Advent 4 Sermon: The Birth of a Family (Luke 2:8-20), Dec 22, 2019

Sermon: The Birth of a Family  

Luke 2:8-20 

Have you ever listened to the birth stories your family members tell? Or maybe you have told them yourself… 

My children like to hear their birth stories: how they were born and what happened before and on the day of their arrival. My two sons were born at home. My older son Peace was laid on my bosom right after his birth on the warm bedroom floor (Not all Koreans sleep in beds.) My younger son Jah-bi was born “in the bathtub” at the lovely blue house we first rented on Vancouver Island; That’s the way I tell the boys about their births. Then, Peace, who was 4 years old when his “little baby brother” was born, and my partner don’t even wait to chime in and tell their parts, … in detail (You know what I mean!). But as the mother, what I often like to highlight is the moment of amazing mystery of the first eye contact I made with my children. The moment that tired baby Peace, about to cry, was laid on my chest, he opened just one eye with effort, just halfway, and when our eyes met, it seemed that he knew where he was and then he did not cry.

Adoption stories are often very powerful and moving, too. The families carefully weave together their own birth story through experience and memories: the story of how they first met, when and where, their first moments of the mysterious and powerful feeling of an immediate deep connection. By sharing the stories each year, or any time when the family wants to, the parents and children honour the birthday of their incredible love as a family.

Birth stories are often extremely powerful. They can immediately bring us back to a joyous moment, they can sadly remind us of some couple’s struggles with infertility, they can stir our imaginations with children hoped for, and they can make us aware of the difficult circumstances some people had to overcome in their lives. 

Birth stories are charged with deep emotion. 

Ask any parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle, and of course, older siblings about the birth of a new baby (or the welcoming of a child to the family), and they typically can describe the event in great detail (Karyn Wiseman). As most birth stories begin, the storyteller sets the stage… They describe the setting and the situation into which the child was born. They bring us into the realities of the event. In the Gospels, we are told of the reasons the family travelled so late in Mary’s pregnancy. We are brought into the place of the birth and why the location of his birth came about. The power of Jesus’ birth story lies in its humbleness - - a babe born in a stable, wrapped in simple cloth, and laid to rest in an animal trough. It is the reality that reflects/represents so many birth stories in the world. It’s the story of real poverty. It’s the story of marginalization. It’s the story of many refugees and immigrants. It’s the story of the babies, the children of God, whose family can’t find accommodation, haven’t received the generosity, kindness and acceptance of society… if we only look at the stable scenes, the manger scenes, the humbleness or the dire situation that Mary and Joseph suffer or embrace…  

And yet, in today’s Gospel, all of a sudden, the others begin to chime in to not lose any time to tell their parts and to weave the whole of the story together… 

“ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS” BY MURILLO

First, the shepherds came in a hurry, and they told their story to Mary and Joseph with great joy. (Indeed, we are told that “Thus is born the true saviour of the world - not Caesar Augustus, the oppressor, the colonizer, the false saviour of the world, the protector of those with power and privilege, but Christ the Lord, whose birth is ‘good news of great joy for all the people.’” Shepherds tell the story: “Mary, Joseph. We are the shepherds living in the fields near here. As you know, our job is just the same, every day. We keep watch over our flock by day and by night. But tonight was different. Just before we came to you, Oh My Lord, we were terrified. We were not sure what we were seeing at first, but an ANGEL of the Lord appeared and stood before us! You should have seen the glory of God. The light, … the beautiful light shone and surrounded us. We were frozen in the moment, terrified, and curious. We didn’t have time to ask each other, What’s going on? Can you believe this? We just couldn’t turn our eyes away. Then the angel spoke to US. The Angel’s voice was so soft, tender and kind, and the Angel said, ‘Do not be afraid; See — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people. … This will be a sign for you: You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ AND THERE WERE SO MANY ANGELS – a whole heavenly choir, and they sang, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favours’. So the angel told us to come here and tell you this and see the baby, and when an angel tells you to do something, you HAVE to do it, right? This baby is special – wait, what’s his name? Jesus is God’s child, and a blessing for you and for us, the whole entire world… Never doubt that.” The Bible tells us, “All who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

Maybe the thing about remembering the birth of a baby and telling the story is that everyone has their memories and they are all different. We are all natural meaning-makers, story-tellers, connecting what we see and hear with our own life situations, identity, hopes…, drawing lines between the dots - which have sometimes been laid aside, neglected and forgotten - and adding colours to the event to celebrate and experience again and again when the stories are shared with more people and in more places.

