Sermon: We-racle
Ha Na Park for Broad View United & First Met UC
On July 8th, my mother-in-law and Min-Goo’s niece arrived from Korea for a month-long visit. They will leave soon, next Tuesday, and I am already sad about their departure. We were completely ready to share our home and this city with our two guests. Then, two weeks ago, my mother-in-law’s sister, Min-Goo’s aunt, also joined us, and suddenly, Min-Goo and I were in charge of feeding and entertaining seven people, including our two kids. Seven different food preferences, seven different eating habits. My mother-in-law loves sweet and sour Korean style salad for every meal. Our niece loves seafood; our kids are not fans of seafood. They are fond of Korean hot and spicy chicken and western food. In addition, for health reasons, my mother-in-law needs to have two snack-times between the three main meals. In the meantime, Min-Goo developed his sourdough making skills using this month’s holiday time. I started making Jun Tea (something like Kombucha), a fermented probiotic drink. It turns out our holiday month became not just a “break” from work, but beautifully and metaphorically a time for “breaking bread” (and brewing fermented teas and sourdough starters every night.)
It was a busy month, and it offered me the wonderful regularity of providing bread for seven people in July. When I am focused on tasks and want to finish them on time, I tend to skip lunch. It could be the influence of capitalist culture, where one is expected to work non-stop in order to finish as much work as quickly as possible. I might have learned it growing up in super-competitive Korea, but North America is not that much different – success is associated with sacrifice of personal time. This holiday month, some time after I built new routines of baking bread and cooking rice every day, I gave myself more time for eating, with great pleasure and with a full table. I learned that I liked it! As you see, I could use more meat on my bones. While Min-Goo and I focusing on feeding family and making sure everyone is fully satisfied with each day’s meals, I also ate fully and happily and it was SO GOOD. I felt healthier, more stable, and energized.
The first thing that shocked me when my family moved back to the Island from Winnipeg, especially in Victoria, were the apple prices at our first grocery store visit last September. All apples were, at most, $ 1.99 per lb in Winnipeg. Here, prices started with the number 2- two dollars and 99 cents per lb. The first thought that occurred to me was “Oooh, I don’t think we can afford these apples.” Then, a few more visits led me to think “Can we really live here and still eat apples?” My kids love apples. We started to buy apples only after some people told us where we can get more “affordable” apples - farmers markets are good - and Min-Goo got his second half-time job at UVic. The top two troubling challenges in the city are food insecurity and housing, along with a lack of family doctors. In the holiday month that blessed me and my family, I learned that, while my family can enjoy good food and nourish our bodies, enjoying food security, a safe home, time to fully rest as our right, these rights become privileges if others are not able to enjoy full access to them. Students struggle with food insecurity. Our younger generations raise their voices for affordable housing. Emerging leaders need to be ambitious to build a community that elevates values such as mutual aid, community care and the radical power of dreaming. Each time a property is sold to a market developer, the rental price goes up and more people lose the stability of having a place to rest and call their home.
What if we hear today’s story as if “The other side of the Sea of Galilee, the mountain place with a great deal of grass” is this place, this city, this planet, where five, fifty, or five thousand people can go hungry or lose their homes, no matter how hard they keep fighting to keep their place, to feed their family and secure stability. Then, keeping that question in mind, I invite you to wonder who the child in the story would be in our own reality. I have met some emerging leaders in the city, who told me they were organizing a community called the “Plenty Collective”, because, for example, “There are not many places in this affluent and expensive city where young people can experience being a community, meeting friends and having food, without spending money.”
I confess that I learned why some of us, including myself, can be silent in front of their persistent cries for justice, when I attended a GVAT (Greater Victoria Acting Together) event about housing last year. Moving to this part of Canada from Winnipeg, we experienced huge ‘sticker shock’ with housing as well as apples. We were lucky enough to be able to buy a small old townhouse, and the stories that the settler and indigenous folks shared about why they were losing homes or could not afford to buy or rent homes in Victoria were painful to hear. Right now, it seems like we are scrambling to save ourselves, protecting our few loaves, our just-enough fishes. It would be miraculous for us to have the resources to act together, like the child in the story.
I would also like to invite you to imagine with me, what if we witnessed the event of feeding the five thousand through the eyes of the child who offered their small lunch and saw in wonder everyone that day fully filled, in both body and spirit? I am sure the child, that day, witnessed something I would like to call, a “We-racle”. You got it! We-racle, not a me-racle. What if we witness today’s story, traditionally called, Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand, as a ‘We-racle’, not a miracle? Let me explain. The evangelists who wrote the Gospels interpreted the feeding of the five thousand as a miraculous sign; the impossibility of feeding “five thousand” people with two loaves and five fish points to Jesus being the Son of God, a confirmation of divinity. The purpose of the evangelists’ storytelling is to reveal Jesus who can do a Me-racle. A “We-racle”, however, offers a new understanding of the story. The moment when a crowd of strangers transforms into a community where everyone makes sure no one goes hungry, in body or soul, becomes the sign because it was a We-racle. The sign of the “Word made flesh”’ is not about the individual divinity of Jesus (which makes a Me-racle); the sign is revealed in the community witnessing the beauty of the five thousand people, the holy ones’ open arms. The child saw a We-racle.
Somehow five thousand and more people learn from the child, just as we learn from emerging leaders. Their lunch and their voices. The least recognized, neglected, or ignored groups will be able to lead us in the ways closer to what the Kin-dom of God can be like. Those folks, including myself, who are more complicit than others with the privileges of food security and housing can also break our silence and act together. Take the example of climate change. If we owe a lot to the generations that follow us, then let’s not just be “generous” (= Giving as good but optional, rather than intrinsic to our moral obligations to one another in an unjust world.) Let’s not just be generous, but “give back” to them what we unquestioningly inherited: the health and well-being of the earth and their future.
The body is the place where we learn about how God’s Kin-dom vision works. HERE IS THE MOUNTAIN where, in the Gospel story of feeding the five thousand, no one, no child, went away hungry. We, Jesus’ mountain people, are called to be an “embodied” community in which everyone’s well-being is cared for, especially the body, nourished by good food, the inclusive Word, and full rest. That large number, 5,000, means that we continue to reach out beyond the boundary of “us”. Broad View United us. First Met United Church us.
How does a community move forward?
I met a highly successful and experienced Executive Director of an organization in this city. She said, “It is not the strategic planning that moves forward a community.” Now, the following is my interpretation of what she said. What really moves forward a community is when the community is a safe and welcome place to be. Hunger can be many things. It's not just bread that sustains us; emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical needs can, and must, be fed. Your hopes, your dreams, your true feelings, how you experience belonging and inclusion, these are bread and fishes, the ingredients of a We-racle. In a welcome and safe place, everyone can be vulnerable and honest, speaking the truth, including how they experience hunger, or do not, in the community. No one should fear to say they are hungry, stuck, tired and need good food, nourishment and rest, stability, safety, fulfillment of their personal purpose. Therefore, let us, First Met and Broad View, become one beloved community, sharing the ministry of counting 5000, 5001, 5002, until all on earth, all bodies in the city and the world, find fully embodied wholeness. Let such impossibility lead us to the beauty and the impetus of the We-racle Kin-dom.
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