Lent 1 Sermon: Redefining the Wilderness in the era of Climate Change, (John 2:13-22), 2020

Sermon, The First Sunday of Lent, 2020 

Redefining the Wilderness in the era of Climate Change

              John 2:13-22    Jesus clears the temple

In today’s reading, Jesus “turned over” the tables of the marketplace, which was inside the temple in Jerusalem, the capital city of the nation, at the busiest time, on one of the holiest days of the year. And his disciples remembered later that when he was asked, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” he told them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

What is the first temple - in Jesus’ response - that Jesus tells his followers to “destroy”, and what would be the second temple, which he proposes to “raise up” in three days? 

Disciples follow their teacher’s lessons and actions, and in the first century after Jesus’ death, the accusation they were charged with most often was that the Jesus movement turns “the world upside-down.” In other words, just like their teacher, the disciples - the post-resurrection followers of Jesus - emulated what their teacher showed them and “turned over” the tables of fundamentalism: the holy agendas and authority of the powerful people. Even in Jesus’ time, it is obvious that the most invincible and unspoken holy agenda seems to be money and power. So, possessions. Like teachers, like disciples: In his ministry of the very short 3 years before he died, (and he was young), Jesus disrupted the symbolic universe of the Jewish world at that time. It was the symbolic actions he performed - including “turning over the tables of the marketplace” in today’s reading - in the temple which forced the powerful priestly elites to seize him and bring him before the Romans - to a death sentence. In this sense, we can say, the first temple Jesus says to destroy would mean the fundamentalist world and its holy agendas. The second temple he says that he would raise up in three days means the other kind of temple - a community in which everyone, every being that participates would ‘break bread’, share, together, a life of abundance. The question for us is, where do we stand? What is our temple practice in the scope of “global life” in the era of climate change? Our fellow beings are not just those who gather today in this sanctuary, but as we said in the prayer of confession this morning, they are also the land, the water, the air, the forests, the creatures, plants and animals, human communities (especially those whose lands and life are most vulnerable to climate change - in both the Global North and Global South - ) and children. 

When I think about Jesus turning the tables upside down, the first activist who comes to my mind is Greta Thunberg. Was the global-wide climate change movement she led a passing phase? Is it quiet now? Just like, perhaps, after Jesus left the temple, and in three days, or even three hours, or maybe thirty minutes, people continued to “sell cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables” as if nothing had happened. No! young people, with or without Greta, still meet here in Winnipeg, and also in Bristol, last week, in School Strike week 80. Her Facebook shows a picture of at least 30,000 people continuing the climate strike, school strike for climate change action, Fridays for Future, in the pouring rain in Bristol, England. And, we are talking about - for now, most of us are just talking, sadly - what would be a responsible and faithful action and daily practice we can do during our day? During just one ordinary day by ordinary people? That is incredible… The question how we might be able to turn over the fundamentalist world, the fundamentalist table has now reached all the way down to a local ordinary church like ours. 

The next question is, then, what is the fundamentalism of our table, our world, that we must challenge and disturb – or, okay even “destroy” - if we, as a nation, or nations, collectively and individually intend to “do our share” (quote from the Men’s Study Group letter, Immanuel) and work together to “strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change … by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (striving for 1.5°C)” set as the goal to all nations in the Paris Agreement on climate change (December, 2015)? 

What are our fundaments, our foundations that need overturning? May I invite your thoughts? (Hear a few answers from the congregation) 

Capitalism, for sure. 

And colonialism. Over time, I would like to share with you and learn with you how, and why, colonialism is the hidden (OR, “holy and unspoken” agenda of today and of the past) cause of our environmental crisis. We love Greta, and on Nov 9, 2019, in the article entitled “Why we strike again,” written by her and two others, she claimed, "The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.” The article takes up one of the arguments of de-colonial environmentalism: that the climate crisis is linked to the history of slavery and colonialism as practiced by Western powers.