Ryan Carreon Aragon, Phillipines

Count the actors in the Nativity stories. Shepherds. Mary. Joseph. The Angel. The Magi. The Innkeepers. Even King Herod… The narrative becomes more complex, richer - just like any family’s life becomes richer and more complex with the birth of a child… 

The mystery of Christmas is that somehow we all can relate ourselves to the story of a baby wrapped in simple cloth and laid in a manger. It offers an entry point into our life’s and world’s complexities. It is, after all, the birth story of all birth stories and it’s a story of family. For many people, Christmas is both an exciting and a stressful time. Some families struggle with overwhelming burdens of care. For others, memories of closeness are accompanied by memories of loss and grief. Christmas is a space which invites the coming together of many significant life issues - experiences, often unexamined or unarticulated… Perhaps that’s when the stories of the birth of the holy child makes connection to the weary, tired part of our lives: We need the angels, the romance, the starlight, the symbols and the colour of the story. We can enter the story, find ourselves there, make our own exploratory journeys with the shepherds, just to see, to be there, and tell our part of the whole of the story… Then, and there, God joins the family… The Starlight falls down to the earth, “spreads diamonds” to the hearts of those who await hope and good news at midnight, rather than just watching over the earth and its people. God joins the family with both its fragility and strength, trading the freedom of power and distance to join us. God, out of all the judgements God has wielded, God chooses to “sacrifice” judgement and become vulnerable in order to fully exist with us, in the story of the humble birth of hope, and make permanent connection with us. And this story of the birth of the holy child is told generation to generation, place to place, all the time, every year. 

Concluding this message, I believe it is quite a relevant and true blessing to share the reflection of Stan McKay (Newsletter, Dec 2019, of Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre): The Birth of a Child. 

“In my home on Fisher River First Nation, we have celebrated Christmas for many generations. We understand the importance of the birth of a child as a sign of hope and new beginnings. We are discussing ceremonies for celebrating with families whenever a baby is born. In our cultural understanding, we know that every time a child is born there is a renewed hope for the future of our community.” 

This Christmas, how about telling the stories of a birth of a child, a baby, a family’s love, a new hope in your family? Joy, hope for healing, accompanies us when we tell our stories of new birth, in wonder, beauty, kindness and friendship… 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Advent 3: On Kindness (Matthew 1:18-25), Dec 15, 2019

On Kindness

Matthew 1:18-25

I read this story from 2010 in Patheos.

There is a legend about the Loretto Chapel, built in 1873, on the Old Santa Fe Trail. It begins like this: 

When the Chapel was built, the architect forgot to include a way for the nuns to reach the choir loft. The sisters weighed their options, but all were equally undesirable. They could build a conventional staircase, but that would take up too much room. They could rebuild the balcony, but that would be far too expensive. They could climb a dangerous ladder up and down, but that would be an accident waiting to happen.

The sisters’ predicament reminds us of Joseph’s dilemma, swept into a situation in which your only choices seem to be negative ones. He could divorce Mary publicly or divorce her quietly, but either way, in Joseph’s mind, he still has to divorce her. She’s pregnant, and not by him; there’s no way out that saves his dignity and her reputation. There is no possible resolution that could lead to full redemption, only painful, but necessary, choices. it never occurs to him that Mary’s unbelievable story may be God’s truth. It never occurs to him that if he embraced Mary’s words as truth, the situation would be transformed. 

No way out - - only negative options. What do we do when we face a situation in which our only choices appear to be negative? 

