Sermon: A Text Forward
So, our Question of the Day this week is “Have you had a text message that changed your day?” I hope you think about this question, during coffee time or later this week.
We do text messages these days… Years ago, they were known as SMS, Short Message Service. For example, here’s a text message my 16-year-old son sent me last Tuesday: “I need my calculator by tomorrow. I can’t take Chem without it” was the longest one. Then, “Yeah, yeah” “Oh yeah I did” “Yes” “idk”. Nothing about those messages really changed my day.
Daily, we exchange a lot of “texts” (not just text messages). Newspapers, novels, poems, even the BVU Newsletter. :) An online dictionary provides the definition: Text is the original words and form of a written or printed work. Text is the original words of an author or speaker, as opposed to a translation, paraphrase, commentary, or the like.
I became interested, and was pondering what “text” means and what we do with it, when my new friend who is a singer — and a preacher in her soul — told me her story. She focused on the remarkable moment of her ordination, in 1969, in the heart of the civil rights era, Black womanist movement, a time of great social change. She was “ordained” in the Baptist church in the US by her grandfather…
“I was ordained / because I was a woman / and Black / woman of colour / and / lesbian.” She told me. My friend emphasized each identity with her eyes, and the pause and rhythm of her speech. She continued:
“For me, what is more important than, or equally important, as melody, is a text forward.” The lyrics. Originality, sung and spoken in words. Not only melody, but the Text, the Message, the preaching of music, can change our day, even our lives.
In today’s reading, the Samaritan woman at the well made that connection. Her “text forward” changed how the first disciples understood who the Good News was for: God’s “Love colours outside the lines.” After hearing Jesus say to her that God is spirit, and only by the power of God’s Spirit can people worship authentically, the woman confesses, “I know that the Messiah will come, and when he comes, he will tell us everything.” And Jesus affirms it, saying “I am he, I who am talking with you.” Then, the woman left her water jar — she completely forgot the reason why she came to the well, to draw water, — and instead, went back to the town and shouted out God’s message - she put her text forward! “I am not ‘Just a Girl’ (which is the title of the song our musicians played last Sunday). I am not ’Just a Samaritan.’ And here’s my text in a bold font: Come and see, the Messiah is here!” Like an SMS message. The woman texts her proclamation forward. Her text, her message, is short. Clear. Efficient. Strong. “Come and See the Messiah.”
If you got her text message today, “Come and See” on your cell phone, and your screen showed the Sender to be Anonymous, or the Sender: Undefined. Or the Sender: Samaritan. Or the Sender: Samaritan woman.” Would it change your day? How? What would happen? What would be your response? It could be a scam. You might delete it right away. Or you might just ignore it, depending on who the sender is. And how busy you are that day. In today’s reading, it is most likely that the woman knew the townsfolk, and the townspeople knew her, so there’s relationship, connection, she’s not totally unknown; she’s not anonymous to her own Samaritan folk. But what kind of reputation does this woman have? What kind of community has she been able to build in spite of the context of her life — when she has had 5 husbands and the person with whom she lived when she met Jesus was not really her husband. Even with this knowledge, the townsfolk listen and follow the woman and they see.
Now, here’s my story about the “text” that changed my day. Have I had a “text sent forward” to me that changed my life? Yes. This text changed the course of my life. During my first Sunday worship with you, on Sept 11th, I shared a little bit about that time… You might remember I told you that I had a life-changing conversation with my husband, Min-Goo, at my parents’ apartment’s playground, in Korea, in the summer of 2006. That evening, when Min-Goo said, “Why don’t you become a minister?”, the question, the idea, was one that I had never considered as a possible, real option in my life, especially since I had never seen any female ordained ministers in Korea.
Min-Goo was ordained during our engagement, a few months before our marriage. He soon became the assistant minister in his church. All my relatives who knew about the life of Korean churches and their patriarchy warned me about my future role at Min-Goo’s church as a Samonim. Samonim is an honorary title for the wife of an ordained man in the Korean protestant church. A good Samonim will sacrifice herself, her identity and ambition, to sustain the things that benefit the church and her husband. I said yes, I was willing to make that commitment, not having experienced the negative influence the church patriarchy would have on me. I trusted that I could do whatever it would take to give what was needed of me. “I am smart. I am wise. and Min Goo promised that we would leave Korea after the two years are over. I’ll please the church people.”