Last month, Immanuel United Church called people to gather and decide on the theme of the season of Lent, 2020, and seven people sat together and talked, and inspired by the passion of the Men’s Study Group on climate justice, we created the title of the theme together: Wandering the Wilderness of Climate Change. And I promised the people there that I would assist the congregation to redefine Wilderness, the Desert, to be more relevant to the era of climate change and to the call of our faithful response. To do this, I would like to teach the same way Jesus taught his disciples - by inspiring questions inside our hearts when we hear a story or a parable. What would be the wilderness in an era of climate change? In the Hebrew Bible, traditionally, wilderness and the practice of wandering in the wilderness was presented as a very difficult place to be: Wilderness mirrors the landscape. It's a desert. Hot in the daytime, cold at night. Wilderness symbolizes complaint, confusion and conflict. The Gospel tells us that after his baptism, Jesus was led to the wilderness, and wandered there, and was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. After baptism, and after identifying and overcoming temptations, he came to the villages and found friends to do the work together. 

Here’s a story, which I hope inspires some questions for you to think about this week. Some of you might recognize the story; it’s an abridgement of a short story by science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin called, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Imagine a place where everyone lives happy, peaceful, rich lives, a place filled with music and dancing and cultural expression, where everyone has just what they need to live their best life. But - there is one exception. A very small one. In a tiny, dark closet in a dank, unfinished basement in a single lonely building within this vibrant and beautiful city lives a small child, terrified and alone, given enough food to barely survive, never given love, or comfort, or even a word of kindness. The entire city, this vibrant, happy, rich, place of great freedom, peace and prosperity lives with the knowledge of this child. Every inhabitant of Omelas was initiated to the secret of the place when they were twelve or thirteen. They were shown the child, the miserable, suffering child, and asked to keep the city’s agreement, the “holy and unspoken agenda” that the foundation of all their happiness is inextricably linked with the forced misery of that one innocent child. It’s written into the pact the founders of the city made with an unknown entity long ago - the prosperity and peace of an entire city for the cost of just this one small being’s suffering. Who is this one little girl? That’s the question I would like to share with you. 

Where the wilderness comes into the story is in the ending. This is how the story ends: 

“At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: From Star to Dust - - For Wilderness Generation (Exodus 24:12-18), on Transfiguration Sunday, 2020

From Star to Dust

:For Wilderness Generation

Exodus 24:12-18

This Sunday is known traditionally as Transfiguration Sunday, when we listen to stories of transfiguration. We may be more familiar with Jesus’s story, which begins with, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. ”It is transfiguration, because the light that was shone forth by him, changed the accompanying disciples’ perception of Jesus - they could never again see Jesus in the same way that they had always seen him. His physical being was transfigured, full of light, an “ebullient incandescence” (Remember? I used those words in the sermon two Sundays ago; and when I was practicing for that sermon, my sons said, “Mom is making up new words again!” and marched around, chanting ‘ebullient incandescence!”), the pure white light of joy. (from Richard Wagamese’s Quality of Light). Many preachers might choose the story of Jesus’ transfiguration on this Sunday, but the predecessor to that story is Moses. The transfiguration story of Moses is recorded in the book of Exodus we read this morning. 

It is interesting that the stories of the transfiguration of Jesus and Moses are read today, one Sunday before Lent begins. January was the season of Epiphany and post-Epiphany which begins with the story of the star whose light guides shepherds and the Magi to find where baby Jesus sleeps in the manger. The delicate, gentle light from the star in the night sky becomes the dazzling, bright light on the high mountain that affirms Jesus’s true nature - the Son of God, with all his divinity and heavenly authority. And with this, the season that celebrates the light ends. If the Christian year’s first chapter’s subtitle is light, the second chapter’s is the desert, the Lenten journey. It is an interesting liturgical transition: the star of the diamond light falls on the desert, and becomes sand and rocks. 

Today’s stage is in between - not the sky, not the desert, not the dusty ground, but on the mountains, in both stories of the transfiguration of Moses and Jesus.

