Sermon: Crazy, Symbolic, Prophetic (Jeremiah 32:1-15), Sept 29, 2019

Text: Jeremiah 32: 1-15

Comments on the story 

(before the scripture reading) 

This story takes place in the tenth year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. The king of Babylon is besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah is imprisoned in the palace of the Judean king. Jeremiah has been imprisoned for speaking harsh and difficult words to the king; he prophesied the demise of the community and of the king who will be driven into exile. Later in today’s story, Jeremiah receives word from Yahweh. Jeremiah is told that his cousin Hanamel will come to him in prison and offer to him the right to purchase a piece of property at Anathoth, the hometown of his youth. When his cousin appears and makes the offer, Jeremiah, certain that Yahweh has spoken, proceeds with the deal. Jeremiah agrees to offer seventeen shekels of silver for the land in Anathoth. He signs the deed before witnesses, seals it in the legal way, and weighs out the money on scales. "Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing terms and conditions, along with a copy, and handed the deed to Baruch (Jeremiah's faithful secretary and confidant) in the presence of Hanamel and the witnesses who had signed the deed, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard" (Jer. 32:11-12). After all his prophecies, Jeremiah bought a field in a war zone, in a time of disaster. Today’s story leads us to ask what this strange transaction in 580 BCE means for us now in 2019: to buy land in a time of despair, to hope for the future.

Sermon: Crazy, Symbolic, Prophetic 

In today’s story, Jeremiah buys some land. But how is this act, this purchase of a piece of land, different from other property purchases? This happens all the time, doesn’t it? Land transactions are important to economic growth; they are seen as a sign of revitalization. Population increases, money is spent, markets get busier, there might even be a speculation boom in real estate. What makes Jeremiah’s land deal different?

Before we ask this question, I would like to remind you that the meaning and the importance of land to people is understood differently across cultures. Many indigenous people learned from childhood that the ground on which they walked was sacred ground. “A Navajo dictionary of medical terms begins with the terms for feet because the feet touch the earth.” “Traditionally, land was not thought of in terms of real estate to be bought, sold, or traded.” (Chapter 8, Land, We Sing the Land into Existence, A Native American Theology, p. 127.) The term “Earth” encompasses the land and sea and atmosphere, the wind, the rain, the thunder, the lightning, the receptor of the life-giving power of the Sun and the benefits of the moon (p. 128.) “Land” is the name given to designate the specific portion of Spirit Earth on which a particular “nation” resides. Indigenous world views explain how a particular people came to be in the particular place in which they live as a tribe or a nation.  

In Anathoth, the ancestral land of Jeremiah, houses, fields, and vineyards were bought, sold or traded as a normal, usual activity, in people’s ongoing lives. However, on the day when Jeremiah bought his cousin’s field things were different. Buying land in Anathoth was foolish – no sensible person would think of it. With the country in ruins, under enemy occupation, God told Jeremiah to buy his cousin’s land. Go, buy a field in the war zone that is Jerusalem. Talk about crazy! 

This is, perhaps, the worst land deal recorded in the Bible or even in history. It was the wrong time to buy a field. The wrong location. It was a mistake in timing for Jeremiah’s own life status as well. He was in prison. According to the records, the Babylonians had breached the city walls, then “burned down every important building” — the royal palace, government offices and the sacred temple that had served as the centre of Israel’s religious life since Solomon - 410 years. The Babylonians executed government officials. Soldiers plundered Jerusalem’s national treasures and everything of any value, both sacred and secular. Dead bodies littered the streets. The book of Lamentations describes children begging for bread. The intellectual elite, the skilled workers, and artisans were deported to Babylon. The poor “who owned nothing” were left to fend for themselves amidst disease and famine. Devastated himself, receiving God’s Word, Jeremiah counselled his people and Zedekiah, the king of Judah: Seek the welfare of your pagan conqueror! Pray for God’s blessing on Babylon! Embrace your exile, for there will be no miraculous exodus. Well, Zedekiah didn’t listen to such a defeatist and unpatriotic message. “Neither he or his attendants nor the people of the land paid any attention to the words the Lord has spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.” Instead, they arrested Jeremiah. This is where today’s story begins. In the war zone, that is Jerusalem, in the town of Anathoth, Jeremiah’s ancestral land, in the time of despair, when it is no wonder if any one abandons all hope. And look at Jeremiah - thrown in prison for angering his king and his country. 

Today’s story-telling narrator, after explaining the context, slows down to recount the intricate details of the business agreement made between Jeremiah and his cousin. The way that the story is told is very interesting. It is as if the narrator really wanted to show the reader how it happened, how it was performed in front of a lot of people, in public, like a movie scene, engendering and stirring some raw, gut reactions from the people who read this story… Jeremiah gets witnesses, signs the deed, produces seventeen shekels of silver, weighs out the money on a pair of scales, and orders the deed be preserved in an earthenware jar. 

What were the reactions of those who had been watching all these things? 

Jeremiah 32:11-12. “Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing terms and conditions, along with a copy, and handed the deed to Baruch (Jeremiah’s faithful secretary and confidant) in the presence of Hanamel and the witnesses who had signed the deed, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard.” 

Did the people react with reverence? Praise? 

A commentator says, “Surely all of these people have come to witness much more than a land purchase; they want to see this fool do the purchase while awaiting his own execution or the sack of the city, whichever may come first!” 

