Sermon: Inverting the World Through All Saints Eyeglasses (Matthew 5:1-12), Nov 1st, 2020

Inverting the World through All Saints Eyeglasses

Amid so much anxiety, today, we turn to All Saints’ Day in the church’s calendar. All Saints’ Day usually recalls our communion with of our spiritual ancestors throughout the centuries, celebrating our unity with saints as far away as North Africa in the fourth century and as close as our deceased relatives. But All Saints’ Day also reminds us of our bond with all believers in the here and now. 

(Jim Wallis, “Ebola is an Inequality Crisis”, Sojourners, 2014)

Many Christian churches mark Nov 1^st as All Saints’ Day. Traditionally, the eight beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, are read on this day as well. With that in mind, I have recently been thinking about who saints are and whose deaths we mourn today.

The identities of saints, who they were and what they believed, is an interesting subject for me, because I grew up in the Korean Roman Catholic church. When I was young, we were given a “Christian name” by our parents or God-parents during our baptism. My baptismal name was Maria Angela. My aunt, who was my God-mother, loved a character called Angela in the book she was reading - that’s why she added Angela to my parents’ chosen Christian name for me, Maria. Later, I learned that I would be able to change that name to my own choice for my first confirmation. So, in Gr. 7, I chose Francesca Romana after reading her story in the book about Catholic saints. The reason I chose ‘Francesca’ was not a sacred one like my aunt’s. You see, there was a cute boy that went to my church. He always attended church wearing a very neat white polo shirt paired with crisply-ironed navy cotton pants, and his Christian name was Francesco. I loved the way ‘Francesco’ sounded, as well as his clean, sharp, rich image. In those days, everyone in the church called my dad Benedicto, and my mom Benedicta. My parents would introduce their children to other congregants – their daughter Maria Angela or Francesca Romana and my brother, Maximillian Colbe. Our names were very important.

By the time I was an older teen, the Korean Roman Catholic Church had committed to teaching their congregants about our homegrown Korean saints. The Korean Roman Catholic Church beatified 102 martyrs – including a lot of women who joined the church when the Bible and the teachings began to be secretly passed on from China in the 1800’s, professing their belief even when they were facing execution. After the inculturation movement in my youth, many Roman Catholic children in Korea were given Korean saint’s names as their ‘Christian’ name.

In the meantime, I learned that Protestant churches and their pastors called all congregants “saints” based on the theology that every believer is a saint – dead or not. I think of my maternal grandmother who “received” Jesus and learned the Bible from a missionary who visited her rural, hilly, isolated town in the southern Korean peninsula when she was a child. As most mothers did back then, she sacrificed her ambitions and raised all her children, her seven daughters and sons, to go on to higher education, persisting with strong faith and fairness. I would absolutely call her a saint. However, I am not sure that I would call the Elders in the church who stood up in the pulpit and offered prayers of the people condemning and cursing “homosexuals” before God and the churches and their leaders that promote those hating activities and words, “saints”.

I believe that if we commemorate All Saints Day as a venerable tradition, it is to ask together as a community who our saints are and whose deaths we mourn in our world today. In my life, I have mourned for those whom I have only met for a short period of time but who made such an impact on my life through a meaningful, soulful connection that I cried or felt deep sorrow upon the news of their death. On the other hand, I had some relatives whose deaths I did not really mourn in my heart. And, like you, I have mourned the death of people who died in tragic circumstances, because of injustice or violence, because of human rights violations and political corruption, even though I may not know them personally. We are called to acknowledge our ignorance, our inability to mourn those who died in other political, geographical or religious spheres because we do not know them well, or because we fear them, or because our media does not give us the whole picture of their lives. I believe that who are the saints and whose deaths do we mourn in our world today are sacred questions to ask.

As a religious minister, I have often had the privilege and honour to remember and celebrate the lives of the departed with their families and friends. When I meet with families for planning the memorial service, some families may choose not to share too much about their family life or about their parents, but families usually have a lot to share about their parents. When the families are harmonious and close to each other, they are happy that I listen to their stories and memories and that I am present with them, letting them weep when they weep, laughing at the same time they laugh. Usually for the families who are happy to share their reflections, the departed one possessed those virtues that are named and blessed in today’s beatitudes. Their beloveds were humble, (“poor in spirit”) able to share sorrow and show kindness. They yearned for fairness and justice, extended welcome and compassion, embraced joy both when it was easy and when it was difficult, and encouraged actions and words that would bring peace. Every time I meet with families to remember those who passed before us, I am humbled to learn that we really cannot, from our own perspective, judge someone else’s life; that is ultimately God’s job. Every life, everyone’s life, is worth celebrating, worth remembering and worth mourning, no matter how they lived their life. The value of each and everyone’s life is immeasurable. We celebrate and mourn all lives because the “infinite-quality light” from God penetrates and flows in all of us, in all matters. It’s dazzling.

It is important to mention that “the poor in spirit”, “those who mourn”, “the meek,” “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, “the merciful”, “the peacemakers”, “those who are persecuted” are defined by social standing as much as by the spiritual disposition that individuals possess. Jesus addresses these blessings to those who are outside of the social protection and privileges of that time. Ultimately and primarily, by proclaiming the Beatitudes, Jesus makes a promise that, regardless of how this world fails them, God’s kin-dom, God’s commonwealth, God’s steadfast love, will comfort and lift up those who are faithful and benevolent. No matter how the world mistreats them, God will ultimately be faithful.