At the time when Jesus lived, many people believed that he might be the second Moses or second Elijah, (like reincarnation!), both hugely influential prophet figures in the history of Israel. Moses in particular, who led the entire Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt to seek the promised land, after wandering in the desert for 40 years. The number of years, forty, is symbolic. That same number is used to describe Jesus’ time in the desert, spending forty days and forty nights fasting, in a vision quest to find his true relationship with the world and the Creator, overcoming the temptations of power, control, and safety. For us, the season of Lent emulates Jesus’s journey in the desert. Through the narrative thread of the symbol of forty years and forty days and nights, the stories of Moses and Jesus become parallel stories that mirror each other. 

In today’s reading, God calls Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for the people’s instruction.” The story continues, “Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain… Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.” 

Today’s story ends here, but the subsequent chapters, 33 and 34, continue that, on the mountain, Moses asks for God to reveal God’s presence to Moses, and while God refuses to show Moses their face, God agrees to allow Moses to stand in a cleft of a rock so that, when God passes by, Moses is allowed to see God’s back. The people see the ‘afterglow’ of the connection between God and Moses, as he comes down from the mountain with the ‘skin of his face radiant’. Moses’ glow is so intense that he wears a veil after his encounter with God.

So, clearly, Moses experienced transfiguration with the light of God. Moses and Jesus’ stories mirror each other in the number 40 and with the light, and yet there is also a stark difference between the two: in the Gospel story, the light is an “ebullient incandescence” - bright, dazzling, pure white blinding light - . In the Hebrew Bible, God declares, “I will come to the thickness of the cloud and meet you there.” The radiant light that glowed on the skin of Moses’ face after Moses’ encounter with God was just like the starlight in the midnight sky. When God passed by, the mountain on which Moses stood was covered entirely with the thickness of the cloud where, God said, he would meet Moses inside the darkness. The thickness, the darkness of the cloud was not in contrast to the light; the light’s presence was deepened and intensified in its de-candescence. I appreciate the moment of the new light being pregnant inside the matrix of darkness in our lives. We are more familiar with understanding and calling the Sacred and the Spirit as being ‘light’, but that can encourage racial overtones of ‘light as good’ and ‘dark as bad’ that is embedded in some Christian theology and metaphor. In Exodus, the inner stirring of God’s love and tender connection was protected inside the thickness of the dark, in the dusk of the cloud.

Let's ask, right here: Why do we read transfiguration stories every year, just before we start the season of Lent? Why should transfiguration stories be marked as the bridge between heaven - Epiphany’s star light - and earth - the Lenten desert rocks -? Why are we invited to visit and revisit the stories on the mountains - whether it is on the high mountain of Jesus’ time, open in every direction, or on Mount Sinai, submerged in the unpredictable weather of stormclouds. What could be the meaning of transfiguration for we who live in our own era, which still calls for peace that fights fear, for hope that fights despair, for right relations that fight false individualistic freedom, in this time when we, each of us, are called to engage in these fights as a spiritual warrior. In transfiguration stories read each year, in Christian churches, we are called to transfigure our world views and faith. We need the thickness of critical thinking in order to be pregnant with the light of new understanding, faith and confidence. Transfiguration must happen in our lives too.

So, here’s one more perspective for how to read transfiguration stories, TODAY. 

The Generation in the Wilderness 

In the Exodus story Moses is the biggest spiritual warrior - or hero - of that time, and he represents his generation. It is the generation that left Egypt and wandered in the desert for forty years. Now, here, forty is not just symbolic but also the necessary length of time for the Exodus (meaning the escape) because only a new generation, born in freedom, would know how to live in freedom. A queer scholar, Rebecca Alpert, defines Moses and his generation as a, “Wilderness generation”. The Wilderness generation are those who escaped captivity and moved to the wilderness, for whom it is not easy to forget the problems of their oppressed past. Trauma and colonization are deeply psychological; they are even remembered in the body – both body and mind remember. And this wilderness generation creates/receives the new covenant, a new commandment, a totally different, life-affirming code of living, declaring, “No more Pharaoh.” No more laws of Imperialism they lived under in Egypt. God’s commandment, God’s law, are based on totally different priorities and values: respect, living in togetherness, and caring for the weak, foreign residents, and strangers. “Do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” It is the holy instruction to become a people of God, journey as a community in difficult times of uncertainty, fear, starvation, with no visible signs of success. 