Just as Paul says, in his first letter to the Corinthians, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” An interesting mirroring. 

This land purchase was just one of the crazy, symbolic actions for which the prophets are famous. 

Like Isaiah running naked in the streets for three years as a sign and portent. 

Like Ezekiel eating the scroll, or shaving his head with a sword, dividing the hair into thirds. 

In fact, Jeremiah had already performed several prophetic acts. He stood in front of the temple and smashed pottery as the people entered to worship. He wore a cattle yoke around his neck. He buried a pair of “undergarments” under a rock for “a very long time.” And Jeremiah performed one more prophetic act. 

Buying a field in the King’s courtyard, a temporary prison. Standing in front of all the Judeans available who had come to laugh at him, to see how he could, again, be so foolish. Jeremiah speaks, “Thus says God. Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says God: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” He answers the assembled crowd’s unspoken question about the wisdom of investing in a land besieged and destroyed by a large foreign power by espousing a word of hope. Someday, there will be again be fields and houses and vineyards in the land. Imagine. In Jewish history, there are records of buried scrolls actually being discovered and unearthed 2000 years later. (Dead Sea Scrolls.) 2000 years later. Crazy. Symbolic. Jeremiah’s Prophetic act is called “hope” in those times, in history, and also in our lives. 

What is called prophetic? What is a prophetic action? It doesn’t have to be a crazy, symbolic, clever or foolish turn-over. Yet, Jeremiah’s prophesy espouses hope, when the times are most unlikely to be hopeful, encouraging others to look at their behaviour and emulate the prophetic actions when they can, and when they should. I don’t think we can simplify and say that buying land in Anathoth means investing in the future (using an analogy borrowed from economics.) By making a land transaction, Jeremiah’s intention is not to encourage others to do the same: to buy a field in wartime, or do it when the war ends - IF it ends. Nothing is certain. The restoration of the city and people, the time when people will visit the location of burial (of the earthenware jar), may take hundreds of years - or a thousand. Certainly not within Jeremiah’s lifetime, or the life span of several generations. The hope he declares is not about the economic flourishing of the world, of the good world. Jeremiah is not interested in the financial return on his investment. His prophetic action is an act of leadership: enacting, right now in present time, the changed behaviour, the right action, that people would do in the restored future. Will you buy a house, field, vineyard and live in harmony with your neighbours, show compassion for the poor, live an ethical life for the commonwealth of people who share the land in the future? Is that your hope? Do it now. Act. Live out crazy, symbolic, prophetic lives and actions, now. Restoration will come. Once again, people will buy fields and homes in the land that will be returned to them. My people, be comforted, build more hope in other’s hearts and in yours, in a time and place of devastation. 

The Malizia II, a zero-carbon yacht, on August 28, 2019, in New York. GETTY

I see this image in the young people’s initiative of global Climate Striking to demand right climate actions, policies, systems. (Show the pictures). What do you want? Climate action. When do you want it? Now. Where are the crazy, symbolic prophetic actions of our time? Our examples lie with Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier and other young climate activists and indigenous rights protectors; they make the world wake up. This past Friday, the young people shouted, “The Oceans are rising. So are we!” Greta Thunberg sailed for 15 days across the Atlantic before landing in New York City to attend the UN Climate Action Summit. She used the boat to raise awareness of the greenhouse gases emitted by the use of commercial airplanes. (Images.) Sailing across the Atlantic, nowadays? Certainly not easy - crazy when you can fly from Sweden to New York in less than eight hours. Thunberg’s yacht had no kitchen, no heating, no fridge and no bathroom. The vessel generated electricity through solar panels and wind turbines. On day four, she said it was “like camping on a roller coaster.” Very difficult conditions for her and her crew while on the journey. I smiled when I read, “It’s unclear how she plans to eventually travel back home”. I think the boats are all gone back already. But will you laugh? Is it a show? No, we need more crazy, symbolic, prophetic actions in our lives and in the world. We still need to buy a field to tell the story of hope. We need more Jeremiahs, more Gretas, more Autumns, more youth activists, more of you to hope for, to prophesy integrity, the integrity of our soul, the integrity of the world’s conscience, the integrity of God’s future. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: Make Friends (Luke 16:1-13), Sept 22, 2019

Sermon: Make Friends

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Introduction before the scripture reading: 

Today’s reading, from the Gospel of Luke chapter 16, verses 1 to 13 is one of the most challenging of Jesus’s parables. Traditionally, this story is called “The Parable of the Unjust Steward” or, in the version Jennifer is going to present today, “The Parable of the Dishonest Manager.” 

To understand today’s reading, I read several commentaries. The commentators wrote, “Any commentator will tell you that this is a difficult text." "This parable of the Dishonest Steward is one of the strangest of the strange. Commentators are all over the map in their opinions of what we should make of it.” 

There are other Bible readings today that could inspire a sermon, but I decided not to skip Jesus’s original, brilliantly crafted, tricky and confusing parable because the message is very relevant to Immanuel and each of us, today. We live within and with capitalism; it is one of the primary determinants of how we live our values day-to-day and form our attitudes towards the acquisition and use of money. Reflecting on this vivid parable of The Dishonest Manager means following Jesus into questions of how we practice neighbourly love in economic relationships, in the midst of unjust structures. 

