Sermon: War is Over (If You Want It) | “Go and Tell that Fox“ (Luke 13:32) | March 13th, 2022

Introduction to the Scripture: 

In this season of Lent, we are journeying through the Deserts of Divisions. Our theme and our hope is for God and all God’s children to “Make a Way, Rivers in the Desert.” The prophet Isaiah hears God’s voice and cries out, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19) 

 

In today’s Gospel reading, some of the sympathizers from the Pharisee’s circle in Jerusalem came to Jesus and say, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 

 

Jesus responds, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.’” 

 

I am very fond of many kinds of foxes in my imagination and in stories. We know that foxes exist from warm climates all the way up to the Arctic. I am thrilled whenever I see or encounter a fox or fox family at a camping site or in the woods, as it is rare to meet them in the wild. They are clever, and for this reason, sometimes people talk of them as if they are sly, deceptive or play tricks on humans. 

 

It is certain that ‘the fox’ Jesus refers to is not like the nature-born foxes. The fox in Jesus’ reference is a predator in the human world. Herod deceives and misguides innocent people and even kills them. 

Scripture: Luke 13:31-35

The Choir Anthem:   

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

Video: Korea Peace Appeal - https://youtu.be/xBJNlcIInsI

Voices from the United Church of Canada: United Church Canada ministers and former and current mission co-workers introduce the Korea Peace Appeal 10,000 signature appeal and invite us all to participate. 

Please read: https://united-church.ca/blogs/round-table/divided-war-0

Rev. Dr. Kyongja (Kay) Cho, minister of United Church of Canada, Ontario, shares the story of two Korean brothers forced into the military on different sides during the Korean War.

Reflection: War is Over (If You Want It) 

“Go and Tell that Fox” (Luke 13:32) 

This morning, I would like to share with you what I have learned this week about the tragedy of the Korean War (1950 - 1953) — why it happened and how it went; the discoveries and lessons we’ve learned — and why we must end the Korean War and call for “Peace Now!” on the Korean Peninsula.

 

We live in a world in which all are interconnected. Peace in Korea matters, not only to the Korean people. Your peace, our peace, ultimately, depends on peace in any small part of the world that suffers from division, war, violence against the vulnerable by the powerful. I hope that today’s reflection on Ending the Korean War can help us all gain insight to understand why all wars, ultimately, are not justifiable, and that we, as children of God, must nurture our hunger for justice and peace. As we witness the extremely traumatic attacks and human suffering in Ukraine, we hear God’s call for us to be a channel of peace, to be the river-makers of peace in the hostile deserts of division. To do so, we need to equip ourselves not only with compassion or aid, but a historical and critical lens to not repeat the mistakes of the past. We need to act with understanding. 

 

The Korean war seems like an old, forgettable war these days. However, as the first conflict of the Cold War, it needs to be understood as the starting point, or template, of all the other wars in the era. It changed the world. It was more than just a local tragedy or the poker table of more powerful countries, with one 1,100 kilometre-long peninsula at stake. Thanks to the Korean war, the United States became the number one dominant nation in the world. West Germany and Japan made a dramatic economic comeback and revival thanks to the Korean War.

 

To set the stage: The relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union which fought together as allies during World War 2 becamse tense and the conflict and grievances reached the peak in 1947, which triggered the deadly arms race. President Truman announced that the US would help any country fighting a communist takeover, and the US would use military force to contain communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones that had ended World War 2; In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, Truman announced that the United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon; Stalin followed suit until both nations could obliterate all human life at the push of a button.

So, how did the Korean War start, and why? When I was an elementary school student, all students had to enter a competition by painting posters of why we (North Korea and South Korea) must be reunited. Every classroom sang the song of, “Our Wish is Reunification“ every year, but none of my friends, including myself, really understood why the war occurred, other than the simple knowledge that North Korea invaded the South on a quiet Sunday morning. However, as we grew up we just naturally began to understand the character of the war. It’s a proxy war by powerful foreign nations. They were sly and uncaring foxes who wanted global control in the Cold War era. They tested their power to do so in this very useful and small geographical location — far enough and safe enough from their own nations: China and Russia above, and The United States across the Pacific Ocean. Classified documents, which have been released in the past two decades, show that Il Sung Kim, the founder of North Korea, discussed armed provocation with Joseph Stalin in Moscow in March, 1949. Mao Zedong in China joined in. In January, 1950, Stalin made the decision. This war killed and injured 4.5 million people in 3 years in this small corner of the world.

