sermons

Advent | inspire us | The Spirit Stirs

Spirit as Wind and Water

Lydia Shiu

Dec 08, 2024

John 3:5-8 (Common English Bible)

5 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.

6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.

7 Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’

8 God’s Spirit[a] blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Let me pray for us.

God, we come to this space this morning longing to hear a fresh word. Longing to see or feel a glimpse of you. We seek truth, love, peace, and beauty in times that might be darkened with hopelessness and despair for some of us. Show us the power of your spirit even now, as we listen to not my words but our own hearts, the great wisdom within us. Strike a chord in us. We pray that we may hear your song and be glad in it. Amen. 

I have a confession. I am a bad Christian. I’m often mad at God, wondering, where in the world God is. Asking questions like,

is any of this real?

I really must be born of the spirit, because sometimes I really don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. I don’t know. 

I realize I am a pastor and I’ve just come to terms with the fact that, yes there are times I have been sure that I’ve heard God, felt God, seen God, and those times are very dear to me because there are so many other times when I’m like, where are you? What are you doing?

My image of my relationship with God is often that picture of Jacob wrestling to God. That about sums up my faith if I’m being honest.

• What’s your relationship with God like?
• What’s your experience with the holy?
• How do you relate with the Spirit? 

We’re in the Advent season and in a sermon series called Inspire Us, looking at specifically where the Spirit is stirring. This week’s images are Spirit as wind and Spirit as water, ancient words and pictures that have been used to personify and describe the Spirit…such as the spirit hovering over the waters in the creation story as RUACH, meaning wind or breath in Hebrew, or in the New Testament in Greek, the word PNEUMA meaning again breath, spirit, wind. 

I actually like this Brick motif in our Advent guide. When I first saw it, I thought it felt a bit hard, blocked. And wondered why this cold grey wall motif for our advent guide during this cold dark winter months. Isn’t advent usually a little bit or red, light, some warmth? But then again, it’s also a bit fitting for how I’m feeling lately. A bit stuck. Walled off. 

The devotional for week 2 went like this:

“God is here”

and my spirit responded with, Really? Where? This?

• A time when hospitals and schools are getting bombed? 
• When undocumented immigrants who are simply trying to escape bombs are in fear of being deported back to a country they haven’t lived in 20+ years?
• When gay and trans folks are afraid of their marriages, their families, and scrambling for a move to another state or another country that might be safe for them to love who they want to love?

This is God’s work? This is God’s plan? And my spirit rolled my eyes. I told you, I’m a bad Christian, I roll my eyes during devotionals. Cause lately, for some reason, I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged and cynical of God’s justice and reign on earth.

The Advent devotional went on to read,

“The theologian Willie James Jennings has this beautiful line about the geography of God. He writes, (and this is in light golden color) “God is everywhere waiting for us to arrive.”

And I was like, really, everywhere? I’m waiting for you to arrive, God. Where are you? You’re nowhere to be found in this godforsaken place! 

Because the on the evening of Wednesday November 6th, the day after election day, after a full day of mourning the loss of what I thought was going to be a movement towards some progress in being able to finally see a woman of color as the president, like she’s not perfect, no party is perfect, especially in a 2 party system, but it just would have been cool to see you know?

And at 6pm, I’m cooking dinner while the kids are playing in the living room. My husband was out of town on a business trip. I got a text from a cousin that I haven’t talked to in a really long time. He said,

hey can we chat when you have time?

I called him immediately. 

And he began to tell me about his situation. That he got into a car accident a few months ago. That a taxi ran into him while he was walking. And so his back’s been hurting so much that he had to stop working. He was a pastry chef, making crumble and angel pound cake but he had to quit. And he’s just been laying in bed for a few months. And that he had to spend all his savings to pay for the hospital because the taxi, it’s an “illegal” taxi company that only runs in Koreatown. You see, Koreatown is huge in LA.

