen and the piece of paper under your chair. Let us engage a few more minutes to just sit (“mindfully”), wrapping ourselves in this communal moment of silence and surrounding each other in love. Think about “What are you bringing and what are you hoping to bring to the circle?” It could be the spirituality that has influenced you most in your life - when you were young or in the turning point of your life or now. If it is your faith in Jesus, how do you express it? 

What are you bringing to the circle that would invite you, me, and others to the journey of healing, justice and right relations, with you?

Sermon: Orange and Mango (based on Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh), Feb 17, 2019

Sermon: Orange and Mango

A few people have said to me, “Through Buddhism, I restored my faith and came back to the church.” One of my friends who teaches Christian studies told me, “I love lotus flowers (water lilies) and the spiritual writings about them in Buddhism and Taoism. It’s part of what brought me back to the Bible.” Beautiful confessions.

In the past week, I have been reading Living Buddha and Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh (I put an excerpt of his biography in the bulletin.). I highly recommend everyone (especially Christians) to read it and to say, “Let’s learn from this book." It is very easy to read, yet very profound. If you are interested in forming a spiritual practice in your daily life and in your justice activism as a Christian, in a very Christian way, this book is for us, for you.

I have seen United Church people ask, “Is it Christian or not? Is it United Church practice or not?” or “Is it ours or not?” especially when we are introduced to a new approach to ministry and theology. I often find that those are not really identity questions. Rather, we are implicitly suggesting the superiority claim of our practice in the question, saying "Don’t mix." I wonder how Thich Nhat Hanh would respond to those questions.

In the book’s first chapter, “Be Still and Know”, Thich Nhat Hanh says:

“TWENTY YEARS AGO at a conference I attended of theologians and professors of religion, an Indian Christian friend told the assembly, “We are going to hear about the beauties of several traditions, but that does not mean that we are going to make a fruit salad.” When it came my turn to speak, I said, “Fruit salad can be delicious! I have shared the Eucharist with Father Daniel Berrigan, and our worship became possible because of the sufferings we Vietnamese and Americans shared over many years.” Some of the Buddhists present were shocked to hear I had participated in the Eucharist, and many Christians seemed truly horrified. To me, religious life is life. I do not see any reason to spend one’s whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions. Professor Hans Küng has said, “Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world.” People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result. The second precept of the Order of Interbeing, founded within the Zen Buddhist tradition during the war in Vietnam, is about letting go of views: “Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints.” To me, this is the most essential practice of peace.”

What do you think? I acknowledge that I was a little shocked, and the feeling lasted for more than a minute, when I first read “the fruit salad can be delicious!”. Wow! Yet, thinking deeply, it wasn’t difficult to appreciate: “Just as a flower is made only of non-flower elements, Buddhism is made only of non-Buddhist elements, including Christian ones, and Christianity is made of non-Christian elements, including Buddhist ones.”

What I would like to highlight from the book, Living Buddha and Living Christ, as the interfaith dialogue told by a Buddhist monk, is the positive parallel of Practice (Buddhists) and the Holy Spirit (Christians.) How do we look deeply and touch the living Buddha and the living Christ in ourselves and in each person we meet?

Thich Nhat Hanh says, “In Buddhism, our effort is to practice mindfulness in each moment—to know what is going on within and all around us. When the Buddha was asked, “Sir, what do you and your monks practice?” he replied, “We sit, we walk, and we eat.” The questioner continued, “But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats,” and the Buddha told him, “When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.” Most of the time, we are lost in the past or carried away by future projects and concerns.

When we are mindful, we are able to touch the present moment deeply. It is so true that the most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When our mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. If we love someone but rarely make ourselves available to him or her, that is not true love. Mindfulness relieves suffering because it is filled with understanding and compassion. When we are really there, showing our loving-kindness and understanding, the energy of the Holy Spirit is in us. Thich Nhat Hanh repeatedly affirms: “Mindfulness is very much like the Holy Spirit. Both of them help us touch the ultimate dimension of reality. Mindfulness helps us touch nirvana, and the Holy Spirit offers us a door to the Trinity."
Somewhere in the book, Thich Nhat Hanh also says this, which I find very interesting: “Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice.” This phrase has never left me since. It is a matter of practice… It is a matter of practice.