While I studied this parable and Luke’s message, I adjusted my goal for today’s sermon. Rather than adding my personal reflection on them, I will try to present to you the story and Luke’s message as they are, as much as I could understand them, so that we, as a community of faith, Immanuel, can see ourselves and our context in the biblical perspective on wealth.

For this, we just have to face the perplexing story head-on. 

The presentation of the scripture passage

Sermon: Make Friends

Today’s story sounds quite contemporary. Here’s the story in a nutshell, and then we will go a little deeper with some questions to raise. A dishonest manager is about to lose his job, because he has misspent his employer’s assets. The first verse, “Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his goods (“squandering his property”).  Verse 2. “So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 

Because he doesn’t want to do manual labour or receive charity, he goes around to all the people who owe his employer money and reduces their debts. He does this so that they will be hospitable to him after he loses his job. Verses 5 to 7, “So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’” Jesus’ original version of the parable ends here in verse 7. The rest of today’s reading is what Luke, the author and the evangelist of the Gospel of Luke added to Jesus’ original parable. 

To our surprise, the employer, the rich man, commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. Why is he commended? And, why does Luke include this story in his Gospel? Verse 8, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” 

Helpful hint: the rich man and the dishonest manager do not represent God or Jesus. They represent “the children of this age” who are more shrewd than the “children of light”. We, the followers of Jesus, are called to be the children of light in the world, yet, as one commentator said, Christians often have a reputation for being “naive”. I still remember a Korean short novel by a highly loved poet lovingly describing church people going out of the building and chatting in the sunny Sunday morning, “pigeons” or doves of the church, happy and smiling. But Jesus, in today’s reading, says, “be shrewd.” Is there something that the children of light can learn from the “children of this age”? What does Jesus mean when he says ‘Shrewd’, and what lesson are we supposed to take from his words?

Before answering this question, let’s check how this dishonest manager was shrewd. Being dishonest and being shrewd are two different things in this story. This manager is called “dishonest” just because in the first verse we hear that he was accused of and charged with squandering the rich man/the master’s property and wasting his goods. The manager was dishonest with his employer, and it is most likely that the peasants/debtors charged him for his lack of integrity. 

Charging interest on loans was forbidden in the Bible because it exploited the vulnerable poor. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts.” Seeing that the dishonest manager reduces poor people’s debts by 20 % - 50 %, reducing their debts to what was probably the original amount borrowed, without hidden interest charges, indicates that he had been collecting the debts unjustly, hiding the inflated fees from the master’s knowledge, and diverting the interest to his own account. He’s not only dishonest but fraudulent, truly one of the children of “this age”, not the light, Like Zacchaeus, the tax collector. After Zacchaeus met Jesus on the sycamore tree, he restored what he had “defrauded” four-fold, and himself was restored to community and “saved.” In Jesus’ day, wealthy landlords created “ways to charge interest under other guises.” The hidden interest rates appear to have been about 25 percent for money and 50 percent for goods. The manipulative steward was probably extracting his own cut of the profits, on top of the 50 % layer for the landlord, and the additional payment for Rome. He keeps two sets of books, it seems. 

Now, in today’s story, the dishonest manager wants peace. He wants to save himself from the bad situation that he has created. He would be removed from his present position soon. Therefore, he finds a solution: He calls all debtors who owe to his master. He does not cut the profits for his own wealth; he forgives the debt that he would otherwise originally charge for his master (25 % - 50 %). Then, the exact amount of what the peasants borrowed will be added to the master’s account/storage without extra, hidden interest (without exploitation). As a result, the master commends his manager… not because the manager faked compassion. But because he was shrewd. But because of his shrewd act to save his life, which is, in verse 9, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes.” Now everyone is happy. The master gets back what he has lended; The peasants are relieved to pay; The community revives. The manager saves his position. 

Great Catch of Fish, John August Swanson

What’s shrewd here? Calculating to insure one’s own self-interest is preserved. The dishonest manager has always been shrewd. At first, to his own master by being dishonest, then in order to get out of a bad situation. (He doesn’t want to live his life digging or begging after losing his job. He must be restored and accepted to the community.) He’s always been shrewd. He represents the shrewd children of “this age”, not the children of the light. Now, the shock point of this story, this parable, the first audience of Jesus’s day had to hear is that the manager’s act to save himself from the bad situation, acting shrewdly, is what the children of light must emulate. The bad guy demonstrated a good example! What is that? Make friends! Make friends by means of dishonest wealth. Koreans have the saying, “No job is nobler or meaner than others.” That means, we work hard, and the money we earn from honest, hard work is all equal and must be respected. But the reality is, especially in our era of neo-liberal, global, transnational economics rooted in the soil of capitalism, the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Money makes the rules, in the unleveled playing field. We see the accumulation of dishonest wealth. Dishonest, not because the people who acquire the wealth cheat the rules (some do) but because the nature of capital itself is to replicate its wealth, double and triple it, and by its nature, it works to exploit or manipulate the poor. Wealth is dishonest in its nature, regardless of whether the individual who has it has a good character and intentions, because this society is shrewd, capitalism is shrewd, the world where we live our lives is shrewd. The biblical perspective on wealth is that it can’t be honest. 

