sermons
We Are Reservoir
Discovering the Joy of Living
Lydia Shiu
Sep 14, 2025
Roman 12: 9-12
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.
11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Good and Gracious God,
We give you thanks for the day you have given to us today. Each of us have granted your image, imprinted your love and likeness in us. We thank you that we carry that with us through all the various parts of our lives. And we come here, to church, to reconnect with you and with one another, to be reminded of your love, joy, and gift that is life. Help us to find strength here. To find refuge in you. To find a fresh word, that your love may break through any hardened hearts, mend broken ones, and resuscitate our numbness to find the beat of your love we pray, even now, Amen.
Last year for Thanksgiving we didn’t have much planned. Our extended family lives in California and Hong Kong, and some of these “family” holidays sometimes feel “meh” to me sometimes. Our little family of four went to the movies for the first time at a theater together. We watched Moana 2. In the series of previews before the movie, at least 10 previews, (the kids were confused at each one, “is this what we’re watching”?) There was a movie called “The Unbreakable Boy” where in the preview the Dad says this great line,
“I wish I could enjoy anything as much as my son enjoys everything.”
and it pans to the boy with his family at a simple dinner saying,
“This is the best day of my life!”
I turned to my boy immediately and smiled, because he totally says that when we go to a playground on a regular Saturday,
“This is the best day ever!”
Ah, to enjoy life. The joys that kids get to have. Unlike grumpy adults and grown ups who have to work and have responsibilities and worry about stuff. I think this is one of the reasons why Jesus said in Mark 10:15,
“Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
One of many wisdoms that a little child holds is that pure delight and joy for life. You are meant to play and that life is a gift to be enjoyed.
But… that can feel hard for some of us. It might almost feel too simple. Especially when life feels so complicated with so much other stuff going on. Like if I ever say something like, “Enjoy!” for some reason it kind of sounds sarcastic, even if I wasn’t being sarcastic at all. Cause like, I can’t hide that I been through some stuff. Unless you’re my daughter who pronounces it, “Endoy!”
Call us cheesy or too simple, I don’t care, but our church Reservoir doubles down on the fact that what we’re here to do– to
“invite everyone to discover the love of God, joy of living, and the gift of community.”
That is our tagline. And in this new ministry year, new school year, we begin the season by going back to our roots, in a series called, We Are Reservoir.
- This is who we are.
- This is what we’re here to do.
- To love.
- To be joyful.
- To be in community.
And we invite everyone, without exception to discover the Love of God, the Joy of Living, and the Gift of Community. I’m touching up on Joy today, and I love it because Joy has been my medicine.
What does it mean to embrace the Joy of Living?
First, what it’s not.
Joy does not mean, no matter what’s happening, just be happy. It’s not, let’s hide your feelings about grief, anger, or sadness and just smile. I, and maybe some of you, might even have experienced this kind of expectation from our parents, or culture in our world, or even the church. You see, I have, sometimes, the difficult time of getting a first pass in receiving good news from the Bible, because I have to sift through some of the ways that I’ve heard that very same Bible verse through a toxic lens that only reinforced my elder’s fears or their way of controlling my body. Mine, the theology and pastoral advice I sometimes got from church was mixed in with a chip on our shoulder as Korean American immigrants.
We used verses like this to tell ourselves, don’t speak up. Don’t complain. Sit down, work hard, be grateful. Which might be why all that played into the “Model Minority” myth, that immigrants are supposed to just shut up and work. In fact, theology was used to self hate and disconnect ourselves from our own identity and worship the white American way.
“Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”
meant, worship at a nice Presbyterian church, seated in the pews, with intellectual Bible Studies. And reject the ancestral ritual that’s been in Korean tradition for hundreds of years that brings us to our literal knees for prayer while beating our hearts and screaming in agony, because that would be heresy. Sometimes it even felt like being Korean was “evil” and being more white integrated into the American way was “the good.”
Of course it was never meant to be that way. I do honestly believe that missionaries to South Korea had good intentions. I just think sometimes we got carried away with our beliefs, and didn’t listen to the Holy Spirit at work, not just in our creeds and not even just in our Bible words, but in our bodies. Our hearts. Our traditions. Sometimes we forgot the next verse that said,
“Honor one another above yourselves.”
and thought that we had all the answers that we needed to share and convert and control how it gets played out at all cost.
And at the same time, those same Bible verses were how immigrants got through tough times, through Korean immigrant churches, that created a space where you found in the gospel, the strength and the power to keep going and persevere, by being joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
One story might say that Asian Americans didn’t speak up and just blended in as “model minorities.” There are also other stories that highlight, hope shaping their activism, and faithful prayers that turned into action, through names like Yuri Kochiyama, who joined Malcom X’s movement, and Grace Lee Boggs who fought for Civil Rights and Maggie Kang, the creator and director of the Kpop Demon Hunters.
You see, the Bible saying, “Be Joyful” does not mean sit down and sweep the painful things under the rug as if they don’t exist. Paul saying
“be patient in affliction”
was more about endurance and survival, rather than just be quiet and deal with it. Being faithful in prayer means that prayer changes us and we don’t just pray good thoughts, but those thoughts move us into action toward change that can only be driven by a solid grounding in audacious hope and joy.
Embracing the joy of living does not mean let’s just all be happy. That’s how you turn into the Joker from Batman. Joker said
“My mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face.”
Have you heard Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker laugh? That’s now what we’re doing here.