We live in a world in which so many unholy priorities have been painfully and devastatingly evident, even continuing over the course of this pandemic. As a result, we have a great many more names and lives to remember on this All Saints Day. Especially those in the gray-spots such as senior’s care and also in hot spots - an “equality crisis” – in urban poverty. Our human nature may cause us to avoid those who are suffering, but the Beatitudes are an invitation from Jesus to model God’s blessing, align ourselves with God, and reorient our priorities to comfort and mourn with those who suffer.

We mourn when those we love have been lost. Even if we may not have a direct, personal connection we are able to raise awareness, extend our care and prayer, and mourn for those who are being hurt by the present situation of the world, whether in terms of health, or finance, or safety. Will we let ourselves feel the pangs of hunger for justice against the persistence of unrighteousness? Will we do the hard work of making real and holy peace?

Recently, my family received a parcel from Korea that we had been anticipating for weeks. My parents – Benedicto and Benedicta – made a care package of tasty stuff to comfort their grown-up child, me. A small bag of dried pollack (I can make a decent soup with it), a large bag of dried squid (Oh, you know the delicious treat for yourself with a good night snack) and 10 tiny bags of matcha green tea powder. But the main reason for them to pack these treats was to send eye-glasses for their grandson, Peace. Peace came downstairs, as soon as he heard the sound of my excitement from the kitchen. He opened the case and put on his new eyeglasses. And immediately he exclaimed, “Oh no, this can’t be right. Everything looks inverted! It’s making me dizzy!”

All Saints Day is, primarily and ultimately, like wearing eyeglasses to see and appreciate the lives of all the saints in today’s world with God’s inverted blessings – the beatitudes. To find who today’s saints are is a dazzling adventure. The Christian tradition of All Saints is not about Christening, giving baptismal names, writing about martyrs, or preserving a day of sober quiet after the craziness of Halloween (perhaps not in 2020). It is a day to wear the lenses that invert the present world, to see the infinite-quality light of God’s desired world in the lives of all saints, asking who the saints are in today’s world and whose lives we honour, celebrate, truly lift up, and when they are lost, for whom we mourn.

 

Hymn:  You Are Holy, You Are Whole by Per Harling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f_6mL7-6m4

Sermon: The Songs For An Escape Community (Deuteronomy 34:1-12), Oct 25th, 2020

Reflection:  The songs for an escape community 

(Deuteronomy 34:1-12)

It was the summer in 2013. My family was visiting my parents in Korea. Thanks to their care, my partner and I were able to attend the celebration service for the 60th anniversary of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea. I was waiting to see who the preacher of the day would be and saw an old man, relying on his cane and also being helped by a youth walking up to the pulpit – he was a 90 year old, shrunken and frail person. Everyone became very quiet. Then, in a second, he preached like thunder. He was Rev. Dong Hwan Moon, the younger brother of Rev. Ik Hwan Moon who was the protagonist, prophet and poet that led the spirit of the Korean democratic movement in the 70’s to 90’s. One of his poems is included in our hymn book, Voices United, in the form of a hymn, “With the Wings of Our Mind” (VU 698). The title of Rev. Moon’s sermon at the celebration service was “The Escape to the Garden of Eden”. I later learned that he wrote a book “The Tower of Babel and Wanderers” in the same theme in his last year. Rev. Moon lashed out against the evils being done in the name of the neo-liberalism that unleashes the tyranny of free trade and free markets. He said it was our Tower of Babel. This Tower of Babel tells us that possessing more equals more happiness, so, produce more and consume more. Still, even in our era of more advanced social perspectives on equity and equality and the dignity of people’s lives and human rights, materially advanced nations constantly ignore the local and indigenous people’s deeply aching cries and concerns about water and air pollution, global warming and social economic disparities and disasters in order to create more tax revenue and make the wealthy even wealthier. Here in Canada, we still pump bituminous crude oil from tar sands, invest in fossil fuels for Canadian pension plans, and favour the megafishery corporation over the rights of treaties. 

In his sermon, Rev. Moon said only when we experience and realize evil as an evil would we dream to escape from the evil. In the Bible, the first five books of Torah, called the Pentateuch, begins with Genesis and ends in Deuteronomy, with the chapter we just read being the last and which records the death of Moses in Moab. The Bible says that God forbade him to enter the promised land. Between Moab where Moses was buried and his death was mourned, and Canaan, the promised land, was the last geographical border, the river of Jordan, laid out before the people Moses was leading, “the escape community” (Rev. Moon-Dong Hwan.) Just like this group of people had to find the right timing to cross the Red Sea by walking on the dryland when the water of the Sea was divided into two walls on left and right in Exodus, in Deuteronomy, the whole community was about to enter the land of Canaan. Canaan was the land that God showed in the vision of countless stars over the endless wild landscape to Abraham, the first ancestor of the Hebrew people. I wondered what all of this possibly can mean to us? 

Moses died in Moab. He was never able to enter the land he believed he was destined to walk into with his people even though “his sight was unimpaired and his vigour had not abated.” His death was somehow described to be premature and unexpected. It was said that he did not die of ripe old age. Certainly, for most people, his death must be a puzzlement and disappointment. Since his youth the whole point of his life was to lead his people and enter the promised land. Moses successfully inspired people to overcome fear and escape the dreadful night through exodus, only allowing them to carry their young ones on their back and with unleavened bread for sustaining life for the next couple of days and nights. All together, they were stopped by the width and the depth of the River Nile. The water opened and the Hebrews ran to reach the other side before the dryland was closed before their eyes. Everyone in the escape community asked, Why wasn’t Moses allowed (or able) to enter the promised land after all of these efforts? 

