Women of Courage, Men of Peace

“Women of Courage, Men of Peace”
Isaiah 2:1-5

December 2, 2007 First Sunday of Advent

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe
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“Women will starve in silence until new stories are created which confer on them the power of naming themselves.” [i]

- Sarah Gilbert & Susan Gubar


Richard C. Choe©

A mother drives to pick up her fourteen year old daughter who works at a local drugstore. She spots her kneeling on the floor in the toothpaste section, stocking the bottom shelf. She is about to walk to her daughter and greet her when she notices two middle-aged men walking toward her daughter. They look like anybody’s father. Her daughter does not see them coming. She is too focused on her task in getting the boxes of toothpaste lined up evenly. The men stop and one says to the other, while peering down at the girl, “Now that’s how I like to see a woman – on her knees.” The other man laughs.

The mother watches her daughter’s expression fall. Seeing her daughter kneel at the men’s feet while they are laughing at her subordinate posture pierces through the mother’s heart. She does not know what to do. But she realizes that if she were to abandon her daughter at that moment by simply walking away and keeping silent, her daughter may internalize the posture of being subservient for the rest of her life.

The mother walks toward to the men. “I have something to say to you, and I want you to hear it,” she says. They stop laughing and her daughter looks up. “This is my daughter,” the mother says, pointing at her daughter, her finger shaking with anger. “You may like to see her and other women on their knees, but we don’t belong there. We don’t belong there!”

Her daughter rises to her feet. She looks at her mother, and with confidence she stands by her mother and faces the men. “Women!” one of the men says and they walk away.

Mother and daughter look at each other and smile. There are moments in life when words cannot truly express the profound moment of truth.

Sue Monk Kidd recounted this moment of her awakening as a woman in her memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, articulating that the men in the drug store mirrored one of the attitudes existing in our culture, a culture long dominated by men – a culture of patriarchy that seeks male power over women, the other. Of staying up by keeping others down.[ii]

By confronting the misogyny of the two men and by standing together, Monk Kidd and her daughter began to name themselves as women of strength.

I wish I could say with confidence that I am far removed from the attitudes shown by the two men in the story I just shared. I realize that not only am I a product of the culture of my father’s generation but I have also have been a willing participant of the patriarchal culture that has been designed, developed, and rewarded machismo while belittling, demeaning and denigrating women.

My birth culture honoured me as the oldest male of the generation in my clan. I was the first born male of the first born male in a family within a culture where being male had clear advantages and rewards. No one had to really go out of their way to teach me that boys were better than girls. It was so ingrained in my birth culture. I grew up learning that being a male in Korean society was clearly a privilege. A family with a new baby boy would tie red peppers to a rope indicating pride and joy of the family. I remember seeing black briquettes tied to a rope on the gate of houses when a girl was born, indicating shame and misfortune in that family. The black briquettes symbolized something dirty and unclean. I find it ironic that these were the same briquettes that provided warmth and were used for cooking to sustain every household in traditional homes in South Korea.

It may be shocking for some to hear that I find Canadian culture – Western culture – the very culture I came to embrace from age 14 – is not much different from the culture of my birth. Although there are more egalitarian ways between the genders being practiced in public by changes in laws and peoples’ attitudes, the machismo, patriarchal culture is still very much ingrained and prevalent in North American society.

Misogyny – hatred of women – may have been outlawed and seen as uncouth in our society. But incidents like the massacre at l’École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989 where 14 young women were murdered simply because they were women tell us that we have a long way to go in dismantling misogyny still so deeply embedded in our cultural foundation. Women in our society continue to be put down and murdered because of their gender.

How have women historically been received in church? "Not well" would be a simple answer.

Faith communities have been a major source and a proponent of patriarchal culture for centuries. Men rationalized, theorized and instituted patriarchy in such ways that in many instances men literally became God. Religion, culture, and politics have colluded and collaborated. Imagining, defining, seeing, and embracing the Sacred as feminine according to women’s realities have not been widely acknowledged or widely accepted as significant or authentic. Many are still uncomfortable or downright angry when they hear any reference of femininity to God. Calling God “Mother” is still considered blasphemous and sacrilegious to many.

“The Bible is no stranger to patriarchy. It was written mostly about if not entirely by men. It was edited by men. It describes a succession of societies over a period of roughly 1200 years whose public life was dominated by men. ... It talks almost only about men. In the Hebrew Bible as a whole, only 111 of the 1426 people who are given names are women. (That’s almost 8 %.) The proportion of women in the New Testament is about twice as great, but still leaves them a tiny minority.”[iii]

This is what author Margaret Starbird says about Christianity:

“Institutional Christianity, which has nurtured Western civilization for nearly two thousand years, may have been built over a gigantic flaw in doctrine – a theological ‘San Andreas Fault’: the denial of the feminine.”[iv]

Women continue to experience being the insignificant Second Sex in God’s Household. Although the United Church prides itself as one of the first denominations to ordain women, women’s place in the United Church has been relegated to the Second Sex in ministerial leadership for many years. The United Church once enacted a “Disjoining Rule – a policy where deaconesses – women clergy – until 1957 were required to give up their paid ministry in church once they married. The unfairness of this policy was finally acknowledged in a Service of Apology at the April 2006 meeting of the Executive of the General Council. At that special worship service an apology was extended to those affected by this history.[v] It took close to 50 years for the United Church “to apologize to those women and express the church’s sorrow for the loss of their leadership to the church.”[vi]

In a church where patriarchal culture is embedded in the bedrock of the foundation so that God can only be perceived and known as male, it is not just women who suffer. In our patriarchal society, men also suffer the consequences of dehumanizing their mothers, sisters, daughters, life partners, friends, colleagues and neighbours – those who are integral in shaping and forming who men are as human beings. When one part of society is dehumanized all parts of society is dehumanized.

Elizabeth Dodson Gray, a feminist culture critic, defines patriarchy as “a culture that is slanted so that men are valued a lot and women are valued less; in which men’s prestige is up and women’s prestige is down.”[vii]

Sue Monk Kidd says that, “It is important to emphasize that patriarchy is neither men nor the masculine principle; it is rather a system in which that principle has become disoriented.”[viii] She also states that “men’s resistance (of women in becoming liberated and becoming whole persons) often grows out of fear – fear that everything is going to change, that women’s gain is their loss, that women will ‘turn the tables on them.’ ... what’s needed in to invite men into (women’s) struggle, to make them part of (women’s) quest”[ix]

How do we reorient ourselves in order for us to dismantle the system that denigrates, distorts and damages us – both men and women – from being fully human?

I remember watching a one-woman performance called “Motherless World.” The woman in the play talked about what it meant to be a woman in a faith community through the ages. At one point she faced the audience and said – “If God is only a Father, then as children of God each one of us is a motherless child.” That I am a motherless child if God is only a father reverberated through me as a profound shock. The feminine aspect of God has been distorted and often absent in the household of God within Christian faith. Many of us – both men and women – grew up in faith as motherless children in church. I believe that men need to integrate the feminine image of God the way we take masculine image as an integral part our faith journey.

When Isaiah envisions God’s reign on earth, peace is the primary marker of the future Household of God. Isaiah envisions peace where people will engage in right relationship with one another and with God. How do we link such vision and hope for peace in and around us in our part of the global village? How can we experience God in our community in a way of peace?

Like many men, my journey toward liberation from bondage and collusion with patriarchy continues. Whether it is learning to become comfortable in a kitchen or unlearning the expectation that men are inherently superior to women, each step is a struggle. No one really wants to change when it means giving up privileges.

As a man in his late forties, I know the kind of man I do not want to be but I do not yet know the kind of man I could be. Many men of my generation feel that we are lost between the culture of our fathers and the emerging culture we are not sure of. Many of us are wrestling with the notion of being a man who are able to live in genuine partnership with women. We are aware that we cannot simply use our cultural upbringing as an excuse to not take responsibilities for our own words and action.

The Household of God originated from a Greek word oikoumene (οἰκουμένη) – the feminine present middle participle of the verb οἰκέω "inhabit" – meaning “inhabited world.” Christians redefined oikoumene as “the Household of God,” meaning Christian faith community – the church universal.

