Speaker: Lydia Shiu

If It Dies, It Bears Much Fruit

I’m still feeling vertigo after Good Friday and Easter. It’s a weird season in the church liturgical calendar, where one day we’re grieving death in a dark sanctuary and then two days later, glory Jesus is risen and we’re supposed to have some triumphant celebratory spirit. It’s disorienting. 

But maybe that’s why Lent is so long. Some 40 days of fasting, alms giving. I think I’m uncomfortable with it because I like avoiding the discomfort of sitting with death, and so when the news of resurrection comes, it feels fake. Whoopdeedooda. 

Of course, why would I feel the heights of euphoria of resurrection when I’ve been numbing myself of the feelings of sadness and grief of death, right?

So today, for our post-easter story, I want to take us to thinking about death some more. Yaaaaay!

Our Scripture reading today comes from 

John 12:24 

Let me read for us. Jesus says this to talk about his upcoming death.

I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Let me pray for us. 

Risen Lord, Your life, death and resurrection shows us a new way. You showed us God in a whole new way. Help us to see clearly. Even through the doubt. Even through suspicion. Even through apathy or cynicism. Help us to see the throughline of love, especially in the midst of death and darkness. Reveal to us your love that breaks through it all, our distractions and egos. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

I thank God for the spring sunshine beaming down on me these days. I don’t know much about plants and stuff, so I don’t know the names, but those yellow flowers on bushes, and the pink ones on the tall trees, and the beautiful yellow and white ones that look like umbrellas kind of open. So pretty. This is a product of knowing English as a second language and being raised with parents who don’t speak English. I don’t know plant names and I don’t know kitchen utensils in English. I just learned that the big spoon for soups are called ladles a few years ago. 

So, how many of you guys are gardening these days? Planting stuff? Cool. How many of you had dirt underneath your fingernails this past week? Nice Nice. Oh man I don’t know much about gardening but I love going to Home Depot in the spring. I know some of you go to fancier places like a nursery, like where the precious plants live? 

One spring, I caught the green thumb bug. I was like, I want to try it. Eat from the land you know? I work with the Kids Ministry team, so I hang out with Dan, our elementary school pastor, who actually grows his own stuff, with chickens and all. Oh I look up to Dan and people like him. So I bought some seeds one spring. The problem was, I brought the seeds home and I had no place to plant them. I mean I have a yard but it’s covered with stuff already. So I started to pull up some weeds and clear the sticks and rock on a little patch of my yard. But as I started doing that, I realized the weeds, there’s more than just weeds down there. They were like thick wood vines that are so interconnected, that when I started pulling on one, there was no end and I found myself pulling and pulling till I sat on my bottom with a huge tree in my hand. 

But I was determined to plant my seeds so I can eat kale in 8-10 weeks. I pulled and pulled on the weeds and the vines to clear the dirt so much that from that one go, I pulled a muscle. Next day, my hands were sore. I didn’t have the right tools. 

Why is it so hard to make something new? 

I didn’t know before I started that I’d find roots bigger than my face underground. I didn’t know before I started that I needed huge scissors. I didn’t know before I started that I had to touch worms with my bare hands. 

  • What are you trying to grow anew right now, in your life?
  • Is it a new relationship?
  • A much needed new job?
  • A new hobby that apparently is supposed to give you life but you feel like you just suck at it? 
  • What did you not know before you started?
  • What barriers and challenges are you pushing through right now?
  • What’s getting in your way of actually accomplishing a new thing you are trying at? 

Good. That’s right. If it’s hard, you are on the right path. Because

“unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

What needs to die? What needs to break open? To birth something new in your life right now?

.You know after the resurrection of Jesus, who Jesus was and is, how Jesus was talked about expanded in all kinds of ways. He came to be called so many of these titles thereafter,

  • Messiah
  • Son of God
  • Lord
  • Words of God
  • Wisdom (Sophia) of God
  • Lamb of God
  • True Light
  • Light of the World
  • Good Shepherd
  • True Vine
    Most of these names came, not from Jesus, but from the community. From their experience of the resurrected Lord. The community had more and more to say. 

Marcus Borg, a professor of religion at Oregon State says, that the community confessed, 

“We have found in this person the light of the world who has shown us the way out of darkness”

“We have found in this person the spiritual food that feeds us in the midst of our journey even now.” 

And so they came up with names and titles and adjectives about Jesus saying, 

“This one who was among us as Jesus of Nazareth is also the Word of God, the Son of God, and the Wisdom of God.” 

But why? Why did they see him as such? How did Jesus make such an impact on these certain people? And I mean these certain people, because certainly it wasn’t everyone. There were plenty of people who saw what happened in the crowd and didn’t become followers of Jesus. 

Why was Jesus such a bright light, enlightening them in such a provocative and powerful way? 

I think it’s like this. 

You know when you’re sleeping on a plane, maybe on a redeye or going overseas. Everyone has their window shades down. You’re in the middle aisle and you don’t have full control of the window shade. Only the window seat person has the power to bring light or to keep you in the darkness. But the moment, when you hear the window seat person next to you pull up that shade, and you pull off the eye mask and squint, and you try to get a glimpse of the sky, but it’s at first, nothing but white bright light and that’s all you see. 

You see, your placement, where you are located matters. If you were in a brightly lit room with lights on and you open up a shade, it only makes a little difference. You are not as impacted. 

You see, you can’t understand the transition from Good Friday to Easter, from death to resurrection if you don’t know the darkest depth of despair and death. It’s not impressive to you. It doesn’t impact you. 

That’s why Jesus says in Matthew 9:12-13

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

And

In Luke 7:47 Jesus says, 

“47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

So if you’re righteous, and you are sacrificing so much, good for you, if you are healthy and fine, if you don’t get sin in your life that you’ve worked through or wrestling with, you’re not going to be desperately in love with Jesus. 

But if you are sick, you are steeped in sin and you are down in the muck and mire. And you are struggling, and you are trying to find something new but knee deep in just smelly smelly compost and weeds and rocks and thistles, there, right there, is where Jesus is. To you, in the midst of your dark world, Jesus is True Light, the Light of the World.

I’m not saying stay there, or excusing the systemic injustice which is sin, and just saying,

‘oh just suffer on this earth for the Lord and you will see heaven after you die,”

no that is a twisted misused version of the gospel to keep the oppressed people sedated with the watered down gospel. No. In your suffering, in your pain, in your struggle for waiting and waiting for a job that won’t come, in your stress of trying to figure out how to pay rent or feed your family, in your anger and grief of sexual abuse that’s reeked havoc in your life. In your loneliness and rejection from supposedly loved ones, in your heartbreak of being cheated on or blamed for everything broken in your relationship, in your struggle with addiction, in your fight with yourself for all the blows the worlds put on you and the blows you put on yourself, 

In the death of Jesus, he identified with you, as one who is suffering. If you don’t know that identification, then the meaning of resurrection and new life means nothing to you. 

You know what’s one of the most powerful ingredients you need for you to grow a new plant? Manure. You know, poop. The thing that is processed and rejected from the body because it’s unnecessary and you get rid of it, but then you really should be putting that in the soil to grow new life. And the funniest thing about poop is that it smells really bad. Something new can come out of something so bad. 

That smell, it’s putrefaction, the final stage of decomposition, where bacteria and fungi break down tissues, causing soft tissues to liquefy, releasing strong odors and causing swelling through gas production. Putrefaction.

Before Jesus raised Lazarus from death, and this is one verse I really like in the King James Version. 

John 11:39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh…”

And it is a holy beautiful work when someone helps make it less stinketh, 

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.

as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might anoint Jesus’ body, 

“39 Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.[e] 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen.”

John 19:39-40

And just as Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night, my good pastor friend and mentor Fred Harrell always calls him Nic at Night, he brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds, wrapping Jesus body with the spices and strips of linen. 

What is stirring up a stink in your life? ..

I’m really sorry that you’re going through it. That really stinks. 

And is there anyone who is bringing you spices, myrrh, aloes, and linen at all? Anyone who is tending to you in the midst of the decay and decomposing? 

Again, I’m not trying to explain away injustice or wrong, or sin, and just glaze over it. It sucks. And if it needs to die, let it die. So that a new thing can arise from it. 

I was sitting there at the Good Friday service, with a beautiful program in my hand, inviting me to sorrow & surrender. I had sorrow, just underneath the surface, but I couldn’t surrender because if I did, I wouldn’t have enough tissues on me to wipe up all the tears. It’ll take too long. And it’s an hour long service. 