 

And how did the Korean War end? It didn’t. A peace treaty was never signed.  

 

The Korean War, as the first testing ground of the Cold War, was also part of the Atomic Age. The German scholar N explains, writing in the book, The Korean War (2000), that during the war, General Douglas MacArthur (US) repeatedly called for the use of atomic bombs in 1951. Even Harry S. Truman, the United States president, considered using atomic weapons at one point. In November, 1950, not long after the American air force bombed the bridge over the Aprok River, Truman threatened the Soviet Union, saying that the US could drop a nuclear weapon on Beijing. Mao, after a victory led by China’s Human-wave Attack in 1951, requested that Soviet Union give the nuclear weapon blueprint to them and Stalin refused. Their relationship split.

 

In Eastern Europe, ruled by the Soviet Union, the campaign to support North Korea started right after the Korean War. East Germany responded likewise. That made West Germany nervous; they pushed to rebuild their army and manufacture military materials. The result: Before the Korean War, the economy of West Germany was in shambles, with more than two million unemployed. By 1952, their overseas trade had doubled. N, the German expert on the Cold War and the Korean War explains that “After years with the war, the West German economy ran smoothly like a rotary machine.” 

 

Of course, the Korean War can never be explained fully as just a proxy war, moves on a chessboard. War makes the most vulnerable suffer and bleed. Korean people call the Korean War “The Tragedy of Brothers Killing Each Other.” Rev. Cho (https://united-church.ca/blogs/round-table/divided-war-0) shares her story that her two teenage brothers were taken away by South Korean soldiers and North Korean soldiers respectively, and had to fight, aiming their guns at their enemy which was, in reality, their brother. Human suffering must be considered as the most powerful reason to end war. We must always remember the theological reflection on the hunger towards justice and peace. We need to be “wise as serpents”, not only “innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) when we are sent out into the midst of wolves, among the foxes.

 

During the war, thirteen activists from the Women’s International Democratic Federation, which was founded in 1945 in Paris, to work for women’s rights, anti-fascism, world peace and child welfare, visited North Korea to research the conditions of women, children and the vulnerable under the brutality of the American and South Korean armies. It was the one of the most influential international women’s organizations of the post-1945 era. It reported about indiscriminate, daily air bombing by the American air force on North Korea, the destruction of houses, mass murder, burning, the starvation of innocent people. They wanted to find the truth of who died by whom and why on the war-torn land. The report was published, world-wide, entitled “We Accuse”. The organization lost their status in the UN as a consequence of their research and conclusions. (They were not given permission to cross the border and research in South Korea during the war. The women’s organization was not allowed to cross ”The border of the Cold War.”)

 

In todays’ Gospel reading, Jesus says to his sympathizers, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” On this second Sunday of Lent, I invite Immanuel United Church to reflect on what the demons are in our time, the healing and cures of today and tomorrow, and what the third day would be like where, with all the children of God, the Christ-body, will resurrect in peace, justice, reparation and reconciliation. 

 

Hereby, I, with many people in Korea and in the world, especially with “Womens’ Cross DMZ” (www.womenscrossDMZ.com; an international coalition of women’s peace groups advocating for a formal end to the Korean War with a peace agreement), call for “Korea Peace Now!”. We call world leaders, you, and us, to make meaningful progress toward lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Specifically, we urge the newly elected president of South Korea (as of last Wednesday) to take a peace-first approach with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”) by, together with the United States, officially ending the Korean War with a peace agreement. This action must come at the beginning, not the end, of negotiations. A state of peace will benefit millions of people living on the Korean Peninsula and in the Northeast Asia region. Regional cooperation amid rising tensions between the United States and China is also crucial to ensuring a peaceful outcome to the security crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Increasing sanctions, military exercises, and pressure will only exacerbate tensions, prolong the arms race, and raise the risk of renewed hot conflict in the region. Such a disastrous outcome must be prevented at all costs. No military-first approach is productive to building peace on the Korean Peninsula. The way to build peace and achieve goals such as denuclearization is by addressing the root cause of tensions, which is the unresolved Korean War. 

 

Peace First! End the Korean War Now!

The Korea Appeal: End the War Now!

Join the Ten Thousand Signature Campaign 

The Korean War began in 1950. While open clashes ceased in 1953 with the signing of an armistice, a peace treaty has not yet been established and the war is not over. For more than 70 years the Korean people have endured a constant state of hostility and war, which has solidified the division of the peninsula.

