Sermon: Groundlessness
Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-12
Have you ever been with someone who showed you their heartbreak - opening up so you could see their pain? Maybe their pain connected deeply to yours. What creates that heart-to-heart connection, making heartbreak the bridge that opens our hearts to truly see each other? This is where our Jubilee reflection must begin, because it connects us to why the scripture first introduced the concept of Jubilee. Without heartbreak, there is no Jubilee.
I witnessed someone break open their heart and cry because of my story. Brenda Fawkes (June 23, 1971 - September 20, 2024), on her way to the bathroom, stopped to acknowledge my speech at the 2014 BC Conference, where I spoke as an ordinand. Every ordinand was to make a 2-minute speech, answering the question, “Who Are You?” I surprised many who were there in the conference room when I said, “Look past my surface, look past my youth, look past my race, strip off what you see on the surface, as I strip off my fears in the deepest part of myself. It is my hope, my affirmation that when we encounter one another, vulnerable and courageous, looking into each other’s eyes, with all social labels and prestige stripped away, we will only see, we will only encounter the radiant core of our beings—the Divine nature of you and me. I am Ha Na Park. I am your neighbour.”
I had experiences in the past in which people at the conference ignored or overlooked me; I was a student, an Asian, an immigrant woman/mom with a young son, 3-5 years old. People avoided eye-contact, dismissed, and overlooked my presence, assuming I was just a wife, a mother, a caregiver – not a legitimate participant. Then, Brenda, who was just happening to go in the same direction—to the bathroom—spoke to me, saying, “I didn’t know.” And she cried. At the time, I didn’t really understand why she cried in front of me, allowing vulnerability. I was perplexed when she allowed herself to be in such an emotional state, allowing me to see her.
Now I understand… I think I can understand… After witnessing many in the BC Conference and other regions outpouring their sorrow and memories of Brenda, (In her obituary, her family wrote: “She was not always easy to get to know but if you did become her friend, you knew what you had found. Brenda knew the inner workings of both the human soul and the institutional church like few others.”) I could see why she let herself be known to me by connecting her heartbreak to mine. Imagine with me how she was able to allow her heart to be tender and open—Breakable, Feelable. When I expressed my version of the Jubilee in my two-minute ordinand speech, she responded to it—the Jubilee she dreamt of in her context to the Jubilee I dreamt of in my context.
Adrienne Marie Brown, who wrote Emergent Strategy, said, “Emergent Strategy grows from heartbrokenness. One of my favorite examples in the human world is actually the work of Black Lives Matter and the movement for Black lives. It’s not like someone sat down at a table and was like, ‘I’ve got it all figured out, I know how we’re going to catalyze black people into their liberation fight and take direct action right now. That’s not what happened. It was just a heartbreak. It really, to me, just grows out of a heartbreak. If you look at the original post, Alicia put it like “MY heart is broken and our lives matter” and that that heartbreak was so catalyzing and people were like “Yeah”…
Recently I watched a play by the Inter-cultural Association of Greater Victoria. One scene featured a Palestinian woman sharing the rich and beautiful culture of her people before the 1948 Catastrophe. Amid fog mimicking tear gas, she explained that saying “Stay safe” has become meaningless for Palestinians. She does not say “Stay safe” to her young people any more. Instead, after a series of funerals and a series of complete heartbreak, she says “Stay smart.” How could we allow our hearts to be tender and open—breakable, feelable—alongside hers?
“It was just a heartbreak” that called people of God—Black Lives Matter, Palestinian solidarity, students who encamped, and on and on—to DREAM JUBILEE. Jubilee cannot be enforced by law. No new law can make Jubilee happen. It is all about heartbreak for liberation, restoration, and a new start. Jubilee is the verb. Set free.
Every seven years, the Sabbatical year required the land to lie fallow, debts to be canceled, and slaves to be freed and paid. Jubilee, celebrated every forty-nine years, added another: Every family would take possession of their ancestral land. Imagine every displaced family in Haiti or Guatemala returning to their rightful land regardless of whether it is owned by a wealthy landowner or an international corporation. It would be like returning to Mexico every single portion of land in the United States that was a part of the original country of Mexico. Imagine Indigenous people reclaiming their lands and their sovereignty and governance on the land, - Land Back -, reversing the effects of colonization.
Jubilee is profoundly about returning to a time before first colonial contact, before 250 years of slavery, before disruption, before destruction, …before 1948 Nakba, … before, and before, with a future-oriented imagination for peace and flourishing communities.
Last May, a member of our community shared a poem for Palestine, speaking of hope amidst suffering. It reflected how Jubilee is a longing that arises from heartbrokenness. It’s the trembling pen hovering over the page, not knowing what to write next, but knowing that hope must spill onto the paper regardless.