It is interesting to note that every year the Jewish community reads the first five books of Torah, starting with Genesis, “In the beginning”, and ending with the story of Moses’ death in the last book. It is as if this is the eternal cycle of our human story… or condition…, from escape to the garden of Eden. It is as if the original place God intends us to live is in the garden, Eden, in the peaceable realm where flowers bloom and fruits ripen but human greed does not. In Genesis, God creates the world and God’s desire for us is that we be the peaceful dwellers who enjoy the flourishing of life in the garden. Then, nevertheless, human greed sprouts and begets hatred, killing, murder, the building of the babel tower, the selling of a brother to the empire as a slave. In Egypt, aristocracy exploited human manual labour forcing it to maintain the system of the powerful based on social class. In the ancient Mesopotamian Near East, those who were not residents in the inside of city countries, those wanderers and nomadics who did not settle in one region were called Habiru. Perhaps it meant savages, or ‘the uncivilized’, or ‘those who have no rights’, referring to those who were unregistered and who were of lower class. The Habriu were rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, servants, slaves, migrant labourers. Also, any disorganized peasant groups and artisans were treated as habiru. Ancient inscriptions show that not all habiru were Hebrews, but any Hebrew at the time who were forced labourers in Egypt were called habirus. That was their social rank and how they were treated in the ancient Near East world. However, Hebrews were distinct from other ethnicities. They preserved the belief in their God. They passed on their faith that they had a special relationship with God which originated with their first known ancestors-- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah, Rachael. When Moses discovered and reclaimed his own heritage as a Hebrew, when he started to learn about the God of the Hebrew people and when he encountered this unnameable deity in the form of the burning bush who told him, “I am who I am” (YWHW), his spiritual strength grew and his wisdom and prophecy spurred him onto the new path – empowering others to rethink the whole paradigm of their life based on the faith of their ancestors. Thanks to him, the new, really new and unprecedented hope for freedom, dignity and liberation was impressed in the hearts of the Hebrews. Very slowly, not only while these people were enslaved in Egypt, but through the next 40 years of making their way to the land that was promised to Abraham, Hebrew people learned to believe leaving Egypt is the right thing to do, as the hard-earned truth. The journey to realize this belief was very difficult and was prolonged with lots of rerouting as they looked for water, and were guided by only manna and the pillars of cloud and fire. And that was it. Moses was the pillar who led the escape community from the empire. His task, vision and teaching were to liberate his people from the enslavement mentality. 

The leadership of his young successor, Joshua, had a different paradigm. Right after Moses’ death in Moab, with the new and young leadership of Joshua, the Bible reports the Israelite’s first conquest project, the destruction of the city of Jericho. To note, the obvious reason the Hebrew people took so long to reach the land of Canaan – which took nearly 40 years -- is that they took the roundabout path that goes around the coast under the Sinai Peninsula, rather than making the straight line to Canaan passing Philistine above the Peninsula. The escape community made 15 lengthy stops before they reached the River Jordan. The Bible says that going roundabout was to avoid war. “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the Philistines, although it was nearer; for God said, ‘The people may have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people roundabout, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds” (Exodus 13:17-18). Moses’ campaign was different from that of Joshua; It was the campaign of liberating the community because leaving Egypt, leaving the empire, was the right thing to do. It was to say evil as an evil and to follow God from the system that would ultimately wrong and harm them. By the way, according to my contemporary road trip companion, GPS, it would take about an 8 day walk, non-stop and without sleep. Therefore, just a week-long walk, compared to 40 years. Moses’ leadership was focused on constructing an escape community. That endeavour needed significant time and the work of multiple generations which was very different from just fleeing or fighting. A people of faith was being formed and reshaped in God’s ethical and religious commandments and convent. Moses completed his task and left his legacy to the generations that followed. 

I still cherish the thunder words I listened to at the 60th anniversary celebration of the birth of the Korean Presbyterian church which is one of the few liberal denominations in Korea and which used to be the leading voice for the Korean democratic movement. Now their voices seem to have lost influence, because few in the denomination continue to think about what the evils are now and who are presently the national and global Pharaohs. Rev. Ik-Hwan Moon sang the vision “With the wings of our song on the wind flying/ to the dreary desolate earth our love sending/ let the vision of light open wide our hearts/ ‘till the songs of our hope freedom ringing.” His younger brother, Rev. Dong Hwan Moon wrote about our need to escape following the vision of the renewed earth with the culture of “life”. God still speaks to us, the wanderers from the Tower of Babel. What are our escape songs? How can we truly be an escape community to inspire and influence as well as to be inspired and influenced by today’s prophets? 

Reflective Music: What Does the Lord Require of You?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XonFoO_gWM

 

Hymn:  VU 701    What Does the Lord Require of You?   (The Micah Song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bnn_pnqaMo

Sermon: On “Giving to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:15-22), Oct 18th, 2020

Reflection:  On “Giving to God the things that are God’s”

Matthew 22:15-22

It was Thanksgiving Monday when I read this week’s scripture on my phone. Holding the phone above my head, I laid down on the carpet of my living room which is now quite nicely decorated with a comfortable cream-coloured sofa and red and yellow autumn-coloured pillows that mirror the view through the living room windows. It was a peaceful and restful thing to do after the great turkey feast we had at our place with our friends, and I read, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” For things in the world, it’s hard and even seems inappropriate to divide and separate what is God’s and what is not. Ultimately, there’s no division where we can draw the line permanently, as if “We will give Caesar what is his, but nothing more; we will give God what is God’s, and that’s everything.”