The Korea Appeal: End the War Now! is a global campaign that seeks to collect 100 million signatures by 2023, the 70th anniversary of the armistice. The National Council of Churches in Korea has challenged The United Church of Canada to add Ten Thousand Signatures by the summer of 2022.

Join with Korean partners and all who seek peace on the Korean Peninsula, the region, and the world. In adding your signature to the petition, you are saying:

• End the Korean War and establish a peace agreement.
• Create a Korean Peninsula and a world free from nuclear weapons and nuclear threat.
• Resolve the conflict with dialogue and cooperation instead of sanctions and pressure.
• Break from the vicious cycle of the arms race and invest in human security and environmental sustainability.

Hymn:  VU 684    Make Me a Channel of Your Peace 

Offering 

Prayer: (from Gathering)

Loving God, may these gifts be a catalyst for truth 

about how we are blessed 

and how we are broken 

and how we are given to your world for hope and healing. Amen. 

Hymn:   VU 34    Come Now, O God of Peace

Prayers of the People: 

God of wonder,
Comfort those who have been suffering from the division by foreign powers for over 70 years.
We ask you to restore the broken Korean Peninsula.

—from by Dr. Un Sunn Lee, Committee of Reconciliation and Reunification (NCCK), Korea Association of Women Theologians

Jesus’ Prayer 

(paraphrased by Rev. Keith Simmons, United Church Minister, in Duncan, BC)

Our Mother, who is in heaven and within us, we call upon your names. 

Your wisdom come. Your will be done, 

in all the spaces in which you dwell. 

Give us each day sustenance and perseverance. 

Remind us of our limits as we give grace to the limits of others. 

Separate us from the temptation of empire, 

but deliver us into community. 

For you are the dwelling place within us, 

the empowerment around us, 

and the celebration among us, now and forever. 

Hymn:    MV 143    We Cannot Own the Sunlit Sky 

Commissioning and Benediction:   

“The Heart of Mother” 

(Korean song: 어머니의 마음) 

performed by Paul Metcalfe

Sermon: “All the Kingdoms of the World” (Luke 4:5), Feb 6th, 2022

Reflection: “All the Kingdoms of the World” (Luke 4:5) 

 

Luke 4:5: Then the devil led Jesus up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, fresh from his baptism in the Jordan river, is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he is tempted by the devil. The first thing I notice in this reading and am appalled to recognize, is the contrast: The Human One, full of the Holy Spirit, is led by the Spirit to be fully present to his own identity and to God, the true source of life, the ground of being, in the wilderness, and the result is that “for forty days” he is tempted by the devil. Even if the number 40 is symbolic, evoking the memory and the identity of his own people, Israel’s 40 years (which is most likely also symbolic) of wandering through the desert of Sinai, when we think about it, being tempted, tortured, provoked by the devil’s temptations for ‘forty days’ tells us how relentless and immersive this journey was for Jesus. Today’s reading says, “Jesus ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.” (V. 2)

 

In the scripture and throughout the ancient history of Israel, deserts were places of radical transformation where the people of God were shaped as a faithful community, seeking and striving to follow God’s rule, God’s law, which centers on equity, economic justice, and care for the marginalized (including immigrants and foreigners). For example, Leviticus 19:34 says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” The desert regions of greatest importance in the scripture are the Sinai to the south in Egypt, the Judean wilderness in west-central Judah (where Jesus was baptized and tempted), and the Arabian desert to the east, separating Judah from Babylon. The last place was the literal and spiritual geography where Isaiah’s prophecy and cry were written: 

“A voice is calling: clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3) 

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19)

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus” (Isaiah 35:1)

 

This week, our hearts overflow with sorrow and indignation as we listen to the news of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Shock and outrage mingle with our tears at this horrific violation of innocent people in a sovereign nation. We have witnessed Russia’s horrifying swath of murder and terror, the Ukrainians’ desperate resistance and fight, and the outcries of more than one million innocent souls trying to flee from Russia’s barbarity, all in the space of one week. This onslaught of horror has led me to think more deeply and do more research in order to shine the light of scripture on the root cause of this evil. Today’s story of Jesus being tempted in the desert is a good place to start.

