4th Advent Sermon: On Incarnation, The Snowy Owl God (2 Samuel), Dec 20th, 2020

Message:  

On Incarnation: the Snowy Owl God

A few years ago, when Jah-bi was younger, we liked watching documentaries on the extraordinary lives of different animals. (National Geographic’s were the best, in our experience.) Usually the documentaries focused on the “law of the jungle”, but one videographer’s work caught my heart with deep emotion. The one-hour film closely followed the life of two snowy owl parents in the landscape of the Far North. The videographer had to wear a full-body mosquito cover when he was capturing how the snowy owl Mom and Dad endured an extraordinarily challenging environment in order to feed their three youngsters through the winter. Winter is long and harsh near the North Pole; predators must search for signs of life on the wide and vast snow-covered tundra in the split-second moment when their prey comes out from underground. In the video, the snowy owl parents found just one rodent in a whole week and fed their young new-borns, while still hungry and tired themselves. They could barely open their own eyes against the wind and snowflakes and mosquitoes. While watching it, I thought - someone called it a “job hazard” - I want to talk about this one day, in a sermon. I can use it as a good illustration of the parental love God must have for us. The stark and honest description of how God’s liberational love enters our lives and feeds us. If we feel that our life circumstances are very tough for us, it would be even tougher for God to find the way to reach us, and reveal God’s love to us. Witnessing the persistence and determination of the snowy owls to feed their family opened the understanding to me that God’s Incarnate Love must endure something that is almost ‘impossibility’ (like the North Pole’s Winter for survival) before reaching us. Likewise, God must endure the midnight oppression of the occupied land of Palestine by the Roman Empire, before coming out to Israel in the birth of a child (Christ), which we call Incarnation: "The Word (God’s parental love) made flesh.” In the breath of the child, in the body of the child, in the heartbeat and blood of the child. In the first cry of the baby. Seeing the snowy owls, I remembered my own experience of breastfeeding. After breastfeeding, I laid down my infant son and looked at his plump and soft cheeks and arms and belly, thinking “All of this incredible being is made from what I gave.” The word Incarnation comes from Latin, "in - Intro, and caro - carn - Flesh." God being embodied in flesh, or taking on flesh. 

 

Today, we have arrived at the fourth Advent Sunday, just four days shy of Christmas Eve. Traditionally, in this fourth Advent week, we reflect on Love - the liberating love of God. It is an extraordinary love in that it changes our lives. It is also Incarnate Love: “The Word made flesh” is the nature of God’s love. Even if, in our faith, Incarnation is fully revealed in Jesus, it perpetually comes to us in myriad new ways. God is like a young child, standing at a mirror or in front of a big window. I don’t know about you, but when I was young, I was never able to leave a place without touching anything that was shiny. I was like a raven collecting silver spoons. I had to touch and leave my fingerprints all over these beautiful surfaces. My kids were the same. At the height where their hands could reach, on any mirror or window at our home, I could find their little, lingering, sticky fingerprint graffiti. Incarnation is the same: God is perpetually leaving God’s touch of Incarnate Love on the surface of all creation and in our lives. Everywhere! Creative. Complicated. Interconnected. Like an artistically skilled graffiti on the wall, it has a message, grace, freedom. God’s love spills down into flesh, takes on flesh. 

 

Today’s reading of 2 Samuel belongs to the Hebrew Bible, and was written long before Jesus was born, and yet it offers an insight about God’s Incarnate Nature: God prefers entering the world, embodied in the flesh — our bodies and beings — , and being movable, mobile, messy and miraculous. In other words, God would choose a manger rather than a royal temple for a place of birth. In the story, David wants to build a house for God. His spiritual advisor, Nathan, agrees at first, then, after a dream, pronounces God’s verdict on the plans for a temple: “No … No house … Not now.” God’s presence with the people along their journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom has been portable, movable. God does not live in a building, or in a heavenly place, but among the people, the bodies and beings, in the midst of all the complexities of their lives together. God is houseless. God’s presence is abundant in the flesh, in the cries of hope of all people. 

 

I have one more story to share with you today. I hope that it can be another way to illustrate God’s Incarnate Love. Before doing it, I would like to invite you to think about Incarnation as a narrative, as a story, not just an “event.” Some Christians might say Jesus’s birth is the only event of God’s true Incarnation, and I have no higher spiritual authority to judge its truth, but I would like to suggest that we can still find amazing stories and narratives that show what God’s Incarnation, what God’s Incarnate Love, would be like and how they are birthed into people’s lives. How does it transform the world? How have our lives been changed through this extraordinary love that resembles God’s incredible parental love, like the snowy owl’s feeding their young in the harsh wilderness of the far North? 