I began to ask, what are the things of God which we must give back to God? I asked, is this abundant sunlight I receive through the windows God’s? In that late morning, I was in delight - all of my body’s senses were focused, to consume what I saw in my eyes – the beauty and esthetics of light, its delicacy as it illuminated my home. Is this light God’s? The light created a beautiful image of shadows through the rolled-down window shade, brightening the piano on the other side of the living room. The shadows looked like piano keys to me. What are the things that belong to God? I thought about time. Is the moment I was enjoying God’s? Am I granted God’s grace to enjoy this minute and second and feel I am fully alive? Is anything and everything we can appreciate and express genuine gratitude for, God’s? Every object in the living room, everything I see in the natural environment, every material wealth, every sense of joy that springs up from the inner depth of our being, everything good and nurturing and faithful, everything that challenges us to grow in relationships and through the works we do, is all of that God’s? If someone else asked me if that is so, I would say yes as the minister, but as myself, I would invite my companions to reflect on what we mean when we say certain things in our lives and in the world are God’s. Asking similar questions of myself, I realize that I have an issue with using my customary thought processes to think about God or things of God in the language and image of possession. Perhaps thinking about things as if they are permanent and that permanence originally belongs to a permanent God who acts like a human who owns and claims something as their own may be the source of my puzzlement, or the start of our misunderstanding about God and our relationship with God and God’s relationship to us.

At this point, I stood up and walked to the window and stood there, putting my face close to the glass surface and looked at the world; I saw - - the open field and trees of the Seine River. As more and more days greet us with a cold wind blowing from the north, the wind swoops up all the leaves to fall eventually (most trees on the right side were already bare, left with only their dry parched bark). All the tall grasses will also swoon and fall to the ground when the first frost freezes them and the millions of snowflakes begin to cover them to lie on the flat ground for the next long season of winter. There is no assurance of permanence, the woods are full of evidence of change, and yet there is a profound trace of God; God is present and changing our world as God-in-the-world, itself, as a personhood, and also as the ultimate ground of being and source of life, changing and evolving to the new path.

What is interesting to me in today’s reading is that the rulers could show Jesus precisely what belonged to Caesar. It was a coin for paying tax, a denarius, on which the image of the emperor was stamped. Metal, forged and shaped, something that appears permanent, obvious, and unchanging. Things that are God’s are hard to show and prove, as the things and relationships in which we can find the image of God are not in permanence - they are flowing and fluid, changing and evolving. They nourish and feed the creation and our beings and lives, and as grace is given, it flows in a form which is neither quantifiable nor measurable…  What belongs to God is what we, you and I, all creation, embody in our beings, both physical and metaphysical. If we are to pay God as we pay our taxes to Caesar, it is by loving our neighbour, by respecting each other, by being mindful of the use of our body, mind and heart, awareness of our breathing, speaking in love, deep listening, so that the roots and the image of God’s love grow stronger and deeper in us, in our relationship with the world. We are getting better at recognizing and embodying God’s life-giving and empowering, counter-cultural images, when we are aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing and oppression, when we learn to practice generosity in our thinking, speaking, and acting, when we express our commitment not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; when we share our time, energy and material resources with those who are in need. Especially when we begin to look deeply to understand that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from our own; also, when we express our faith in the power of living intentionally to reverse the process of global warming. When we practice Right Livelihood (Thich Nhat Hanh). It is how we give to God the things that are God’s, and praise the love of God in the world, putting down deep roots in the ground of our beings. 

As I was writing this reflection, I got up from the desk and went up close to the glass of the living room window and looked at the outside and how the wind was blowing so hard. In the meantime, I got a phone call from my older son, who said, “Mom, I think I need to go to washroom really soon, and it’s too cold outside. Could you come and pick me up from school, just for today?” Of course, I said no, and smiling, I looked up to the sky, now going outside, the gray cloudy moment on the Thursday, and gave thanks to God for giving me a new awareness every day about how I am part of the whole universe. I also offered a prayer that I might nurture the actions and commitment necessary to live more intentionally in my faith, hoping to embody God in actions and work. For now, I practice deep listening to myself, and giving myself a loving speech, reminding myself - start again. Give God the things that are God’s every day.

 

Hymn:  VU 820   Make a Joyful Noise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCf_kfiThoA

 

 

Sermon: A Travel Log In the Middle Space (Luke 17:11-19), Thanksgiving Sunday, Oct 11th, 2020

A Travel Log in the Middle Space

Luke 17:11-19    (Ten Healed; One Returns to offer thanks.)

Today’s Gospel story begins with telling us that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, and was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. How interesting!

If you were to look at a map of the land, you would realize that Samaria and Galilee border each other; there is no “region between” them. Therefore, the “region between” Samaria and Galilee, linguistically, must refer to a certain space in the middle of the two, and yet there is none. The land Jesus and his disciples are travelling is either one or the other: either Samaria or Galilee. We know Galilee was the hometown of Jesus and his folks. At that time, Samaria was treated as their enemy or foreigners, since a long time before the experience of exile left its mark on both kingdoms.

The encounter today between Jesus and the tenth leper happens in the middle space where any traveller would or should expect tension between ethnic and religious differences, between Samaritans and Jewish people, to be palpable. As well, the traveller would also notice that it is a place where it is impossible to forget that the two had once been as one blood and one nation. There, in the middle space, in the region in-between, this travel log of Jesus and his friends found in the Gospel of Luke chapter 17 records Jesus healing the ten lepers.