But, the most important part, I think, is that it is not the wilderness generation, as represented by Moses, who would cross the river Jordan and finally touch and smell the soil of the promised land. Moses led everyone to that land, but he, himself, was not able to cross the river Jordan. He died just before they were almost to the promised land. The lesson here is that whatever we in the wilderness generation do, ultimately our work is for opening up new possibilities, new hopes, a new tomorrow, for the new generation. “Only a new generation, born in freedom, would know how to live in freedom.” The new generation is able to envision and inhabit the worlds that are closed to the wilderness generation, and they will determine what their life will be like in the future, when we hope they will arrive in the promised land. Then, it is also true that each new generation becomes the wilderness generation - because they would define what the captivities and oppressions are in their time and context, and therefore, what true freedom would look like - the struggle is different for each generation, but it is present for all generations. 

The wilderness generation, OR, each generation in their wilderness time, must know when and how they would transfigure themselves or allow themselves to be transfigured, to become spiritual warriors, not just for themselves, but ultimately and more importantly, for the new generation who are already here and who will come, always, tomorrow. When we choose to sacrifice our entitlement, and sanctify the tomorrow of peace, co-existence, well-being, we journey towards justice for new generations. TRANSFIGURATION is the call for all of us, before Lent (fasting and identifying today’s temptations and overcoming them), tasking our heart, mind, and spirituality to be transfigured with courage and ebullient incandescence, on the thick clouded mountain of our own time.

So, here’s a song for you, and us, — Transfigure Me!   (Ha Na will sing it.)

Transfigure Me      Christopher Grundy     From Songs for the Holy Other (p. 73)  

YOUTUBE video: please click here. 

Transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, more like Jesus; 

transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, Jesus my light. (Break) 

Take me up to the mountain

shine your light down on me

’til the person you’ve always intended 

is the person everybody can see

Transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, more like Jesus; 

transfigure me so that I might be more like Jesus, Jesus my light. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: Choose Life, Create Life! (Deuteronomy 30:15-20), Feb 16, 2020

Sermon: Choose Life, Create Life!

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Introduction: 

(Begin with the video that plays Mozart’s Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 12 Variations Piano) 

Today’s sermon continues on from last week’s reflections on creating life after destruction. Be the Light in the world with all that we are - our humanity, emotions and individuality. This week’s message is not just a repetition, although the value of repetition in cycles and movements that spiral and return can open a new spiritual perspective to us.  Today’s message is more like piano variations. That’s why I played 12 Variations of Mozart’s Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for you. I have played those variations before. My teacher taught me to play them when I was young, and as a child pianist I didn’t find the variations exciting, but I do now. 

Sermon: 

There are certain events that change our lives permanently; we cannot go back and undo them; we can only move forward with our altered lives. When those times and events happen, we often evolve to learn the way to find ourselves, again. We learn how to empower ourselves and others who have been affected, and support them. We learn how to be resilient, to reconstruct our lives and establish new norms that open fresh possibilities for tomorrow. Last week, I shared with you two writings from Jeanette Armstrong and Richard Wagamese: The Bluejay’s laughing about humans who do not know the Sun has risen and it is a new day, and Wagamese’s praising the Infinite Quality of Light, “more colour and more light to come.” These are songs of hope and faith for those whose individual and community life has been turned upside down violently and permanently to arise and be radiant again - it is possible; it is a call. 