If you don’t know, it’s not just one street but a whole neighborhood between downtown LA and west LA. And it’s a bubble where some people are able to get by, if they’re not able to get out. It’s a hub of restaurants, and all kinds of businesses run where you can honestly get by without speaking any English even. It’s been a landing place for many Korean American immigrants. And I realized, it’s where my cousin’s been for probably over a decade now. Where he’s been able to find work as a high school drop out in restaurants. 

Why do I feel embarrassed sharing all this, like I’m still in the immigrant Lydia mindset, afraid of how people will see me and my ethnic community in one swoop. Ashamed to tell real stories like this that there’s illegal Korean taxis running around Koreatown LA, and that I have a cousin that’s what they call “undocumented.” Because yes, he came here on a visa and stayed and applied for green card which was a long process and never got one in time and at some point was called “Dreamer” when that was a thing, to be able to apply for citizenship.  But one thing led to another where he stayed in America and now it’s been over 15 years without a driver’s license or a passport so he can’t get paid from the illegal taxi company for their damages and he can’t even fly here to Boston to even visit. 

Asian American are often melded into the persona of being the “model minority” only to be used against other minorities as “see, they’re good at math and work so hard,” but the story is more complicated than that cause I know I seem fine, but I barely made it out. And my cousin… he’s stuck in limbo. I cried and cried in realizing oh my god, my own cousin is an undocumented illegal immigrant and he’s stuck. 

That wall, that grey tall wall of hard cold brick. That’s what it feels like. And the imagination to dream of drawing a beautiful mural feels like to me, what is even the point of drawing a beautiful mural on an abandoned lot no one cares about? What’s even in the point when you’ve hit a dead end. You’re faced with a wall that shuts you out of the system of access to a job, to healthcare, to credit, to housing and you go on to draw a pretty little picture for who for what? 

I feel like the woman at the well asking Jesus,

“Where can you get this living water?”

Where is this justice that will roll on like a mighty river, righteousness like a never-failing stream?

The advent guide pressed on with annoying invitations to wonder:

What is stirring love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control in you?

I’m stirring with grief, and sadness, and anger, and disappointment, and hopelessness, and shame, and guilt, powerlessness. I am lacking inspiration to paint a mural cause all I see is hard cold cement that won’t relent. 

There’s a picture in the advent guide by the artist named Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs.

It’s not just a “mural” but graffiti. The history behind modern day graffiti art is that it originates from Hip Hop culture. Hip Hop for me has been one of the most formative ways that I’ve become to be awakened to the awareness of being the Other in America. Moving to the United States at nine years old, not knowing any English, I didn’t understand my racial identity and how people saw me. To understand my identity as an Asian American honestly began by taking cues from the Black American culture and Hip Hop being a central way for me.

In a strange way, Hip Hop spoke to me, although I saw no commonality with Black people at first. But then I also remembered my first two best friends in the 3rd grade when I moved from South Korea to Warner Robins, Georgia were two Black girls named Tisha and Ramona who welcomed me and befriended me.  

Hip Hop showed me, told me, made me feel that when there’s no way, you make a way with what you got.  And is it not only survival but even beautiful and amazing, something you’ve never seen or imagined before, a whole new thing. Graffiti is working with cheap spray paint that was meant to color radiators, making any surface into a canvas. It’s speaking out when there is no platform. It was creating stories and symbols when there were no true Black stories or representation in the media or in the public sphere.

So it just went on and claimed the public sphere. Hip Hop is finding swag in a limp, and rhythm from a bucket can, poetry and literature with nothing but your speech. It’s making a way when there’s no way. You don’t need a dance studio or an art gallery. Everything was on the street. From the streets. 

If you have ears to hear, let them hear. If you have the eyes to see, let them see. Art where they “shouldn’t” be. Beauty where they didn’t exist. Holiness and light in the darkness. Graffiti artists didn’t wait for their neighborhood to be beautified by the system. They just went on and did it. At first they were considered “vandalism.” They were illegal. The gritty history of graffiti is sometimes lost with commissioned art or in another sense finally realized and recognized and accepted and honored for what it is. 

And so when you see, hear, and experience stories of those who have come before who have found ways when there seemed to be no way, how can you NOT be inspired? 

That’s why we need each other. To show each other the way when you feel like there’s no way. We have to inspire one another and say, look, look here. 