“Pyung-An(平安)”[x] is one way of expressing peace in Chinese. “An(安)” – the second character forming “peace (平安)” in Chinese is made up of two components – a roof standing over a woman (安). According to Chinese, peace is experienced when woman is present in the household. In other word, feminine presence is an integral part of peace in household. Peace within the Household of God will not be a reality without a presence of the feminine.

As we remember the 14 women who were murdered in Montreal on December 6, 1989 along with countless women who have died in violence since then, I would like us to commit to National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in every aspect of our life and faith. May we be bold in reclaiming the feminine images of God we have lost throughout much of our faith journey. May we be daring in expressing the many feminine aspects of God in and through our worship and ministry.

May our journey toward Bethlehem in this Season of Advent – season of waiting for the Christ Child who “at Christmas became like us so that we might become like him”[xi] – be a journey of discovering and embracing God who nurtures us the way a loving mother nurtures her children. And may we find the courage to make peace.

Amen.


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[i] Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (New York: HarperCollins.1996) vii.
[ii] Kidd, The Dance, 7-10.
[iii] Cullen Murphy, “Women and the Bible,” Atlantic Monthly 272, no. 2 (Aug. 1993): 41-42 cited in Sue Monk, Kidd, The Dance, 70.
[iv] Margaret Starbird, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail (Santa Fe, NM: Bear, 1993) xix. cited in Kidd, The Dance, 63.
[v] Moderator’s Report to the General Council, 39th General Council, 39th General Council Workbook, OMNI-59, http://www.united-church.ca/files/organization/gc39/workbook2_omnibus.pdf.
[vi] Vivian Harrower, Regret, Not Apology, from General Council, Women’s Concerns, Fall 2003, 40.
[vii] Elizabeth Dodson Gray, Patriarchy as a Conceptual Trap (Wellesley, MA: Roundtable Press, 1982) 19 cited in Kidd, The Dance, 61.
[viii] Kidd, The Dance, 57.
[ix] Kidd, The Dance, 44.
[x] Korean pronunciation of Chinese word peace - 平安.
[xi] William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) 7.

Who will be the face of peace?

“Who will be the face of peace?”
Luke 20:27-38

November 11, 2007 Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

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Richard C. Choe ©
Warriors Memorial at Walpole Island Nation, Ontario, Canada
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Stolen Voices.

The title of the book, Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq, twigged my interest. I read it in preparation for Remembrance Day service last year but found that I needed more time to digest it, experience the difficult stories, and find hope in the stories.

I have attempted to use the book again this year but with the same result. The war time stories of children broke my heart. It was so painful to read stories of children growing up through wars and experiencing atrocities. I could not pick myself up after reading the final entry of one of the diaries and, then, the postscript. Nina Kosterina, a young Russian girl who began her diary at the age of 15 on June 20, 1936 with so much love of life and hope, died on the Russian front at age of 20 fighting against the Nazi German army attacking her country.[i] Like Nina, many of the children whose diaries were in this book died fighting in wars.

War, I think, is just that to most of people – a catastrophic event through which people’s lives are destroyed. War destroys people’s hopes for one another and changes the terrain of human hearts forever. Such destruction happens to the innocent and the war-mongers. Such heart change happens to both aggressors and victims. Everyone, soldiers as well as civilians, are affected by war forever.

Olara A. Otunnu, UN Under-Secretary-General, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, 1997-2005, wrote in July 2005 to the foreword for Stolen Voices.

“In the last decade 2 million children have been killed in situations of armed conflict, while 6 million children have been injured. Over a quarter of a million child soldiers are being used today in situations of armed conflict around the globe. Since 2003, over 11.5 million children have been displaced within their own countries, and 2.4 million children forced to flee conflict and take refuge outside their home countries. The scourge of land mines result in the killing or maiming of between 8,000 to 10,000 children every year. The future peace and prosperity of many countries will depend upon how well we are able to care for the children affected by today’s conflicts and their future rehabilitation and development.”[ii]

Mr. Otunnu ends with the following words.

“Today, as never before, we have the necessary means to ensure the protection of all children exposed to armed conflict. In today’s world, parties in conflict do not operate as islands unto themselves. … the force of international and national public opinion represents powerful means to influence the conduct of parties in conflict.”[iii]

Zlata Filipović, one of the co-editors and a survivor of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a child diarist herself, shares the following story.

“Some months ago, I received an e-mail from a ten-year-old American girl who had read my diary and who had such a pertinent point that I had to relate it here. She was finding it strange that my story was the only one that she had read about the war in Bosnia, or that the most famous story from the Holocaust is that of Anne Frank. But after thinking for a while, she realized that in order to understand, you follow one story and subsequently accept that Anne Frank is, in a way, the face of the Holocaust, and that I am also, in a way, the face of the Bosnian war. She couldn’t help wondering, however: “Who will be the face of peace?”[iv]

Who will be the face of peace?

Who will be the face of peace in a planet where war is a never ending event? Who will be the face of peace in a globe where war mongering is a major business venture for investors to increase their stock portfolios? Who will be the face of peace?

Nicholas Keung reported in last week’s Saturday Star about a screening of Chris Tashima’s Visas and Virtue, which tells of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who in 1940 ignored orders from his government and issued hand-written visas to Jews fleeing the Nazis.[v]

Chiune Sugihara was sent to Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania, as a Japanese Consul-General in March 1939. Chiune Sugihara had barely settled down in his new post when Nazi armies invaded Poland and a wave of Jewish refugees streamed into Lithuania. They brought with them chilling tales of German atrocities against the Jewish population. They escaped from Poland without possessions or money, and the local Jewish population did their utmost to help with money, clothing and shelter.[vi]

Mr. and Mrs. Sugihara wrote and signed visas by hand for 29 days – from July 31 to August 28, 1940 – and saved more than 6,000 Jews. They wrote over 300 visas a day, which was about a month’s worth of work for the Consul. This selfless act resulted in the second largest number of Jews rescued from the Nazis.

Chiune gave two reasons for signing the visas against his government’s order: "They were human beings and they needed help," he said.

“You want to know about my motivation, don't you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when (one) actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. … There is nothing wrong in saving many people's lives....The spirit of humanity, philanthropy ... neighbourly friendship ... with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation – and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.”[vii]

Sugihara was a Christian who believed in a universal God of all people. He was fond of saying, "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't I would be disobeying God."
In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was granted the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations (Hebrew: חסידי אומות העולם – Khasidei Umot ha-Olam) by the government of Israel. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and son accepted the honor on his behalf. Sugihara and his descendants were given perpetual Israeli citizenship. Chiune Sugihara died on July 31, 1986 at the age of 86. In spite of the publicity given him in Israel and other nations, he remained virtually unknown in his home country.

Chiune Sugihara is the face of peace.

The Rev. Murray Whetung is another face of peace. I have known Murray Whetung since early 1990s. We even shared a room together at the Grand Council of the All Native Circle Conference in Manitoba. Late in life Murray became a United Church minister. I have experienced Murray as someone with tremendous wisdom and humour, and who has an overflowing love for his son, a traditional healer.

Murray Whetung’s story was recently featured on the front page of the Toronto Sun.

Mike Strobel reported that “every man of fighting age, (51 of them), in Curve Lake, an Ojibwa reserve then known as Mud Lake, volunteered for World War II. All 20 young men had volunteered for World War I as well. 100% of the young men in Murray’s reserve volunteered for the two wars. From across Canada, 12,000 First Nations Peoples fought for Canada. More than 500 were killed, including two of Murray’s childhood friends. Signalman Murray Whetung landed on Juno Beach three days after D-Day and fought the war until the Germans surrendered. Still think native Canadians aren’t too committed to this country?” Strobel asks in his article.[viii]

There are so many tragedies in war. One of which is that all sides at war have tendency to lump together and condemn all people on the opposing side as evil. War propaganda would make you believe that all Germans are Nazis, all Allied soldiers were saints, and so on. I would encourage you to watch Letters from Iwo Jima, an American movie directed by Clint Eastwood as the other side of Flags of Our Fathers. It took more than 50 years for Americans to see and accept Japanese soldiers as human beings with families who faced the same uncertainties about fighting for their country and who experienced war with fear and misgivings just like the American soldiers.