 

This is Pastor Lee Dong-Hwan (Show the picture). On August 31, 2019, Lee, who is part of the Korean Methodist Church, took to the stage of the queer festival, clad in a white robe to bless those in attendance, throwing flower petals and offering a prayer. Just three days afterward, he was required to attend a regional committee meeting in the city where his church was located. A day later on Sept 4th, he was reported to the annual conference for violating the book of Doctrines and Discipline by advocating and agreeing with homosexuality. On Oct 15, this year, he was sentenced to two years of suspension of duty by the Korean Methodist Church, which means he cannot preach for two years; it would almost sever his livelihood and pastoral career during the period. In addition, he received a letter from the Conference not long after, informing him that he had to pay the cost of the church’s trial - $7,200. 

 

Quote from the news article: "Lee’s life may have been turned upside down the day he took to the stage at the queer festival, but he has no regrets and says he would do the whole thing over again -- but this time, with a smile." This is where I find the glimpse of God’s Incarnate Love: “I have no regrets,” he said in the interview. “But there is one thing that I feel a little dissatisfied about. Because I had already gotten so many calls from people from the day before and that very morning, I was so scared when I stood on that stage. I’m really easily frightened (laugh). There were people coming up to ask me ‘Are you Lee Dong-Hwan?” and taking pictures of me from far away for evidence. I started to feel like something was happening and so all the pictures and videos show me with a serious face because I was so nervous. But I should have smiled when I threw the petals -- It was a blessing. If I could go back, I would put on the biggest smile.” I believe a smile is the most beautiful thing we can put on our face. Not to look friendly but to really bless God’s people by love. 

 

“The Word made flesh.” Hope for peace and joy, love incarnate manifesting in the biggest smile. 

 

Like the snowy owl parent, the houseless God endures extraordinary circumstances to reach us and to bless us, to create a family, a community, an earth, to create change through extraordinary love. Throughout this year’s Advent, I have reflected on Advent with you, in the light of four major themes in the Bible: Exodus, Exile, Apocalypse and Incarnation. What is interesting to me is that the first three are played on geographical landscapes. The liberation in the first three requires migration: crossing over the Red Sea, returning from Babylon to the homeland, New Heaven and New Earth. And yet, the Incarnation is happening in our flesh: Our breath, our body, our heartbeat and blood are the elements of God’s new landscape. We, flesh, the whole creation, are so important to God that Houseless God is born in us. This week, the last of Advent, I invite you to look for the messy hand marks of God’s Incarnate Love in the breath and flesh of the earth, in us, beyond us. We are the mirror of God’s Incarnate Love. The Word made flesh. Merry Christmas! A Child is born! Hallelujah! 

3rd Advent Sermon: Inside the Belly of the Advent Whale (Dec 13th, 2020)

Reflection: Inside the Belly of The Advent Whale

(Advent 3: Apocalypse)

I wonder if some of you  might find this joke makes sense  and say, “Oh, that’s me!” like I did.

 

“The 3 A.M. Wake up” (Read the words in the picture above.) 

*Sorry for the words like “Black” truth or “civilization” as they certainly imply a racial and a Western bias.*

Perhaps waking up at 3 am is like waking up  in the middle of the night during a pandemic. Down, down, down, you go into sheer panic. “It’s all impossible,” we groan. It’s been announced that Code Red goes even deeper and is extended until Jan 8th, 2021. Code Red swallows up both Christmas and New Year’s Day --  the wonderful, colourful, shining, special days children and grown-ups alike looked forward to ever since last December. We groan, “It’s all impossible!” 

 

This week, I also started thinking about what will happen to my kids and other families with school-aged children in January, once the schools revert to remote learning just like last spring. Home-schooling was like an endless tunnel; parents and teachers all began to burn out. “It’s all impossible!” I screamed. “Will all these impossible and unbelievable nightmares never end?” Sometimes I wake up at 3 am, and when I do, I often fall into endless thinking… Can I do this? Can I do that? Is this choice better? Have I done this right?

Perhaps this Advent comes to us like the “Great Whale of Doom” (see the joke) swallowing us up and disintegrating the texture of our life. We are looking for hope, peace, joy and love, … the signs of the birth of the holy child, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, at 3 A.M. And we scream, “It’s all impossiiiiibleeeeee.” 