I sat there and read the card with reservation. It said: 

SORROW & SURRENDER STATION

“Father, into your hands I entrust my life.” — Luke 23:46

Visit the table alongside the stage. Jesus didn’t and doesn’t turn away from what’s terrible. He enters it. He holds it. Even in the shadow of death. You may come to this station in defiance, in sadness, or in deep need — because of the times we are living in, or because of the time you are living through. Write down what weighs on you, what aches, what you long to entrust to Jesus. If you have no words — take a branch or a twig to the cross as a symbol of all you need held by Jesus.

I so appreciated the inclusion in naming one of the emotions that I was holding, defiance. I had sorrow, but I didn’t surrender because I am frustrated with this world and with God. I was sitting there thinking I know Easter celebration comes in a few days, but God, look at this world. What did you actually accomplish on the cross? Victory over death? That’s a lie. Where? People are dying, for no good reason, children, innocent children are dying with bombs and starvation. People with good faith ask, Where is thy sting? But I’m here saying, it stings, a lot, and where is this victory? Everytime I open up the news, a new sting, a new stink. It is nauseating and turns my stomach. 

I had no words, except some curse words. I wrote them down and covered it with a pretty little branch and intertwined it into the cross. I was still angry but kind of felt nice, but still quite numb in my body from all the withholding and not surrendering I was doing. 

And then towards the end of the service, from my seat, I heard a wailing. A deep deep cry and wailing from the foot washing station. And how good it felt to hear someone else’s unfiltered voice of sorrow that I am too contained to release. How good it must be to let go of it all. To surrender. If that was you, my heart breaks with you, and thank you for your resounding sorrow that made me feel like I wasn’t alone in my messy grief. At that moment, I finally kind of got the “Good” part of Good Friday. 

I’m a slow processor. A slow reader, who reads a chapter of a book and has to marinate on it for weeks before moving onto the next chapter for really emotionally challenging books. I’m a late bloomer, or immature, still growing and learning. It’s after Easter but I’m still stuck at one of the stations of the cross because I can’t move on. That’s alright. I’m like Mulan. And that’s not racist. I mean I kind of heard that the Asian Disney princess story was written by white writers, but I still liked the movie, like I don’t know, sometimes stereotypes hit home (sometimes not), but “bring honor to us all” I relate. But also the blossom thing. 

Mulan’s sweet father saying,

“My, what beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one’s late. But I’ll bet that when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful of all.”

Take your time to bloom. Take your time to root your seed. 

For the seed to soak in the water, in the dark cold dirt, for a while. 

Did you know that tulips, my GOD they are pretty but you can’t just plant the bulb in the spring when you get jealous of your neighbors’ blooms in April. 

You have to plant them according to The Plant Hardiness Zone Map. 

Massachusetts is Zone 6  coldest in winter being (-10°F to 0°F)

Best planting time: Mid-October to early November

You have to plant it in the middle of winter, in the cold and you won’t see a thing till like at least five months later.

What does it look like for you, to be buried in the cold dirt for five – six months? What does it feel like? Are you okay? You hanging in there? 

God is in the deep with us. The God revealed in Jesus is the seed that fell and died and produced many fruit. That’s how Jesus talked about his death. And look at all you pretty delicious fruits, thousands of years later, dripping in sweet nectar? Jesus is the true vine because he knows what it’s like to have to crawl up and tangle up slowly. Hang in there. God is with us in the dirt. In the death. If you’re in it now, may you taste the fruit soon I pray. And for that fruit to fall and decay and give of themselves for something new again and again together. Amen. 

You Don’t Have to be Perfect. Be Complete in Love.

Matthew 25:31-46 (Common English Bible)

Judgment of the nations

31 “Now when the Human One[a] comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne.

32 All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left.

34 “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began.

35 I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

36 I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’

37 “Then those who are righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink?

38 When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear?

39 When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

40 “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you who will receive terrible things. Go into the unending fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels.

42 I was hungry and you didn’t give me food to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink.

43 I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. I was naked and you didn’t give me clothes to wear. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

44 “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and didn’t do anything to help you?’

45 Then he will answer, ‘I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me.’

46 And they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.”

One thing cool about moving to Boston was realizing that someone helps you get the gas at the gas station. You don’t even have to get out of the car in the cold!  I’d never seen that before. One time, a guy was getting gas for me. And me a busy full time working mom, I’ve got a million things in my mind, and I’m like, okay, drop the kids off, get gas, get to this meeting, so while he was doing the credit card, I turned on my engine, and started turning my wheel, and the guy appears and goes what the?! I turned my head and he was like,

“Dude, you almost ran over me!”

I sheepishly took the card saying,

“oh my god I’m so sorry.”

And drove away feeling horrible. And then I kept on thinking about the incident. God I almost ran over his foot. Poor guy, out in the cold, putting up with selfish little drivers like me, I’m the worst. I’m spiraling now. And I call myself Christian. I’m a pastor! Ha. She calls herself a pastor, running people over with her car.

You see, there’s this mode that folks who might’ve grown up Christian can get into. It’s moral perfectionism. Because we were told,

[Matthew 5:48 New International Version]

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

said so Matthew 5:48.

And were told that sinners will burn in hell. Some forms of Christianity widely teach this in a way that’s created a culture of shame and fear rather than love. Even today’s text could be posed as not just an invitation to feed the poor but, be perfect and act according to my command otherwise you are going to eternal hell. And it has turned a generation of Jesus followers into moral perfectionism motivated by fear of hell rather than anything else.

So much misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Or sometimes, our best efforts at understanding carried too far…

The word perfect wasn’t meant to mean perfect, but complete.

Τέλειός (Teleios)

Complete, fully developed, mature, perfect

The original Greek word teleios implies being complete, fully developed, or mature, rather than sinless in an absolute sense. It means growing into a mature, godly character. Look at this Common English Bible translation

Matthew 5:28 Common English Bible

48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete. Matt 5:28 CEB

It was never meant to say,

“Now get your act together and do right.”

It was an invitation to love completely. It was never meant to say, be perfect, but instead be complete in love.

So how are we to understand even our text today?

Verse 46 saying,

46 And they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.”

Eternal

αἰώνιον (aiōnion)

Of the age or belonging to the God’s age, eternal, enduring

Again, maybe it does not mean what we think it means.

The word “Eternal” might have meant more Quality, rather than Length.

The Greek word translated “eternal” (aiōnion) can also mean “of the age” or “belonging to God’s age.” It might describe more of two realities we might face depending upon our actions sure, but not literal places we will go to for however long an extended period of time.  It could be a word with more the feeling of “enduring” rather than “eternal.”

In fact, whenever Jesus was talking about heaven and hell-ish concepts, we cannot simply imply our modern day conception of heaven and hell. Jesus did often speak of God’s age, God’s realm, a world which knows and abides by enduring God’s sovereignty as opposed to the “earthly” or man/ego driven world, one absent of God’s reign or presence.

Theologians like James Cone would go on to say that heaven and hell  are realities or revelations that get unveiled to us. It is less a judgement or a sentencing but an awakening. Upon seeing and meeting the oppressed, we realize and find ourselves in the revelation of God’s age being revealed right before our eyes. When we stand with those who are oppressed, we see and get to experience where God is standing. Which, being in the perfect (complete in love), in the eternal (or belonging to the age of God) presence of where God stands, one could call that reality–heaven.

And so maybe this revelation of heaven doesn’t just happen at the end of time, or after we die, but in our lifetime, here and now. Sometimes it happens in history, where once there was hiddenness, no knowledge of God, but then God’s revelation and truth becomes known.

Apartheid

In 1980’s, South Africa had a system called Apartheid. Apartheid wasn’t just social or political—it shaped everything. It legally separated people by race and gave minority white South Africans power while oppressing Black South Africans and other communities of color, determining where they could live, who they could marry, what beach you can go to.

The word Apartheid originates from Afrikaans term meaning “apartness.”

The Dutch Reformed Church, one of the most influential churches in South Africa at the time, supported the apartheid and taught that racial separation was part of God’s plan. In fact they used religion to justify inequality.

But there was another church body, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, made up mostly of people classified as “non-white” under apartheid.

They were directly experiencing injustice—and they saw clearly that apartheid didn’t line up with the message of the Gospel. So in 1982, they wrote a document called a Belhar Confession. It said

Belhar Confession

“God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wrong…”

Therefore it concluded that

“the church as possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wrong.”

One could say that by seeing the oppressed and recognizing them, truth was unveiled and they were able to craft a document that described this new reality, one where God’s justice prevailed.