People call such earthshaking events trauma and its forms are many. But trauma is not just about what happened, what the event’s story was, but how it has been experienced: It is life experience, deeply psychological, fatally historical, often passed on in the form of intergenerational experience of trauma. Trauma is structural. It is the wounded state of mind of the downtrodden, the violated peoples, therefore, it is also the wounded heart of the Creator who chooses to be not omni-potent but fully present to the hurt as the God of Compassion, who weeps, opening himself, embracing vulnerability. In this sense God is not a weak version of the human experience, but shows the model of how to be an enlightened Being with an empathic aching heart of love, action and listening. And yet such a Mothering God, such a Fathering God is hidden in the world… because we humans are always chasing after the signs of power; we yearn for a conquering, sky-filling God. 

Last week, I introduced to you what the writer Alicia Elliott says in the Foreword to This Place, 150 years Retold. “As Indigenous people, we all live in a post-apocalyptic world. The world as we knew it ended the moment colonialism started to creep across these lands. But we have continued to tell our stories; we have continued to adapt. Despite everything, we have survived.” These stories are owned by the survivors of trauma, in contrast to the history written by the victors. Every Indigenous person’s story is, in a way, a tale of overcoming apocalypse. 

I am sharing this witness before we move into today’s Bible reading because today’s reading is tricky.  We all know that in the Bible, in the Gospel stories, there are many covenant stories to create life, advocate life, to affirm life. The Bible has been the true good news for those who seek self-determination. It gives them the strength and the moral imperative to rise up, and stand up for themselves. It is the story of the underdog, and therefore, today’s reading can be read in quite opposite ways if we do not take special care, because today’s reading is written by the victors, the conquerors - the Hebrews. 

One of the contradictions we face in history and in our lives is that the same identity can mean different things depending on the times and the social context. We can be both oppressed and privileged by the same identity. The Hebrew people who escaped enslavement in Egypt and passed 40 years of exile wandering in the desert, almost to the point of a starved and uncomfortable death, the people who had endured devastation, clinging to just one hope, one promise – that they would enter the promised land – our sympathy is entirely with them. In today’s reading, the author declares that “If you obey the commandments of the Creator and walk in his ways, and observes his commandments, decrees and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.” 

To possess. 

Wait - what?

What does that mean?

Before this word, we should pause… to read the words not from the viewpoint of the victors, but from the perspective of those who have lost and who feel the full force of the destruction of their lands and the violation of their homes. 

Slightly before this chapter, in Deuteronomy, chapter 7, the author declares, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you - the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canannites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you - and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.” 

To sum up, get that land, bear no regrets. It’s all legitimate, no matter what, because God has declared you can – you must, in God’s name, enter and possess. No mercy – no reflecting that the opposite of possessing is the other’s experience of being dispossessed. Their disruption. Their displacement. Their destruction. 

However, there’s hope. In so many places, our Bible clearly tells us that even in the devastation of wartime, humans create life. Those who have been displaced, disconnected, discounted, who have found themselves on the other side of God the Victor’s sanctity and sanctuary indeed rise and stand up to sing and praise and illuminate the God, the Ultimate Guardian of the human spirit of recreation, reinvention, resistance, reconstruction and resilience and of the Bluejay’s laughter. “Wake up! Wake up! All shadows are gone. There’s daylight even in the swamps!”

There is hope and the future's daybreak even in imprisonment for those who have been thrown down because of their prophecy! 

Last weekend, at a retreat called Renewing the Peace Treaty with the Earth, I ran into a familiar storyteller, Bob Haverluck. He said something like this: Do you know where most of the most beautiful descriptions, praise and illustration of the new heaven and earth have been written in the Bible? While those voices were, in human eyes, trapped in the situation of “captivity”. In the victor’s eyes, they are confined. In the Liberator’s eyes, the Creator’s eyes, they are free. Always, prophets in the Bible are found in one of three situations - “on the way to captivity, or in captivity, or just getting out of captivity”.