“For Christians, the way to make the Holy Spirit truly present in the church is to practice thoroughly what Jesus lived and taught.” If we read the Bible but don’t practice what we find there, it will not help us, or anyone, very much. Thich Nhat Hanh says, in Buddhism, practicing the teaching of the Buddha is the highest form of prayer. The Buddha said, “If someone is standing on one shore and wants to go to the other shore, he has to either use a boat or swim across. He cannot just pray, ‘Oh, other shore, please come over here for me to step across!’”

At this point, it is important to note: The Theravada school of Buddhism emphasizes the actual teaching of the historical Buddha, the Buddha who lived and died. Later, the idea of the living Buddha was developed in the Buddhism of the Northern schools, the Mahayana. Of course they are not the same, based on the different teaching and theology (non-duality in Buddhism; Incarnation in Christianity), but we do have the teachings of the son of man (the historical Jesus) and the son of God (the Christ). Listen! Buddha says,

“My physical body will no longer be here, but my teaching body, Dharmakaya, will always be with you. Take refuge in the Dharma, the teaching, to make an island for yourselves.”

According to Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha is still alive, continuing to give Dharma talks. If you are attentive enough, you will be able to hear his teachings from the voice of a pebble, a leaf, or a cloud in the sky.

In today’s scripture reading, Jesus says, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jewish people so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

Quote: "The Buddha said that his Dharma body (for Christians, Christ/Wisdom/Sophia) is more important than his physical body. He meant that we have to practice the Dharma in order to make nirvana (for Christians, Kingdom of God) available here and now. The living Dharma is not a library of scriptures or tapes of inspiring lectures. The living Dharma is mindfulness, manifested in the Buddha’s daily life and in your daily life, also. When I see you walking mindfully, I touch the peace, joy, and deep presence of your being. When you take good care of your brothers and sisters, I recognize the living Dharma in you. If you are mindful, the Dharmakaya is easy to touch. The Buddha described the seed of mindfulness that is in each of us as the “womb of the Buddha” (tathagatagarbha). We are all mothers of the Buddha because we are all pregnant with the potential for awakening."

This Buddhist monk, the founder of Engaged Buddhism, the life-long practitioner of Mindfulness, urges us that if we want to renew our church, we need to bring the energy of the Holy Spirit into it. When people appreciate each other as brothers and sisters and kin and smile, the Holy Spirit is there. When mindfulness is present, understanding (prajña) and love (maitri and karuna) are there, also. The church is the vehicle that allows us to realize those teachings. The church is the hope of Jesus, just as the Sangha is the hope of the Buddha. It is through the practice of the church and the Sangha that the teachings come alive.

Again, our religious partner, Buddhism, asks us the question to which we were introduced by Hinduism three Sundays ago.

What is our practice?

How do we touch the living Christ?

How should we grow the Holy Spirit at Immanuel and in our activism in the world?

Again, you can taste Orange and Mango separately, these two “authentic" fruits, but you can also appreciate their nutrients, (sweetness and acid, too) in a delicious fruit salad. 

Sermon: Is atheism the enemy of faith?, Feb 10, 2019

Is atheism the enemy of faith?

Introduction:

Throughout the season of Epiphany, we’ve learned about our United Church’s understanding of and relations with other religions: Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Thank you so much for receiving my reflections and studies very positively so far.  I hope that this study of Atheism inspires the same openness and genuine curiosity. Hate or fear often come when we think we know something, but we only actually know the most obvious, inflammatory things about it. I hope that we can approach this study in the same way we would learn about other religions and their faith, practices and traditions. You know how deeply I appreciate the fact that the United Church has produced wonderful study guides such as Bearing Faithful Witness, Honouring the Divine in Each Other, That We May Know Each Other. Each one represents years of work for the many people involved, and we do not have one to study atheism (and I don’t think we will see it soon, especially as it seems that to identify as ‘atheist’ has become anathema to the United Church.). So, I have picked up a couple of books that I have been keeping on my bookshelf for the last five years: Atheism for Dummies (like Football for Dummies, Wine for Dummies, MBA for Dummies (I have the MBA one, too, very useful!) and Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion. 