Another way to say, “God is in a special way the God of the destitute”… In liberation theology shaped by voices in Latin America, says that:

God has a preferential option for the poor. Not because the poor are morally better—remember we’re not going for moral perfection—but because injustice has placed them closest to suffering, and therefore closest to the heart of God. That’s where God stands, with the poor.
If we want to find Christ, we do not look upward—we look outward, and downward, into places of pain.

In our Scripture text today, the Human One, traditionally translated as Son of Man, appears in glory—but immediately identifies himself not with power, but with vulnerability.

“I was hungry.”
“I was a stranger.”
“I was in prison.”

This is not metaphor. It is location. it’s not abstract pain. It’s specific bodies. It’s specific lives. Specific places and people.

So what do you think it means to identify ourselves with God, when God identifies Godself with them?

I really appreciated the invitation from Hanna Reichel in this book, For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional, a book our church is using as a Lenten guide in this season.

Reichel

Reichel goes by they/them pronouns. They are a professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton. Reichel is German, an expert on Karl Barth. Karl Barth is the theologian who was the primary author behind The Barmen Declaration.

Barmen Declaration

The theological Declaration of Barmen 1934 was a document adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the German Christian movement.

So for Reichel, in these times that we’re living in the United States right now, they said that they couldn’t help but have the voices of the Belhar Confession and the Barmen Declaration that they were so steeped deep in their studies and research pop up into their minds. South Africa during apartheid. Germany during the Nazis.

Now I also appreciate, Reichel in the beginning of the book mentions that they have no prophecy that the US is specifically going toward authoritarianism, or Facism, or is it totalitarianism or something else. They say,

“I am not arguing that history is repeating itself. But noting certain similarities directs us to models we could learn from.”

And they wrote this book with the question,

“What should the church’s response be?”

Reichel titled their chapter 9,

“Stand Where God Stand,” or Protect the Weak

They ask this question that struck me

“What difference does belief in God make in such a time as this? Belief in God is not a comfort in affliction; if anything, it makes injustice and suffering more acute.

(I so resonated with that…)

“Belief in God is not a special talisman that will keep you safe, or a miracle weapon that will save the day. Belief in God is a commitment to stand where God stands.”

This humbled me, because this is me. Asking, what difference does believing in God make when things continue go the way they go and I have no power to change it and it seems as though God has either no power or interest in changing it. Believe in God? For what? What is God doing about the children dying from bombs?

Nothing! God is not putting a stop to this, so why, why would I pray to a God that does nothing to stop violence and injustice? In fact those who are waging wars are doing it in God’s name!

And to all the people that are throwing their hands up in the air, while scrolling in the comfort of their homes with distraught minds but safe bodies screaming,

“Where are you God?”

The question gets turned on us and asks, where were we?

Jesus does not ask what we believe. He asks us, where were you? He does not ask what we profess, or how often we prayed, or whether our theology was correct. He asks us, Whom are you standing with?

Reichel invites us to see that in moments of emergency, faith is not about clarity—it is about proximity. About drawing near to suffering rather than explaining it away.

Let me say that again. Faith is not about clarity but proximity. Drawing near to suffering rather than explaining it away.

What if “salvation” is not just about where we go afterlife—but about where we stand now?

The “sheep” are not praised for correct doctrine.

They are recognized because their lives were oriented toward connection, toward presence, toward care. This passage reframes righteousness not as purity, but as solidarity. Let me say that again. Righteousness not as purity, but as solidarity.

Reichel’s devotional reminds us that we are living in urgent times. There are crises everywhere. It is tempting to feel overwhelmed. To ask,

“What difference can I make?”

But this passage does not call us to solve everything.
It calls us to notice someone.

And the question is not: “Will you be perfect?”

The question is simpler, and harder:

Will you draw near enough to see?

I go back to that gas station a lot. This is funny. Next time I was getting an oil change from there, and he was jotting down my info. I was trying to be friendly and said,

“you have a nice handwriting for a guy.”

He glared up and said,

“that’s sexist.”

I wanted to crawl into a hole.  I leaned over sheepishly and asked,

what’s your name?

He said, Mike. I said,

Hi Mike, I’m sorry I almost ran you over the other day.

He said

you did?

I said,

you were doing the credit card and I turned on my engine and wheel and you were like what the.

And he flashed a smile at me and said,

Oh that happens like 4-5 times a day so I don’t remember you.

I said

oh my god, really?

He was like

yeah especially old ladies, they don’t see anything!

And I was like,

ugh I’m so sorry, no I’m super aware everytime I get gas to not turn on my engine.

And he’s like yeah,

just get the credit card first

and then, and I was like

yeah, what am I in such a hurry for.

And I left that gas station wanting to picket outside saying, please watch your driving around Mike!

I share my silly story to show how silly we are sometimes. Obsessed or embarrassed about the wrong thing. Or not getting it right. It’s nothing about feeding the poor but I share the story to show how we don’t have to be, er, we don’t get to be perfect. In fact, when we actually lean into things, we might make mistakes, say the wrong things, become the rude, sexist, old lady who can’t do anything right. But there, we’re changed. We might not even get to be the one who changes the situation. We are changed. That’s a taste of heaven right?

Right now, many of us don’t feel like we know exactly what to do about the condition of our nation, for example, in which immigrants can be taken off the streets without due process. Many smart minds have come together to try to make a change. In fact GBIO right now has found some organizing power around trying to defund or at least make it difficult for detention centers around the country to get financing by engaging a top lender bank, Citizens Bank. We’ll be sharing about this more at the House Meeting after church today, if you want to join us.

At the same time, GBIO is also trying to stay grounded to not just tackle/solve an issue, but be connected to those who are actually impacted by unjust immigration policies and practices, the people. Which is why we are going to keep running house meetings and listening sessions and 1-1’s, even as we go into some kind of issue campaign. In some ways, doing one (tackling the issue) is easier than the other (being connected to the people). But we MUST keep asking ourselves, how can we gain proximity to those who are suffering?

Jesus shared in our text today that that’s where we will see and recognize God. I wonder where that place is for you. I wonder how our church can stand where God is standing more boldly. Cause if not, what are we doing all this for then?

We don’t have to be perfect. We only have to be completely in love. Can we do that?

Let me pray for us.

Prayer

God of the hungry and the hidden,
open our eyes where we have learned not to see.
Draw us close where we have kept our distance.
And teach us to recognize you—
not in power alone,
but in every vulnerable face we encounter.

Amen.

Back in Love with Jesus

There’s a story of a man, when his son turned 12, they kind of lost their closeness and they weren’t really able to have conversations and finally they stumbled on texting as a way to keep some connection even though he abhorred it. It was in the early days of texting. So he caught on some. His son taught him some abbreviations, but he says the one he didn’t have to teach me. Because it was so self-evident was LOL. And I knew right away that it meant Lots of Love because he put it at the end of every message he sent me. So he says, such a beautiful telegraphic abbreviation for the 20th century, like a little arrow of love. You can send out to anybody you know. 

Then he describes the next six months, his infatuation with instant messaging and it’s kind of power of emotional transmission so he sent LOL to everyone. He knew his sister was getting a divorce and he wrote to her, You know we’re all behind you and beside you. LOL. Your brother. He says my father got ill. I sent him lol. Everyone I knew at work, at home, everyone I sent them lol. He said he happened to be texting his son from an airport saying how much he hated being away but he had to travel to make the money they needed as a family and he signed it off, lol. 

And his son responds,

Dad, what exactly do you think LOL means? 

Well Lot of Love, obviously. 

No Dad, it means Laughing Out Loud, and his world kind of crumbled. He went through every message in his mind, all the LOLs sent to people while they were suffering. 

I share this story to start because reading the Bible often can feel like we’re peering into someone else’s text box, without fully knowing what they meant, and honestly applying a whole lot of what we think it means to what we just read. 

So I’m going to read today’s text, Psalm 103, with some contextual edits.

Here’s what I mean. 

Verse 1

Let my whole being bless the Lord!

Okay stop right there. We didn’t even get through halfway through verse 1 and I already have to stop us. Most of you know the “Lord” is referring to God. But also, what do we think of when we hear the word Lord? What is a Lord? 

Lord means 

“someone or something having power, authority, or influence; a master or ruler.”

Use it as a verb and it’s 

“act in a superior and domineering manner toward (someone).”

I’ve never known any Lords in my life, except for a Landlord. It makes me think of Lord of the Rings or some other buff Englishman in movies. I imagine Bridgerton like setting, curtsying in a ball gown, “My Lord.” 

But the original language didn’t say Lord. 

Then why did it get translated as such?