The shrewd manager decides to continue to protect his own best interest, and that is, in this case, acceptance, belonging, and community. He nullifies all debts that have been heavily charged upon the poor people’s breaking backs and he lifts them up. To make friends! He is a Zacchaeus. His heart is still shrewd and his heart has not been changed an inch from his dishonest nature, but his act (making friends) is what the followers of Jesus should emulate, and that is summed up at the end of today’s reading: “You cannot serve both God and wealth (mammon).” That’s the bottom line, and the last line of our text. We can be shrewd, making friends by means of dishonest wealth, only when we are dispossessed by our possessions. (For this dishonest manager, possession is no longer the goal at least for now, but community, belonging, the neighbourly acceptance.)  We have to have the spirit of liberty and freedom from obsession with wealth. We are not asked the question “Do you have wealth?” but “How will you use the wealth you have?” and “How do you seek the ways to find true riches?” (which can only be found in that place “Where no thief can draw near and no moth destroys” and in lasting friendships.) Our self-interest lies in finding the true riches. Our Gospel does not tell us to become the victim of merciless capitalism, the victim of the unjust stewards and managers of the world. Instead, Jesus tells us to be shrewd to act out neighbourly and Godly love. Be shrewd with money; be shrewd by means of unjust wealth, the rich man’s wealth, to reverse the existing order of things. In Luke, reversals of status are at the heart of what happens when Jesus and the Kingdom of God appear. The proud are scattered; the powerful are brought down, and the lowly lifted. 

All in all, today’s Gospel teaches us two lessons. First, a practical one: Following Jesus, how will you practice neighbourly love in economic relationships, in the midst of unjust structures: forgiving debts and giving people new hope? The second lesson is even more important, the spiritual one. The bottom line for the children of light: the last verse. “No slave can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Just to be shrewd, forgiving debts and giving people new hope, we have to be free from Mammon’s power that the world worships. 

And, … As Bob Dylan sings, we just “gotta serve somebody”.  Amen. 

Sermon: Count as God does (Luke 15:1-10), Sept 15, 2019

Message: Count as God does 

Luke 15:1-10

We’ve all had that moment – I’ve lost something. Keys, wallet, phone - regardless of the price of what we lost, the feelings are pretty much the same: anxiety, worry, regret, frustration. We usually find our lost things… Well, some of them. Sometimes, my partner and I have a conversation about the definition of ‘lost’. If I can’t find things right at the moment I am searching, I often declare, “I didn’t lose it; I just don’t know where it is right now.” My partner, always replies that’s what he means by, ‘I lost it’. But most of the times I end up being right – I find my temporarily missing items. Most times. And for all of us, regardless of the price of the lost items, we “rejoice” when we find them. 

Jesus doesn’t tell the two parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep to just talk about lost items. When Jesus tells a story, it is about people. The story of finding people. Lost people, found people. The story is about ourselves, as individuals, the people we love, the community we care for, and the world where we find our home. 

Traditionally, the church understood the two parables allegorically, which means, it considered that each story had one meaning - - regardless of the context where and when these stories are told and shared. For example, the shepherd who has a hundred sheep and loses one and the woman who lights a lamp and sweeps her house to carefully search for one drachma represent Jesus. The lost coin and the lost sheep are us, the sinners. The church teaches that in these stories, Jesus was telling the church about himself, the Christ, who redeems and saves sinners, paying a high price in the process. The church says this story is about the grace and the love of God who restores a relationship with us who have sinned and gone astray; God offers forgiveness. This is a beautiful image when we imagine a shepherd who seeks and gently restores the lost sheep, famously portrayed as a lamb being put lovingly on the shoulders of Jesus himself. The problem with this interpretation, through, lies in the fact that it defines our relationship with God only in the light of sin and forgiveness. It narrows down a complex thing and constricts it to that single language of sin and grace. 

Now, I care for my garden. If any of my plants becomes weak or show signs of disease or infestation, I give my best care and love and try all the solutions I can find, showing the same concern that the shepherd would give for the lost sheep. It is not because any of my flowers or plants have sinned. Jesus finds the humanity in us deeper and richer than just having sinned or not sinned. Jesus leaves the ninety-nine in the wilderness to find us, the “one sheep”, not because we sinned but because of the love Jesus has for humanity, a love that longs for restoration, relationship and reconciliation. 

Amy Jill-Levine is a Jewish scholar who studies and teaches the Christian Gospels at Vanderbilt Theological School, and she says, “Luke misleads us by turning the parables into allegories. It is unlikely a first-century Jewish listener would hear the first two parables and conclude that they have something do with sheep repenting or coins confessing. Sheep eat, sleep, poop, produce wool, and give milk — but an awareness of sin is not part of ovine nature. Neither sheep nor coins have the capability to repent; If any blame is to be assigned in the first two parables, then the shepherd and the woman are at fault, for they “lost”, respectively, the sheep and the coin. Were the parables called ‘The Shepherd Who Lost His Sheep” and “The Woman Who Lost Her Coin” we might be closer to an earlier meaning.” 

Please imagine with me. The parables might not tell us obviously in the text, but the first activity the shepherd and the woman must have done in the story is counting. The shepherd counts, and finds one is missing out of one hundred. If he doesn’t count, how would he know? Counting must be one of the most important things to do in the Shepherd’s job description. If you are in charge of the finances of your household, the same principle applies. The woman counts, and finds one coin is missing out of ten. (One drachma was worth about one day’s wages). Perhaps the two parables of today are really stories about the God who counts - stories for us to count as God does. Count to know who is missing? Who is not here? Who is lost? If one or more is missing, our task is to seek, search, and find those who are not included in our counting. It is the work of searching and committing to be a community of inclusion and justice in all aspects possible. The community of “no margins” as the ideal. As Jill-Levine noted, the blame is on the shepherd, not the sheep, “if any blame is to be assigned.” The task of searching is assigned to the love, the aching heart, of the Holy One, the community of faith, and the ordinary people of faith who search for the lost, because we count. Because we care. What if our congregations were places of joy where we heard regularly that God is using ordinary people like us to find others in order to create even more joy?