The author who wrote about the Loretto Chapel imagines that Joseph had a talk with himself that might be something like this: 

“I cannot believe that she has done this to me. I have been sitting here all day. I have been praying. I have even cried. For one fleeting moment, I even considered the possibility that she was telling the truth, but it is more than I can swallow. What man would fall for a story like this? It would serve her right to be publicly shamed. Why not? Nobody in town would blame me. But I am not a vengeful man. I am a man strong within myself, not concerned with others’ opinion of me. I have nothing to gain by humiliating her. I believe I will divorce her and save her the public humiliation of accusing her of adultery. It will be a quiet matter, the sooner we get it over with the better. I always try to think the best of people. How I wish I could of Mary! And of God. I confess I feel somewhat betrayed by God as well as by Mary. They say that you should never let the sun go down on your anger, but the sun is setting, and I am filled with pain. I will go to bed with my pain, and hope for sleep. Tomorrow, I will send a message to Mary letting her know of my decision.” 

(Show the picture of the painting by Rembrandt, Joseph.) 

On this night, an angel hovered near, whispering a message from God into Joseph’s sleeping ear. “Here”, whispered the angel, “is the key that unlocks your dilemma. Believe her unbelievable story. Marry her, and become the father of God’s child. He will need, not just any father, but a father like you, capable of nurturing him, and giving him a name, ‘Immanuel - - God with us.’”

Now, back to the legend of the sisters of Loretto Chapel. According to the legend, one night, while the sisters were together, a bearded stranger appeared at the door of the convent asking for work. A toolbox was strapped to his burro and he told the sisters he was a carpenter. When they told him their problem, he offered to build a spiral staircase. His spiral staircase was an engineering marvel, containing thirty-three steps and two complete turns of 360 degrees with no central support. The carpenter used wooden pegs instead of nails, and his only tools were a saw, a T-square, and a hammer. As soon as the staircase was finished, dissipating the cloud of despair and worry from the sisters’ minds, the unknown craftsman disappeared without asking to be paid. And, according to the legend, many believe that the carpenter was St. Joseph. Well, even though I grew up as a Roman Catholic, I am not very enthusiastic about saints (except for some inspiring women of courage like Edith Stein!). The point I would like to highlight about the Loretto Chapel story is that kindness, which is the theme of our third Advent Sunday, is a lot like that unconventional staircase, the “despair-defying staircase.” Just as the nuns did not get much personal information from the bearded stranger carpenter, many other ordinary saints in our lives prefer to keep a low profile, going quietly about their business. We all know someone who offers true kindness, someone who gives us a demonstration of how to build a staircase that lifts us out of impossible situations. There are people who help us to expand our imagination to dream and live courageously, especially when we are in difficult situations and the only options before us seem negative ones. “Quietly dismissing” Mary is never a kindness. Only when Joseph’s decision is based on the shared courage to defy despair with his partner, Mary, does it become the truly supportive staircase of kindness, built for the future of all.

Loretto Chapel Staircase, Santa Fe, New Mexico

There must be four characteristics (and more, I am sure) which go with the expression of kindness: the sacrifice of time, the sacrifice of judgement, the sacrifice of social status quo, the sacrifice of fear. When kindness is accompanied with the genuine significance of personal sacrifice, based on strength and courage, it transforms despair into hope, strong enough to build a “despair-defying staircase” for the people we are helping, in the community where we find each other as partners.

First, the sacrifice of time. To share kindness, we must give away or share something from ourselves. Sacrifice, when it is voluntarily offered, not forced or imposed by others, is a beautiful practice, even a spiritual journey, that allows the blessing energy to flow through us. For sharing kindness, sacrificing (giving away/sharing) time is the first thing. If you don’t share time, how could anything good even happen? I believe the foundation of genuine kindness is time, shared out of humility, because we see the others we are helping or sharing kindness with as being equal, as our partners, who are capable of teaching us, not just the recipient of our benevolence. 

Second, the sacrifice of judgement. Think about when you truly feel grateful when another person attempts to help you. We are often most grateful when we are offered non-judgemental empathy. Attentive listening. Just empathic listening, without the other trying to impose their judgement, opinion, advice, will… Our pains are heard as they are and our struggling selves are accepted. We must sacrifice our ability to judge others in order to show true kindness.