Even while imprisoned, the prophets still create life. Still write blessings. Still infuse imagination, which is a power no weapon can kill. Then, the people of the Holy, Aching Liberator, use anything that is available to them, pens and letters, stories and songs, to tell others just what God has also declared in today’s reading, in the crossroads of “Life and death, blessings and curses,” always, choose life, and  just like every blade of grass to which angels say, “grow, grow, grow, “create life, O People of History. Amen. 

Hymn: 

All people are also the stardust whose destiny is to shine. 

Let me introduce to you a beautiful hymn about Grandmother God. 

Grandmother God, grandmother God.

Younger than a youth,

older than the stars,

passionate for truth,

breaking prison bars,

comforting the sad,

wise from ancient days,

Grandmother God, gladdened by our praise. 

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: Be Like the Light In the World (Matthew 5:13-20), Feb 9, 2020

Sermon: Be Like the Light In the World

Matthew 5:13-20

In today’s reading, Jesus declares to us, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” This light in the world and in us is like a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden. This light is like the flame on a lamp. If you want to give light to all in the house, you must bring it out and find the right, open place to put it. If you put it under a bushel basket, the light is wasted, illuminating only itself.

Being the light is a great metaphor to explain how we can act as an agent to bring the life of the Kingdom of God forward, in our daily, social and political lives.  In order to act, we must understand what it is like to be the light. We know that light is everywhere. I mean not just here, in Manitoba or on this earth, but light as a scientific phenomenon -  the cosmic wavelength from our Sun that exists, with no need for human witness to see it exist. There are billions and billions of Suns out there in the universe, and some of the Suns (billions!) have planets, locked into orbit and circling around them, and some of the planets (who knows how many?) have enough gravity and air to contain and scatter the light from their sun. Like our earth, these numberless planets have days and nights. 

I believe that when Jesus said, “You are the light in the world”, he was telling us to be like the light, in the same way that we experience it in the world. It’s the light with which we have relationship through experience. We may not notice it all the time, but when our heart becomes a little poetic, God may speak to us through light-inspired imagination and emotions.

In today’s reading, the light Jesus gives as examples seems to show light as the most advanced technology of his time, like a city or a lamp. He does not talk about the light in nature, in the night sky, outdoors, perhaps because the land was so available, unpolluted, undisrupted, as a “given”, in his time, there was no reason to talk about technology-free nature’s light. Now, for us, who live in a post-industrial, capitalist North American context, we may find some compelling reasons to discover the “quality of light” in the land, in the earth, in the sky, in humanity… rather than fluorescent light or neon signs. 

Here, I am happy to share with you two quotes from two Indigenous writers. After experiencing the destruction of life, in one’s individual life and also through 500 years of colonial history, (in Alicia Elliott’s description, “as Indigenous people, we all live in a post-apocalyptic world”), more people have begun to write from “the heat of the earnest struggle” about the task of reconstruction, challenging colonial imaginings. People write about the human spirit, resilient and optimistic, searching for a better tomorrow, believing that even amidst the devastation of wartime, we humans must create life and art, fighting the exterior power that dehumanizes us. Writers, poets, prophets re-write, re-sing, and re-paint how we all are human, each with our deep, emotions and individuality… 

So, the first writing is from Jeannette Armstrong’s Whispering in Shadows. 

“Wake up. All the shadows are gone. There is daylight, even in the swamps. The blue jays are laughing…. Laughing at the humans who don’t know the sun is up and it’s a new day.” 

The Second writing is from Quality of Light written by Richard Wagamese. 

Here, Wagamese sings that there is an infinite quality of more colour and light to come.   

“We are born into a world of light. Every motion of our lives, every memory, is coloured by the degree of its intensity or shaded by the weight of its absence. 

I believe the happy times are lit by an ebullient incandescence - the pure white light of joy - and that the sadder times are bathed in swatches of purple, moving into pearl gray. When we find ourselves against the hushed palette of evening, searching the sky for one single band of light, we’re filtering the spectrum of our lives. We’re looking through the magic prism of memory, letting our comforts, questions or woundings lead us - emotional voyageurs portaging a need called yearning. Because it’s not the memories themselves we seek to reclaim, but rather the opportunity to surround ourselves with the quality of light that lives there. 