In Hebrew it actually says, 

יְהוָ֥ה

Which says Yahweh…. kind of. Actually the ancient Hebrew texts didn’t include vowels, which are like the little dash, the tiny T looking thing, and the two dots, were vowels that were added LATER, in what they THINK how the word might have been pronounced. 

All it originally had were the consonant letters,

יְהוָ֥ה

YHWH

Some scholars point to these breath consonants י-ה-ו-ה (Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh), that the living God is the breath of life, as close to us as our own breath, who lives in us and through us. 

No one knew the pronunciation because it was the name for God that was too holy to speak, so they literally did not say the name. Instead, they looked at the consonant letters with no vowels and said, Adonai. 

יְהוָ֥ה

YHWH

Adonai – LORD

Adonai, meant something like Lord, or the High One. And yet the word lord does have a modern attachment that many of us presume, even subconsciously. Many Bible translation words are like this because words evolve in meaning and even the feeling of it, all the time, so quickly. So making them contextual to us is a better reading of the text, one could argue, than literal translations. 

Lord conjures up certain things. But we know that God is not primarily like a high official of nobility appointed by King Charles in fancy robes like it’s graduation season. No. That is one imagination. A popular one. A traditional one. 

OK now that we got that out of the way, let me read the rest, switching out LORD with God or my Love. I’ll also be using that for God’s pronouns to expand our imagination. 

Psalm 103 

Let my whole being[a] bless my Love!

    Let everything inside me bless their holy name!

2 Let my whole being bless God

    and never forget all their good deeds:

3     how God forgives all your sins,

    heals all your sickness,

4     saves your life from the pit,

    crowns you with faithful love and compassion,

5     and satisfies you with plenty of good things

        so that your youth is made fresh like an eagle’s.

6 My Love works righteousness;

    does justice for all who are oppressed.

7 God made their ways known to Moses;

    made their  deeds known to the Israelites.

8 My Love is compassionate and merciful,

    very patient, and full of faithful love.

9 God won’t always play the judge;

    They won’t be angry forever.

10 God doesn’t deal with us according to our sin

    or repay us according to our wrongdoing,

11     because as high as heaven is above the earth,

    that’s how large God’s faithful love is for those who honor them.

12 As far as east is from west—

    that’s how far God has removed our sin from us.

13 Like a parent feels compassion for their children—

    that’s how my Love feels compassion for those who honor them.

14 Because God knows how we’re made,

    God remembers we’re just dust.

15 The days of a human life are like grass:

    they bloom like a wildflower;

16     but when the wind blows through it, it’s gone;

    even the ground where it stood doesn’t remember it.

17 But God’s faithful love is from forever ago to forever from now

        for those who honor God.

    And God’s righteousness reaches to the grandchildren

18         of those who keep their covenant

        and remember to keep their commands.

19 my Love has established their throne in heaven,

    and their kingdom rules over all.

20 You divine messengers,

    bless My Love!

You who are mighty in power and keep their word,

        who obey everything God says,

    bless them!

21 All you heavenly forces,

    bless My Love!

All you who serve them and do their will,

    bless them!

22 All God’s creatures,

    bless my Love!

Everywhere, throughout their kingdom,

        let my whole being

    bless my Love!

 

Someone who’s just starting out in the Christian faith asked me this week,

Pastor Lydia, how am I supposed to pray?

One of the homeworks I gave her was to come up with names for God that she feels comfortable with. Actually, not just a name, but a nickname. A pet name, like a pet name you come up with for your girlfriend that you just started dating. 

Because this letter, this prayer, fits more to a loving endearing pet name for a God than Lord 

I mean,

“crowns you with faithful love and compassion,

   and satisfies you with plenty of good things”

I mean it’s not full on Song of Songs, but this is a love letter. This is a love prayer. 

And you know what? This is a love devotion song that comes only AFTER you’ve gone through some really tough times together. Like, getting back together after a big break up. 

I was visiting my aunt in New Jersey a few ago and her two adult kids all showed up to her house for a little family reunion while I was in town. My cousins lived in New York and they both drove at least an hour in traffic to get together. Turns out though, that they get together every weekend. This kind of surprised me. My parents and my siblings live about the same distance in Southern California, at least hour traffic drives they do not want to make unless it’s real gathering that only happens about 5-6 times a year. But my aunt’s family, they get together through this hour-long traffic drive every weekend. “Really Every weekend?” I asked. I asked my cousin, like why? 

She said that there was this one time, some years ago, while they were all living together, the dad had moved out for a few months. They really thought the family was going to break up and that since then they’ve been even tighter and closer than ever. 

I mean, this must be some kind of natural law of attraction. Why is it that the distance makes the heart grow fonder? How grateful you are that you can breathe through your nose after suffering through a cold. 

This is the case for me and Jesus. 

In the passage that was critical to my own calling back in love with Jesus, Luke 7 tells a story about a woman who loves Jesus so much that she poured oil on his feet and wiped it with her hair. The onlookers were confused about this but Jesus tells the story of two debtors saying, 

Luke 7:41-42

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[c] and the other fifty.

42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

You only know that kind of love, that kind of gratitude for forgiveness and reconnection after the debt. This isn’t meant to be transactional but a hyperbole. It’s meant to describe the feeling, not the transaction with God, sometimes we get too caught up on the transaction language. But Jesus wasn’t saying that God is a generous loan shark, but trying to capture the gratitude of the debtor, and you won’t relate to the story unless you’ve had debt, that’s been forgiven. 

Have you had a debt that’s been forgiven? Have you been in a desperate situation where you had to be indebted to someone? 

I had an appointment in an office building a few months ago. And as I was looking at the office building directory, I saw a name I recognized. It said, Topper. Hi Topper. Are you here? Could you stand up for a second? So we can see who you are? I don’t know his full story, but I know he’s an elder black man, who’s produced and directed tv shows and documentaries. He’s the one who made that One Love art piece here. He’s done organizing and activism, literally part of the civil right movement. I love that you’re part of this community, so grateful for your presence here. So I see this Topper name cause it’s not a common name. After my appointment, I went to Topper’s door and knocked on it, cause I like the guy. 

There he was, in his overalls, the office  with two huge screens and a video editor editing something. He immediately invited me and said, I want you to check this out, and told his editor,

“play that one part for Pastor Lydia.”

The screen played a scene from a black church. Singers dressed as you do for Sunday Best, jumping on stage, beautiful heart wrenching voices singing Gospel about having joy and hope in Jesus. It’s much more expressive and emotional than my ‘ol presbyterian, what we call the frozen chosen, self is used to. Topper says,

“You see, this is what we need to share right now. The joy”

and he went to explain the singer and this Atlanta church’s impact on the movement. 

I felt so disconnected to the joy that I saw on the screen in the moment to be honest. I’ve been so appalled by the political state I have been seeing in the US and violence around the world that I’ve just been feeling general dread. Joy? Jumping for joy and gratitude is not a natural response for surviving these times for me, although I have heard it is necessary. My disembodied intellectually woke self oscillates from crying to my therapist while talking about political theory and theology to watching liberal stand up comics reels to cope.

The Black church knows joy that I don’t know. 

Yolanda Pierce wrote in a book titled “In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit” 

“The Black church has been a place of refuge as the sons and daughters of enslaved persons and sharecroppers became priests and bishops and evangelists.

The Black church has been a physical sanctuary, with the congregation housing fugitive slaves and serving as stops on the Underground Railroad. 

The Black church birthed and funded the largest and most effective grassroots political movement–the civil rights movement–which challenged Jim and Jane Crow, lynching, segregation, and voting restrictions. How can I say thanks?…

How can I say thanks for a theology not just rooted in eschatological hope but focused on becoming the beloved community on earth as it will be in heaven?”

Thank God for the Black Church in American Christianity. I loved telling my daughter on MLK day that MLK was a pastor, just her mommy! 

Psalm 103 knows joy and praise that can only come from going through it all. 

I read a pastor put it this way, Rachael McClair co–pastor of a church called Highlands Church in Denver, CO

Psalm 103 shouts its gratitude loudly, like the trumpets of a mariachi band. Its rejoicing comes only after the suffering. 

On first glance, it could read like a return to the innocence of the first Psalms, those of orientation; of, perhaps, naiveté. But re-orientation is something much harder earned. This Psalm isn’t an attempt to go back in time to when life seemed so simple, before all the suffering. It is what joy sounds like on the other side of the suffering. 

Rachael McClair, co-pastor Highlands Church in Denver 

As we have been praying through the Psalms in this season leading up to Lent and Easter, we have soaked our spirits with the honesty and the rawness of the Psalmist prayers of outcries, of vengeance, of doubt of faith and questions like,

“What you are you doing God?”