A Poem for Palestine (by Haneen Al Hassoun)
I hope the airplane to Palestine is filled with people just like you
I hope someone with skin like yours is sitting next to me
I’ll always remember the hand that held the “Free Palestine” banner with me
…
I hope the safety briefing shows a child secure in a plane, not scared by one
I hope that the captain tells us the temperature
Warm with a breeze, honeybees, and soft clouds
I hope she tells us that in just a few hours we will see a land we cried for
I hope the other pilot chips in
I hope you can hear his smile through the mic
As he speaks his God for a safe journey through skies
…
I hope the airplane to Palestine is filled with people that look just like you.
Jubilee is the dreaming uttered at the edge of the tongue, coming from the throat of, regardless of heartbrokenness, because of heartbrokenness, fighting heartbrokenness, and demands “returning”, “restoring”, “resilient”, “revealing”, “revolutionizing”, calling for freedom and release from the “imperial structure” of things that contribute to perpetuating injustice. You may have noticed I switched from ‘heartbreak’ to ‘heartbrokenness’. That’s on purpose – although they seem to mean the same thing, I think that ‘heartbreak’ can be seen as momentary, transient. Everyone has experienced heartbreak; not everyone has experienced heartbrokenness. ‘Heartbrokenness’, to me, is deeper, harder to fix.
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| Photography by Krystal Cook (photo 1) and Gurleen Cheema, from I'm:print 2024 |
If we don’t see heartbrokenness, that is not Jubilee. If we don’t see the rejoicing of the oppressed, imprisoned, displaced, and know that Jubilee is not returning to the status quo, but advancing to a new beginning, then we haven’t yet seen and understood the complete scope of Jubilee. Lastly, we don’t wait for 49 years to declare Jubilee. Jubilee is not for specific special years that come around every 49 years. The year of Jubilee must be a constant and repeated reordering of God’s creation today and now, – the nowness of Jubilee --.
Here’s a question:
For Jubilee to happen, many of us, here and in the world, or at the very least the top few, will have to allow themselves to be in an un-okay position (i.e. the slaveowners should emancipate their servants – losing some comforts, taking on more work themselves.) Why would we, if we enjoy our comfort, place ourselves in an un-okay position? Regardless of social status, everyone has, at some point, faced some kind of hardship, trauma, unlevel playing fields, disadvantages, or a painful part of their lives. No one is perfectly free from harm since birth, growing up, and journeying through life. Everyone, in their unique ways and circumstances, has been touched by sorrow. So how can we demand anyone “to be un-okay”? It is not like St. Francis’s ‘voluntary poverty,’ who will do ‘voluntary un-okay’? To whom can we say “Now you need to accept being un-okay”? Who should declare Jubilee? How can we know that Jubilee is, and can be, an event for all creation and with all creation, no matter where you sit on the see-saw, on the top, on the bottom, or somewhere in between on the Jubilee see-saw?
First, kinship.
For Jubilee to be everyone’s concern, and to trust that it is the possibility of the impossible, not the impossibility of the possible, we need to develop our kinship with all beings. When I can recognize my pain, accept it, understand it, and interpret its meaning—not just about suffering but also freedom from the root of the suffering—we can expand this to recognize others’ pain, accept it, understand it, and interpret its meaning and the freedom from the root of the suffering. The heartbrokenness that you feel, the Jubilee that you feel, the sense of being able to open up and let go of what strains us—the structure of empire—becomes the way you connect with others. It is to develop the sense that we are in kinship with all beings. Everyone is on God’s Jubilee seesaw today. The other, on the other side of the seesaw, is my child, my mother, my relative, my kin, my brother, my sibling. My neighbour.
Second, we embrace “groundlessness.” We often hear about grounding because we sometimes, or often, feel upset or just too busy… So, grounding ourselves is so important. However, Pema Chodron goes a step further to invite groundlessness. Moving away from comfort and security, stepping out from cocooning ourselves with the story we keep telling ourselves—why we do certain things, why we are right, who we are, and who we are not—allows groundlessness. Un-okayness. Allows stretching. Allows being in the moment of heartbreak as heartbreak. Allows our heart to do what it does well—connect. Feel pain. Feel delight. Allow our heart to teach us what it knows already deep inside. Non-duality. This kinship, this stretch, this groundlessness, this stepping out—that’s called liberation. It’s one more step to Jubilee as “When all the walls fall down, when the cocoon completely disappears and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves. That’s what we aspire to.” (Pema Chodron, “The Opposite of Samsara”, in Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion)
Every God’s Jubilee story begins with “It was just a heartbreak. My heart is broken, and our lives matter.” And that heartbreak was so catalyzing people started to see how the world started to tilt towards those who dreamt of, or desperately called, or daringly declared Jubilee. It’s God’s jubilee seesaw, where all are lifted to an equal horizon. It’s the airplane to Palestine, filled with people who look like you and me, landing in a place of spring warmth, honeybees, apple trees, and hope.
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