The third component that makes kindness genuinely supportive comes from sacrificing status quo. A few weeks ago, a Residential School Survivor told me that the most painful thing to reflect back on was that his liberation, his own awareness of the impact of colonization on himself, was slow. His liberation was slow, because racism and oppression are often carried out using the language of love. Even at residential schools, many of the staff believed that they were doing the right thing as they destroyed his people. Believing in the superiority of White culture, they lacked the capacity to see that Indigenous traditions and families and knowledge keepers have their own intrinsic, important value. Kindness as the despair-defying staircase means that it must defy the status quo at its heart. Kindness is sharing respect and humility, out of deeper understanding on our interdependence with one another. 

The last thing I would like to mention, the sacrifice of fear, is also a very important aspect of kindness. See Joseph in agony, in today’s story. He is a carpenter, a lower class, in his time, but he is a man respected in his community, a decent citizen. Not much, but compared to Mary, he has incomparable power. He has choices. He’s thinking, “Oh, I am filled with pain. I will go to bed with my pain, and hope for sleep. Tomorrow, I will send a message to Mary letting her know of my decision.” The flip side of his sense of self-protection is his fear. What happens if he loses all that makes him secure? The flip side of his power is the fear of shame — the fear of the feeling of weakness, the feeling of grief, pain and sorrow, and the realization that he himself is vulnerable to society’s rejection, judgement and even shunning. His power, small as it is, could be taken away, his status stripped, were he to be seen as a fool, a cuckolded husband. Instead, what makes Joseph’s act of kindness a true one to commend, comes from the fact that he sacrifices his fear of weakness in order to build a staircase to walk up to the future of God’s dream, with Mary, and with the child, when he has only wooden pegs, (instead of nails), a saw, a T-square, and a hammer in his toolbox, trusting that in God’s toolbox, told in his dream, the family would become strong, a structure for blessings, the good news, to flow to the world. Joseph moves from fear to courage. In the Advent season, we are urged to do the same. Accompanied by the necessary sacrifices of time, judgement, status quo and fear, kindness is never a sign of weakness and naiveté but the demonstration of personal courage and strength and faith that transforms today. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Advent Two Sermon: Sakihiwawin (The Love upon which everything hinges), Luke 1:39-55, Dec 8, 2019

Sermon: Sakihiwawin 

       (The love upon which everything hinges) 

Luke 1:39-55

In today’s reading, two women, Elizabeth and Mary, meet each other and share greetings. The way-making and the way-wandering Creator follows their footsteps with a smile. 

“After Gabriel receives Mary’s stunning consent to walk a path no one has ever walked before, the messenger/angel gives Mary one point of orientation, one navigational clue that will assist her to make the rest of her journey possible: Gabriel tells her of her kinswoman Elizabeth who is pregnant in strange circumstances herself.” (Jan Richardson) 

At this point I will share with you one very useful concept. Wild Space. I learned it from Sallie McFague, who was a professor at VST while I studied there in 2007. Sallie continued to inspire countless people through her books and lectures until she died just a month ago. Many of us were very saddened by the news of her passing, partly because of how her ideas touched us. Wild space is the part of each of us that doesn’t quite fit into our conventional worlds. What would you say is the wild space within you that does not fit into the worlds in your life? What are the characteristics of your “conventional worlds”, and how do you fit or not fit into them?

For some, it is the “consumer and market-oriented, individualistic, greedy world”. See, Black Friday and the temptations of Amazon Prime. What else… I would say conventional worlds are the oppressions that make us suffer. Colonialism. Hierarchy (which places humans at the top of everything, while, actually, we are the most dependent beings in creation.). Individualism. We might consider them to be “normal”; we live with them just like we breathe air. And yet, at the same time, at the crossroads of conventional worlds and who we are, we learn that there is a spiritual and emotional realm inside of us that makes us resist these normal, isolating worlds. There’s a yearning within us to seek out ways to shape our world differently. That yearning is wild space; the heart story and personal truth that matters. It is the desire to participate, to change the world. We desire to be heard and to hear, to be connected and to connect. Friendship would not shine like the sun, if we do not feel safe and confident enough to let each other know about the wild space within ourselves. My favourite definition of friendship is that it is a shared space in which each person finds true security and safety in intimate equality. No one is higher or lesser, none of the cultures, the cultural wild spaces, dominates another. Could we see Elizabeth and Mary, their kinship and friendship, in the light of wild space, too? I think so! Mary’s Magnificat is truly a hymn that praises the wild dreams of God and our wild spaces. “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. She has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; She has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