Continuing from last Sunday’s reflection, we have just begun to realize what is the one big missing thing among us: the earth, the planet, the Mother. We humans are not above it or under it in hierarchy. In the indigenous worldview, we two-legged beings are not higher or central; we equally share the land and the earth with all of everything else: the four-legged, the winged, the living-moving things. When I read about the Corn Mother - the Christ figure - from A Native Indian Theology recently, I was deeply touched. This, the Corn Mother, the Christ, is exactly the One whom we have lost in our counting for a long time while we assume that we have God’s sanction to make progress, the industrial revolution, the factory waste and the astonishing record of carbon emission and carbon footprints that come after us. If Jesus were here with us in this critical time for climate action, Jesus would start searching the Christ-self, the body of Christ - the earth that sustains humanity along with everything else, the four-legged, the winged, the sea beings, the living-moving things - with the aching heart of a shepherd with a vulnerable missing sheep.

Let me share with you the story of the Corn Mother. In itself, it can be a parable of the earth, too, told in a variety of versions and languages among indigenous communities from the east cost of Canada down to Florida. It is the story of the willing self-sacrifice of the First Mother (Corn Mother) on behalf of her children. Initially the First Man was the hunter and alone provided for the sustenance of his family. But as the family grew, it became important to introduce new sources of food: vegetables and grains. In some of these stories, the Corn Mother provides food when the First Man cannot find game by privately scraping or shaking the corn (and sometimes beans) off of her own body. When two of her children sneakily discover where the food is coming from, they accuse her of tricking them into cannibalism; this become an excuse for killing her. There are other versions, but in all the tellings, the self-sacrifice of the woman is consistent and results in the enduring fecundity of the earth and production of food. In these stories, First Mother’s death is also the first human experience of death. Her burial is accompanied by ceremony and sometimes pronounced weeping. Later, the surviving family discovers that the clearing where she has been buried is miraculously filed with fully mature food plants, most prominently including corn. First Mother, buried in the earth, continues to nourish her children long after her death. 

When we eat, especially when we remember food is sacred, eating becomes sacrament, because eating always involves the eating of the flesh of the First Mother. She, in her dying, becomes identified with the earth, with Grandmother, Mother God. In the indigenous creation stories, the character of the Creator is revealed: the grace, self-sacrifice, feeding. It is good news. Those things that are considered un-alive in the Eurocentric mindset, rocks, rivers, lakes, mountains, are sacred, alive, and inter-related in this worldview. It takes years and years, more than one lifetime – it takes generations (therefore, the traditions honour sacred knowledge keepers), for humans to finally understand the sacramental nature of eating. Corn and all food, and all that are provided by the Earth are all our relatives. So, the ceremonial and very real physical sacrifice of Corn Mother reminds us of Christ. Tink Tinker, the indigenous theologian would say to us Corn Mother is Christ, Christ is Corn Mother. 

UN Photo/Manuel Elias

The Swedish teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg (centre), joins other young people for a school strike or demonstration outside the United Nations in New York on 30 August 2019.

In this critical time of awakening to climate actions, we need to count. How do we count the Christ, the Corn Mother, Mother Earth, in our actions and plans and lives? If we cannot commit to one hundred action recommendations to keep the global average temperature under 2 degrees Celsius in our lives right away, we can still find and work on ten actions- or one. It is really all about counting the cost, and counting what and who are missing, and find and count the ways we can act.  An all-out war on climate change might not be a reasonable option in our daily lives, (i.e. no taking flights) yet once we find what we can do, our actions will take on greater meaning. Remember, any movement toward a more just and more inclusive society can now be a meaningful climate action. Securing fair elections, combatting extreme wealth inequality, instituting humane immigration policy, advocating for racial and gender equality, supporting a free and independent press — these are all meaningful climate actions. To survive rising temperatures, every system, whether of the natural world or of the human world, will need to be as strong and healthy as we can make it. Therefore, rather than feeling guilty or overwhelmed and doing nothing, keep doing the right thing for the planet, but also try to save what you love specifically - save one, specifically, out of ten, or out of a hundred -, a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble. Taking heart in small successes would be following the Christ, the shepherd’s heart, and the woman’s practice of looking for one, unexpected miracle. Any good thing you do for the planet now is a hedge against the hotter future, and it’s a meaningful act right now. As long as you have something to care about, you have something to hope for. (Read: what-if-we-stopped-pretending)

When we lose something that is valuable to us, we all feel the same. Anxious, worried, regretful, frustrated. When we find them, we all feel the same, we rejoice - regardless of the price of what we’ve lost. The earth, the Corn Mother, the body of Christ is priceless. If we forget to count, if we overlook the missing, then we are not doing our jobs as disciples of Christ. So – we count, we seek the missing, we seek to make the very Earth whole again. If we rejoice when we find our lost keys, our lost phone, imagine the joy when we recover our missing ones, when we heal our wounded planet. It may take generations, but that makes the final summation – the wholeness of our communities, our planet, all the more worthy of rejoicing. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: Counting the Cost (Luke 14:25-33), Sept 8, 2019

Message: Counting the Cost

Luke 14:25-33

In today’s story, Jesus asks, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?... Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?”