Another tragedy of war is the tendency to forget all those who fought along side you to defend your country’s freedom. The photo in the bulletin cover today was taken in Walpole Island, Ontario. Warriors from the First Nations are forgotten by most Canadians. For years, Murray Whetung was not able to wear his native attire since it was banned from any Remembrance Day ceremony. Soldiers from the Caribbean Islands who fought for the “Motherland” of Great Britain, were treated as foreigners who were taking away jobs after the end of the Second World War. Algerian soldiers who fought for France took several decades to be recognized as French Army veterans.

If we believe falsehoods about other nations propagated during the war, we will be continuing the same kind of attitude that led the nations to war. If we forget those who also fought for the freedom of our nation, we would be perpetuating injustice that divides our nation from within.

Remembrance Day is a very difficult day. We are all affected by war in one way or another. By naming those who are not usually remembered, I invite you to expand and deepen your memories in order for us to “correct” the falsehood that leads people to conflict and war.

Let us remember those who have fought and perished as Canadian soldiers in Juno Beach, Vimy Ridge, Korea, Afghanistan, and many known and unknown places. Let us also remember those whom we considered our enemies. They were all fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, friends, and lovers who gave up their lives for their country. May our response to all who died in war be a commitment to transform our face into the face of peace, and a commitment to also transform the faces of our neighbours and our enemies into faces of peace.

We have red balloons in our sanctuary to remind us of our hopes and dreams for peace. The 1984 song 99 Red Balloons envisions the imaginary end of the Third World War.

“99 dreams I have hadIn every one a red balloon …In this dust that was a cityIf I could find a souvenirJust to prove the world was hereAnd here is a red balloonI think of you and let it go”

Jesus talked about resurrection as something that is very different than the way we experience our life. Resurrection is a process of making God’s reality of peace a human reality. Resurrection is a process of transforming our face into the face of peace. May each one of our lives be a process of becoming the face of peace.

Amen.


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[i] Nina Kosterina, Russia, 1938-41 (15-20 years old), World War II, 1939-45, Zlata Filipović and Melanie Challenger, eds., Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006) 41.
[ii] Stolen Voices, v.
[iii] Stolen Voices, vi.
[iv] Zlata Filipović and Melanie Challenger, eds., Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006) xvi.
[v] Nicholas Keung, 2007 Nov. 3. Pain of Holocaust felt by many groups: Cultural and religious organizations share grief during Holocaust Education Week. Saturday Star.
[vi] Jewish virtual library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sugihara.html.
[vii] Hillel Levine, In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1996) 259.
[viii] Mike Strobel, 2007 Nov. 7. Murray Whetung strung telephone wire from Juno Beach to Germany. At Age 85 he salutes the other 49 brave men of Curve Lake who enlisted, Toronto Sun; 6.

Beyond Welcoming to Belonging

Luke 19:1-10

November 4, 2007 Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe
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Ireland Park, Toronto, Canada Richard C. Choe©

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Beyond welcoming to belonging.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in one of his books that strange travel suggestions are dance lessons from God. I recently had such a dance lesson.

I was attending a function at a private golf club. I was given a name and was comforted by the fact that most people seemed to know the place. I looked up the Google Maps and got the directions. It looked simple enough. Well, what you see in a two dimensional map and what you see through your windshield while driving is a different story.

I could not see a sign or a marker indicating the golf club as I was driving back and forth along the street where the entrance was supposed to be according to the map. So when I saw the green through an opening I assumed that it must be the entrance. The entrance was not exactly what I expected. It didn’t look like any of the golf club entrances I had ever visited but I thought to myself, “Well, this must be a very private one.”

As I drove along I could not understand why the road was so narrow. After driving about a minute or so, it dawned on me that I must have entered the golf course through the wrong side. I was driving on the golf cart path! It was like a scene from a James Bond movie – or Mr. Bean, depending on the way you looked at the situation. I kept driving and ended up at where people tee off.

I told a friend that I had to drive on the golf cart path and that my car may have been damaged because of it. He, an avid golfer, told me that it was a good thing I didn’t drive on the green. It costs over a million dollars to put the green on the golf course and I should consider myself lucky that I was not sued for any damage I may have caused. So the name of the golf club shall remain nameless.

The lesson I received at the private golf club was that,

· If you belong here, you know your way in so there is no need for clear signage.
· If you cannot find this place, it is because you do not belong here.

On the way back home (through the real entrance), there were nagging questions in my mind. What if church is like that private golf club? What if church is like a private club where people who are new to us get the kind of message I got at the private golf club – if you do not know the way around here, you do not belong? The size of our building may not be as large as the golf course but the message would have the same impact.

The private golf club, I think is an apt metaphor, for many churches. Whenever I visit a church I find that there is no clear signage to indicate which door to use or where things are. Newcomers and visitors often find that even the worship itself is an alienating experience where it is assumed that you ought to know what is about to happen. When do you stand? When do you sit? When do you recite prayers that are not printed in the bulletin? What exactly is the Lord’s Prayer everyone seems to have memorized? How do you not feel foolish when everyone seems to know what they are doing? For those who are relatively new to church, being welcomed means more than hearing hello from people.

When you are new to a place, when you are a visitor, you soon realize that what people consider as common knowledge is not so common for you. You also realize that those in the know often assume that everyone knows what they know. There are lots of assumptions people in the know take as normal or elementary.

If welcoming strangers is so difficult, how, then, are we to help them be part of us? I think there is a clue in welcoming strangers and helping them to belong to the community in the Luke passage read today.

Jesus is visiting Jericho – the famous place described in the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Scripture where the walls of the city tumbled down by the long blast of Ram’s horn before the ark by Joshua’s army. The city of Jericho is a town in the West Bank near the Jordan River. It is believed to be the second oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world.

Jesus encounters a wealthy man named Zacchaeus, who has accumulated his wealth by dishonest means. Being a chief tax collector in Palestine during the time of Jesus meant that he would be skimming off profits from collecting tax. Jesus must have heard of him. Jesus initiates conversation, “Zacchaeus, let me stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus reciprocates Jesus’ invitation by not only hosting him in his place but he also volunteers to give and return much of his ill gotten possession to the poor and those he had defrauded.

Zacchaeus’ experience of being welcomed and being invited to open his door to Jesus becomes a turning point in his life. A chief tax collector promises to return most of his wealth – giving half of his assets to the poor and promising to return four times to anyone he has defrauded. But there are murmurs of disapproval from the religious. “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”

An encounter between two individuals – a wealthy man who was despised by the public for his ill gotten wealth meets a homeless preacher who is being watched by religious authority for getting too close to so-called sinners – provides an example of how transformation takes place in human life. Even a chief tax collector – the epitome of corruption – can be turned around from ways of evil when he experiences genuine welcoming and an invitation to be part of God’s community.

The story also tell us that,

· There will always be individuals who will have difficulty accepting those who are changing their lives around.
· That welcoming and belonging takes reciprocity and mutuality.
· And that there are no barriers in God’s love; that everyone is welcomed and invited to belong in God’s community. After all, even a dishonest tax collector can change.

When individuals experience genuine welcoming, they experience a life changing encounter. We have all experienced such welcoming in our lives. We know what it is like to be greeted when we move into a new neighbourhood. We know what it is like to be welcomed when we have felt alone in our surroundings. We know what it is like to be accompanied when we are “walking alone.”

Moving from welcoming strangers to ensuring that they be an integral part of our community takes courage from everyone involved.

There are few things that KRU Council and I have been trying to work with since I came here. One of the messages I heard from the Search Committee was that KRU community would like to continue to expand welcoming in a rapidly changing neighbourhood.