However, today’s Gospel story does not only present the middle space in geographical and racial terms, it also tells us how the society controlled the disease and oppressed those who were born with it or developed a disability later in life. In the time of Jesus – and for centuries after – leprosy was a dreaded disease. It caused horrible disfigurement and there was no known remedy. Still worse was the suspicion and judgement that leprosy was a divine punishment. The solution at the time was to forbid sufferers from coming into contact with other human beings. The lepers stood some way off as described in today’s story: “The ten lepers, keeping their distance, called out, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” All kinds of apartheid, whether based on race, disease or disability, are unjust. The fear of contamination cannot justify the discrimination and social segregation completely, especially when religions sanctify exclusion and separation in God’s name. The pain and suffering, the psychological effect of the trauma on those who have been put away, is beyond imagination.

I do not know what to say about the other nine lepers who did not come back to Jesus to thank him. I have no right to judge them. It’s not only because I never lived at that time, and therefore, do not share the understanding of the era. In today’s story, Jesus tells the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests – for it is they who can decide whether the person is really cured and therefore would be able to rejoin the community. Can we be so sure that the reason the lepers did not go back to Jesus, to thank him and praise God was their ungratefulness? After a long time of estrangement from families and communities, how would someone’s mind work? What care should have been arranged and offered so that they might find acceptance and belonging again; so that they really truly know they are loved? Where and how does real healing - mind, heart and body - begin even after the cure? To be truly healed, the whole community is needed, to be part of one individual’s journey.

What about the tenth leper who came back? Today’s Gospel tells us that he was a Samaritan. He lived in the region between Samaria and Galilee. The tenth leper cannot simply go to the priests to be allowed back to the community. He is a Samaritan and might only meet with contempt from any Jewish priest. It is not simple for him to take the same route which the others took. For him, the situations have double swords – He was a leper and Samaritan. The others may go to the temple to give thanks to God in the prescribed ways. However, the last leper has no temple building to go to. Instead, he returns to the one who healed him, gives thanks, and praises God’s grace in the presence of Jesus. Jesus, to the last leper was the living body, the manifestation of God’s true love. It is simply extraordinary that this healing story took place in the middle space, in the region between Samaria and Galilee, and between the Samaritan outcast and the Jewish “master”.

Standing with the last leper in prayer and imagination, I think about him and forgiveness. I wonder who should offer forgiveness in this story. The disease is a health condition, never a sin. Never punishment of God. Who should offer forgiveness? The religious authority who maintained the rule or those who have been hurt by the condemnation of society and religion? Priests or lepers? Jesus did not say, “your sins are forgiven.” Jesus’ words toward the leper was “your faith has made you well”(NRSV), “made you whole(KJV).” Jesus did not assume the role of priest. He took himself and the leper out of the oppressive, prescribed process of being condemned and redeemed.

I ponder how faith and forgiveness go hand in hand. I think about how our hearts, our souls, our human minds move and work: how we thank someone, how we forgive someone, how we take a risk to trust someone. How we understand someone. How we love someone. Even though I may not find a direct relevance to today’s scripture, the chapter I read from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book continues to come as an important insight or a warm wave to my heart: “When we understand our own suffering, it becomes much easier for us to understand another’s. Understanding is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time. Understanding is the other name of love. If you don’t understand, you can’t love. If you don’t understand your son, you can’t love him. If you don’t understand your mother, you can’t love her. To offer understanding means to offer love. Without understanding, the more we ‘love’, the more we make ourselves and others suffer.”

Could anyone, especially those who have been hurt, truly thank another, without understanding, without forgiving the past, without risking to love? Could we thank someone who have wronged us? Why or why not?

Have you praised God for the beauty of the Earth and the beauty in you and others, especially in the season of fall? When you see the vibrant brick-red and yellow leaves in the woods or the branches that start to go bare after wind and rain? Last summer I was introduced to a book by my Korean artist friend who had just published a book for children in which the changes of the season on a typical Korean grass-filled trail was depicted in stunning green water colour. The book’s title is “The Grass-bundles at the Yun-nahm Creek”. My friend chose to begin the year, to begin the illustration, with the season of fall, then winter, spring and summer, and her book ends in fall that comes again. The stories in each page move very slowly, telling the readers, “Seasons come back but none of them is the same. They do their utmost even through repetitions, every time, all the time.” Personally, the words that struck me with insight and beauty were these ones, which were the words in the first page: “Everything began with the fall. The stuff, light like feathers, carry the beginnings of the world one by one, little by little.” My friend was depicting that the seeds flying and fallen in the fall, carried by the wind and rains, started everything to be alive again.

Thanking God, praising God, in the place like the middle region,

Thanking God and praising God in such a time as fall,

when bright and beautiful things eventually fall and lie on the ground, seem to me the declaration of the new beginnings of life and of the world. Giving thanks for the completion of certain parts of our life journey is a courageous and extraordinary act. Because our life circumstances are often like the middle space, the middle ground, the season of fall, when we cannot always thank ourselves, another person, or even God. However, with giving thanks, the fall is when everything starts to be alive again in the next season, if it is not now. The fall is when everything begins. With seeds, as completion. With thanks, as the new start. The tenth leper has just done that: Understanding. Forgiving. Thanking. Loving. The last leper’s act was so wonderous to see that Jesus called it faith, and the disciples wrote it in their hearts, in their travel log, as a memorable healing story, while they continued to walk to Jerusalem, passing through the region between Samaria and Galilee.