Neuroscience has now taught us that pain and pleasure are co-located in the same part of the brain. I’m not a neurologist, I know at least there’s one of you out there, who actually knows this stuff but latest science affirms what our ancestors already knew that pain and pleasure, grief and gratitude, joy and suffering are actually closer to one another than we think. The brain uses overlapping limbic circuits for both pleasure and pain, with the opioid and dopamine systems playing crucial roles in modulating both sensations. In fact, they are so in close relationship with one another, it’s described as like a scale balancing each other, when there’s pain you need pleasure to reach a balance, when there’s lots of pleasure, your body responds with the equal and opposite effect to try to reach homeostasis, a base level. Like experiencing a deep deep low after a high, like cocaine or alcohol.
I often talk about my first few Sundays at Reservoir to get at an angle of trying to describe who Reservoir is. What’s Reservoir church? What’s it like? I’ve seen Reservoir hold services about patriarchy, #metoo, and Pride Sunday. In those services, we grieve systems of oppression like patriarchy that have hurt women, and we celebrate women by having ordained women pastors preach. It calls out the harm and the hurt sexual abuse have cause in our society and culture for generations by naming and centering the #metoo movement and uplifting women voices.
We’ve heard stories of LGBTQIA folks who have been hurt by the church and celebrate LGBTQIA experiences of finding community and solace by singing songs like Pink Pony Club on stage even though it’s not a “Christian” song but to say, “Yaaaas” to safe spaces where boys and girls can be queens. We do both. We grieve and we celebrate. And sometimes in order for us to find the joy in this sometimes what feels like a God-foresaken world with famine, genocide, war, violence, abductions, bullying, abuse, guns, and so much more that many of us hear on the news and feel in our bones daily– we dare to show up on a Sunday and sing songs together. We hug and smile, and ask each other who we’re doing. We laugh and put our hands up in worship in release. We cry together and we dance together.
That’s what we’re going for when we say we’re inviting everyone to discover the love of God, the joy of living and the gift of community. And you know what Reservoir, I think we can use even more joy, especially at a week like this. Not to act like public execution by gun violence didn’t happen, because apparently that’s what America is doing these days. Not to act like we’re not bothered and trigger and angry and just sad and trying to survive but in ORDER to survive.
Joy is our medicine. It’s our Antidote to our grief, pain and suffering. We’re trying to reach homeostasis so bad and all we keep getting are just rocks on our pain balance scale when we watch the news. We need to intentionally tip the scale by adding gratitude, joy, grace, appreciation, jokes, silliness, laughter, beauty onto the other side of the scale. All the more, right now.
I named Maggie Kang, the creator of Kpop Demon Hunters among fighters for social justice and human rights because sometimes cute animation and banger pop songs are the anthem we need to fight on. In the movie, the three girls who make Huntrix, a kpop group that sing and dance, are also actually the protectors of the land from demons. And they do this by singing. When they sing and dance their best, they apparently strengthen and seal this thing they call Honmoon. Hon means “spirit” or “soul” and Moon, “gate.” Honmoon, if it is weak and there are holes in them, the people are more likely to hear demon’s voices inside of them.
My favorite line in one of the songs, called “This is What it Sounds Like” is when it says,
“I should’ve let the jagged edges meet the light instead.”
You know what happens when you get jagged edges to meet the light? GLITTER. It shines. It’s beautiful.
“Show me what’s underneath. I’ll find your harmony.”
Show me the things that you are hiding. The things that are not the easy fun stuff of life but the hard stuff. And we’ll find each other’s harmony to sing it through. We HAVE to get creative and find our beauty and harmony together through it.
This is how generations after generations have survived. I saw a commentary of Kpop Demon Hunters panning on the scene where the Huntrix girls are in Moodang outfits, a Moodang is an ancient spirit worker in Korea that often performed rituals through dance and music to fight off evil spirits. The dramatic performance was a spiritual meaning-making through somatic movements that meant to heal people.
I want to remind us that our ancestors did not give up on joy, through traditions like Moodang and even Kpop. And the Christian tradition has relied again and again on the hope and joy of the resurrection, through music, through ecstatic worship, through speaking in tongues, so many traditions and cultures that celebrate the life that God has given us. Our biggest holidays are Christmas and Easter and yo, the church we go all out for the stuff. I mean, Christmas songs, they are just the best you know? And the death and resurrection of Jesus is the great drama and crux of the gospel, set before us to say, death our greatest enemy is not the final word. That in new life, we find our joy and delight in our God, through whom we find mercies that are new every morning.
Jesus juxtaposed this pain and pleasure, grief and joy in his sermon on the mount, doing this balance act to reach homeostasis, which is what our biological bodies long and desire, and perhaps also our hearts and our spirit as well.
Matthew 5:3-12
Jesus said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
When we are poor, we are gifted a kingdom, when we grieve, comforted, those who are weak, will have power, those who hunger, be satisfied, those who need more mercy, mercy given, those who are pure, they see God, peacemakers are descendants of God he says, those who suffer inherit kingdom of heaven. Blessed he says, I bless you when you are struggling, not shame you or blame you, but I bless you even more. And he says, rejoice and be glad.
Rejoice and be glad.
What are some ways your ancestors held onto joy? Think of them. Think of your parents, your grandparents. How did they hold on to joy, even in the midst of so much they might have had to endure?
And could you share those with us, with this community more? Reservoir wants to, needs to celebrate more joy, especially now.
In a season when I was going through deep depression, my mom said to me, look in the mirror and clap your hands. Just clap your hands and applaud yourself. It kind of sounds like Joker’s mom but I don’t know, it helped me. Again my ancestors knew their own tricks we nowadays call EFT Tapping, or regulating our nervous system, or little tricks that help us get out of the anxiety loop through cognitive behavioral therapy skills.
Let us embrace the foolishness of this world called joy and hope. The hope that we have in the resurrected power of Jesus. The joy we have in being made in the image of God who loves us and forgives us. And this, the gift to do it together with one another.
We are Reservoir and we embrace joy. No matter what. Without exception. And especially now, we better. May that be so for us. Let me pray for us.