“Sharing the Peace of Christ” during Sunday worship is one attempt of implementing welcoming in and through worship on Sunday. I am well aware that it is not easy for introverted folks to take part in such an extroverted activity. I am also aware that getting up in the middle of the worship service could be experienced as a disruption of a worship mood when you want the worship to be a time of quiet reflection.

But what if welcoming is the integral part of worship? Making peace with our neighbours before we make peace with God is part of worship. Worship – being in communion with God – cannot happen without attempting to make peace with those who are here. Experiencing welcoming and being welcomed by one another is part of Sunday worship service. Taking time to greet people is part of greeting God in our midst.

Welcoming encounters involve change. Sometimes the change is tremendous like the way Zacchaeus was changed by his encounter with Jesus – from an unscrupulous tax collector into a generous man giving away much of his fortune. Other times, it can be as mundane as receiving a genuine greeting in worship on Sunday when you’re not feeling very friendly – and turning to greet someone else with more warmth than you felt a minute ago.

There are many examples of how we practice welcoming at KRU.

· There are Sunday School teachers upstairs who are sharing their time with young children and their passion for Christ’ ministry.
· We have former CGIT leaders who have resisted sexism and misogyny and in turn guided young girls to be women who live to their fullest potential.
· We have lay leaders like Helen Hick who just celebrated her 90th birthday, along with those in the 90 plus club – Elizabeth Carnaghan, Myrtle Lamb, Hazel Ferguson, and Bessie Stallworthy – who have exemplified living a life that is full of zest, humour, and generosity.
· We have members of the choir who minister to us through music.
· There are those who participate in Friday lunches, who phone or visit shut-ins. The list could go on.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, a Roman Catholic priest who is regarded as a Poet Laureate of Toronto recently published a book, Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City. In it, he considers what enfeebles the passionate imagination of a city. If I were to replace the word city with church, this is what we would hear.

“The quality of life is initially and inevitably predicated by love. … What is at stake is always quality of life, which people know cannot be bettered, unless love is factored in. People who are not in love are irresponsible. A church that is not in love (to care for) itself is irresponsible. … A congregation is incited to action by eros of mutual care, by having a common object of love – their neighbourhood.”[i]

“What enfeebles the faith community?

The notion that money predicates vision.
The mean-spiritedness that criticizes before it allows.
The convention of “safeness” from either the left or the right.
Anything that discourages human encounter in the interest of expedience and time-saving.”[ii]
Our faith community is called to serve this neighbourhood. Serving this neighbourhood requires us to move beyond welcoming in order for our neighbours to belong with us as part of KRU community. Serving this neighbourhood also requires us to be integral part of our neighbourhood.

May we continue to welcome strangers and be welcomed by them. May we continue to broaden our sense of being a faith community with those who journey with us. May we be changed as we learn to belong together in God’s community. And may we show signs of welcome wherever people are so that all will know they belong here.

Amen.

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[i] Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City (Toronto: Mansfield Press Inc., 2007), 23.
[ii] Municipal Mind, 19-20.

"El Dia de Los Muertos"

Ezekiel 37:1-14

October 28, 2007 Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

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Kim and I were on an elevator after visiting our friend Glenn when the elevator stopped on the 5th floor. A priest walked in. He was dressed in black and wore a clergy collar; a Bible and a purple stole in his hand. It was most likely that he had just performed last rites for someone who was dying. He looked very serious and solemn. As the elevator began to descend to the main floor, I said to the priest, “I thought you guys only go up and never down.” The priest burst out laughing. Humour has way of unburdening us from life’s challenges.

I grew up seeing caricatures of tigers and evil spirits in South Korea. Some of the old houses had drawings of a tiger with large fangs on the gate of a house. Some of the old cemeteries had huge stone carvings standing ten feet tall guarding the tombs. Each and every one of these image also had humorous expressions on them. The tiger, one of the most feared animals in Korea, had comical expressions on his face. Many of the tigers were holding a long stemmed tobacco pipe, smoking. The stone carvings of the evil spirits had cartoon-like features like huge rounded eyes and a huge circle depicting a nose.

I learned while studying Korean religion and philosophy in university that the ancient Koreans turned the objects of fear, such as tigers and evil spirits, into humorous caricatures so they could grapple with fear in a manageable way. Images of death, like a ferocious tiger or evil spirits, were “tamed” by re-imagining them into something comical and silly.

Many cultures and communities around the globe use humour to deal with fear of death. Making something that is outside of one’s grasp into something tangible like anthropomorphized tiger and evil spirits in order to make some sense has been part of spirituality in many communities.

If you were to pause and look around you, you may be surprised to know that there are many who are living with illness and many are grieving the loss of loved ones through death. Irene Maguire, one of the staunch members of our faith community passed away last Sunday. Her funeral was held here on Thursday and she is missed by many of us. Death is part of our lives. And yet North American culture focuses so much on youthfulness and rejuvenation of individuals. Our culture seems to be focused on “death-denying” and we do not want to acknowledge death as part of our life. Many TV and print advertisements in North America are about youthfulness. Billions of dollars are spent on anything and everything that would make people look youthful. “Old is bad and young is good” seems to be the message.

But if you were to look at the reasons why we are so preoccupied with youthfulness and rejuvenation in our culture, you might draw the conclusion that it is not youthfulness we are preoccupied with but a fear of death. It is the fear of death that drives people to find ways to deny that death is part of the human life journey.

I am sure some of you were shocked at the images you saw in the bulletin this morning. I must admit that I, too, felt somewhat uncomfortable using the images of “El Dia de Los Muertos” when DeeAnn and I sat to work on today’s service a few weeks ago. The images of this Mexican festival looked so alien to me. Is this Christian? Could we use such images on Sunday worship service? Are we glorifying death?

DeeAnn was very helpful to point out to me that “El Dia de Los Muertos” – translated roughly from Spanish into English as the “Day of the Dead” – is about re-connecting death as integral part of our life rather than trying to deny that reality. “El Dia de Los Muertos” uses humour to help us to embrace death as an integral part of the human life journey. There is also a sense of tribute to nature and respect for one’s ancestors present in ofrendas – the offerings – to the ancestors.

Hallowe’en began as a Celtic ceremony reflecting the vision of life as a natural, never-ending cycle of birth, death and reincarnation. The five days of festivities known as Samhain (pronounced sa-wen) began on the eve of October 31, and constituted the greatest event in the Celtic calendar. The Celts’ religion, still practiced today, is called Wicca, meaning wise. The Celts believed that the veil between the spirit world and the living is the thinnest on Samhain (sa-wen) Eve. As the two worlds become transparent to each other, those who died recently chose the bodies of people or animals to inhabit for the next year. To scare away these spiritual “squatters,” the Celts dressed up as demons, hobgoblins and witches.[i] Hallowe’en began as a way to embrace death as part of the circle of life in ancient times in British Isles, West-Central Europe, Spain and Portugal. Many Celtic belief and practices have been incorporated into western Christianity over the years.

Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of the powerful Babylonian empire, destroyed Jerusalem and burned Solomon’s temple to the ground in 586 BCE. The Jerusalem temple, where Yahweh dwelt, was essential to the Israelites. Some ten thousand Israelites were exiled in Babylon. How would they serve Yahweh without the temple that was the only means of making contact with their God? Five years after his arrival in Babylon a young priest called Ezekiel had a terrifying vision. He saw a vision that God had left Jerusalem and, riding on what seemed to be a massive war chariot, had come to live with the exiles in Babylon.[ii]

Today’s scripture reading is part of Ezekiel’s vision from his experiences of exile in Babylon. It is a vision of re-imagining new ways of being in the midst of suffering and death. It is a vision of hope that God is with them even when Israelites felt disconnected from God.

If you were to see the images in this space – this sanctuary – through the eyes of someone new to the Christian faith, you would be surprised how much symbols of birth, death and resurrection you see here. There is a cross – a symbol of torture and death from the Roman era turned into a symbol of a new birth. There are images of dead saints – those whose lives are eternal through the re-telling and re-enacting of their deeds by the followers of Jesus. There is also all of us – individuals at various life and faith stages walking together as community. This is a place of acknowledging life, death and renewal.