Sermon: Is atheism the enemy of faith? 

Text: Luke 5:1-11

Is atheism the enemy of faith? 

This question was asked in a sermon by a feminist United Church clergy in Toronto. I borrowed it from her. And, actually she said atheism is the enemy of faith.

When I asked that question on Facebook last week, two of my friends shared their responses. My friend P is an ex-Roman Catholic priest. He lived and worked in Peru for seven years when he was in ministry as a missionary. Now, I have deep respect for his commitment to justice. For example, he regularly visits Honduras and helps the work of his friend, a priest who dedicatedly, risking faith, works for the exploited, suffering ordinary people in Honduras. In his response, he asks, 

“Is atheism the enemy of faith or perhaps the seed of faith? In rejecting the oppressive god(s) of power, prestige, and exclusivity which are the gods of organized religion, atheism tills the soil where a new spirituality can germinate and perhaps lead to a different relationship of humankind to all creation.” 

Another friend of mine, B, newly-retired United Church clergy, left his comment as: 

“Hmm. I think fundamentalist atheism might be. But then again fundamentalist Christianity (oxymoron!) is an enemy of faith… basically I guess fundamentalism is…” 

My friend B’s point of view may be more widely shared in United Church circles. 

I appreciate both responses very much. 

Setting aside misconceptions, Things that few (if any) atheists believe:

That that there is no right and wrong (Be careful not to confuse atheism with moral nihilism.) That life arose and evolved by chance. That all religion is the same. That religion has made no positive contributions. 

What does most atheists actually do believe? 

(All are quotes.) 

• Seeing the natural universe as all there is — and that is enough. 
• Accepting that this is our one and only life (That life ends, and ends for good, should give what time you do have an extraordinary preciousness. Knowing that this moment is part of a limited life, one with no do-overs, can lend a whole new depth, intensity, and meaning to that moment.)
• Valuing ethical behaviour (An ethical society is simply safer, less scary, easier, more satisfying to live in, and simply better, whether or not a person believes in God.)
• Taking responsibility for ourselves and each other (After a person sets religious belief aside (“putting it in God’s hands”), a huge feeling of responsibility often sets in. Life has no divine safety net and no escape clause into the next life. If humans want a better world, they have no one but themselves to turn to. This idea strikes many atheists with the overwhelming desire to do it right - to work for human rights, justice, peace, and equality in this, our one and only life.) 
• Critiques of religion, in fact, all religions (If a religious belief inspires bigotry and hatred and violence, it would be immoral to look the other way just because that belief is religious. i.e. the use of biblical arguments to extend slavery in the 19th century and delay women’s rights in the 20th. The ongoing opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians, extremely framed in religious terms.) 
• Last but not least, getting humble about humanness. (One of the defining Christian ideas is that humans are special, created separate from animals and endowed with immortal souls.) 
• Another last but not least, Humanism. So, what’s the best way to respond to a world in which there is no God? The answer for many atheists is humanism, the thousand steps that follow the conclusion that God doesn’t exist. Humanism is a worldview that focuses care, compassion and a sense of wonder on this world and this life instead of focusing on a God and an imagined afterlife. 

The history of atheism is as long as the history of religions; limiting myself to 1500 words is a challenge. To be succinct, let’s invest some of our time in understanding New Atheism and a New Humanism of the 21st century. The beginning of the 21st century saw the birth of a more confrontational brand of atheism, one that challenges the ill-effects of religion without apology. On September 15, 2001, less than 96 hours after the attacks of September 11, a compelling essay by Richard Dawkins appeared in the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom. Commentators and politicians at the time were doing what they’ve done for centuries — saying that a religiously inspired tragedy, in this case, the 9/11 attacks, wasn’t really about religion at all. It was about politics, or culture clash, or something else… anything but religion. 