In the two last Advent services, I invited you to see/find Advent in light of Israel’s memories  of the past, played on the unforgettable geographical and historical landscapes: Exodus (show the picture of the basket), 

Return from Exile (show the picture of the winding highway.) 

On this Third Sunday, I would like to talk with you about Advent as the Great Whale, an Apocalypse, and ask, “What kind of whale would Advent be? (Especially this year’s Advent). The Great Whale of Doom? … What is your ‘Advent Whale' like and what can it be this year?"

 

Before we ponder the questions, please let me explain what I mean by apocalypse. (Some of the insights here came from a Centre for Christian Studies’ Friday workshop with Nancy Sanders. Thank you, Nancy.) In the Hebrew Bible, apocalyptic times are reported in the prophecy, lament, and witness around the first and second destructions of the Jerusalem Temple in BC 586 and CE 70. What is an apocalypse? This is my understanding: It’s the name of "the end time." However, the apocalyptic world refuses to end. People are frightened; Terror and fear invade everyone’s life. It’s the mass experience. No one can escape this situation. Perhaps the impact may be more significant and disproportionate to the most vulnerable populations. However, everyone’s life is affected somehow. It’s the mass suffering in the event of overwhelming destruction ("of the world as we know it"). Some could say the status quo of the old world is passing away. However, while it can be true, it destroys not only bad status quo but also good gifts in life too (That’s the hardest part.) It is traumatizing, and yet everyone’s experience of the apocalypse -- how each one, each community, goes through it, struggles with it, copes with it, heals from it, is  different. It also contains truth about the world: just like climate crisis. We cannot turn away from the impending reality and close our eyes, but we are tempted to avoid the news and generally live in denial. At the same time, apocalypse is also when we courageously face the deep wounds of our time. We yearn for healing. We seek to find the right path for us as we navigate this massive Whale Time together. In this sense, apocalypse is never a totally bad time, but is good news too, which is where the ambiguity of apocalypse comes  in human experience. Apocalypse calls forth new hope. 

(We cannot fix the current system with the tools we have been keeping in our garage…)

 

Quite a few people have told me that they are finding this a hard time to feel hopeful. When I asked someone, “What is on your mind lately, in your heart?”, my wise friend said, “I am worried if there is lack of hope in the world right now...” for various and different reasons and  different contexts. We act and pray for the end of oppression, the end of injustice, the end of suffering (hoping to bring the end to the apocalypse), and yet sometimes, or often, we can feel that perhaps the tasks are beyond our power. 

 

I was told that in the 70’s, when Korea was under militant governmental dictatorship, Min-Jung theologians (a stream of liberation theology; Min-Jung means People) proclaimed and persisted with the Kingdom of God movement singing New Heaven and New Earth for Korean democracy. They sang in jails and schools and on the streets. Students learned scriptural passages on the Apocalypse in their theological schools. In those days when it felt like it was impossible to change the world  with their power and alone, the faith in “divine transcendence” still encouraged them; “Transcendence” means that even when the world seems to lack hope, even when we lack hope, even when it seems really hard to see that change is happening in the world, we still find hope in God. Scriptures teach us that sometimes we feel powerless but ultimately our enemies are also powerless, no matter how strong they look, because in the end, it is God’s world. God reigns. The only mighty and powerful one, truly, is God. If we miss faith in the promise and the work of New Heaven and New Earth, apocalypse is only half of the truth. Hope comes from God's future, and it has already been planted and growing in the hearts of the people. This is the mystery of God’s Kingdom as it is illustrated in the parables: the smallest mustard seed growing into a messy big bush, the leaven in the bread that makes the dough doubled and tripled, and the wild fig tree bearing fruits when the summer is near. Even if it looks like “It is all impossible” here and now, nothing is impossible. The beauty and the power in the Christmas story is that God’s immanence (here and now) merges with God’s transcendence (the future) in the birth of a baby. 

 

We go through the apocalypse together. 

We must open the future of heaven and earth, together.

No one can escape it. We need everyone to participate in the work the Creator has started already. God’s kingdom grows irregularly and unexpectedly — there’s no prescribed path — . Kingdom of God shoots new buds and puts forth its leaves every summer, with us, God’s fig trees. 