How do we learn to pause at times to reflect on our life?
What are we thankful for when we think about our ancestors?
How do we grieve loss of lives of our loved ones in ways that are healing rather than just experiencing pain?

I would like to invite you to take time to reflect on those questions as you participate in the activities following this reflection. Like Ezekiel we live in the midst of despair and hope for radical changes. Like Ezekiel we would like to vision a renewed life that is filled with God’s spirit so we could experience connection with God once again.

May God’s spirit be poured into us and renew our soul, mind. and body. May God gift us with a sense of humour when we feel too exhausted to laugh. May we be a source of hope and strength to one another.

Amen.

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[i] Gregory Felton, “How Halloween took flight,” The Globe and Mail October 31, 1994. “Halloween born of ancient pagan rituals” Toronto Star October 31, 1996.
[ii] Karen Armstrong, The Bible: A Biography (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007) 9-10.

Stretching to Our Fullest

Luke 13:10-17

Preached at 2007 Toronto Conference Ethnic Rally at Toronto Chinese United Church
by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

Stretching to the fullest.

A few years ago I went back to South Korea to visit and I toured an old prison in Seoul. It had been turned into a walk through museum. In the basement of the jail, I saw small prison cells no bigger than a broom closet. They were purposely designed with very low ceilings so the prisoners could only stand with their necks bent. Can you imagine never being allowed to stand fully erect? My neck hurts as I think about it now. The effect of such prison cells was to break prisoners’ spirits as well as their bodies.

The prison was built and used during the Japanese military occupation of Korea from 1909 to 1945. The jail is now a museum so visitors can see and experience the shameful period of Korean history when the Japanese Military Regime ruled Korea with brutality and violence until the Atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The prison cell in South Korea reminds me of Luke’s story of a bent woman with a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years. Not being able to stretch to her full height must have been torturous. Only seeing the ground she was walking on – littered with things people would carefully avoid stepping on. Never being able to look people in the eye. But the worst part of it all must have been the inability to stretch to the fullest of her being.

An unnamed, bent over woman encounters Jesus one Sabbath Day and was set free from her ailment and was able to stand straight and praise God for letting her be able to stretch to her full height. But the religious authority can only focus on the fact that Jesus transgressed the rules of the Sabbath.

In the time of Jesus, physical difference was accepted as a curse, a sign of an individual’s sin or the sins of one’s ancestors. Having any physical contact with such a person also placed one at the risk of being cursed as well. It was not just during the time of Jesus that physical difference was seen as a curse. It continues to happen in our time.

Societies continue to define and dictate what is acceptable and “normative” to the public. Media spins the “orthodoxy” – “belief in or agreement with what is, or is currently held to be right, especially in religious matters.”[i] And the public continues to perpetuate the orthodoxy until a brave soul, like Jesus, stands tall and challenges public opinion.

Tracy Turnblad is a generously portioned high school student in Baltimore, Maryland in 1962. The highlight of her day is to watch The Corny Collins Show, a local teen dance show from Station WYZT, with her friend, Penny Pingleton.

When the Station is looking for a new dancer for The Corny Collins Show, Tracy auditions for the show but gets turned away for being overweight and supportive of racial integration of the show.

This is 1962 in Baltimore. Only once a month are African American kids allowed to be part of The Corny Collins Show. Racism was in full swing.

Besides catchy tunes and wonderful dance moves, the play and the movie Hairspray shows how the United States struggled with the issues of race, intertwined with socio-political disparities, in the 1960s. The physical standards – physical preferences of the media, to be precise – based on people’s sizes, both height and width, along with the colour of one’s skin is also at a forefront of the issues the movie deals with. Parts of the movie were captured in Toronto so there are familiar landmarks as people march along the Roncesvalles Village near High Park.

When Black and White young people fall in love with one another – like the characters of Seaweed and Penny – and people finally stand up for their rights – the way African Americans and Tracy and her Mom march for racial integration of the dance show – the walls of segregation begin to tumble down. When people begin to lift their heads and reach to their full potential, equal rights, and privileges, communities begin to experience healing and freedom.

It was not just African Americans who were healed by marching toward healing and freedom when they stood up for their God-given inalienable rights to be equal with their White neighbours. The rest of American society – First Nations Peoples, Whites, Asians, and bi- and multi- racial people of all shades began to be healed and freed in the process. By segregating one segment of society, those who were enforcing segregation were also in need of healing and freedom from their racism and hatred of their neighbours. Canada was not exempt.

It is amazing how the church and societies do not seem to realise that the disease of discrimination against the downtrodden and minorities of any community always points to the illness of the majority of the members within it. There is much resistance toward the healing of the community and the Other just the way the bent woman’s community seemed unwilling to heal her themselves, and heal themselves in the process.

The Very Rev. Dr. Bill Phipps, who served as the Moderator of The United Church of Canada from 1997 to 2000, speaks of the necessary transformation of humanity as a process of moving away from being co-opted and perpetuating the Old Story – stories that are characterized by violence, fear, domination, arrogance, and competition. In his new book Cause for Hope: Humanity as the Crossroads,[ii] he speaks of moving to the New Story – stories that are characterized by mutual respect, cooperation, laughter, humility, interdependence, interconnection, and gratitude. When you change the story, you can change the context of your life and the future.

Much of our Church, The United Church of Canada, still believes, participates, perpetuates, and disseminates the Old Story. When the Ethnic Ministries Council was being developed as a way of transforming the United Church in 1992, many in the church raised questions about creating a national program unit that would “isolate and segregate” ethnic minorities from the rest of the church. What they have not asked themselves was the question why they, the dominant part of church, have been “isolating and segregating” the ethnic minorities since the inception of the United Church. There were no visible minority or First Nations Commissioners at the Mutual Arena celebrating the inception of The United Church of Canada in 1925.

The same question continues even today, eleven years after the creation of the Ethnic Ministries Council. Like the religious authority in the Luke story, the people of the status quo can only focus on the fact that ethnic minorities are doing something that is contrary to the rules and regulations that have benefited them to remain dominant within the church.

“Why Ethnic Ministries Council/Unit?” Many of us who have been part of the Ethnic Ministries Council/Unit have been answering this question for more than seventeen years.

The institutional racism within The United Church of Canada has segregated and isolated ethnic minorities as the Other within the Church from the time of Union in 1925. It is questionable whether the founding vision of the United Church of being One in Christ Jesus had any intention to include anyone other than White Europeans.

Being One in the United Church for many ethnic minorities, Peoples of the First Nations, and French Canadians has been and still is about being assimilated into White Anglo Saxon Protestant values that have too often been expressed as the Old Story of alienation, belittlement and exclusion of ethnic minorities in the church. What we seek through the leadership of Ethnic Ministries is integration of the whole where each part of Christ’ body is valued and appreciated and is part of transforming the whole.

So when ethnic minorities within the Church, in partnership with some ethnic majority allies, spoke for establishing a national unit that would encourage, enable, and empower ethnic minorities along with the rest of the Church, those of the Old Story saw it as a threat to their status quo rather than a gift to the Church.

Ethnic Ministries, Aboriginal Ministries, and French Ministries have a vision to begin to tell the New Story of the United Church – stories that are based on mutual and interconnected relationships amongst all peoples within and outside the Church.

But when you are only used to the Old Story – a paradigm of competition, and divide and conquer – ways of interdependence by establishing, developing and nurturing all parts of the Body of Jesus Christ can only be seen as “isolation and segregation” of the minorities.

The proposal from the Ethnic Ministries Unit for the United Church to embrace intercultural ministry – a ministry of mutuality between and amongst all racial/ethnic/cultural communities – and to become an intercultural church was accepted at the 39th General Council of The United Church of Canada in Thunder Bay in 2006. The church committed itself to move toward the New Story for the common good of all.

The United Church needs intercultural ministry – a ministry between and among peoples of various racial/ethnic communities – a ministry that envisions, pursues, and lives out the original vision of Jesus Christ “That All May be One.” What we need is individual and corporate courage to live the New Story of interrelatedness, mutuality, and interdependence where no one is left out and where everyone is truly appreciated and valued as children of God.