 

Reflective Music:  Beautiful Things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoTXr8Yf1L4

Thank you, Golden Ears United Church, BC, for sharing amazing music! 

 

Sermon: Good Tenants in the Vineyard (Matthew 21:33-46), Oct 4th, 2020

 Reflection:  Good Tenants in the Vineyard 

 Scripture: Matthew 21:33-46 

(The Parable of the Wicked Tenants in the Vineyard)

Once I moved out of my parents’ apartment, I became a teenage tenant. After getting married, my personal boundary extended to a three-member nuclear family: Min-Goo, myself and our first child, and we, as a family, started our immigrant journey while still being tenants. Since our wedding, Min-Goo and I changed our address 11 times in 10 years - until we moved to Winnipeg. 

Our first home was on the rooftop of a four-story church building in a makeshift two-bedroom apartment. The church where Min-Goo worked was the landlord; we didn’t pay rent. But I insisted we move out because of the noise from the eight-lane highway right beside us. So, the church purchased a very old brick house in a redeveloping area as an investment, and we moved there. It was so cold in the winter; the wind from the closed window near my desk was strong enough to blow my hair around. Because of the cold, we could barely use any space except for the master bedroom and the kitchen. But I liked the house. It was the first real house I had ever lived in; my family, like most Koreans, lived in apartment complexes. It had grapevines in the front yard! In our first summer there, Korean dark purple grapes were ripe and ready to be picked. We used this amazing chance to make our own wine. At the time, I was pregnant with our first child (who would be born in the spring). We were in full of hope and excitement. Just like we learned from the Bible, we harvested the grapes, put all of them in big basins, and stomped them under our feet to get the juice out. Then we stored our precious, fragrant wine in the basement storage room where many crickets also made their home. We moved out the next winter, but ever since then, every year on Peace’s birthday, I tell my kids that he was born in the grapevine house in Korea. We moved out the next winter. 

Fast forward, to when Peace was about three years old, and we lived in a student residence in an affluent and glorious neighbourhood on the UBC campus, until we had to move out because of a sudden outbreak of bedbugs. When Peace was four, we had a big move to Vancouver Island, as Min-Goo got a permanent call from a church there. I was still a student and I was in my second pregnancy. Jah-bi was born in a beautiful blue house with a large backyard in which apple trees grew and French lavender was planted on each little backyard trail. I found my first orange poppy beside the deck. Within a year, we had to move out as the landlord sold the house - a 60-year-old house, cold in the winter, but a beautiful wooden house with a real furnace. I am still thankful that Jah-bi was born in that beloved blue house. Lots of loving memories of tears and joy grew there with our family with two small children. However, every time I made a loving attachment to each home — especially to the nature each residence offered: grapes, apples, lavender, poppies, melon-coloured mosses — , as we were tenants, we had to move when conditions changed. The next rented house - which we called the white house - had a lovely small grapevine over the side door in the backyard. I loved picking up my little Jah-bi and holding him in my left arm while I picked juicy green grapes with my right. I would pick two grapes: one for me and one for Jah-bi. I could peel those grapes open with just two fingers, right from the vine. The very sweet little balls fell on our tongues. In those very lonely days of migration, I gave my full love to every small gift from the earth on my landlord’s property and praised the sweetness of God’s creation. I preserved this memory to create another birth story for my younger child, Jah-bi, to tell him: “You were born in the blue house with lavender. You loved having a fresh grape popped in your mouth with sweetness.”

I am capturing and narrating my personal tenant stories today because my remembrance of how I nurtured joy and connection to the world, especially when those early years were permeated with loneliness and the sorrow of isolation, helps me to see the tenants in today’s Gospel story, The Wicked Tenants in the Vineyard. For me, throughout my 11 years of being a tenant, I lived with the clear awareness that all the properties we leased or rented - no matter whether I enjoyed them or not - legally and personally belonged to the landlord. However, I found a breeze of hope and connection from what the earth produced in those ‘somebody else’s’ properties. I owned the joy as mine. Even though legally speaking, the grapevines, apple trees, lavender, neon-green-coloured, moss-covered rocks were just properties in which I shared no ownership, in the cycle of nature, the legal boundary of ownership and possession was graciously blurred… In spiritual terms, they belonged to me as nature and I all are siblings of the earth.  Even though any legal document would call them the human landlord’s property, they were, to me, also the gifts of the earth, the creation of God, which also belonged to me and to which I belonged spiritually. I called them in love one by one. I named them using my creativity. They became my friends when I and my family were like the wandering Armenian. Even though they were not my inheritance, I willingly gave my personal and spiritual respect to them as they belonged to God ultimately, and I praised God’s generosity, beauty and abundance. The illusion that I, we, possess or own something was not a necessary condition to praise God. 

While reading today’s Gospel story, the first question that occurred to me was, “What is the tenants’ motivation to kill those servants the landowner sent and even the landowner’s son?” It’s a deliberately shocking story of successful murder. What is the tenants’ motivation? Also, what is the motivation, what is the landowner actually thinking by sending their own son when multiple murders had already been committed prior to that point? The landowner sent their own son without any protection greater than that given to the servants - even though the threat of death was well-known by that point. Today’s reading tells us that what God (the landowner) has in mind is respect: “They will respect my son” (v. 37), my teaching, my own heir, my covenant, my own soul. Radical trust. However, those tenants seized the son, killed him and threw the unburied body outside the vineyard. What was the tenants’ motivation? They sought an inheritance. Greed. Possession. Acquisition of the right of ownership by force and violence. Theft by stealth. 