The muted grays of storm clouds breaking might take you back to the hollowness you found in a long good-bye. The electric blue in a morning horizon might awaken in you again that melancholic ache you carried when you discovered love.

Or you lay on a hillside in the high sky heat of summer, the red behind your eyelids making you so warm and safe and peaceful. It’s like the scarlet a part of you remembers through the skin of your mother’s belly when you, your life and the universe was all fluid, warmth and motion.” 

I imagine Jesus saying to us “You are the light of the world.” is also telling us “Be like the light in the world.” Greet a new day, greet family, friends, and neighbours, greet changing life, struggles, pains, happiness, sadness, loss, grief, greet the earth, everything with all that we are… with all of our humanity, with “more colours and more light” for tomorrow. Do not be afraid; let yourself be an emotional voyageur, truly, as the Creator shares her wisdom through all of our inner realms and geography. See how the Creator shines through us and through others for the Creator’s work and for the Creator’s people.  

Courage is facing our foes with integrity, and faith is walking with courage. So, Courage is faith, illuminated. 

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, so it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father/Mother in heaven.” 

Individuals and faith communities are searching out where to go from here. Jesus’ wisdom? Be like the light in the world – stand tall, illuminate others, show the way.

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church

Sermon: The Cross Crossover (1 Corinthians 1:18-31), Feb 2, 2020

Sermon: The Cross Crossover 

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

When you enter this space, our sanctuary space, what is the first thing that catches your eye? It really depends on the time you enter: if it is before a fundraising event and you are here to set up tables and chairs, the first thing that stands out for you may be that the space is empty and open. If you are someone who is attracted to art, beauty, and creativity - “Even amidst devastations of wartime proportions ,humans create life and art. It is also resistance to reinvent and recreate humanity.” (Emma LaRocque), some of our banners might appear to you first. So much depends on who you are, when you see the space and what you are looking for. If the cross has a special meaning in your faith and spiritual journey, it would not take long to find this large, wooden cross at the centre of our space. When I first became the minister here at Immanuel, someone told me that when we turn on the lights in the chancel area, the light that hits the cross makes three thin shadows, as if three crosses stand on the hill of Golgotha. For me, when we gather like this on Sunday, or for the services to celebrate the life of someone dear to us, what I see is the community of people, and the spirit of love, care and concern like breath in the air, which connects us and binds us in unity through diversity. 

This is a picture I cherish. 

Here, I look like a young adult, but I was a newlywed at the time; it was taken during our honeymoon trip, when we visited La Verna, Italy. (La Verna is an isolated mountain of 4,209 ft situated in the centre of the Tuscan Apennines, rising above central Italy. La Verna is known for its association with St. Francis of Assisi where he received the stigmata. In this picture, I am kneeling down in deep faith and a spirit of submission in front of a wooden cross left leaning on the rock by an unknown visitor. There’s no symbolism there, just myself and the humble expression of faith which I cherished in my heart when I was in my twenties. 

To me, at that time, the cross represented the intention of purity and integrity in all I do, say, and feel. I can lovingly recall memories of the spaces where young Christians gathered before the cross, which appeared in various creative forms, made by the hands of diverse Korean artists, communicating messages like hope from despair, liberation from oppression, the humble birth of Christ, Min Jung ( in Korean, that means grassroot people), the earth, or the land, especially in the retreat spaces or on the street for protest. In my memory, these crosses awoke different emotions than the ones I feel when I see the cross being abused as a symbol of dominance, based on hierarchal and patriarchal theology. 

That cross, the dominant cross, has been used to crush the spirit of the oppressed, women and the poor, the indigenous people of the lands, and other non-conforming groups in order to gain wealth and power by coercing or forcing submission to the institutionalized and colonizing rules of Christianity. 