However, I have to admit that I was over-confident. Soon, I started to look closely at the other minister’s wives I met. They looked terrible. They seemed to have forgotten how to smile brightly, happily, from the inside. These women looked hollowed-out. I wondered why; it took much less than two years to find out. After our marriage, we started our lives together in a make-shift house, conveniently built/added on the rooftop of the four-story church building, Min Goo’s workplace, which stood right next to a slightly uphill eight-lane highway. (Traffic was loud!) While my husband became like a church prince, I became like a “smiling angel.” I had to say yes to all the compliments that the church women and men made to praise Min-Goo. I felt that I must always agree with them despite my feelings. I sensed something was wrong when a church member, who really cared for me and Min-Goo, complimented me, “Our young Samonim is an angel.” A smiling, silent, creature.
After two years, I began to experience huge anxiety issues. I couldn’t be alone in a room without having an anxiety attack. I remember one day I desperately needed to hold the Rosary beads my mom blessed me with on my wedding day, to overcome panic. Over those first two years of being a ‘smiling angel’, or ‘silent angel’, my personality changed dramatically - from an intelligent, competent, independent woman to an anxious, passive and dependent hollowed-out shell.
I knew that, for my own mental health, I needed to stop performing the role of the smiling angel, the ‘shadow’ of the ordained husband. That’s when Min-Goo suggested, “Why don’t you become a minister?” It was a time of incubation for me to reinvent my whole world. A few months later after the summer playground bench talk, I accidently found a book “Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology”, written by Chung Hyun Kyung, a Korean feminist, eco-spirituality Christian theologian, a pioneer, a Goddess theologian, a tenured professor at Union Theological Seminary. I picked it up, read it, and found a poem in it, “The Hidden Sun”, which Japanese feminist poet Hiratsuka Raicho wrote, as her original text, in the 1900’s. The text Hiratsuka sent and forwarded reached out, from Japan to me, from 1911 to 2006, almost a hundred years later.
“Originally, woman was the Sun.
She was an authentic person.
But now woman is the moon.
She lives by depending on another
and she shines by reflecting another’s light.
Her face has a sickly pallor.
We must now regain our hidden sun.
“Reveal our hidden sun!
Rediscover our natural gifts!”
This is the ceaseless cry
which forces itself into our hearts;
it is our irrepressible
and unquenchable desire.
It is our final,
complete,
and only instinct
through which
our various
separate instincts
are united.”
Reading this poem, I immediately identified myself with this poet, who claims that “Originally, woman was the Sun. She was an authentic person. But now woman is the moon. She lives by depending on another and she shines by reflecting another’s light. Her face has a sickly pallor.” It’s a perfect description of the life of a Samonim. I had become the moon. After I received this text, I declared to myself, to God, that I will struggle to be the Sun again, the Sun as the wholeness about me, by me, of me, within me. And I carried the text, the poem, “Hidden Sun” as my prayer, and said it when I flew to Canada in 2007 to walk a different path, shining my own light, in nobody’s shadow.
Now, my BVU friends, I would be extremely keen to learn what has been the “text forwarded” to you and the “text” you forward to the future that has changed your life and will change other lives as well. This year, we will continue to worship with the theme of Telling Our Story, Sharing Our Faith. We will continue to explore why we tell a story — as a way to find our strength within: Touching Our Strength. Let us gather to worship, sing, reflect, pray and share what it means to each of us when Audre Lorde (the incredible pioneer, self-declared as a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”, who shared the same era and the voice of our musician LR) says
that our story is “The transformation of silence in language and action.”
And here’s the ending quote for us, as my benediction, commissioning and prayer for you (which is also shared in the Friday Email):
“As a woman it is important for me that I am in God, and God is in me. No longer do I see God as a rescuer. I see her more as power and strength within me.” (Lee Sun Ai, Korean theologian)
Come and See. Text forward your message to God, to yourself, to your neighbour.
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