Colonization is another name for theft by stealth. The first settlers who came to this land and those of us who became immigrants (still settlers) were covetous of the land. Those who came later declared it empty, free to take it as if it were our inheritance. The land was endless, the resources were abundant, the beautiful earth was challenging and at the same time brought wealth and power we used for our benefit. Unless we are from Indigenous ancestors, we are all immigrants and tenants. We can still ‘respect’ the covenant, the treaty, the relationship with the Creator to appreciate and use what is available, as a gift, as a tenant. However, like the wicked tenants in the vineyard, those who came later have been busy with erasing, removing, violating and nullifying the laws, the culture, the medicine, the tradition, the identity, the children, the stories and soul of the First Peoples, and therefore, committed cultural and physical genocide. 

The vineyard in today’s parable was one that was planted with care, love and intention. It was planted long before the current tenants leased it - - long before they knew it could be their means to provide for life itself. Vines take time to grow and produce fruit. God’s vineyard is an intentional gift passed on to all who come to enjoy what the earth produces and shares. Vineyards do not happen overnight; they are the results of many, many years of cultivation and care. In this story, cultivation by God’s own people, care from God’s own hands. I still vividly remember the joy I embraced even as a tenant to taste the sweetness of a grape, an apple, lavender and a poppy because they connected me and my family to the gifts of the earth. They were not just property.  I hope I am still a good tenant who has not forgotten all this and decided any piece of land I legally possess is mine and mine alone.

What the earth produces, offers and shares are gifts to all creation. These gifts are based on sharing, inspired by the understanding of interconnection. Everyone and everything has their own point of interconnection - the foundation of relationship with the circle of life is built by sharing in respect. On September 30th my sons went to school wearing their orange shirts, in deep respect and honour to all the survivors and to those who died in Residential schools. We (using the pronoun with acknowledging that actually we have created a community of both First peoples and Settlers at Immanuel) dispossessed people from their land; we disrespected their customs, we, like the wicked tenants, killed their children and took their inheritance. May we remember all things in our hearts this day. May we remember all the beautiful things, as well as the painful. May we remember as tenants in our life journey on the earth that possession may give us an illusion of power, but sharing allows us to learn the deeper reality that no one is alone. The earth is a gift; it is not just the storage room of God’s wine, but God’s wisdom. It lets us taste the sweetness of God’s pleasure and learn truth through the inevitable pains our lives might bring. The earth is not just material to use up for our convenience, property we leverage to assert our control and power; it is the school where we learn balance, the window which we approach to see the Creator’s heart and God’s ever-evolving consciousness. Let us sing the faithful song of the good tenants in God’s generous vineyard. 

Hymn: The Prayer of Jesus      (Please click HERE and watch from 38:17.)

Thank you, Golden Ears United Church, for sharing wonderful music!

Sermon: Loves in Need of Love Today (Matthew 21:23-32), Sept 27th, 2020

Reflection: Love's in Need of Love Today                       

Scripture: Matthew 21:23-32

Good morn or evening friends

Here's your friendly announcer

I have serious news to pass on to everybody

What I'm about to say

Could mean the world's disaster

Could change your joy and laughter to tears and pain

It's that Love's in need of love today

Don't delay Send yours in right away

Hate's goin' round

Breaking many hearts

Stop it please

Before it's gone too far

The force of evil plans

To make you its possession

And it will if we let it

Destroy everybody

We all must take Precautionary measures

If love and peace you treasure

Then you'll hear me when I say

Oh that Love's in need of love today

love's in need of love today

Don't delay don't delay

Send yours in right away

It's up to you cause

Love's in need of love today

love's in need of love today

Don't delay don't de-lay

Send yours in right away

It’s Stevie Wonder’s Love’s in Need of Love Today. In the song, he sings, “What I’m about to say could mean the world’s disaster, could change your joy and laughter to tears and pain. It’s that Love’s in need of love today. Don’t delay; Send your love in right away. We all must take precautionary measures. If love and peace you treasure then you’ll hear me when I say.” I find a good parallel in Love’s in Need of Love Today with the Jesus’ parable of two sons. Jesus asks, “Which of the two sons did the will of his father?” When asked to go and work in the vineyard ‘today’, the first son answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The second son answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go.

Before starting to write this reflection, I received this week’s Sunday School package from our Faith Formation Elders, (By the way – and this is actually really good news “to pass on to everybody” that we are in need of volunteers to deliver Sunday School packages to children in our midst. We hope to deliver a Sunday Sheet (art sheet) and an Activity Sheet to 12 children in 4 families. Danika will print her own.) and I looked at the questions in the Activity Sheet Ann and Fjola prepared with a lot of care, love and dedication for our children. I am so fortunate that I work with such wonderful Elders who care about young people. The Elders ask the children, “What if the son who said ‘yes’ but didn’t work had a good reason for not working? What would be a good reason not to do something he said he would do?” Good questions continue. “What would happen if everyone said ‘yes, I will help’ and then nobody helped?” “Have you ever told someone who asked you to help that you didn’t feel like doing what they asked you to do and then changed your mind and found a way to help? How did you feel about saying ‘No’? What made you change your mind? How did you feel about helping after you had said ‘No’?

Now, this is my humble question: “If it is today and the present time, what is God asking you to do, and you are saying no? Even if you have said no, will you change your mind and heart, and do it? It is today and the present time, and you already have heard and known what God is asking you to do, and you have already given the answer yes. However, you haven’t actually put your intention, words and thoughts into action and changed your behaviour. What is God asking you to do?”