According to Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, during the first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with image of Christ as a living presence - as a shepherd, teacher, healer. He is serene and surrounded by lush green earth, depictions of this world as paradise, than Jesus on the cross, Jesus in crucifixion, “as if dying was virtually all Jesus seemed able to do”, and paradise disappeared from the earth. Only since the second millennium, the cross has been the central image and expression of faith in church history and Institutionalized Christianity, through the right way of its use for justice and healing, but also through the abuse of power and violence. In our third millennium, today, we may not have had enough time for ourselves, individually and together, to truly ponder what the cross means for us, in our cultural and historical context, and in our faith development and spiritual nurture. I encourage you to spend some time in reflection and share with someone who you can trust. 

For Paul, who wrote the letter to the Corinthians which Debbie just read for us, the cross redefines what is God’s wisdom, in terms of the “weakness of the cross”. 

When Paul wrote this letter there was conflict among the Corinthians. There seemed to be factions within the community, set along lines of social status. Paul describes the conflict in Corinth in terms of “wisdom” versus “folly/foolishness.” According to Paul, some of the Corinthians praised and understood wisdom in terms of spiritual power. For example, these boasted their "speech and knowledge": how they spoke, how they possessed knowledge, and how they exercised their deemed spiritual gifts - as more superior, as better, as more sophisticated than their counterparts. What’s interesting is that some scholars find that those who laid claim to ‘wisdom’ seemed to be the social elite in Corinth, since it is these who would have been able to invite a philosopher into their home. While the exact relation of social status to wisdom remains uncertain, it is quite clear that those who claimed that they manifested the kind of wisdom: wisdom of spiritual power (which is associated with their higher social status) was of Paul’s deep concern. So Paul upheld the “weakness of the cross” as the true wisdom of God, even though others may see it as foolishness or a stumbling block. Paul says in verse 16, in the letter to the Corinthians “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” And he declares, it is not through power, status, or wisdom that God is made known in the world, but through ‘what is low and despised… so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” (1.28-29). 

It may be true that Paul saw in the cross a reflection of his own loss of power and status. Loss became the means for God’s power to be revealed in his life. And yet for many of the Corinthians, it is possible that they had the opposite experience. Those who were previously not powerful, not of noble birth, not considered wise, might have initially seen in the crucified Christ a mirror of their own life experience, then have experienced a rise in status, beginning with the cross and ending in the power of Christ’s resurrection. 

If I am asked what I think of the cross, I would say, TODAY, (because our definition of things can change with time) for me, the cross is crossover. The cross, such a beloved, central and controversial symbol of our Christian faith, is like a drum. You may touch it, and play it, and the rhythm, the culture, the use, the purpose, the sound, the effect that each player intends can be different. It can play deeply moving rhythms and vibrate with soul-searching tunes like a global-music/Jazz crossover album. But a drum can also be thumped in the battle field to threaten the enemy. The unmistakable heartbeat in Paul’s pastoral urging in this letter is that any spiritual gift, if it is true, should be used for building up the community of faith, the body of Christ, and done through the spirit of co-operation which he identifies with love. If we sum up Paul’s message in various places, it all consummates in the pastoral urging of love. He emphasizes interdependence, working for all and the benefit of the community, in the spirit of love, through celebration of diversity, opposing any kind of hierarchy, and challenging the status quo. It is a great challenge. A wonderful challenge that grows us. Paul says, “Prophecy and knowledge will end, and speaking in tongues will cease, but love, which is patient, kind, not envious, irritable, or resentful, and which does not insist on its own way, will endure.” (13.8, 4-6) 

The cross as the crossover work is still the work we must do - - how shall we continue sharing the Gospel in our homes and in the world across the lines of difference - - especially in our time of calls for respect and renewing treaties? What does ‘cross’ mean for you, in your faith, in your life? When the light illuminates your cross, what will be the first thing that other people see?

Ha Na Park

Immanuel United Church