The question for us in this Advent season may be… What is the wild space I own and share? What are the wild space of ours, friends, strangers, the Creator’s people that overflow the strict lines of prescribed, imposed, conventional worlds? And, why do our wild spaces overflow?

Imagine, "wild space" like a wild space you’ve gone out to on the land, in the actual real world. You find a place on the land that is away from things… It might be a hilltop. It could be the shore of a lake or a river. It might be a glade in a forest or a rock ledge or a fallen log in a clearing. A wild space is like these… Hear the wind or the breeze in the trees or grasses. Hear the sound of birds and the small creatures. Smell the land, and differentiate the aromas of the soil, grass, blooms. Pick up stones, twigs, leaves, moss, tree bark, and feel each of them. Let our fingers trace each of them and see them with our touch, and know how the touch, the smell, and other senses make you feel. Enjoy the feeling of connection. That may be like the wild space in our hearts too. It’s the energy. Know how the land makes you feel in the day and the night... 

I learned the following from a lecture by Dr. Alex Wilson, a Cree scholar who teaches at The University of Saskatchewan: Sakihiwawin. We are a part of Creation. That means we are created, we are born, with the same creative energy as all of Creation. And that is Sakihiwawin. Before explaining about Sakihiwawin which means Creative energy of love, we need to talk about reconciliation. Reconciliation originally stems from Catholicism. (framed from within a Catholic world view. That’s where the idea came from) For any of you that know people or you may have been yourself in abusive relationship, the solution is not everybody getting along and back together. 'Reconciliation' is not the perfect descriptive word to express the ultimate reality we should strive for… Alex Wilson says that some of us understand reconciliation in a limited way to just mean “getting along” among Indigenous and Settler peoples and communities. Limiting reconciliation loses the full implication that this critical process must include for us to be connected to underlying Indigenous philosophy and world views and honouring them in a way that they influence our behaviours and work. Reconciliation, in its true sense, validates and actualizes the “wild space”  against the aggressive, capitalistic world. A very wise Elder teaches us that Reconciliation means declaring the ecological interdependence among Indigenous and Settler communities as equal partners, being able to contribute, inspire and transform, and emphasizes our human interdependence on bio-diversity.

Why do our wild spaces overflow and make us desire change? Because we are the creation of Sakihiwawin, the creative love energy. The energy of the Creator. “Sakihi” is the root for the term love. The creative energy is the love, love in action, love in constant motion, (which is Cree natural law). All things on the earth, in the sky, in the air and under the water are created with vital love energy, and therefore, love is the thing upon which everything hinges. Elizabeth and Mary, as kin, as friends, greet each other and find each other in joy during their very strange, difficult situations because they have faith in the Sakihi energy - - the love, as a way of being, upon which everything hinges. They have been able to keep their wild spaces intact and connect them together to make a greater whole. Alex Wilson says Love is why the water protectors are doing what they are doing. Love is why there is Standing Rock. Elizabeth. Mary, Joseph, Wise Ones. Shepherds. Angels. All of the characters in the nativity story appear and write the extraordinary drama of the birth of hope because the creative love energy, Sakihiwawin, positions these actors and us in the story that comes every year in new, unexpected ways. Sometimes we have to make a difficult decision and stand up for friendship, for justice; we choose to follow Sakihiwawin, the wild space in us that moves us to act, both inwardly and outwardly. 

May your Advent journey be guided by the creative love energy of the Creator to reach and hear your wild spaces. When friends meet, may the way-making and the way-wandering God follow our footsteps with a smile and bless us. 

Hymn:  VU 12    She Walked in the Summer 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church