We know the prayers have places of belief, unbelief, and we’re now getting to see this place of new orientation. A place of believing again, after disbelief. 

And that place? That place isn’t just returning to orientation. It’s much more grand. It’s explosive. It’s beyond what you’ve ever known and even more. 

as high as heaven is above the earth,

  As far as east is from west—

And you realize just how small you are. The psalmist is utterly humbled and everything is honestly laughable, cause nothing matters. It’s like all that suffering, who cares? 

we’re just dust.

The days of a human life are like grass:

    they bloom like a wildflower

  but when the wind blows through it, it’s gone;

    even the ground where it stood doesn’t remember it.

In a sense, Who cares because GOD’s faithful love is from forever ago to forever from now. 3 generations from now, and ALL, God’s realm, God’s household cares for ALL, which is my translation of

“his kingdom rules over all.” 

It ends with Bless My Greatest Love! With exclamation marks. Bless God! Blessings upon Blessings just shooting up into the sky like the ending finale of a fireworks, which is always more impressive than I expect. 

This thing we’re going through as a nation, this grief that you’re carrying, this suffering that you have been enduring, is all part of the long and glorious story of love. God’s steadfast love. Not one who Lord over you to make sure you’re doing it right. But one who loves you, with compassion and forgiveness, and endless mercy. 

This kind of prayer of new orientation only comes through the night and in the morning. I’m gonna attempt to channel Black Church mode, I do so much of my own theology through the works of Black theology, why not live, embody it, by singing preaching, 

The Steadfast love of the Lord never ceases

Their mercies never come to an end

They are new every morning, new every morning, 

Great is thy faithfulness oh Love, 

Great is thy faithfulness. 

Whether you are going through getting to know God initially, orientation, or falling out of love with God, disorientation, or coming back to taste the goodness of God again, new orientation– know that others like the Psalms and the Black church have been through the journey. Even if you don’t know it yet, maybe not now, but you will praise. You will praise God at the top of your lungs, maybe on a stage with a mid singing voice, saying, Great is thy faithfulness oh Love. 

Would you pray with me? 

 

A Path in the Faith Journey

Psalm 73

A psalm of Asaph.

73 Truly God is good to Israel,

    to those who are have a pure heart.

2 But me? My feet had almost stumbled;

    my steps had nearly slipped

3     because I envied the arrogant;

    I observed how the wicked are well off:

4 They suffer no pain;

    their bodies are fit and strong.

5 They are never in trouble;

    they aren’t weighed down like other people.

6 That’s why they wear arrogance like a necklace,

    why violence covers them like clothes.

7 Their eyes bulge out from eating so well;

    their hearts overflow with delusions.

8 They scoff and talk so cruel;

    from their privileged positions

    they plan oppression.

9 Their mouths dare to speak against heaven!

    Their tongues roam the earth!

10 That’s why people keep going back to them,

    keep approving what they say.[a]

11 And what they say is this: “How could God possibly know!

    Does the Most High know anything at all!”

12 Look at these wicked ones,

    always relaxed, piling up the wealth!

13 Meanwhile, I’ve kept my heart pure for no good reason;

I’ve washed my hands to stay innocent for nothing.

14 I’m weighed down all day long.

    I’m punished every morning.

15 If I said, “I will talk about all this,”

    I would have been unfaithful to your children.

16 But when I tried to understand these things,

    it just seemed like hard work

17     until I entered God’s sanctuary

        and understood what would happen to the wicked.

18 You will definitely put them on a slippery path;

    you will make them fall into ruin!

19 How quickly they are devastated,

    utterly destroyed by terrors!

20 As quickly as a dream departs from someone waking up, my Lord,

    when you are stirred up, you make them disappear.[b]

21 When my heart was bitter,

    when I was all cut up inside,

22 I was stupid and ignorant.

    I acted like nothing but an animal toward you.

23 But I was still always with you!

    You held my strong hand!

24 You have guided me with your advice;

    later you will receive me with glory.

25 Do I have anyone else in heaven?

    There’s nothing on earth I desire except you.

26 My body and my heart fail,

    but God is my heart’s rock and my share forever.

27 Look! Those far from you die;

    you annihilate all those who are unfaithful to you.

28 But me? It’s good for me to be near God.

    I have taken my refuge in you, my Lord God,

        so I can talk all about your works!

Would you pray with me?

Loving God 

We don’t know how to make sense of things going on in the world and in our country and even in our own hearts sometimes. How do we keep the faith? How do we hope? How do we persevere toward peace and mercy when we’re so distracted, angry, busy, and overwhelmed? We don’t even know how to pray sometimes. Teach us lord. Help us to be open to the hearts of saints that have come before us, that we might learn how to pray, so that we might be changed. So that we can stand on the strength of faith in you God, even now, we pray in Jesus name amen. 

I have doubts about a god. When you are young, you first learn the rules. Be good. Be nice. Be kind. I taught these things to my kids at a very young age, 2, 3 years old. But already, at 5 and 7 years old, they’re starting to see the cracks.

We went to the library the other day, and saw Jenny the Juggler, who made sure that at the end of the show every single kid got to take home a balloon mouse she called, Rocket Mouse. You hold it in your hand, pull the tail, and let go and shoot it up into the sky like a rocket. Rocket Mouse. Oh they loved it. They came home and shot it up in the air again and again. They played to see who went higher. Jesse’s went higher. He won! And then, Sophia’s went up higher and she says,

I won!

And Jesse says,

no you didn’t. 

Sophia the 7 year old older sister, she lets it go and says,

okay it was a tie.

They shoot it again. Sophia’s definitely goes up higher. She says

mine went higher.

And Jesse says,

I didn’t see it. 

Finally she comes running to me, crying, saying,

“Jesse never lets me win. Even when I win, he says I didn’t. And when I say I won, he hurts me”

And the kind, understanding, sweet Sophia says,

“I never want to play with Jesse ever again!”

Cause what good did it do Sophia, for her to go along with her brother, not upsetting him, okay it was a tie, when it clearly wasn’t. She was kind. She was patient. But at some point she thinks, this is unfair! 

Jesse, he’s not bothered at all. I asked him, did Noona (older sister in Korean)’s Rocket Mouse go higher? And he’s like no. I ask him,

“Are you sure?”

and then he says,

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it.” 

Sometimes, following Jesus in this day and age, can feel like what Sophia is feeling. And this story is as old as time, as they say, or at least a few thousand years old, which is what our guess is for when various parts of the Psalms were written. And yet we still read it because it checks out. This feeling of,

“Okay, so God is good to those who are pure in heart. But then why are the wicked so well off?” 

It’s how the book of Psalms actually starts out. In Psalm 1. It lays out the basic understanding of a world, one in which those who are wicked will perish and those who delight in the law of the Lord, prosper. 

Walter Brueggemann, a biblical scholar of Psalms, describes Psalm 1 as a Psalm of Orientation. 

“For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,

    but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”

1+1=2. That’s how it works. Basics. Things are black and white. Clear. There’s no ambiguity. One could even go as far to say that, those who have such worldview, those who rely on the binary and never depart from it are “naive or privileged.” 

Breggemann puts it like this, 

“Such a satisfied and assured attention of orderliness probably comes from the well-off, from the economically secure and the politically significant. That is, such religious conviction comes from those who experience life as good, generous, and reliable. This does not make these poems suspect, but it permits us to read them knowingly, for not everyone experiences life this way and can speak so boldly about it. 

Life is well-oriented only for some, and that characteristically at the expense of others. In these psalms (psalms of orientation) we enter into the religious sensitivity and life experience of those who know life to have congruity, symmetry, and proportion. They are those whose

“lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (Ps. 16:6). This means they have ended up with the best land, and so find it not difficult to live a life of gratitude. (26-27) “

If that is you, I am genuinely happy for you. Sometimes I wish I could keep the pure innocence of my kids. I wish I didn’t have to tell them about people who might lie to them or take advantage of them or would ever want to hurt them. You be good and you’ll always be okay. I wish I could have them stay there forever. 

But then, you live a little, get a little brother who tricks your eyes, and realize, life doesn’t work the way you were simply taught. Be good and people will take advantage of you? Be kind and people will step all over you?

And so other Psalms enter our prayer repertoire. The rest of the Psalms, like today’s Psalm 73, wrestles with the fact that life is messy. 

Brueggemann calls them Psalms of Disorientation. Things are not as they ought to be. 

Have you had an experience like that? 

1….2….3…

When your innocence was broken and you got to taste the bitterness of a broken world filled with broken people? 