The intercultural church we envision is about faith communities that seek partnership amongst the disenfranchised to enable and empower themselves to be equal partners in the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is about inviting and challenging those who are in the status quo to courageously “de-centre” themselves to join the community where everyone is truly equal as servants of the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is about re-membering – as in re-connecting – our church to find ways to establish right relationship with sisters and brothers in First Nations communities and with one another.

My hope is that the intercultural vision would provide a thorough understanding of the Old Story in order to not keep repeating the old paradigms of empowerment of some at the disempowerment and dispossession of others. James Cone cautions us that “lack of knowledge of one’s past leads inevitably to self-hatred and self-hate leads one to love the oppressor’s values, and thus to act against one’s own freedom.”[iii] Ethnic minorities in the church would need to unlearn the behaviour of being Native Informers – those who have been co-opted to the Old Story that they have internalized the racist values of their oppressors deeply within them. Ethnic majorities in the church, on the other hand, would need to embrace and accept who they are without the trappings of the unearned privileges and status of being White in Canada. What we are envisioning together as ethnic minorities and ethnic majorities through intercultural ministry is a faith community that tells the New Story that heals and transforms all within it.

An Intercultural church should be a place where faith and life stories of each one in the community is lifted up and cherished so we can all live to our fullest. It is a community where the Journeys of Black Peoples is a healing and peace-making journey of peoples of all African descents. It is a community where the Sounding the Bamboo is a healing and life transforming event for racial ethnic minority women. It is also a community where people of the land and people from away; where men, women, youth, children, gays, lesbian, transgendered, and differently abled folks are all welcomed and embraced as sisters and brothers in God’s love.

Intercultural Church is a vision of a community where the last, the least and the lost in our society are invited and welcomed as part of our community. Intercultural church is not a middle class ghetto where only upwardly mobile folks from various racial-ethnic cultural communities congregate for the next opportunity to advance themselves by peddling the “hierarchy of pain” through which one community’s Otherness becomes a ticket for one’s personal and individual success. Intercultural church is where everyday is “intercultural day” and every aspect of ministry and worship is intercultural in ethos and in practice.

There is a song in the movie Hairspray that says a lot about our communal journey in intercultural ministry. The civil rights marchers sing “I Know Where I’ve Been” as they demonstrate for the de-segregation of the dance show.

Motormouth Maybelle Stubbs, played by Queen Latifah, leads the singing as they march for freedom and the healing of society.“There's a dreamIn the futureThere's a struggleWe have yet to winAnd there's prideIn my heart 'Cause I knowWhere I'm goingAnd I know where I've beenIn my heart 'Cause I knowWhere I'm goingAnd I know where I've beenThere's a roadWe must travelThere's a promiseWe must make'Cause the richesWill be plentyWorth the riskAnd chances that we takeThere's a dreamIn the futureThere's a struggleWe have yet to winUse that prideIn our heartsTo lift us upTo tomorrow'Cause just to sit stillWould be a sinAnd lord knowsI knowWhere I've beenOh! When we win,I'll give thanks to my God'Cause I know where I've been.

When people stand up to say “No” to the orthodoxy of the day and society’s prevailing beliefs and attitudes based on the Old Story that threaten and force people to live at a less than their fullest, then healing of the society begins.

When the rest of the Canada begins to hear the pleas for dignity from Aboriginal Peoples and participate in the healing journey for all Canadians, the healing in Canada will begin.

When society begins to realise that the healing of the entire society depends on the healing of the wounded and marginalised, then healing has begun.

When we, as a faith community, do not participate in this healing process, we are diminished, stunted, living with our heads down so we cannot see our brothers and sisters. Becoming an intercultural church is about affirming life for all so that all can live to their fullest in the New Story.

Luke recorded the day when Jesus not only sought out the bent woman but also touched her and healed her on the Sabbath. It is not the dogma of the religion that healed the bent woman. It is the homeless rabbi named Jesus from Nazareth who healed and enabled the bent women to stretch to her fullest.

The story does not end after her healing. The healing also comes to the community. Jan Richardson, a Methodist pastor, writes in her book, Sacred Journey: A Woman’s Book of Daily Prayer.

“The community also receives Jesus’ freeing touch as it begins to learn about the care God calls us to have for one another. With Jesus’ touch of the woman’s body, with her song of praise, and with the community’s rejoicing, this story challenges us to consider how we participate in the diminishment of those around us and how we must provide the condition of healing – physical, emotional, economic, relational – to happen for us all.”[iv]

In a place where people lives were bent with the burdens of the Old Story Jesus started the New Story that “un-bent” and stretched everyone to their fullest potential. For us, intercultural ministry is the New Story of Jesus Christ for our church. It is the story of interconnectedness, interdependence, and intercultural relationship amongst all God’s people.

The bent woman got un-bent and she was able to celebrate with her community and praise God for the gift.

What about us? in the here and now?

What parts of our lives are not living to the fullest? Who are we in the face of those who live at less than the fullest?

Jesus continues to challenge us to seek out those who are prevented from living to their fullest, and to heal them. Jesus continues to seek us out and heal us when we are bent and stunted by the prejudices and unwillingness of others to see us the way God sees us. For we, too, need healing. For we know where we’ve been. And we know we are going on a journey of healing and freedom for all God’s children.

May our life be abundant with creative ways of stretching to our fullest.

Amen.

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[i] Katherine Barber, The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998 ed.) 1027.
[ii] Bill Phipps, Cause for Hope: Humanity at the Crossroads, (Kelowna: CopperHouse, 2007) 71-109.
[iii] James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986) 203.
[iv] Jan L. Richardson, Sacred Journeys: A Woman’s Book of Daily Prayer, (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1996) 414.

Gift of Life

John 6:25-35

October 7, 2007 Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Worldwide Communion & Thanksgiving Sunday

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

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34They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ 35 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Richard C. Choe©
“Communion Basket & Cup at Walpole Island First Nations United Church”


What are you thankful for?

What are you thankful for as you celebrate Thanksgiving?

I know that Thanksgiving Day will always be associated with a miracle that happened to my friend Glenn this weekend.

“In Honour of those who gave the Gift of Life” This inscription was etched on the 7th floor of the Toronto General Hospital as you enter Transplant Unit of the hospital. There are sixty photos of people on either side of the inscription. Each photo is accompanied with a brief description of the person. They are photos of men and women, boys and girls, who have donated their organs so that others may live. I was so moved by the individuals who were courageous enough and generous enough to share part of their body so that someone else may have a chance to live life anew.

A woman came by me around 6 am on Saturday morning as I was reading the descriptions of each person on the wall. “They are beautiful, aren’t they?” she commented. “Are you doing a research to write a book?” she asked me. “No, but I would like to share some of their stories with others since a friend of mine is waiting for transplant surgery,” I said to her. “My name is Suzanne and I just had heart transplant on September 20,” she said. “I did not know how long it takes to recover but I am so thankful for these people.” “I read about some of these people in the news,” Suzanne said as she walked toward her room, pushing her IV trolley.

My friend Glenn Smith, whom some of you have met at our Covenanting service last year, has been waiting for kidney and pancreas transplants for about three years. He received a call on Friday night around 9 pm that he would need to get to the Toronto General Hospital as soon as possible. The call was from 705 calling area, Glenn told me as we were heading to the hospital. We were surmising that there must have been a fatal accident in Northern and Central Ontario, places like Halliburton and Barry. Glenn was also told that he was a “secondary” recipient – meaning that the surgery may or may not happen this time.

Glenn, Kim and I were beyond excitement as we were heading down the Gardiner Expressway. We know how difficult it has been for Glenn as he awaited for a possible transplants. There were so many ups and downs. A close friend of Glenn’s volunteered to donate her kidney and they spent so much time going through all the required procedures in the past year. But there were medical complications that prevented the hope of transplant at the last stage a few weeks ago. Needless to say, this was such a disheartening experience for all of us who were hopeful of the transplant for Glenn so he could live his life as fully as possible. Then, the call came out of the blue on Friday night. A gift might have his name on it.