Hip hop was not just music, it was many art forms, from rap, to breakdancing, fashion, graffiti and so much more. It took many forms for us to showcase the Black beauty that was already all around us.  

I lived in San Francisco during my seminary years and in northern California, there’s this beautiful thing that happens almost daily in some neighborhoods. Fog. It’s a very interesting fog. You can see it literally rolling over the mountain and through the Golden Gate Bridge.

I used to live in the Twin Peaks neighborhood where Eugene and I would run together into the fog, not being able to see anything six – seven feet in front of us and it was so mysterious and beautiful. I used to call it a natural fog machine because in the city at night, the mix of the street light and the fog rolling through was just so romantic.

 I remember being grateful in seminary for the closeness I felt, like heaven was to the earth, through this fog as it enveloped my surroundings and would show off majestic views like the Golden Gate Bridge as if to unveil a curtain for a final act of a show. Oh I’d make it a backdrop to my romantic comedy, biking over the bridge with Eugene, yelling ahead of me,

“I love you Eugene!!!”

into the fog and he’d scream back,

“I love you Lydia!!!”

If you ever get the chance to visit, you’ll know what I mean, and take a jacket with you cause this fog is the heaviest in the summer. It’s not quite what you picture as “California.” 

When you begin to interact with the holiness of the breath and wind and water, you start to see it and notice it everywhere in many different kinds of forms. Like the breath you’re able to take when you finally get better from a cold. Like the shower you take after a long day. Like the rain that comes and how it is amazingly able to wash and cleanse every leaf instantly. 

Spirit as wind and water is meant to be a daily reminder, that even if you can’t see it, even if you can’t see the water molecules flying through the air, it’s there. It’s both science and religion. It’s a reality and mysterious. Hidden in plain sight. God is always present. Even I can’t deny or roll my eyes at that, no matter how much I scream with

“God is nowhere to be found!”

cause it’s literally like, yeaaaah you can’t see it, but it’s there. It’s everywhere. Apparently the Earth’s atmosphere contains about 3.75 million billion gallons of water vapor at any given time.

Jesus is giving us the gift of this imagery. That Spirit is like wind and water. Look. Notice. Wherever you see wind and water. From the delicate water stream that cuts through rocks to the vast ocean, it calls us saying,

I am here. I am here. 

And the breath, it’s flowing through you right now. With that breath and that breath. God’s divine energy and the power of the holy spirit is flowing through you every second. You are the proof. You are the proof that God exists. 

In seminary I also got a tattoo. Because that’s just what you do when you learn cool ancient things. 

Jesus Christ in Greek is Ἰησοῦς Χριστός. And Christos isn’t his last name. It means Jesus, the anointed one. Jesus showed us how to be God’s anointed one. And that same spirit that flowed through him flows through us. The first letter of  Ἰησοῦς is ‘I, so I took the first letter of Jesus’ name in Greek, like a J Christ. But in Greek it looks like ‘I Christos.

And to me, I meant to tattoo Jesus’s initial and “last name” but also that it has a double meaning, “I the anointed one.” No, I wasn’t have delusions of grandeur thinking that I am the Chosen one, but actually isn’t being Christian kind of having delusions of grandeur to think that we’re God’s children? Even a bad Christian knows this. 

You are a living breathing temple of the Holy Spirit. You are the anointed one. Jesus Christ. Lydia Christ. Nancy Christ. Eva Christ. John Christ. Brian Christ. Try it with your name in your head or under your breath. I know it’s weird. But religion is kind of weird. 

May you notice the holy breath of the Spirit flowing through you every second of your life and know that it indeed is holy. That you are holy. You have been blessed and anointed. God is not just out there, but right here, really right here, in your breath.

Let me pray for us. 

God you have anointed Jesus and have been showing us again and again that you love us and reside in us and have anointed us. Help us to stop looking around asking God where are you, where are you? And to stop and hear in our bodies, that as close as the breath is to our lips, you are there. You are here. And you are here. And you are here. Help us to know you deeply within us and through us, through your anointing we pray Amen.