So here, Jesus sets before us two vignettes, one of a person building a tower who runs out of resources, the other of a king who sets out to battle another king and discovers his forces are outnumbered. In both cases the problem arose because someone did not count the cost before they began the enterprise. These two stories lead us to wonder, what is Jesus telling us with these two imagined examples of counting the cost? Jesus points to builders and kings who count the cost before they build or go to war. If a builder begins to build and lays a foundation, their intention is to finish it. The lesson is, if you start something, first, “Count the cost”. Jesus compares becoming disciples to building and battles. Who wastes time, effort, resources on a building project before knowing whether funds will be available to complete the project? Which king would not make peace with his opponent if he thinks his military forces are outnumbered? Both examples of building and battles would have been quite familiar to the early audiences of these stories. 

In addition, today’s story tells us that on that day Jesus was followed by a “large crowd” who were “travelling” with him, and he was talking to these people who were certainly enthusiastic, but also uninformed, about the cost of being/becoming a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus. The energy of the crowd was great, but the people weren’t engaging with the reality of following a radical, counter-cultural prophet and saviour. Then, Jesus, kindly, (because these two vignettes are not stories that you can hear and understand right away) provides his own commentary: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” and “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” Jesus is telling the large number of happy travellers, the multitude, to first count the cost and then follow him. The cost is carrying the cross: finding the courage, the commitment to turn away from, detach ourselves from what possesses us and our spirit. Jesus says, “Carry the cross. Give up all your possessions." The Gospel is not willing to negotiate or compromise its call with the other priorities we might have in our lives or with the culture’s values. Christ’s message sounds more challenging than attractive to his potential disciples, these cheerful and optimistic followers, this large group of excited volunteers who were literally following him, ready to stand up for the great cause of a kin-dom of God. Jesus tells them, you need to carry this through to completion. Count the cost. 

Jesus said these words to the people of the first century, the rich and the poor, the Gentiles and the Israelites alike, but counting the cost can be a relevant message not only to Christ’s contemporaries, but also to us in the 21st century. We estimate costs all the time, don’t we? We may not build a tower in a vineyard to stand watch against thieves and animals. But we have spreadsheets and budget lines. We read numbers, and before starting any big task, we consider many things. What is the goal we would like to achieve? What would we gain? Do we have resources/funds that we can invest until we see the fruition of the goal? Would I enjoy the work? Might there be a drop-off in the middle? (Emotional and spiritual costs) How many hours will I have to put in? Will there be positive or negative changes in my status? (cultural costs) Will there be extra pressure on my family or friends because of my choices? (concern for close relationships) What are the other, unforeseen, risks and costs? 

Some people may not count the cost all the time. On some things, we start without fully planning it all out. Like me, for example, with kid’s hockey. I signed up to be a hockey parent for my son, without thinking through what the next three seasons of the year would be like: Giving rides multiple times a week, dragging the heavy hockey bag around, watching the first few IP sessions in which my son spent more time falling than standing on the ice while other kids, his friends, who are third year, or fourth year players, skated like little “gods” on the ice. I certainly didn’t count that cost when I signed him up. But we do that – we sign up for a new thing, without counting the cost, especially when we just know that it is what we need to do.

Jesus is really clear, however. He doesn’t want us to just enthusiastically sign up for God; he instructs us to count the cost. Estimate it. Weigh it. Know it. Build the funds, the resources - especially spiritual resources - to complete the discipleship. To complete the Kin-dom of God. Jesus wants us to be passionate and informed travellers on the road to justice, love, faith and reconciliation; not just start the journey, but complete it. And this teaching really helps me to admire, follow, support, and join in with the young people who are working for climate action. In recent months, thousands of high school students and young people sprang up across the world, organizing to demand strong climate action from the big decision-makers (the lawmakers, policy-makers, the profiteers) on this planet. They are the vanguard of the new active hope and uproar movements that are taking action right now. 

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg takes part in the school strike demonstration "Fridays For Future" in Vienna, Austria, May 31, 2019. (Photo: AP/Ronald Zak via CP)

The best-known is the Swedish student Greta Thunberg. In August 2018, when she was 15, she began staging her own school strikes, (show the picture) saying Sweden would need to step up its efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions if it is to do its part to stop the global temperature rise from reaching 2 degrees Celsius. Since then, Thunberg, now 16, has travelled - by train and boat - to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, to the European Parliaments, to multiple international climate talks in many places, publicly admonishing the planet’s wealthy, its policy-makers and politicians. She accused politicians of being like the emperor Nero: fiddling while the planet burns. The TEDx talk she gave has been viewed more than two million times. Following her, (show the pictures) thousands of students and youth (Generation Z - those born in the mid-1990s and after) around the world have organized school strikes and sit-ins in front of city halls and planning offices. She received an enthusiastic welcome upon her arrival in New York, after fifteen days at sea, to attend the UN Climate Summit, beginning September 23. (Show the Facebook post). 