 

So, let us take heart. Believe. Look forward to Christmas, even this year! The Advent Whale is never like the Great Whale of Doom at 3 A.M. We still find the Creator’s tender touch. Gentle grace. Kairos Kindness. (Kairos means God’s right time.) God still can guide our lives and prepare us for where we are meant to be. 

I suggest to you to find the good Advent Whale. Please note that this imagery originally was shared by Fjola Hart Wasekeesikaw, when we had a little delightful time between us. It was a long time ago called BPE “Before the Pandemic Era” when we could sit around the table and the cup of tea rose to our lips. (No masks.) She has generously given me permission to share this image and to adapt it in a new context. At that time Fjola and I were talking about “dark nights of the soul”, a well-known theme in medieval Christian spirituality. In the Bible, Jonah did not want to go to the city of Nineveh, the enemy’s land, even though God commanded him to do so. So he ran away and was on the boat hoping to be far, far away from the task. Then, he was thrown into the sea, drowned and swallowed up by the whale. 

The miraculous Advent message from this Jonah and the whale story may be… that he was still being guided by the Creator. Falling into the inside of the whale could absolutely be scary, frightening and dreadful. However, in the story, Jonah was warm and safe inside the belly of the whale. Jonah was guided, prepared, and cared for. We cannot tell the whale where to go, but God, the Creator, guides us where we need to be and helps us to get on the right path. You might wake up at 3 A.M. You might find yourself 3 meters under the water. But flip it. The Great Whale of Doom can mysteriously show that we are still in the Creator’s belly. 

Let us go out into the Apocalyptic world together and look forward to Christmas this year: anticipating the new places of Christ’s birth, the merging of God’s summer and our winter… in the edge of this whale time, casting our trust in the warmth and safety with which God guides us and provides for us, inside the belly of Emmanuel Whale, God-With-Us.

2nd Advent Sermon: Advent as Threshold; Advent as Homecoming (Isaiah 40: 1-5), Dec 6th, 2020

Message:  Advent as Threshold; Advent as Homecoming 

                   (Advent 2: Exile) 

 

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”

Today is the second Advent Sunday; it is also the anniversary of the United Nations instituting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th, 1948. After today’s service, everyone is invited to stay and watch a few videos from Amnesty International Write for Rights 2020. Let’s help release those who do justice and are imprisoned by oppressive governments. Let’s help end the global complicity in silencing the cries of the poor, the women, the oppressed, and the Indigenous land defenders in our world. Immanuel United Church is a participant in letter-writing to advocate for the rights of political prisoners; we have contributed to helping release them for many years. The original document from 1948 declares that everyone has the right to own property; that everyone has the right to rest and leisure and periodic holidays with pay; that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile; that everyone has the right to education, and to a standard of living adequate for their health and well-being; that everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions; and that everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution. 

 

There’s a Sunday School song, widely sung in Canada and also in Korea, “Jesus (or God’s) Got the Whole World in God’s Hands.” I never liked it because I saw colonialism and missionary expansion and religious conversion in its words, but when I encountered the song title and the verses again in this Advent season, I took a moment to think about it. Our suffering is deep with Covid-19; we have every reason to worry and raise concerns about the human right to health care and well-being, especially the rights of those who are the most vulnerable in our own city, in Canada and the United States… 

 

Jesus is born today for all of us - the whole world - in God’s care. 

The “Captivity of Israel” for which we lament and pray for our emancipation is not only Covid-19 Captivity: there are many, especially when the meaning of Advent - waiting for the end of suffering and the groaning of both human and creation -- is seen and interpreted through the lens of the most oppressed. We do not seek to compare different human sufferings and inappropriately attempt to rank the hierarchy ofsufferings and list whose liberation should come first. Rather, ‘marking the captivity’ means to truly prepare ourselves for entering the “threshold” of Advent, before the quiet night of the birth of Christ. John O’Donohue, the late Celtic Irish poet and philosopher, and author of Anam Cara and To Bless the Space Between Us, said during an interview that the origin of ‘threshold’ comes from “threshing” which means separating the grain from the husk. “So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.” 

 

O’Donohue continues: “There are huge thresholds in every life. You know that, for instance, if you are in the middle of your life in a busy evening, fifty things to do and you get a phone call that somebody you love is suddenly dying, it takes ten seconds to communicate that information. But when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. Suddenly everything that seems to be important before is all gone and now you are thinking of this. … A threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit, and very often how we cross is the key thing.” 

