Matthew 13:44-46
The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in their joy, they went and sold all they had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When they found one of great value, they went away and sold everything they had and bought it.
Sermon: Listening to the Lotus Roots
Today’s Kingdom of God scripture, which has also been a touchpoint in their studies, is about the treasure hidden in a field… In this reflection, I would like to invite you to connect this story with my Question of the Day: “If Easter is not a day but this moment, what do you see as a present-time possibility, something resurrecting?” Then, this Sunday, (as John Wesley famously said, each Sunday is a “little Easter,”) on this little Easter, we celebrate the youth’s faith exploration by confirming their baptismal faith, with Jamie receiving baptism. In my mind, these three different elements became one as I prepare this Sunday, this Easter time with our youth: 1) The treasure hidden in a field, under the ground 2) something resurrecting, something rising, and 3) water…
These three elements move in my mind and heart like a circling spiral, and suddenly I am transported back in memory. A few years before COVID, I spent a summer with my family in my hometown of Gwangju, South Korea. At a park, we came upon a small human-made lake where a thousand lotuses had bloomed. When I was younger, I had never seen a real lotus flower. I had learned and knew the phrases like "No mud, no lotus" illustrated in children’s books or in Buddhist temples, but only as a metaphor or a symbol. Growing up, I do not have the memory of having seen a real one. Maybe the conditions and climate needed to create a place where lotuses bloom are so precise that it rarely happened in Gwangju, my hometown, in the 80s and 90’s.
The lotus begins its life in the muddy water below the surface of a pond or marsh. Gradually, the pod pushes through the murky shadows, reaching up toward the rippling surface above. In time, it rises from the water and unfurls its petals to the sun, revealing its silky, vibrant beauty in fullness. Nowadays, in this millennium, almost everything can be recreated artificially, so a park can have a small lake and create the conditions for a thousand lotuses to bloom easily. While reflecting on this new-to-me sight in my hometown, a sparkling object caught my eye. I saw it shimmering in the sunlight, rolling around on a wide, deeply indented lotus leaf. It was perhaps a drop of rain from that morning, gathered like a pearl in the centre of the leaf, not drying up, spilling over, or being absorbed by the leaf, even as I deliberately moved the leaf around. In that moment, I saw every part of the lotus that preserves itself intact - not just the petals, but the leaves that allow the water marble to play, the stems that support it in pushing through the water surface, and the roots that still connect it firmly to the mud below. I also saw that the one lotus, or even the immensity of a thousand lotuses was not the key issue at that moment; rather, it was that in that one moment, the dirt, roots, stems, leaves, petals, and the beads of water, and the rain that had turned into those beads, and the cloudy sky and the winds that moved those clouds, and my mother who had suggested we go to the park were in that single moment, all together, as one universe of the thousands of unique particulars, as Easter.
Then, all of these lotus-interconnected worlds were not all that came to my awareness. The threat of climate change was so real. Summers in Korea have become brutally hot and humid in recent years. On muggy days, it feels like being a goldfish in a steam-filled glass bowl, and on dry, hot days, the air conditioner becomes a refuge. It required courage to venture out to the park to see those thousand lotuses in the noonday heat. However, despite the real threat of climate change, the realization came to me: there is still summer, still winter, and still, for now, nature is a gift that sustains our lives. The power of the unbroken nurturing each and every life, encompassing a thousand thousand lotuses, billions and billions of our lives and the lives of animals and plants, still creating tomorrow from today, and the future from tomorrow - all this was a gift of perspective given to me by nature's invitation to awaken to the whole, at that lotus-awareness minute and universe-sized moment.
I wondered why I had been thinking so much about our youth confirmation/faith exploration journey. Why was this important to me?
Before reaching out to the youth, I was reaching out to myself.
Joy Harjo, a poet and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, said, “Listening comes before writing. … Listening is crucial to writing poetry, living a good life, creating, raising children, and I think these days, it is increasingly difficult to find listening places... Learn to listen.”
Engaging with young people is incredibly precious to me; it moves my entire heart with gratitude and joy, so often, like the lotus pod pushing through the mud to the surface. When I am reaching out to the youth, it’s because I’m already reaching out to myself.
Young people are an important “listening place” for me. When I was finishing Grade 6 and graduating from primary school, there was no next step after Sunday School. In my church, there was no youth program to lead my questions into meaningful activities. Sunday School was merely a program provided for the children of my parents' generation, not paying attention to the growth of each youth. Somehow, the youth became mismatched, hard-to-fit, somewhat misplaced, misunderstood puzzle pieces... Odd pieces. Looking back, my adolescence was like a void of meaning, not a time when I could look into how I was the treasure, to discover in the dirt like the roots of a lotus. I did not learn how to listen to the sound of those roots. Instead, I only knew how to compare myself to others and how to separate my values from the mud. I hope our youth learn to listen. Especially, that they learn to listen to the lotus roots of themselves. What do they want? What powers do they have? -- The questions of the lotus roots in the mud below.
Someone in youth ministry said, "Today’s generation is the most anxious, adaptive, and diverse generation ever. Let’s be the most empathetic church ever." This is an invitation for the church to be a listening place, the place where we learn to listen gently to the roots.
I think of young people as precious 'listening places,' 'lotus places' for ourselves. When you listen to the youth, you are actually listening to yourselves: Your lotus-pod-mud-leaf-flower-stem-rain-bead-water marble-wind-sky journey. Therefore, today, as I share this reflection with you, and as we celebrate confirmations and baptisms at the ConXion service, I believe they are meant to be our listening places, our Easter places, even before the moments of celebration will be listening places and Easter places for the youth themselves. This also means that when you are listening to me, you are listening to yourself, and when I am listening to you, I am listening to myself.
If "Remember your baptism" means “Remember to listen, especially remember to listen to how the lotus grows and how the treasure is found,” then Joy Harjo’s poetry, "Remember," shows exactly how Easter, as the moment, (not a day) can be experienced as something resurrecting, as something profoundly unbroken, as one universe and at the same time a particular, a present moment possibility. Indeed, whenever the youth met for faith exploration on the last three or four Sundays, J would always respond to my question, “What do you like? What stands out to you from the story?” with “Everything.” Everything.
Remember, by Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, … how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too.
Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice.
She knows the origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
Listening is inquiry. When you hear the poem, you start to ask, with the speaker, about how one person becomes all people, and all people become one person, and how this universe becomes you and me, and you and I become the universe. Listening is about hearing the question that comes from the “gift of a different view”. It is listening to the sound of the lotus roots—hidden, vibrant, in the mud, below the water, just like finding the treasure hidden in a field. Then you buy the whole field, not just the treasure. You find the whole universe, including the lotus roots.
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| Credit: Sarah Porter. Sarah and I co-led Youth Faith Exploration at Broad View Untied, 2024 |
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