Sermon: Who Do You Say That I Am?
Matthew 16:13-20
Before scripture reading
Since the summer, for the sermon, I’ve tried to focus on offering more scripture-based preaching, instead of sharing more personal reflections. I LOVE exegesis, looking at scripture and how it is so relevant to us and our world, but today, I am going to get personal. Jesus says in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Sermon
In today’s reading, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Hearing those answers, irrelevant to him, he asks his disciples one more time, changing the question just a bit, changing people to “you”, “Who do YOU say that I am?”
Today, I would like to share with you about identity. I will share with you about my identity, and I hope that will inspire you to think about your identity – what shaped your life, to make you the person you are today?
I was born in 1979, in Gwangju, in the southwest of South Korea. It’s a big city, the fifth biggest in Korea, and my birth came one year before the government, a military dictatorship, sent troops into Gwangju’s streets to massacre thousands of pro-democracy students who were demonstrating, in defiance of martial law. When the troops and the soldiers passed the outskirts of the city and invaded the downtown, students climbed on trucks and buses, weaponless, to fight the soldiers. Ordinary citizens went out on the streets to support them, handing out packed lunches and food. While the massacre was happening, no one outside of the city knew what was going on because all media were controlled by the government; no reporters were allowed in. Until the first truth and reconciliation commission was established twenty-five years later, in 2005, it was just known as a riot, not the Democratization Movement. (My husband told me this week that it was banned to teach about it at University in 1994. Students secretly passed on the knowledge underground.)
As a baby, I was carried on my mom’s back when she went downtown to visit a hair salon just one day before all of these events happened. After that terrible day, I grew up with silence. No one taught the elementary school students of Gwangju what happened when they were babies. The silence was born out of fear, and the desire to avoid trouble. We grew up not knowing what had happened, but we knew the deeply shared common hope for justice and democracy. That hope lay underneath the surface of fear and obedience, but it was there.
When the citizens of Gwangju saw a new democratic government win the election in 1993, with our leader (who was like Nelson Mandela) as the president, only then did my parents and my teachers express their extreme happiness and tears and laughter, and the whole city literally went crazy for rejoicing!
In my city, I grew up in a new, planned community. It was very nice, living in a new, shiny place. Later I learned that my new place was someone else’s old place - those who lived in the older, poor, farming towns had to leave where they lived, to make room for the pleasant new communities. I grew up thinking that the original people who remained, living just outside the border of the newly developed area were so different from us. They were poor, and poverty was attached to negative connotations. The town outside where I lived had a big orphanage; each of the schools in the new neighbourhoods received kids from the orphanage. Each class was assigned two or three kids, as if they were so different, they had to be spread out. They often looked spiritless, lifeless. Every year, I felt sympathy for them; I wanted to get to know them and become friends.
All these experiences have remained with me. To be honest, I have just recently begun to reflect on what their influence has been on my life and my psyche that I begin to see the connections. I begin to make connections between the massacre history of my home town and the consequent stigma attached to people from Gwangju as being Red and Communist, the punishment and discrimination we had to go through, and the Metis history, here in Canada.
Historically, there were efforts to build Indigenous confederacies across Turtle Island. One of these that included the Metis, Cree, Ojibwe, and Assiniboine was called the Nehiyaw Pwat in Cree ("Iron Alliance" in English). And they made the efforts which resulted in the creation of the 5th province of Canada, Manitoba - the language used is that Metis people confederated the province, or ensured Manitoba's entry into confederation. While they were successful then, the outcome - due to racism and colonization - was ultimately the dispossession of Metis people from 1.4 million acres of land they had been promised in the Manitoba Act (1870). Many of them fled the new province they had helped create, and tried to re-establish a new homeland in what would become Saskatchewan. Metis people and the new alliance tried to confederate a 6th province but the railway had been built by then and the Canadian Government sent in 1000s of military men to defeat Indigenous resistance on the prairies. That's when the indigenous alliance lost the Northwest Resistance in 1885 and Louis Riel was hung. Since then, Metis people entered into the Forgotten Years - a period of dark repression and oppression where they were beaten, raped, evicted from their own lands, prevented from sending their children to school, or receiving health care, with extreme poverty and starvation. This lasted until the first World War but didn't really start improving in a concerted way until the 1960s.
Historically, there were efforts to build Indigenous confederacies across Turtle Island. One of these that included the Metis, Cree, Ojibwe, and Assiniboine was called the Nehiyaw Pwat in Cree ("Iron Alliance" in English). And they made the efforts which resulted in the creation of the 5th province of Canada, Manitoba - the language used is that Metis people confederated the province, or ensured Manitoba's entry into confederation. While they were successful then, the outcome - due to racism and colonization - was ultimately the dispossession of Metis people from 1.4 million acres of land they had been promised in the Manitoba Act (1870). Many of them fled the new province they had helped create, and tried to re-establish a new homeland in what would become Saskatchewan. Metis people and the new alliance tried to confederate a 6th province but the railway had been built by then and the Canadian Government sent in 1000s of military men to defeat Indigenous resistance on the prairies. That's when the indigenous alliance lost the Northwest Resistance in 1885 and Louis Riel was hung. Since then, Metis people entered into the Forgotten Years - a period of dark repression and oppression where they were beaten, raped, evicted from their own lands, prevented from sending their children to school, or receiving health care, with extreme poverty and starvation. This lasted until the first World War but didn't really start improving in a concerted way until the 1960s.