“They hate us for our freedom.” President Bush said (speaking of the need for a “crusade”, alluding to Matthew 12:30 — “He who is not with me is against me.” —), not worrying whether that actually made any sense. Countless religious progressives claimed the attacks had been inspired by religious extremism, attempting to place a firewall between that extremism and religion in general. The purpose of Dawkins’ remarkable essay was to make the case that religion was the “elephant in the room”. Quote: 

Then Dawkin’s imaginary terrorist event planner hits on an idea: 

"What if some young men could be convinced that death isn’t the end after all?” (to keep the planes on course until they hit the buildings.)

Dawkins assured his readers that he wasn’t making light of the tragedy. On the contrary, he said he was motivated by a “deep grief and fierce anger” and this grief and anger heralded a whole new approach to religion for him. (So far, all quotes are from Dummies.)

I have a lot to say about all of this, but in the interest of keeping it short, I highly recommend that any interested faithful person like me should read chapter 4, Why There Almost Certainly Is No God, in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. The argument in the whole chapter is just stunning, expanding our (or my) understanding. Does it stop me from being faithful? No. It does the opposite. It only makes me even more profoundly faithful to the earth, the body of God, with the appreciation of its fierceness, elegance and the power with which the “millionfold and still ongoing” evolution of life has brought all of us to be here. 

In this chapter, Why There Almost Certainly Is No God, Dawkins picks a page from the creationist book, Life - How Did It Get Here?, with no named author but published by the Watchtower Bible Society in sixteen languages and eleven million copies. Dawkins says, 

Picking a page at random from this anonymous, lavishly distributed book, we find the sponge known as Venus’ Flower Basket (Euplectella)

, accompanied by a quotation from Sir David Attenborough, no less: ‘When you look at a complex sponge skeleton such as that made of silica spicules which is known as Venus’ Flower Basket, the imagination is baffled.

How could quasi-independent microscopic cells collaborate to secrete a million glassy splinters and construct such an intricate and beautiful lattice? We do not know.’ The Watchtower authors loses no time in adding their own punchline: ‘But one thing we do know: Chance is not the likely designer.’ 

Dawkins continues: 

No indeed, chance is not the likely designer. That is one thing on which we can all agree. The statistical improbability of phenomena such as the Venus’ Flower Basket skeleton is the central problem that any theory of life must solve. The greater the statistical improbability, the less plausible is chance as a solution: that is what improbable means. But the candidate solutions to the riddle of improbability are not, as is falsely implied, design and chance. They are design and natural selection. 

The quote ends. Turning Watchtower’s pages, we find Dutchman’s Pipe (the picture),

The giant redwood, etc. The creationist asks, (Quote:) 

‘Did all of this happen by chance? Or did it happen by intelligent design?’  

‘There are about seventy separate chemical reactions involved in photosynthesis. Biologists say, “It is truly a miraculous event.” Green plants have been called nature’s ‘factories’ - beautiful, quiet, nonpolluting, producing oxygen, recycling water, and feeding the world. Did they just happen by chance?’

Dawkins continues: Quote:

Creationist ‘logic’ is always the same. Some natural phenomenon is too statistically improbable, too complex, too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to chance that the authors can imagine. Therefore, a designer must have done it.

Dawkins continues: 

 [However,] Indeed, design is not a real alternative because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer?

Dawkins continues,

Natural selection is a real solution. … And it is not only a workable solution, it is a solution of stunning elegance and power. What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, where chance and design both fail at the starting gate? The answer is that natural selection (notes: evolution of life) is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so.  

It is the power of accumulation.

It is like “graded ramps” of slowly increasing complexity. 

Evolution goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up the “gentle slope” to the summit. 

Okay, quote over – my turn to speak. 😀

The power of accumulation of the millionfold and still ongoing process of adaptation of life moves forward the endless diversity and complexity of life and the earth system. 

What lies at the heart of atheism and humanism is the understanding and the ethics of the diversity of human life and, indeed, the life of all creation and all relations; 

putting humans in the circle of nature. 

It teaches the Golden Rule, respect and human humbleness. 

It challenges the faithful to hear the important critiques of religion. 

The answer to the question, “Is atheism an enemy of faith or seed of faith to germinate a new spirituality?”, is yours, depending on our confidence in our own faith. Some atheists may never be friendly. I can say that. (And those who identify themselves as atheists and humanists may not be perfect as we, Christians, and the faithful, have never been either.) 