 

Perhaps, holding the many moments and places of “Advents” in the whole world (prayerfully and carefully recasting the word Advent in plural) that are happening now, or that are struggling to find their way, becomes a threshold to enter Advent, or, is the Advent. Advent as Threshold becomes a place for us to move into, as a community and as an individual self, more critical and challenging and worthy of the fullness of our attention. 

 

Advent becomes a door, a table, a geography, a highway for everyone’s homecoming. In today’s reading, Isaiah 40, Israel had been stripped of everything that had become an obstacle to their relationship with God. And by the time of Isaiah 40, the exiles were poised to return home and to serve God. 

 

“Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God. 

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to the city 

that its warfare is ended; 

That its iniquity is pardoned;That it has received from God’s hand 

double for all its sins.” 

 

The whole of the book of Isaiah is the prophet’s emotion-filled meditation and outpouring of prophecy upon the destiny of Jerusalem. The Book of Isaiah has four main parts. The book begins by harshly anticipating YHWH’s judgement upon Jerusalem for its idolizing power and wealth, exploitation, injustice and false allegiance. Before Isaiah 40, it is about the prophecy of inescapable judgement on the destiny of Jerusalem: the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians and the ensuing deportation and exile. The prophet does not diminish or soften the judgement to come: the expulsion of the leaders and people of Israel to the foreign land of Babylon, the new empire. However, ultimately, the Book of Isaiah declares that judgement is not the last word for God’s city. The prophet painstakingly makes an effort to announce to the people of Advent the hope beyond judgement. 

 

“Comfort, O Comfort my people, Says your God.” 

 

The situation bears some resemblance to our own. There is hope, perhaps dimly seen, on the horizon - the power of Babylon is now fading - but the current situation is still one of displacement, anxiety and suffering. (Just like thanks to the heroic efforts of scientists, there are effective vaccines in the works, but it will be several months before they are widely available!)  

 

Still, we see all of this isolation, dismay, grief, separation, pain and death, but God will bring shalom (peace) to Jerusalem (salem in Jerulalem is shalom, which means peace! salem = peace); There will be renewal and restoration. 

 

Those who remained or survived, ultimately, all of Israel (those who died will resurrect bodily — says the fourth part of the Book of Isaiah!), will return home, out of exile into new well-being! Today’s reading of Isaiah 40 professes that it is a “herald”; It is the glad news that the reality of loss and suffering is shifting to a new hope and possibility.

“Your God reigns”. God is doing a new thing - a restoration of peace, Jerusalem (shalom for Jerusalem) after the “former things of destruction and deportation.”

 

Then, after these glad tidings, the prophet still speaks; the remainder of the book tells the hearers that we, Israel, still have work before us even after the exile is ended: How and whether we will struggle to reshape Jerusalem as God intends; to make it the land of prosperity for everyone. Israel at that time had the same task as we who are going through the year of the pandemic: How will we reorganize our lives after this pandemic to make sure the post-pandemic of Covid-19 will be the “homecoming” for you and for everyone?

 

• What “hope” will we sing as the new reality to come after our own inescapable judgement? 

• In your song-writing, who will the song of hope be speaking to? Who are the people God speaks of with the words, “Comfort, O Comfort my people?” 

• If the post-exile of our time means that we never again fill up shopping malls with crowds of people, what would it mean for us to “create space” spiritually, in the same way we keep our physical distance to save lives? What are the examples of creating space to save lives? 

• What has been a “threshold” moment for you in this Advent? What do you hope to be a “homecoming” moment for you after this exile?

 

I appreciate Advent as a time to find our inner landscape meeting the Biblical landscapes in the stories of the past. Memories of Israel are played on such unforgettable geographical landscapes: Exodus, return from Exile, Apocalyptic Christmas (as the New Heaven and New Earth) and Incarnation (redirecting our attention to the most neglected or misunderstood part of here and now). I hope that we think about Advent as the work of 'creating space' just like Mary and Joseph said yes to the angel Gabriel to welcome a baby and made room for God’s incarnation (for us, deeper conversation, finding an inner landscape of beauty, holding sacred intimacy with those who live in our household, caring for community with a phone call or Winnipeg Harvest) — in such an unprecedented time as now, when physical distancing has become our bondage and captivity (the dilemma) as well as the way to save lives (the gift). 