 

As many of you have already studied yourself, the ground that lies under this premeditated war is Russia’s hundreds-year-old settler colonialism and Russian nationalism (imperialism) in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I believe that, in the words of today’s Gospel, “All the kingdoms of the world” challenge or even condemn the notions and practices of settler colonialism and expansionist nationalism. Luke 4:5: “Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 

 

Many experts explain that Putin’s obsession with Ukraine originates in a Russian imperialism and settler colonialism that are based on a religious belief that in the ninth century there was a state called Kievan Rus. This is where it was located. (Show the picture) The Slavic people lived here. The city of Kyiv was the capital between 980 and 1015. The Kievan Rus was ruled by a Grand Prince. In Russian, his name is Vladimir. In Ukrainian, Volodymir. Russians and Ukrainians both draw their lineage from this Slavic state. Much changed in the centuries that followed; Ukraine came under Russian rule. There are many hidden histories that require, for a better understanding, critical lenses such as settler colonialism and religious and state imperialism.

 

There is a lot of history between the two nations but it all leads to the same point: Russia’s claim to Ukraine on the basis of colonial history is unjustifiable and wrong. India-based journalist, Palki Sharema Padhya, compares the forced annexation of Ukraine to Britain reclaiming India or South Africa, or Spain reclaiming the Philippines. Past imperialism cannot justify present day expansionism – especially when the past is so horrific. Russian leader Katherine the Great started Russifying Ukraine in the 1700s (Russification). Ethnic Russians were shipped to Ukraine as settlers. Schools were told to teach in the Russian language. By 1800 the Ukrainian language was banned. In 1930 Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin engineered a famine in Ukraine (Holodomor: the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor)) as a punishment for Ukrainian defiance. Millions of Eastern Ukrainians were killed – starved to death in a region known for its wheat harvests. The area was re-populated with ethnic Russians. In the 1940s, the indigenous Tartars were forcefully relocated, and they were replaced with Russians.

 

There is a reason why Eastern Ukraine today has so many native Russian speakers. It was designed to be that way. Eastern Ukraine, historically, was important to Russia. It has coal. It has iron, and fertile land. Its historical connection with Russia was forced both by claims regarding the Holy Rus and repopulation. Putin’s Russia has claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Today, the people of Ukraine, fighting to defend their national sovereignty and identity, bleed to defend themselves against Putin’s Russian Imperialism. The description above is just a general quick summary; it requires much more to give a comprehensive, accurate picture of the land and its peoples.

 

Here's some of what I’ve learned from my personal readings. 

 

According to Taras Kuzio, a Toronto-based academic and expert in Ukrainian political, economic and security affairs, a large number of western historians of ‘Russia’ and political scientists working on Russia continue to include Ukrainians within an imperial history of ‘Russia’, denying Ukrainians a separate history. For example, many denied that Kyiv Rus was part of Ukrainian history, as the history of a sovereign nation, independent from Russian history. It also supported the incorporation of Crimea into Russia based on the argument that the peninsula “had always been Russian.” Many have downplayed Russian nationalism (imperialism) in Vladmir Putin’s Russia and completely ignored the revival of Tsarist and White emigre Russian nationalism that denies the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. On the contrary, Ukrainian nationalism was portrayed as a threat to forging an “All-Russian People” based on the three Eastern Slavs and undermined Russian foundational myths to ownership of Kyiv Rus. Tsarist Russia denied the existence of the Ukrainian language and claimed there had never been a Ukrainian state, that Ukraine had no history and that they were “Russians.” Putinversteher (Putin-Understander) scholars treat Russian military aggression as some sort of a ‘civil war’ taking place in Ukraine.

St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv

Luke 4:5: “Then the devil led Jesus up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.” 

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, following his baptism, is led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he is tempted by the devil. Let us ask ourselves: What would we do? As a people of God, a community of faith, what would be our own critical reflection on our spiritual and political status in regards to the temptation of power, land, control of being promised “All the kingdoms of the world”? 

 

The root cause, the evil of this invasion boils down to this: bending to the temptation of power (regardless of its character: political, economic, and/or religious). It’s not just reduced to one individual or one historical era. It’s how despots employ and the world permits imperialistic nationalism. It’s the opposite of what today’s Gospel reading teaches us. It’s the opposite of what we hope for today - to see Ukraine acknowledged as an independent nation, with its own identity and history. In this Lenten season, Christ is with Ukraine and other imperiled countries, seeking a future outside of the grip of the devils of not only war, but Imperialism.

 

This is all I have for today, for our reflection on this first Sunday of Lent. As we continue on with the theme, “Make a Way, Rivers in the Desert: The Reflective Journey through the Desert of Divisions”, I encourage this community to define together, what would be the true opposite word/alternative story, or path, to “divisions”, that challenges nationalism, imperialism, and wars, in the world. Let us travel the symbolic and spiritual journey of 40 days with Jesus and with one another. 

Hymn:  VU 460    All Who Hunger