If we think that the cost this generation is undertaking is just skipping a few Fridays, we would be wrong. They are counting the cost of their actions, and they want us to count the cost of climate change, and it humbles me to look at and examine how I schedule and style my life. Certainly, Greta Thunberg and I live our lives in different time frames and understandings. She feels a panic that I have not felt. These young people are my sons’ generation. My sons (13 years old and 8 years old) honestly wept when they heard the Amazon was on fire. A few weeks ago, my younger son wrote a book, Earth Book, (quotes) and wanted us, his parents, to read it. And this week, when I was reading the article on Greta Thunberg in Broadview, (Show the pictures) he kept asking questions which showed his deep interest. “Why does she say, ‘We Want You to Panic’?”, “What is ‘strike’? (on the Strike for Climate picket line), “What does, ‘If You Don’t Act Like Adults, We will.’ Mean?” In Fridays for the Future, a grade 7 raises a picket sign that echoes Thunberg, “Let politicians act as if their house is on fire.” 

Like other students, my older son was both nervous and excited for his first week of the new school year, but his biggest concerns are the same as Thunberg’s. He talks about his concerns quite regularly. There’s the report: a special report was published last October by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which puts a hard deadline on taking the actions needed to avoid a full-on sabotage of our environment: 12 years.  This means, if carbon emissions continue to mount, by 2030, it will be too late. And I begin to see that this generation Z and I (Generation X) have different timeframes to live on this earth, and that influences how we feel about it. To me, that 12 years, which is now down to 11 in 2019, means, ‘Ok. In 12 years, unless planet-wide actions to slow down climate change are implemented, our earth’s ecosystem will irreversibly deteriorate, enduring fires, floods, mudslides, heat waves, rising oceans and species extinctions.’ I realize all these things but it does not go deeper than just a numb realization. In contrast, this report, to generation Z like my sons, is emotional, filled with grief and anger and fear: My son would exclaim to me, “I heard that in 12 years the earth is dying. We have only 12 years left, and it is the end!”. 11 years from today, my son will be 24. Quote: “Imagine a 10-year-old hearing every day that in 12 years your planet is dying. Before we make posters, I say: “Are you okay?””  

Count the cost. If we just follow and share the Instagram and Facebook posts of Greta Thunberg and praise her, thinking she will be our prophet and saviour, we are not doing the work that is asked of us. We must count the cost ourselves: Find out the right climate-crisis informed actions we can do today and then find more. We need to take action and build active hope, rather than build guilt. Counting the cost means that we intend to complete our work. The church should seriously count the cost in order to effectively motivate the family of God to counter this climate crisis. Two summer volunteer students recently changed the sign at Fort Garry United Church: “The Greatest Threat to Our Planet is Thinking Someone Else Will Save It.” We can admire, cheer, praise the radical, counter-cultural prophets of our times and enthusiastically profess that we are disciples of Jesus, but we must count the cost, the sacrifice we will need to make, in order to complete our professed discipleship. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: Listening with the Canaanites (Matthew 6:24-34), Sept 1, 2019

Sermon: Listening with the Canaanites   

Matthew 6:24-34

In today’s reading, Jesus invites his disciples to look at the world, especially nature, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and gain a sense of place. The disciples are invited to open their eyes and look around to see what surrounds them in this Creator’s garden. The small things - the winged friends and colourful plants - flourish in the wild open places. They are not creatures of artifice, but the arts of God, and they help us to learn the sacred power that is present in the world.

Lilies from a friend's garden

This “noticing” and gaining a sense of place can be an effective way to find inner safety and balance in the moments when we need to pull away from feelings of anxiety, fear, or sadness. Anywhere with a bit of colour and different things is good; if you can find a moment to go outdoors to engage your senses, then, go to the world! Ask yourself, “What are the five things I can see right now?” I was in the classroom when I was doing this activity for the first time. My notes told me that, in the class, I could see windows, a tree’s green leaves, my cup (brick red), the projector, a white water bottle. Then, ask what are the four things you hear from the environment (Mine were people chatting outside, my typing noise, fans, someone turning book pages). In the third exercise, ask what are the three things you can touch (i..e my jeans' texture, the cold table surface, the chair). The next is to ask two things you can smell (flowers and the spring). The last activity is to ask what is one thing you can taste. Tea. 

When Jesus teaches his disciples in their private class, they seem to retreat from the crowd for restoration. Probably on the hills or in a flowered, grassy field (imagine, very nice!). And Jesus teaches his disciples that worrying (“what you will eat”, “what you will drink”, “what you will wear”) belongs to time… It belongs to tomorrow. It is the concern of tomorrow. Then Jesus says, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” 

What is interesting to note is that in this passage, in the teaching of that day, Jesus didn’t bring the disciples’ attention to the troubles of the day, but to the wonder and beauty of the day: Birds in the air, lilies of the field, tall green grass. These royal clothes God gives creation are more glorious than Solomon’s, yet do not last more than a day or two (“alive today and tomorrow and are thrown into the oven”). So their very beings are temporal. However, the secret of the kingdom of God lies in the spacious time of the kingdom of God: the place. the space. They are temporary but rooted in the sacred power present in the world, in the spatial connections. The birds, the lilies, the grass are not the concerns of tomorrow. These least yet full-of-life things consist of the power and the holiness of today, of the space of here, of the the place of now, in the repetition and in the cycle of nature.