1….2…3…

Psalm 73 is in the innocence-is-broken moment. The prayer starts with, 

Verse 1 Truly God is good to Israel,

    to those who have a pure heart.

But quickly …

Verse 2 But me? My feet had almost stumbled;

    my steps had nearly slipped

In the faith journey, we all come to this place of disorientation. A But Me moment. I was taught this but, but me. But what about me?

This moment can come to us at any age. At 4. 7. Sometimes in your teens. 

When I was in the 10th grade. I moved in the middle of my 10th grade from Kansas to California. My father was a pastor and he got a job at a church where there was a big youth group of kids, most of them who had grown up together. But me, I was the new girl from the Midwest. It was a Korean-American church, and a pretty big one considering that I used to attend a church with 50 members all together and no other kids my age. This one had 40 students just in the youth group. I wasn’t like the other Asian Americans who had grown up in California, who knew Kpop and went to SAT classes together.

I was the weird kid from Kansas who apparently had an accent (actually it was the Californians who talked weirdly saying “dude” every other word and they called pop, soda.) I was kind of weird though. I love electronic dance music rather than pop music. I liked Bjork while they liked Brittany Spears. 

I started to feel their coldness more and more and then one day one of them handed me a letter. 

Apparently the group of girls had a meeting. They met up at Barnes and Noble one day and had a discussion about me and then decided to draft a letter together to give me. 

The letter I got was cruel. It told me that they were going to give me the silent treatment until I changed. What I needed to change, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t clear. I literally hadn’t done anything, except just be myself but they said that they couldn’t be friends with me unless I changed. I kept that letter until I graduated and burned it, yes like with fire, before I went off to college. 

During this time I felt so alienated and rejected. I remember I talked with my dad about what to do. That it felt so unfair. My dad, being the pastor, pointed to Psalms when they were unfairly mistreated. When they were blameless and yet persecuted. Verses like 8

“They scoff and talk so cruel;  from their privileged positions they plan oppression.”

I was like, yesssss, this Psalmist knows what I’m going through. When everyone was against me. My dad told me to just stay quiet. Don’t argue. Let them think whatever they want. But me, I wanted to pick fights and say my piece to them. This is when I felt like my Dad was so Christian, humble, and foolish. 

This was my disorientation. The world is like this. And God, the church, is telling me to what, just take it? I literally do not understand why anyone would tell anyone to “turn the other cheek” as Jesus did in the Bible. How is that wisdom for life? It sounds like wisdom for getting stepped all over. 

That confusion. That defiance, the sense of,

“But, me, have questions.”

I want to tell you that this disorientation is not a lack of faith. It is not a thing that should be erased or omitted from our lives but it is a natural, perfectly normal part of life and, I want to say that it is an important part of our faith and our prayers. If it wasn’t, why would it be in the book of holy prayers like this? You shouldn’t bypass or avoid these parts. In fact they are the most honest and raw prayers. In one sense, we can only get to trust and worship and praise and understanding through misunderstanding. 

But like, we want things to be too perfect instantly these days. 

I was watching on YouTube a roundtable discussion called Songwriters Circle with big songwriters like Ejae, Shaboozy, and Ed Sheeran. And they were talking about the first songs they wrote. Most of them talked about how bad their first song was. Ed Sheeran talked about his first song he wrote when he was 11 years old. He said that it actually makes him cringe to listen back to the demo but in a way that he knows what comes of it.

And then he talked about how he wrote songs and showed it to his dad and his dad would just say,

“oh it’s awesome. It’s good.”

when he would play for his friends they’d say,

“this ain’t good,”

But his dad told him to just keep going. He talked about gigs he played, how fun they were, and how he felt on the stage. He felt amazing, but how it’s so rough nowadays because kids would play and record themselves immediately and listen back and it’d be so bad and immediately discouraging. 

Look you stumble your way, in a real cringe way, to becoming someone talented like Ed Sheeran. And that’s life. Like real life, right? And if you ever think of God as a father, I hope we think of the likes of Ed Sheeran’s father saying, keep going. Oh that’s amazing, just keep going, when everyone says it ain’t good. 

And I think God kind of does this with this Psalmist throughout this prayer. Though in their heart, they are confused and they are disappointed and angry. Verses 1-12 laying out the contradictions in life, the problem and the dissonance they saw between their faith and their actual experiences. They describe the absurdity of it all.

And the Psalmist moves through from blaming others to blaming themselves. Verse 13-14

  1. 13 Meanwhile, I’ve kept my heart pure for no good reason;

I’ve washed my hands to stay innocent for nothing.

  14 I’m weighed down all day long.

 I’m punished every morning.

You ever go through such a line of thinking?

 First you blame others. When you’ve exhausted yourself of others to blame. You’re only left with yourself.  I’m the worst. I deserve this. I did this to myself. 

1….2…3…

 I heard this from this amazing community called Faith and Justice Network. Rev. Dr. Peter Choi who runs the program said this. That scholars agree that this was probably written by someone who studies and teaches about God. So when they say in the next verses

15 If I said, “I will talk about all this,”

    I would have been unfaithful to your children.

They were probably thinking, well it’s hard for me to teach about God when I’m weary about all this. This theologian, maybe a pastor, thinks, I’m not fit to teach this stuff. 

It says in vs.

16 But when I tried to understand these things,

    it just seemed like hard work

The Psalmist is so upset, so confused, blamed others, and blamed themselves, they are just tired. They are overwhelmed by the task at hand. 

And that’s why I started this sermon with the words,

“I have doubts about a god.”

Because it’s true. Though I am a professional Christian, there are so many days when I feel discouraged and I wonder, what is God doing with this world? When I am seeing the wicked boast. It doesn’t bother them. They’re rich and happy. And the good folks are suffering, struggling, unfairly treated. How am I supposed to give a sermon on a stage with a mic and lights about how God is good when I really do not feel good because of how much unfairness and injustice I am seeing in the world? 

1.2.3.

I’m right there with the Psalmist.

But then the Psalmist makes a turn on vs. 17. 

17     until I entered God’s sanctuary

        and understood what would happen to the wicked.

18 You will definitely put them on a slippery path;

    you will make them fall into ruin!

19 How quickly they are devastated,

    utterly destroyed by terrors!

20 As quickly as a dream departs from someone waking up, my Lord,

    when you are stirred up, you make them disappear.[b]

 

The prayer kind of reverts back to the formula they know. My side YEAH, God will make them disappear! 

But then also, in verse 21 the Psalmist starts to soften and not just praying for the destruction of their enemies but gets tender and introspective of oneself, confesses to their own shortcomings.

21 When my heart was bitter,

    when I was all cut up inside,

22 I was stupid and ignorant.

    I acted like nothing but an animal toward you.

I feel like that sometimes, when I’m throwing a fit to God. This protest in me. This fight in me that prays prayers like,

“God, are you even there? What are you actually accomplishing around here? Is this one big joke to you? Will they not raise the sea levels and burn up the earth?” 

But the Psalmist meanders around, through the doubt, through the questions, through it all to eventually make their way  to remember God’s faithfulness. 

23 But I was still always with you!

    You held my strong hand!

24 You have guided me with your advice;

    later you will receive me with glory.

25 Do I have anyone else in heaven?

    There’s nothing on earth I desire except you.

26 My body and my heart fail,

    but God is my heart’s rock and my share forever.

Another commentator said it like this, that 

“The goodness of God is not defined by the Shalom the wicked enjoy, nor is it denied by the affliction suffered by the pure in heart. The ultimate misery is to be “far from God” (v. 27)”  – (James L. Mays, Interpretation of the Psalms) 

This prayer is a picture, an example of what a faith journey looks like. One with many meanderings, as one does, because that is life. Prayers don’t have to be correct. They are just steps we take in the journey. One step at a time. And if you misstep, you can always take the next step, toward God. 

There you’ll come to another But Me moment. One that truly knows who you are. 

But me? It’s good for me to be near God. I have taken my refuge in you. My Lord God. so I can talk all about your works!

But me, I know where I can be safe. I know where I belong. God is my refuge. God is my home. 

No matter what’s going on with you. Whether your brother is giving you trouble. Or your friends reject you. I hope you know that God cheers for you. Welcomes you home and says,

“You’re so good. I believe in you. You’re amazing. I love you.”

Do you hear that?

I hope we can all hear that deep in our hearts. 

Let me pray for us. 

Loving God, be close to us. Be near to us. Help us to hear your voice saying, that you love us deeply, no matter what misery befalls us, no matter what mistakes we’ve made, no matter who we’ve hurt, others, or even ourselves, God help us to know that in you, we are forgiven and welcomed, not rejected, but embraced by your merciful love we pray. Give us that power and faith more and more that we might go out into the world with that same love we pray, in Jesus Name. Amen. 