 

1st Advent: Exodus

2nd Advent: Exile

3rd Advent: Apocalyptic Christmas

4th Advent: Incarnation

Sermon: Mushroom in the Rain (Matthew 25:31-46), Nov 22, 2020

Reflection: Mushroom in the Rain

Matthew 25:31-46

 

Sheep and goats,

left and right,

blessed and accursed,

the rewarded and the punished…

 

Just as if there are two distinct, two different categories of people, it is as if that is also so of the “Bovidae”…

(Sheep and goats belong to the same sub biological family, the Bovidae. Please see this Bovidae group tree. What’s interesting is that except for the small representation of sheep here, all the rest look more similar to goats than to sheep!)

Today’s scripture illustrates that there are things that can’t be mixed—like oil and water, and that we must not be confused about telling their differences. Today’s Gospel story tells us that the sovereign set aside the sheep, the first group, the righteous kind, at the right hand and said to them, ‘Come, you that are blessed by God, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. You gave food and welcomed the stranger, the least of these who are members of my family. Just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.’ I am sure those who hear this declaration would be exceedingly joyful to be affirmed as the full, faithful, first class members in the sovereign’s family, the Kingdom of God.

However, the first group cannot share their joy without humbly acknowledging that those who were rejected by the sovereign are on the left hand. They are accursed into “eternal punishment.” It reminds me of how the Exodus story ends in the Bible. After the Israelites managed to cross the Red Sea, the water, that had been separated to make the dry land for the Israelites to run away, came back to swamp the chasing chariots and soldiers of Egypt and drown them. How do we make room  to lament the lost, regardless of being on the right or left? Where is the room for the lament for all humanity?

Certainly, the vindication of the righteous ones is good news. That’s what we want to hear. We want the ultimate triumph of goodness. Those who tell truth to power, those who selflessly care for the most vulnerable, and even endure persecution because of their faith, those who seek liberation from oppression and move to unite, in solidarity, for liberation of others, must inherit the kingdom of God; “the righteous into eternal life” (v. 46))

Certainly, the vindication of the righteous ones is good news. At the same time, I would consider even greater good news would be that Jesus actually spoke in his time (not as the addition by the later authors with their own interpretations) “You have heard that it was said,  ’You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. ‘ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of God; for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters – what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:43-47)

Before the birth of Christianity, and even today, religions, including Christianity, have not been free from practicing blessing and cursing. Historically, Christian churches hardly separated themselves from interrogating “who is worthy of being part of community we call church and who is not?” and what is the condition for full membership, and what isn’t?  

Using blessing and cursing as the two sides of the same coin, church authority and members often ignore and fail to understand the full scope of the kingdom of God: the profoundly inclusive and loving nature of the kingdom of God which is all about giving life and allowing it to flow through the lives of all people. In God’s kingdom, there’s no first class, no second class. There are not those who are fully worthy, those who are less worthy, or those who are not at all worthy. God’s kingdom is not about a place but about the nature of the realm of God. No one has inherited nor earned superiority or tickets to enter the kingdom of God. The kingdom is life in God that plays out as love for the needy ones.  And, aren’t we, somehow, all of us, needy in certain times and manners? We all are worthy of being loved. We, needy ones, are also called to love others who are needy in the same way. It’s the daring work to love in the hardest conditions.

Those who bully and those who are bullied, those who inflict and those who are traumatized … those who are sober and those who struggle with addictions, those who are right, those who are wrong… no one is inherently excluded. Everyone needs good news. While we continue to strive hard to name what is evil as evil – for example, evil is the colonizing act to keep one group in first place, in the position of being superior and worthy, and the others in second place, not fully worthy to be accepted to be family as who they are, however, I encourage us to still uphold the GREATER way of how God’s realm of justice and love works – with the greater condition: having everyone in radical respect and profound equal belonging. Its love and inclusivity is so BIG that the kingdom of God, or God’s realm, is revealed to us as Holy Mystery, which unites us, even as oil and water, into the realm of profound belonging.

Here is a children’s story that I would like to share with you, as I believe this story is a good illustration of the holy mystery of God’s realm. It is originally a Japanese folktale retold by a 20^th century Jewish writer Mirra Ginsburg. This children’s story is about how we, sheep and goats - -there are so many different kinds of goats within the Bovidae family, 443! -- find shelter and protection under the realm of God’s inclusivity as Holy Mystery, especially in the times when things seem to go wrong, resources are scarce, trust in each other’s generosity is thin.

Please read this fabulous children’s story: Mushroom in the Rain, retold by Mirra Ginsburg, illustrated by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey.

https://www.ousd.org/cms/lib/CA01001176/Centricity/Domain/3684/1.pdf