However, atheists and the faithful are never automatically foes. 

----      Post-sermon Reflection     ---- 

I wonder if we (i.e. Christians) can change the question we ask to ourselves, from “Do you believe in God?” to “How are you faithful?” Especially in this 21st century, asking “How are you faithful in your relation to the earth, the body of God?” would be critical. 

To do this, we would need to redefine faith and what it means to be faithful. If 'being faithful' means sincerity in heart, integrity in ethical life (equity, justice and peace), human humbleness and vulnerability in relations with neighbors and all creation, this standard of life can be applied to both atheists and people of faith. If so, atheists and the faithful are not automatically foes. We have so much work to do for the safer, equitable society and the sustainable earth. In addition, As our church member said to me after my sermon, we would be “Really only enemies when we aren’t appreciative of diverse ways of understanding the world.”

Sermon: "One Covenant" (inspired by United Church-Jewish Relations Today), Feb 3, 2019

Sermon: “One Covenant” 

Text: Luke 4:14-21

Today’s text is from the Gospel of Luke: we hear that Jesus participates in a synagogue service in Nazareth, his hometown. (4:14-30) The scripture Jesus reads features the words of the prophet Isaiah (60:1-2), and he applies it to Gentiles, or non-Jews, as an example. One Gentile is a woman and a widow (4:25) and another is a Syrian soldier (4:27). 

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

The Gospel of Luke’s program is not much different from the other Gospels. According to Luke, Christianity and its mission clearly originated within the Jewish community. God’s plan called for the message of Jesus Christ to be taken to the ends of the world before Christ would come again. This delay allowed time for mission to Jew and Gentile alike, seeking their conversion. Because the Jews did not accept and continued to not accept Jesus, and later rejected Paul’s message, Luke ultimately sees them as being rejected by God. 

The problem is, this program, this narrative, is way too familiar to us. In history, taking the Gospel to the ends of the world has been dangerously complicit with colonizing evangelism. And Proselytism. The study I share with you this morning is based on the United Church’s study guide: Bearing Faithful Witness (United Church-Jewish Relations Today), and we, The United Church, “Reject” proselytism which targets Jews for conversion to Christianity. 

If I say to you that the passage from Luke that Jesus teaches in the synagogue is one of the problematic passages, it might make you puzzled. There seems to be nothing wrong or untoward said here – it’s a simple message, of “God blesses Gentiles, too.” 

However, listen. In the following passage (4:28-30), Luke uses the wrathful crowd to foretell the conclusion of his story: Jesus is rejected by the Jewish community, driven out of the city, and almost killed. That’s problematic, because it is extended to accuse the whole of the Jewish people (as if it is their inherent nature) for the rejection of Jesus, and so for the death of Jesus. 

28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

When I was a child in Korea, I grew up as a Roman Catholic. I attended Sunday School every Sunday and worshiped at Children’s Mass every Saturday, in my hometown. It’s a big city, but when I grew up, you hardly saw anyone from other countries, or of another ethnicity. It was all Koreans, (except for 0.1 percent Chinese immigrant’s descendants) and except for our parish’s two Irish priests (who were reported to jokingly say that Korean is a “demonic” language, hard to learn. I heard that, for one of them, it was a habit to do a handstand against the wall in order to write his sermons, because the task was so torturous.) 

I think my childhood world view was pretty simple, influenced by all kinds of outside sources of the simplified knowledge about how we are related to others. Here are a few things I believed when I was young: 

Buddhists are superstitious because Buddha was a human. (I didn’t know Jesus was a human, too, until my teacher in Grade Six, who was a Buddhist, challenged me and said Jesus was a human, too) and this “new information” tested my faith. 

Protestants are bad because they accuse Roman Catholics of being heretics. In response, my Catholic friends spoke ill of Protestants in defence. Kids go to the Protestant church because they want to date. They do not have communion, and if they do, theirs is fake - not Jesus’ body. 

The Japanese (when we say, Japanese, that means “all Japanese of the past and of the present”) are invaders and colonizers, both savage and cruel. 