 

Be An Elizabeth

Have you ever had to start over?

Starting at a new school. Moving to a brand new city. Starting over single after heartbreak.

I started a new job one time at a church, not here. Another church. First day, I went into the church office, I walked in. No one’s there that early. It’s empty. No one cares that it’s your first day. The communications guy walks out and I’m like,

hi I’m the new hire.

And he’s like, uh I’m not sure, let me see find… And I tried my best to make him like me by making a joke.

“Oh it’s alright, don’t worry about me, I’ll just sit in this corner and pray until someone needs me.” 

There are two opposing feelings that can happen when you are starting something new. Excitement and fear. There’s a name for this feeling. Ambivalence. I thought ambivalence was like hesitation but you might hesitate because the feeling is both positive and negative. You are both looking forward to it and want it and you don’t want it at all and want to run the other way. Both, at the same time. 

Maybe you might be feeling that way a bit about the new year coming. Another year is coming to a close. A part of me is glad that it’s over. Could use a new leaf.

  • But will the new year bring new good things to me?
  • Will it be just more of the same, same grief work, same heartbreaks, same loneliness and sadness or busyness trekking along another year?

Maybe there is something delightful and surprising in store for me. 

I wanted to kind of extend the Christmas story today. Everyday is Christmas day at church! I wanted to reflect on this story of waiting and expecting something new and what that could mean for us. Actually it was Pastor Dan, our elementary pastor who shared the Bible story with us, his idea, or wonderings. I wonder what it feels like to welcome this new baby Jesus into our lives. Along with, as we’re welcoming a new year, What does it mean to welcome the Gospel of new creation into our lives?  

For Mary it did begin with fear. And she needed not just her own story, but to hear someone else’s miracle to make it even a possibility in her mind. And then, she took off flight into a vision of hope she dared to entertain in her mind with joy.

So those are my 3 points today. 

  1. Fear is okay. 
  2. You might need a friend. 
  3. Dare to Rejoice and Hope. 

I’ve been in therapy for the past few years for… anger. That’s right. I’ve apparently got anger issues. We’ve been working for years on managing it. How to regulate myself when the kids are screaming, crying, and breaking down. She told me to write anger, like cursive letters, and say, I am feeling angry. That was the most surface level the way it’s been manifesting. How to process grief and anger about systemic injustice and racism. My therapist pushed me further down.

What else? What else are you angry about? She was like, your parents. I’m like, I mean yeah when I was in my 20’s, I already did years of therapy because of my anger at my parents. Now that I’m a parent, I understand everything! Umma, Appa, if you’re watching I forgive you. You were great. 

Then one day, after I got off the Zoom therapy session. With these questions in my mind. What am I so angry about? What feels so unfair and unjust, that was out of my control? I went to the bathroom, and on the throne it hit me, I burst into tears thinking about the nine-year old little Korean girl moving to America. It seemed like such a stupid thing to be angry about.

Like, the immigration story? Comeon. That’s so overplayed. But then I remembered the movie Inside Out. And how hard it was for that little girl to move to San Francisco from Minnesota. Lydia’s Sadness did not get to take up space. Lydia’s Joy definitely just shut everyone up. Which is why Lydia’s Anger is sometimes so angry. Apparently the whole point of the movie is Sadness and Anger is valid and okay. 

My favorite part of Mary’s story is not the poetic prophetic part, the triumphant obedient Mary. It’s too holy and perfect for my taste. Give me broken humanity. One with doubt and fear and disbelief. One who is suspicious and greatly troubled at what an angel is saying, wondering what kind of greeting this might be. And I’m still slightly annoyed at the obsession with these great origin stories in virginity.

Somebody with a PhD in history of the gaze of women’s sexuality talk to me about this please. Regardless, just imagine. You’re engaged. And someone comes to you and says, you’re pregnant. It would be confusing times. Maybe afraid of what your fiancee might say or do or think, as last week’s Kids Church Christmas pageant Joseph confessed.

“What would my relatives think?”

I wouldn’t break out into a song either immediately. 

The Good News, whether through an angel, or Scripture, or a conviction in your heart through a spiritual experience, might come at us abruptly with an audacious even suspicious power that can feel daunting. It might invite us to move into that fear and grief, asking us to let go of the old way of doing things. And letting go of old ways of doing things feels scary. And you know what helps when you’re scared? Not being alone. Having someone to comfort you and encourage you. 

And that’s why you might need a friend. We need one another to share our testimonies. To hear it, share it, and believe it. To share our struggles and the suffering. To share our miracles and God’s answered prayers. We need one another to remind one another. Especially when you’re afraid. 

When you are afraid, tired, anxious– you need a hype woman. Listen to this

Luke 1:39-42

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea,

40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.

41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: 

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!

43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

Do you have an Elizabeth in your life? You know, one who’s all hopped up on the Holy Spirit, in a loud voice exclaiming,

“Blessed are you!”

Everyone needs at least one of those. One who tells you that when you come around, their baby leaps for joy at the sight of you. If you don’t, I pray that God will give one to you. She’ll keep us grounded. She’ll remind us of the blessings all around us. She’ll tell you the struggle that she’s been through. She’ll praise God with you and for you when you’re scared. Go stay with her for three months. 

And be the Elizabeth for someone. Go around sharing God’s miracles in your life. Be a testament. We need your loud vibes please. This is why we do faith in community. Not isolated. Because our destinies are shared and intertwined with one another. 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately but we’ve been working to integrate our youth group into the service more. You might’ve seen high schoolers on stage in the band or in other ministry areas. They do have a youth program where they meet in the basement of the Ministry Center the first three Sundays of the month.

And as I’ve been having the privilege to work with our Elementary Pastor Dan, Pre/k Pastor Aubrie, and Youth Pastor Bri, we’ve been discussing in our weekly team meetings, where and when and why and how did we get to a church culture where we tuck the kids away to their own rooms? Is the purpose to keep them occupied while the grown ups do the serious Jesus stuff and not have them distracting us? Our team says a strong no. That’s why we don’t call it Sunday School but Kids Church. The kids are doing church too.

I mean of course there’s age appropriate content, considering the stage of development in spiritual formation. We’ll actually have a really cool Workshop called Parenting After Deconstruction happening in April where an expert will talk to us about how we can be thoughtful about that. But, one of the beauties of church actually is the intergenerational space we get to be around with one another. That’s not just the job of a Kids Church volunteer. Because it’s not about learning Bible content. Church is being in community with one another, hearing each other’s stories, rooting for each other, leaning on one another. Ages 0-99. 

A study from the Fuller Youth Institute, called “Sticky Faith” research, found that about half of high school youth group kids drift from faith in college. It led a longitudinal study identifying key factors for lasting faith. An important one is the impact of intergenerational relationships, with a 5:1 adult-to-kid ratio. Our young people need meaningful relationships with 5 grown ups outside of their parents in the faith context.

That means they can’t just stay in the basement during church. They need to be mixed into the wider church. In order for them to be able to receive Christ into their lives and live into the new creation in faith, they need Elizabeths in their lives. An elder saying, look at me, God did miracles on me and look at the mercy God’s bestowed upon me. I was not disregarded as worthless. God used me. I am worthy of love and so are you. They need five Elizabeths in their lives, at least. 

Actually they’ll probably be an Elizabeth for you. Last week one of the high schooler boys said hi to me, first! And I felt so cool. And the teens were also the winners of the Cookie Bake Off on Christmas Eve earlier this week, with that chocolate cookie with Cayenne Powder, a little spicy sweet goodness, for The Most Delicious category and the chocolate dipped pretzel “cookie” that looked like tiny Christmas trees for the Most Creative. Sylvie, Freya, Harvey – good work. I bet you Elizabeth made cookies for Mary, I’m sure of it. 

And so with some cookies in our belly for the journey we can maybe

Dare to Rejoice and Hope.  As you welcome the new year. As you welcome God’s new creation in your life. Fear is okay. And, Joy is okay. Both of them, co-existing is okay. As Brene Brown would say, and I say to my kids,

that’s being brave. Being scared and doing it with the belief, I can do it, even if you think you can’t. 

My third point is to dare to rejoice. And if you’re going through a season of depression or grief, I mean it’s the dead of winter, let’s be honest, many of us are, or in a season of depression, you might be thinking,

“oh gee thanks, tell me more, to rejoice.” 

Look I’m not saying will-power into being joyful. I’m not saying,

“Just be positive!”

because your Sadness will respond with,

“I’m positive that’s not going to work.” 