“It is good to be a friend.”

“It is good to be a friend,” was what I was thinking as I was rushing along the highway to take my friend to a hospital on Friday evening.

We got to the hospital in record time. Kim reminded me that the surgery was not an excuse for me to fly down the highway. Once Glenn was admitted to the hospital, a long wait began. Three of us spent the night sharing jokes and regaling one another as nurses came in through the night and morning to perform various tests and preparations for the surgery. No one at the hospital was able to tell us whether the surgery would happen. All we knew was that there was a possibility of a surgery.

Three of us formed a circle as we held hands and pray to God for Glenn’s safe keeping and guidance for the surgeons and nurses. The emotions of the moment and the tears flowed on our cheeks reminded us of the friendship and love we shared with those who were praying for Glenn. 27 hours after he received the call Glenn’s surgery was successful and he was alert last night.

It is wonderful to be alive. It is wonderful to give a “Gift of Life” when you have an opportunity to do so.

Here are two descriptions I read from the wall of the Transplant Unit on Saturday morning.

Robert was wearing a tuxedo with a smile on his face. He looked to be in his mid 30s.

“Known as Bobby to friends and family, he was full of life and always had a smile. He enjoyed fishing, cars and being with friends. He was a loving son and a caring person with a heart of gold. He would have wanted to know that through organ donation he was still able to help another. He is dearly missed by all who knew him.”

Sarah was wearing a graduation gown and a mortar board in the photos. She looked to be about 8 years old.

“Sarah was beautiful child who stole people’s heart at a very early age. She was full of love and not shy to show it. She helped people however she could. Sarah loved to swim, fish and ride her bike. Her school planted a tree in her memory. Not a day goes by that she is not missed immensely by her family.”

It is indeed wonderful to be alive. It is truly wonderful to give a “Gift of Life” when you have an opportunity to do so.

We heard the words of Jesus remembered by the early Christians in the Community of John, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Robert, Sarah, and those who gave their organs in their death have become the bread of life for those who have received transplants – like my friend Glenn Smith and Suzanne whom I met at the hospital yesterday. People like Robert and Sarah gave opportunities for others to have their life renewed. I am immensely grateful to those who had courage to share their life through organ donations for I know what it is like to see a dear friend’s life being renewed and regenerated with hope and possibilities of a future.

In my thanksgiving for Glenn’s renewed life, I am also mindful of the death of the person who shared part of his or her body. I think of the pain the family must be experiencing as they mourn the loss of their child, parent, and love of their lives. I pray for God’s guidance and comfort as they grieve the loss of their loved one.

Jesus is remembered as the bread of life by us for we believe that Jesus is present in and through our lives as we comfort those who are in need of our care and celebrate with those who are experiencing joy in their lives.

It is good to be a friend – for Jesus is our friend. It is good to be a “Gift of Life” – for Jesus is the gift of life for us all.

On this Thanksgiving Sunday we are thankful for all those friends who are walking with us in this journey called life. We are grateful for so many who have been a source of nurturing and sustenance for us as we traverse this passage called life

We celebrate Worldwide Communion – partaking in the celebration of being part of body of hope for a renewed life in Jesus Christ. We “re-member” (bind) ourselves with people of Burma – military dictators who are spiritually destitute as well as for those who are hungering for food and for justice in their land. We “re-member” (bind) ourselves with our neighbours who are homeless and those who experience “homelessness” even when they are at home. We “re-member” (bind) ourselves with Jesus Christ as we join in his ministry of loving kindness for all God’s creatures.

Amen.

Saving Fish from Drowning

“Saving Fish from Drowning”
Luke 16:19-31

September 30, 2007 Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe


Charlotte, North Carolina Richard C. Choe©

19 ‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.* The rich man also died and was buried. 23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.* 24He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” 25But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” 27He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” 29Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 30He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” 31He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” ’

* * *

Jesus tells a parable that was well known to his listeners. This story read from the Gospel according to Luke is a folktale which reflects a popular view of the afterlife. It focused on the individual’s fate – that there would be a just reward in the end, that there is a “great reversal” at the end. Needless to say, the story is told from the perspective of the downtrodden and the have-nots.

People in Jesus’ time believed that there was a time and place of reckoning after death. They believed that there was “heaven” for those who led an exemplary life and “hell” for those who did not. The story of an after life was often told in the ancient days as a warning that there would be a time of reckoning.

This notion of “reckoning-after-death” or a “great reversal’ may provide some “relief” and “comfort” for people who are experiencing injustice in life. “Someday my time will come” may have been a way to endure the burdens of life for many who were suffering. The notion of an after life, however, has been abused by many oppressors in history. Many abusive leaders everywhere, both secular and religious, have exploited this “reckoning-after-death” notion to tell the oppressed to accept their life situation without a fuss.

“Do not complain. Do not protest against those who oppress you. Accept what you are given and don’t seek any change. Be thankful for what you have.” Some religious thinkers describe this notion as a form of “delayed gratification” – suffer now but you will get your just reward later.

The notion of “prosperity theology” is a contradictory concept that continues to exist along with the “delayed gratification.” Many continue to believe that wealth is a sign of blessing from God and poverty a sign of God’s curse. Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed this notion based on their reading of the Book of Deuteronomy. Thus, Lazarus, for the Pharisees, would have been an example of God’s curse. Pharisees of Jesus’ time would have implicitly and explicitly accepted that Lazarus was guilty of some appalling sin, and, thus, deserved his suffering. For the Pharisees and many others, God’s blessing was individualised, personalized, and, in the end, privatized God’s action. For many, God had been reduced to a “blessing” business. Their belief in a privatized God led them to ignore the poor and vulnerable. But such a belief also created poverty and vulnerability.

It was to those who believe in a privatized God that Jesus spoke. One of the Biblical Commentary states,

“While this parable seems to be about money, it is really about values. … The question is not whether we have money, but whether we love money (over and against anything else in life) – whether we share God’s concern for the poor and the vulnerable – whether we are too preoccupied with personal concerns to notice the Lazarus in our midst.” [1]

The apathy of the rich man who walked in and out of his house every day past the starving, sore-covered man lying at his gate was the cause of the harsh judgement in the story Jesus told.

The rich man was not an evil doer. He might even be considered a kind man. He could have kicked Lazarus out of his gate yet he allowed him to be there day after day. How long would many of us allow someone who was dirty, sick, and smelling of disease to park right by our door?

The problem with the rich man, Jesus says, was that he did not even lift a finger to do anything to change Lazarus’ circumstance. Apathy, indifference and lack of concern for someone suffering on his doorstep, was the rich man’s sin. It was not a sin of commission but a sin of omission.

By naming the man Lazarus, meaning “God heals” or “God helps,” Jesus confronts the Pharisees of his time. Luke described them as “the lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). Jesus counters their prosperity theology based on Deuteronomy saying that "what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:15).

The name Lazarus is a counter statement from Jesus to those who believed in a privatized God that “God helps those whom people with apathy chose not to help.” The Pharisees would have heard Jesus’ warning to them through the parable: If they were like the rich man in life, they will be like the rich man in death. “Don’t be by-passers. Engage with the poor, the sick, and those in need” is what I hear Jesus saying.

The challenge of the parable did not end with the Pharisees. The challenge continues today.

Who do you identify with the most in the story?
What aspects of the story make you uncomfortable?
How would you like the story to end? And, why?

We, too, pass by the poor and homeless without seeing. We, too, are often so preoccupied with our own issues that we cannot see those who are in need of our help. We discover that we love money over anything else in many instances. The parable confronts us to help and heal the Lazarus people in our midst – in our city as well as in the global village.

Dr. Fumitaka Matsuoka, former Academic Dean of the Pacific School of Religion, shares the following insight on the Luke passage.