Here in Canada, my educational background has given me some advantages, but I have struggled a lot. I have a hard time being recognized as who I am. I sometimes find myself in two different situations. Some people like to consider me as just one of them - as their regular minister. They would say, we called you, not because you are Korean but because of who you are - as someone who can be a good minister. What that means, what they are telling me is, "We would love to see you as someone like us"! OR some people have no higher expectation or interest in me because I am not of the group of people they identify with. Neither of these is good. The former is assimilation. The latter is stereotype.
So I developed a strategy of self-identification and assertion of myself and my needs. The strategy is that I list the categories I identify with. I tell others, “As an Asian, newcomer, immigrant, queer/non-binary/woman, to whom two kids are attached and who speaks English as my second language”. So far, this has been very helpful. It’s the politics and power of critically using my positionality to reverse expectations. Before others tell you who they think you are, let them know who you really are. When I tell others that my experiences have been different because of being those categories, I keep my power because I explain my stakes in the dialogue.
So I developed a strategy of self-identification and assertion of myself and my needs. The strategy is that I list the categories I identify with. I tell others, “As an Asian, newcomer, immigrant, queer/non-binary/woman, to whom two kids are attached and who speaks English as my second language”. So far, this has been very helpful. It’s the politics and power of critically using my positionality to reverse expectations. Before others tell you who they think you are, let them know who you really are. When I tell others that my experiences have been different because of being those categories, I keep my power because I explain my stakes in the dialogue.
In our journey of finding ourselves, our identity, all things past, all things present, all things we have not yet been, all our fears and all our dreams count. We recollect, remember, relive, reflect, and we realize all are connected. All are like stitches that are embroidered with one needle, different threads. Our identity is never fixed but is shaped and changes, challenged and develops, dismantled and gathered back all the time. Identity is at the heart of how we understand faith and practice it.
How have you understood and worked on yours? My early experiences have shaped my heart for resistance, to feel and express anger over forced silence regardless of who experiences it, me or others. I know what it means to be silenced, to be treated as a category, and not an individual.
Last week I was challenged when I was reading Rekindling the Sacred Fire by Chantal Fiola. She is Metis Anishinaabe-Kwe (woman) from The Red River region of Manitoba; she currently teaches Native Studies in U of W. I learned a lot of insights and historical information from her book, but what profoundly shook me were the participants’ stories in respect to identity and self-identification. For her research, Chantal interviewed 7 people with Métis ancestry, or a familial connection to the Red River Métis, who participate in Anishinaabe ceremonies.
Most participants indicated that the way they self-identify has changed as a result of following their spiritual path. Diane shares, “Rather than being just kind of like floundering out there and just looking around, swimming around, trying to find who you are; right away you just identify yourself as Anishinaabe. You’re not Metis, and you’re not White, and you’re not a Halfbreed, and you’re not a dirty Indian; you’re Anishinaabe… If you call yourself Anishinaabe, everything else that you grew up with, all those names and labels, they kind of just disappear. Because the word Anishinaabe, to me, is such a spiritual word; a name.” Lance also shared the story of how his spiritual path led him to identify as Anishinaabe. “I started self-identifying [as Anishinaabe] when I went to see an Elder in a tipi. He asked me who I was, and I said, “I’m Lance Wood.” He says, “Who do you belong to?” I says, “I’m a Métis.” He says, “You’re a Métis?” And I says, “Yes, I am a Métis.” He says, “That’s what the White people give ya; you’re Anishinaabe. Go find yourself. (…) I knew I was re-discovering myself who I was, being Anishinaabe rather than a Métis person who was labelled early on in my childhood days.” Mike shared, “It’s made me proud to be who I am… given me that sense of pride, sense of identity, knowing that I am not alone.
After Diane’s and Lance’s stories, reading Dawnis’s story pierced me to the heart. Dawnis shares that her spiritual journey has led her to self-identify more with relationships and connection in Creation instead of fixating on a particular noun or identity category. She explains, “I’ve identified differently, not like a noun identity. The way I identify myself (and I continue to identify my connection and my relationships in Creation) is different because I am actively announcing and relating to Creation. … It’s not so much a noun-based identity, but relating.”
Dawnis’ words helped me realize that I would also like to give more intention and love and effort, more mental, emotional and spiritual energy into building a more spiritual, beautiful, resilient identity. Too often, our individual experiences are translated into socially conventional categories. I thought that defining myself to others was better than letting them define me, but what a waste of time! Life is too short to not explore. Life is more abundant than being boxed in some conventions – even if you are the one building the box. It is wonderful to know who you are and identify yourself in “relating” to the Creation. Therefore, in relation to the air, water, land, the creation, in a more imaginative, nature based, spiritual sense of identity.
In today’s reading, by asking “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus is asking how his name is a spiritual name that is new and life-giving and freeing people from bondage and division. It is not John, it is not Elijah, it is not Jeremiah, it is not one of the prophets. It must be a spiritual name, in relation to the people who suffer in exile, to the people resisting oppression, to the people fighting the colonial ruling of the Roman Empire, much as the Anishinaabe have fought the colonial ruling of Canadian government. ‘How is my name, how is my identity, relating to the Creator’s people?’, Jesus asks of Simon son of Jonah. Simon answers, “You are the Messiah, the Child of the Living God.” Messiah, Jesus’ spiritual name. Jesus tells Simon, “I tell you, you are Peter.” Peter, Simon’s new spiritual name. Peter means the rock, the sturdy anchor that keeps the boat from unmooring, from being lost to the currents. Jesus asks us to know what it means to follow him through spiritual identity. Jesus asks us to relate to Christ “In truth and spirit”, to be anointed with the sacred oil that the Creator’s people harvest and press. Who do you say that Jesus is? Who do you say that I am? Who do you say that you are? We are shaped by our experiences, and we are crafted by God, always relating to the whole of Creation, never standing still.
Ha Na Park
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