Imagine… We are on a hill or in a field with Jesus and his disciples, and some of us are the Canaanites. The Canaanites are those who were native in the land even before the Hebrew people, the Israelites, came to the land to move, to settle and multiply, to live generation to generation with the faith that this land was given to them as the promised land, the land of milk and honey, by God, and to be conquered, following their freedom from slavery in Egypt. It is very interesting to me that in Jesus’ time, the Canaanites lived alongside the Israelites. (The Canaanites were not the people of the past!) In the Bible, we have the record of Jesus healing the child of a Canaanite woman. These Canaanites were also Ruth’s sister-in-law, Orpah, who returned to her Moabite people and to her gods. In the book of Ruth and Naomi, the story of Orpah is left without a story. As feminist Christians, we have learned to remember not only patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but also faithful women leaders such as Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth and Mary. Native women scholars tell us that there is another trajectory of faithful women leaders: Rahab, Orpah, and the unnamed Canaanite woman whose daughter Jesus healed and whose faith Jesus praised. (Matthew 15:21-28). 

Kwok Pui-Lan is a prominent leading scholar of post-colonial theology from Hong Kong, and she contributes one chapter to the collection of articles, Wrongs to Rights: How Churches Can Engage The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. (Show the book. The editor is Steven Heinrichs, whom a number of people at Immanuel quite know well) Kwok Pui-Lan just hooked me into a whole new world of thought and made me want to learn about re-reading the Bible from Indigenous theologians. In her chapter, she says, “In the mid-1980s, women of colour in the US began to articulate Black women’s theology, Hispanic and Latina theology, and Asian American feminist theology. Yet the voices of Native American women were often left out. When I had a chance to edit a book on Third World women's theology, I purposely included Indigenous women’s writings in it.” 

To me, re-reading the Bible, engaging the Bible’s stories, including the Gospel’s stories, from an Indigenous worldview, is incredible, and something I haven’t thought about much. I'm curious to know how this different way of reading the Bible can inspire us and deepen our understanding, not only to understand the world of the Bible Stories, but also God and ourselves. And my first reading about the indigenous worldview and theology already Inspired me to start appreciating the physical, spatial world more, (not only thinking in term of time but space) - how I am here and how I can be here in this concrete and lively world in a better, holistic way: The spatial interconnectedness. If we liberate Jesus from the stranglehold of the Western worldview, we can really see Jesus and Jesus’ point of view and teaching through new eyes. 

Going back to today’s story, if the Canaanites hear Jesus say, “Strive first for the kingdom of God; see the birds, lilies, and grass in the field.” they might find Jesus’ views resonating with their own, looking at space and land with Indigenous (or traditional) eyes. You might remember I shared, in the first Sunday service last month, Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel’s quote on the Sabbath. “The meaning of Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week, we live under the tyranny of things of space: on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.” “Under the tyranny of things of space.” “Holiness in time.” Osage theologian Tink Tinker says (the main author of An American Native Theology) that the Christian tradition has been profoundly influenced by the concept of time (God’s plan on earth, God’s acting out in history, Jesus’ second coming, etc). Likewise Westernization is also very time-oriented: see the ideology of progress. "Seven-day cycle. Production schedules. Time clocks. Calendars. Personal wrist watches.”(quote), and in 2019, of course, the Apple Watch. Since “Enlightenment”, many powerful peoples and nations have believed that primitive and traditional societies had to change to catch up with modernity in the sense of linear time. 

In contrast, Tinker says, “American Indian traditions are spatially-based rather than temporally-based.” “Power is manifest in all the things of the world; the sacred may appear at any time” (in the sense of place). “People are constantly reminded of the presence of God as they pass by certain rock formations, or rivers, or groves of trees.” (i.e. Petroforms in White shell, Sand Dunes trails in Spruce Woods Provincial Park) “Space, rather than time, becomes the evidence of God’s presence in the world in an immediate manner. Spatiality and the notion of interrelatedness lend themselves to a categorical difference between these indigenous cultures and the West.”  (Show some images and arts of Indigenous artists.) The sense of space blooms wonderfully in the full expansion of interconnectedness (in the four directions, in a Circle, in a Medicine Wheel), in God (Wakonda) as reciprocal duality (the sky and the earth, grandmother - water - and grandfather - rock - ) in the world… These insights are from a very different world view than our Western one and they broaden the view of the Kingdom of God, not just in the sense of holiness in time, but more importantly, in terms of the sacredness that exists in place and in the environment, and that demands a “spatially related responsibility of the Two-legged people toward all people and all things", Two-legged, winged, living-moving things who share that place with them: animals, birds, plants, rocks, rivers, mountains and the like. 

So, while sitting with the Canaanites and Jesus, everyone on the grass would have learned to see the kingdom of God in the sense of spatial sacredness… Seeing God and the kingdom of God as the creative power in the world, seeing the power of God, as Wakonda, as the reci procal duality - the sky and the earth - is hidden and manifest in all the things in the world. The sacred can appear at any time. To know this is to have an incredible, immanent sense of present time and present place. With this deep sense of place, this commitment and belonging to the land, this interconnectedness, we cannot destroy the earth and the earth’s community for our greed. We cannot damage living-moving things of the sacred territory to feed our desire for power, for tomorrow’s wealth! And Jesus makes clear that we cannot serve God, Wakonda, and wealth, mammon both… Then, the question for us is, How will we strive first for the kingdom of God as today’s trouble and also as today’s beauty in this here-and-now realm of the 21st century? 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church