“The statement of the “chasm “ that exists between the rich man and Lazarus is a reality about our own apathy (as middle class North Americans) and numbness in the face of overwhelming poverty and suffering. It is a statement about how we are numbed until we become indifferent by the enormity of suffering world over.” [2]

Dr. Matsuoka stated that there is a great chasm fixed between those of us who live in affluence and those who are suffering from economic, social, and political devastations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and in our own cities. He talks of the chasm fixed between the culture of the “contented” and the underclass. He concludes by saying that, “If faith communities are the embodiment of the good news, these communities are an opportunity for us of courage to see the world for what it is – a world ruled by powers and forces that derive their strength from our natural fear of destruction and our natural need for self-preservation at any cost, even at the cost of dismissing the very images of God.” He then urges people “to turn your heart and your eyes away from the contained private world of self-preoccupation, even self-preoccupation with our own pain, to the deep pain of the larger world. “We are called to a deeper accountability in the world full of Lazarus (people).” [3]

Over the past week we have been overwhelmed by stories and images of violence trickling out of Burma, now commonly known as Myanmar. What started as a peaceful demonstration turned into a violent suppression by the Myanmarian military junta.

The military dictatorship has ruled Burma since 1962 – for 45 years. Burma is the most militarized country in the world. [4] “Nearly half a century of military misrule has turned resource-rich Myanmar into a shambles, with a ranking of 130 out of 177 countries on the UN human development index and a per-capita gross domestic product lower than that of Sudan or Chad.” [5]

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won a clear and popular mandate in free elections in 1990; however, she has been living under house arrest for the most part since July 20, 1989 – the year the military junta changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar. Suu Kyi, advocate of non-violent resistance, was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma.

Olivia Ward, a foreign affairs reporter for Toronto Star, reported on Friday, September 28, 2007:

“The crackdown began Wednesday when soldiers and police fired tear gas, clubbed protesters and arrested up to 200 (Buddhist) monks in an attempt to quash the upraising, the largest since the rebellion by students and (Buddhist) monks in 1988, in which more than 3,000 (Buddhist monks and students) were killed.” [6]

The Globe and Mail reported that at least nine people – including (Buddhist) monks – were killed at the Myanmarian junta’s hand. British diplomatic sources said that there was evidence that one monastery was raided before dawn. (Buddhist) monks were ‘badly beaten’ and hauled away, leaving large amounts of blood in their dormitories. [7]

In 2005 American writer, Amy Tan, wrote a fiction novel situated in Myanmar called Saving Fish from Drowning.

Tan began her book with a fable from which her book title is derived:

“A pious man explained to his followers: ‘It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. Don’t be scared, I tell those fishes. I am saving you from drowning. Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes.’” [8]

The fisherman is an apt metaphor for the military junta and their cronies who plunder and pillage and justify their actions in Burma. It is no wonder Amy Tan has been banned from Myanmar since the publication of the book.

Andrea Okrentowich wrote in her review of Saving Fish from Drowning.

“The underlying truth throughout Saving Fish from Drowning is that of human nature; how one perceives themselves and the world around them. This novel demonstrates how one reacts to suffering on their part or others, physical or emotional. At what point does an individual drop their shields and see their surroundings as (they are) meant to be seen? If the circumstances are beyond their perception of the norm, at what point will an individual give up hope? Does one have the ability to bend their reality in order to survive? And at what cost?” [9]

As I was reflecting on the words of Jesus from Luke and the uprising for freedom in Burma, the questions from the book review kept coming back to me.

• At what point do you drop your shields and see your surroundings as they are meant to be seen?
• If the circumstances are beyond your perception of the norm, at what point will you give up hope?
• Do you have the ability to bend your reality in order to survive?
• And at what cost?”

According to Jesus, the rich man chose to see his surroundings by bending reality rather than dropping his shields to see his surroundings as they were meant to be seen. He chose apathy – originating from the Greek α- “not” and πάθος (pathos)” to mean “not suffering” or “indifference to feeling” – over empathy or compassion – i.e., identifying pains of others and suffering with them.

Choosing apathy, according to Jesus, was sin. Unwillingness or inability to live out one’s faith is sin.

Last week, Burmese Buddhist monks and students rose up to peacefully demonstrate for the liberation of their people knowing that the violent and brutal suppression of 1988 may repeat itself. They began with reciting Metta Sutra – the Buddhist virtue of metta (“unconditional love and kindness”). [10] “Excesses of the (military) regime, and the wretchedness of the Burmese people, have driven the monks to the streets,” says Pricilla Clapp, former chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Burma. [11]

The people of Burma have risen up once again to live out their belief that unconditional love and kindness ought to be practiced in their land. Theravada Buddhism, a school of Buddhism 90% of Burmese is part of, teaches that each person is a potential Buddha. Each individual can attain Buddhahood, by various practices. People of Burma can no longer bend the reality of a country ruled in fear in order to survive. They rose to free themselves from God within themselves being distorted and destroyed by the military dictatorship of the 45 years.

People and countries around the globe are standing with those standing up for love and kindness. On Thursday evening a former colleague of mine joined more than 150 people gathered at Nathan Phillips Square to show support for the demonstrators and Buddhist monks who stood up for justice and freedom in Burma.

One thing I know for sure is that even brutal oppression cannot and will not suppress people’s desire for freedom and compassion toward one another. When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

At what cost do we bend reality as it was meant to be seen?

May the great compassion of Buddha move the people of Burma as they seek liberation for its people. May we, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth – the one who sided with the downtrodden and the oppressed – hear the challenges of the parable and bear the cost.

Amen.

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[1] Luke 16:19-31, Sermon Writer:Resource for Lectionary Preaching, http://www.lectionary.org/EXEG-English/NT/ENT03-Luke/Luke%2016.19-31.htm
[2] Fumitaka Matsuoka, The Lazarus World, http://www.psr.edu/page.cfm?l=89&id=24.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Olivia Ward, Spiritual Warriors, Toronto Star (Saturday, September 29, 2007), Section AA2.
[5] Marcus Gee, The hidden ‘lady’ for whom they struggle, The Globe and Mail, (Saturday, September 29, 2007), A23.
[6] Olivia Ward, World & Comment, Toronto Star (Friday, September 28, 2007), Section AA1.
[7] Aung Hla Tun, Toll mounts as brutal regime bares its teeth, The Globe and Mail, (Friday, September 28, 2007), A16.
[8] Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons: New York, 2005), 6.
[9] Andrea Okrentowich, An Essay on Amy Tan’s Novel Saving Fish from Drowning, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/54600/an_essay_on_amy_tans_novel_saving_fish.html.
[10] BurmaNet News, http://www.burmanet.org/news/2007/09/25/all-burma-monks-alliance-and-88-generation-students-joint-statement-of-abma-and-88-students-unofficial-translation/.
All Burma Monks Alliance and 88 Generation Students: Joint Statement of ABMA and 88 Students (Unofficial translation) Tue 25 Sep 2007 Filed under: News, Statement
1. The entire people led by monks are staging peaceful protest to be freed from general crises of politics, economic and social by reciting Metta Sutra.
2. The ongoing protest is being joined by monks, nuns, Member of Parliaments, students, ethnics, artistes, intelligentsia and the people from all walks of life which is the biggest unity seen in last 20 years.
3. In this demonstration, we need to show we are deserved democracy by upholding the following 3 slogans adopted in consensus by the monks and endorsed by the entire people.
(a) Economic well-being
(b) Releasing political prisoners
(c) National Reconciliation
4. The entire people must aware the danger of government’s anti-strike counter- measure and violent crush by drawing lessons and experiences from 88 uprising, need to form the Mass Movement Committee and Anti-Violence Committee to prevent from such a violent crackdown.
5. The monks and students will not hesitate and not be deterred from any form of intimidation and violent crackdown will join hands with all the people and continue our struggle bravely and resolutely step by step for our beloved country.

Signed by

All Burma Monks Alliance(1) U Aw Bar Tha (2) U Gambiya (3) U Khe Mein Da (4) U Pakata

88 Generation Students(1) Htay Kywe (2) Tun Myint Naung (3) Hla Myo Naung (4) Aung Thu

[11] Olivia Ward, Spiritual Warriors, Toronto Star (Saturday, September 29, 2007), Section AA2.