I imagine it is God who sings, especially the songs like Stevie Wonder’s, which tells us, “Loves are in need of love, today. Don’t delay. Send your love in right away.”

Just one hour before I wrote this reflection, I began to read peoples’ posts on Facebook such as “Praying for our Black daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, for Black girls, women, transwomen, femme, and female-identifying. For Breonna’s family and loved ones. That the justice system isn’t broken – It was built this way.” (The picture: Completed mural of Breonna Taylor at Chambers Park, Annapolis, MD. Image courtesy of Street Arts Films.) I also read a post a Black colleague in the United Church posted, “I’m wondering what you’d all do if I was Breonna… Whatever it is, do that!” Last Wednesday, a grand jury indicted one of the Louisville police officers for shooting into the apartment – with the charges of crime. But not for killing her. None of the officers were found guilty in Taylor’s death. Actors, athletes, musicians and other celebrities (including Stevie Wonder) have been using their platforms calling for justice for Breonna Taylor, the Black woman shot to death by police during a botched drug raid in Kentucky. They called Black Lives Matter, joined with voices from all over, from grassroots, from ordinary citizens and children, calling for justice, calling for love. They were not heard on the ruling in Breonna Taylor’s death.

Loves are in need of love today. What is God asking us, you and me, those who are traumatized by systemic racism and those who express solidarity with them, to do in order to uproot the deep cause of hate and despair into the right way of expressing anger and love? Have you said yes? Have you said no? Are you the first son? Or Are you the second?

The second son in today’s story who answered, “I will go, sir”, but did not go, may have been just delaying his yes (action) until tomorrow, when his father asked him to go and work in the vineyard today. This week, my husband and I went shopping together. We had a very nice French press coffee/tea maker in mind, hoping to advance our life style with some flavour and convenience. Even though I had important tasks to do – writing this sermon and joining a United Church zoom meeting on anti-racism work right after -- even though I had a fairly busy schedule this week, I never delayed going to the mall and getting the ordered French press. I asked my husband, “Why do we delay certain things, even if they are important, while we might never delay other things believing they are urgent?” We engaged in a reflection together: perhaps ‘material desire’ is always easier and so much more attractive, and therefore, often takes precedence. Also, the things we believe we can fix and know the solutions, and the solutions are what we can identify as A or B, in a clear straight process, we go for it. However, for the solutions that require more complicated, collaborative reflections, asking uncomfortable questions and diving in to the life-long process, we tend to delay engaging and putting them into action. Getting what we want gives us an illusion of power, while expressing our love to someone means allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.

Just as our Elders asked the children to ponder, “What if the son who said yes but didn’t work had a good reason for not working? What would be a good reason not to do something they said they would do?” my understanding is that everyone has different talents, experiences and paces of learning and reflecting. Certain paths that lean towards love, healing and reconciliation take a life-time. Like the first son, some of us may say no at first and then gradually move towards engaging love and justice. Like the second son, some of us may say yes, first, then, need more time for integration by directly and indirectly witnessing other’s experiences of pain, trauma, despair and grief. One of my friends said after he carefully engaged with the questions from our Elders, “I was reminded that I planned to call my Dad.” His aged dad, who had been estranged from his family since he was very young, was recently admitted to hospital for heart and kidney failures and almost died but recovered. My friend added, “But I am still delaying calling him. Certain things are deep.”

There may be many circumstances and tasks in which we have said yes but still haven’t gone to work – sending love --. Lately I read that a new clock was erected in New York. It is a Climate Clock which counts down the days we have left to deal with the climate crisis. The Climate Clock displays a deadline of sorts: the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds left to curb greenhouse gas emissions in order to give the Earth a two-thirds chance of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, compared with pre-industrial times. This is the goal of the International Paris Climate Agreement – a level of warming which scientists say if we exceed, the impacts will become increasingly more disastrous. The loves that are in need of love, urgently, deeply, are often the ones which and who have been silenced and oppressed at the bottom of the pyramid of power. In Greek philosophy, which influences Western academics and politics, at the high top of the pyramid is God, then, Greek free men, followed by Greek free women, then Greek children, then, slave men, slave women, slave children. Under the humans come animals, under animals, plants, under plants, minerals, and so on. It is the hierarchy of beings, also known as the ladder of existence. This is how the world politics, economics, theology and colonialism have organized the world; The higher beings are at the top, the lower beings are at the bottom, and the Earth is the material that has been ranked in the lowest bottom, under everything. The Earth is in need of love, today. We are in this, and our life and our next generation’s tomorrows are in this.

Loves that are in need of love, urgently, deeply, intensely are the cries at the bottom of the ladder of existence. We need to call ourselves and encourage one another. We may delay sending love for various reasons, but let us hear first the announcements from God: The world’s disaster, the world’s tears and pain. The world’s joy and laughter. The calling of the heavenly father and mother is not for us to save and fix. Rather it is for us to hear the world, neighbours, family and friends, the Earth and the oceans, and ourselves, to do our part. Yes, in action, Yes in action, and yes, in action. Loves are in need of love today. Don’t delay. Send your love in right away. To do the will of the Creator, because we have each other, We are not alone.

Reflective music: Loves in Need of Love Today – Cover by Dawn Pemberton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGGbRKHdGlE

Hymn: MV 26 Your Love Is Amazing (Hallelujah)

10,000 Reasons                                          Please watch from 9:44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6KJ395GKoo

Thank you, Golden Ears United Church, BC, for sharing amazing music!