Those were some of my beliefs, surrounded by people who thought like me. I also had some knowledge about who Jewish people, or “the Jews”, were, even before I met any real Jewish people in my life. Think about it. I had never met any Jewish person until I came to Canada. There is still no synagogue in my hometown. But I knew - we knew – everyone in my world knew that the Jews killed Jesus. (But we didn’t know Jesus was a Jew). No emotion, no hatred was attached to that belief. It was just a fact. It really didn’t matter to my young self, but it was the primary thing I thought I knew until I learned other, more truthful information about Jewish people's lives, history, holocaust, faith and traditions when I grew into adulthood. 

There are many things we should try to “correctly” know and learn about Judaism and the relation of our Christian faith to Jesus as a Jew, Judaism, Jewish people, the Jewish Bible and literature the Mishnah and the Talmud, covenants (see the back page of the worship bulletin: One covenant or Two?), and so on. It would take our intention, sensitivity, attentiveness towards further study and dialogues. The study guide, Bearing Faithful Witness, recommends a visit to a synagogue and building friendships with Jewish people - try to get to know them in person. In this light, I am happy to share and affirm what I newly learned from Bearing Faithful Witness with you. 

We believe that the God whom we know in Jesus Christ is the One who called Sarah and Abraham, gave the Torah to Moses, and put passion for justice into the hearts of the prophets. We believe in the faithfulness of God. We believe the Word become flesh in the person of Jesus, a Jew. The One who is “our judge and our hope” lives as a Jew, dies as a Jew, and is raised as a Jew. In making these affirmations we seek to bear faithful witness to the Jewishness of Jesus. 

We believe that the Holy Spirit calls us to bear faithful witness concerning God’s reconciling mission in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, God has opened the door “In a new way” to those previously outside the covenant. It seems important to me to note that “In a new way” means it is a brilliant and different way. It doesn’t mean that it is the only way, or that it has superseded the earlier covenant as deficient or incomplete. Rather, it more correctly means the story of Christ recapitulates the Hebrew stories, catching up the promises of God and “newly revealing” the content that God always saw was in them. In other words, what was always there is revealed again, and made available more widely to the Gentiles, those who were previously outside the covenant.

It can be never overemphasized or affirmed too often that the earliest followers of Jesus were all Jews, as was Jesus himself. For them, “Scripture” referred to the Torah and prophetic works that are in our Old Testament, along with other writings of Judaism. Jesus did not write any book or letter that has been discovered, and presumably for Jesus the Jewish scriptures (like Isaiah in today’s reading) were sufficient. Written works that did emerge with the early church were not intended to replace scripture or even to be added to scripture. They sought to interpret the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, his life and teachings, for the day-to-day struggles of the emerging church. Their authors searched the scriptures to find interpretive clues that made sense of Christ’s death and of the overwhelmingly strange event of Easter. 

It was only in the fourth century CE that the church officially expanded the compass of scripture to include Christian writings. From the beginning of Christianity, then, Jewish scriptures were the natural interpretive vehicle for understanding God’s intentions and acts. Jesus himself led the way in using these writings. The emerging Christian writings, - the four Gospels, the Letters - focus on explaining the new things that God was doing in Christ. And it is also important to note: since then, Judaism has also evolved, with texts declaring the newness of God to be relevant and meaningful, to help chart the ongoing life of the Jewish people. 

The love of God has been expressed in the giving of Torah and Gospel. 

It would be the false witness to our Jewish neighbour and to our own heritage we share with Judaism, if we still believe, sometimes as it is said, “The God of Judaism is a god of wrath but the God of Christianity is a god of love.” Such generalization ignore both the love in Judaism and the wrath in Christianity. 

Jesus commands us to love our neighbours, but all too often Christians have treated Jews as enemies. I am always aware that those wrong influences I had in my childhood about Jewish people have not all just washed away… I acknowledge and repent that the deeply-buried seed of suspicion influences my attitude towards the state of Israel. 

We have many things to unlearn and learn, repent and affirm. We believe that our faith calls us to repent when the church has been unfaithful in its witness by not loving Jewish people as our neighbours. Let’s learn more. Let’s unlearn more.