Daring to rejoice is the imagination of a faithful protest. It’s praying words you don’t believe or are not sure about. It’s receiving and expecting the gifts of God coming at you, like a fool in love. 

To rejoice is to take the leap of faith. And leaping, sometimes works. 

Like just try skipping and tell me you don’t feel a little childlike wonder. 

Our movement, our practice in the ritual of worship reinforces and proclaims even before our minds and mouths can. 

Do you dare worship and sing praises when your world is crumbling? 

My kid asked me the other day, while listening to Christmas Carols in the car. Is Bethlehem a real town? And good thing she couldn’t see my face. I said,

“yeah, it’s real.”

She asked,

“have we been there?”

I said,

“no, we haven’t been there”

with a pinch in my heart. I’m thinking of the videos of Palestinian Christians celebrating Christmas in Bethlehem this year, after three years of war and bombing. I’m thinking of their Christmas celebrations with deep deep grief in their hearts. How stark the joy is at the heels of destruction and death. How precious the joy is, all the more, than ever before. 

Even if you are scared of the unknown, starting anew, daring to wonder if God has a new mercy waiting for you tomorrow, worship and sing. Praise Jesus. Bring glory to God in the dark of your rock bottom. It’s a ridiculous thing for me to tell you to do but that’s the gospel. Ridiculous. 

Ridiculous for a young lowly pregnant out of wedlock girl to proclaim the glorious riches of Jesus. But she dares. She dares to prophesy. 

Listen. This is Mary’s Song

Mary’s Song

 And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord

    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has been mindful

    of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

    for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

    holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,

    from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones

    but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

    but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

    remembering to be merciful

to Abraham and his descendants forever,

    just as he promised our ancestors.”

What is her song’s thesis? 

She’s happy, humbled, blessed and… her reasons for these are not just because she’s pregnant with a baby. She paints a vision for a future 

Where God has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble,
filled the hungry with good things,
but has sent the rich away empty.

Her joy does not come from a surface level joy, everything’s fine, or simply lofty thoughts but grounded in a real picture of what heaven on earth can look like. Her joy is from a place of resistance and an unapologetic thrust of her imagination of justice, in spite of all that she saw in her world, the rulers on thrones oppressing the humble and the hungry going empty, the rich filled. She doesn’t even put it in the future tense but past tense. 

Do you have that kind of audacious foolish joy? Do we dare look so ridiculous being that joyful when the sky is falling? No, many of us, I often, don’t have that kind of faith. I don’t expect and hope that much, because, well, I don’t want to be disappointed again. 

I’ve been listening to a kind of silly podcasts lately on productivity, efficiency and organizing. Because you know, with the new year and all, I want to be more organized. More of my work streamlined, daily routines automated. And one of the podcasts suggested as one of six ways to get organized. She said, after you organize and clean one little drawer, celebrate. She said celebrate, and maybe do a little dance whenever you pass by it. It sounded silly but she elaborated, how it’ll halt your feelings of being overwhelmed by all that you should do. That celebration motivates and puts you in a good mood to do the next thing. 

Look, I have been feeling pretty jaded about justice lately. It looks as though evil continues to just prevail. And it feels pretty overwhelming.

  • What if the joy to the world was actually real?
  • What if what Jesus did by coming into this world was actually worthy of me doing a little dance and cleaning up and community organizing my little corner of the world?
  • What if praising worshipping Jesus is the only way to welcome him into my life again and again, year after year? 

As we start a new year, maybe you are feeling dread or fear or anxiety. That’s okay. Even the mother of God felt such things. 

Maybe you could use a friend or a community. Myself, Steve, and Ivy, the pastors of this church are all starting new community groups in the new year. Join one. Mine’s on Wednesdays at Noon on zoom. 

And maybe, claim a little joy and step into the new year with a little dance, even if it feels silly. Let us dare to rejoice and hope with fear and friends. Let me pray for us. 

Christ Lord Jesus, 

Who came into Mary’s world like a wrecking ball. 

One who disrupts our lives of numbness and mundane apathy with a call higher for justice and love. For peace rather than destruction. We worship you and praise you for the joy that you bring to us. Remind us of that joy again and again, even this week, as some of us continue to endure the cold, the loneliness, the chronic pain, the aching grief, hold us in your loving arms and comfort us in the warmth of your love and mercy we pray. Amen.

Healing In Community Through Jesus

Mark 2:1-12 New International Version

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man

2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.

3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.

4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.

5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,

7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things?

9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?

10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man,

11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”

12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

I was sitting at my desk in the office one day. It was a time before open concept office layout became cool. So not here, years, a decade ago, at my prior place of employment. You know the cubicles that you can look over when you stand up, but in your own world when you sit down. And sometimes we’d have random over the cubicle conversations, without even looking up. Someone would make a sound, we’d chuckle and carry on. Listen to and hear everything that happens from our own individual desks. 

There was this one guy I never really liked, who sat three cubicles over from me. We were both interns at the church, Associates we’d call it, maybe he was one year ahead of me. You can kind of get the vibe of the church office culture from that. He’s the kind of guy that would say things like,

“As an economist in my former life…”

He was an econ major in college and worked like a year in consulting I think. I also worked for a year after college in political campaigns before seminary but I don’t go around calling myself a political strategist in my former life. 

That day, we were talking about some new pop song that came out, maybe it was a kpop song. I chimed in and said, yeah it’s a kpop song. And the guy, that I didn’t like, says,

“what even is the difference between kpop and jpop? Cause they sound the same.”

One could say it’s a harmless comment. He just didn’t know. But to me, it was offensive. Because it brought up for me all the times when I felt invisible and unseen. When guys holler “konichiwa” or “nihao” to me on the street because they can’t even catcall correctly. When people would ask me,

“Are you Japanese or Chinese?”

and I’d say,

I’m Korean. 

And then they’d say,

“South or North”?

Like they’d been there or know anything about the difference.  I’ve heard lately people say in response,

“where are you from?”

and if someone says,

“America.”

you say,

“North or South?” 

It’s ignorance. It’s just that sometimes we don’t know. It’s aggravating in one sense but also, I used to say, well I don’t really know the difference between the French and the German. 

Look, we’re all ignorant people in so many ways. I think sometimes in the intellectually liberal circles, we’re even worse about what is offensive. Well no, that’s not true. Saying the wrong thing will get you excommunicated and cancelled in the liberal circles, but a trans person just existing without even having said anything in some circles will get you that invisible unseen feeling for sure, or much worse. 

How are we supposed to put up with one another? 

The politically divided, the ignorant co-worker, the microaggression, the difference in culture that causes stress and offense. Things ranging from minor agitation to hurtful even violence toward one another because of our difference, that causes harm, even death. How are we supposed to live together? 

We’ve been talking about healing in our sermon series and I wanted to talk about healing in the context of community and relationships. Because sometimes it feels like there’s more hurt, pain, and offense when we are in a relationship with one another, especially when we’re in a relationship with a “difficult” one. 

That co-worker I really didn’t like, that’s just one story. I had to work on a project with him at some point, and one day we had a huge confrontation. All my built up anger toward him was triggered that day, when we started arguing about diversity. After that difficult conversation, a week later, I went to the dentist for a filling. She told me to come back if the bite wasn’t correct, they’d file down the filling if it was bothering me. For days, it bothered me. I went back in, convinced that the filling was giving me pain in my jaw. She looked at it. She said it looked fine. I tapped my teeth. It still felt like something was off. And then she asked me,

“Have you had any stress in the last week or two?”

I was like,

“Um I mean, work is always stressful (strung out laugh)!”

But I was immediately thinking about my confrontation with that guy. 

In an attempt to heal, sometimes our first line of defense is, just cut him out of my life. He is toxic. It’s a toxic work environment. He’s literally causing me physical pain! I’m supposed to buy a $300 retainer and wear it every night so I don’t clinch my jaw–for him? Cause of him? Naw. I’m gonna live a stress free, toxic free life, as soon as he’s out of my life. He’s on my No Fly list. 

Someone right now might be thinking,

“See that’s what’s wrong with cancel culture.”

And I agree with you. 

I want to offer that today’s Bible Story shows us a picture of healing that happened through and because of a community. The healing happened because four friends decided to carry a paralytic man on a mat, and decided to conspire together to break through someone’s roof to get this man healed. 

You see, the action taken by the four men not only practically had the strength to carry the mat or plow through shingles or straw, whatever Ancient Near East roofing material was, but it also showed their faith. Their determination. Their love. 

Mark 2:5  

Look. Verse 5, it says that,

“When Jesus saw THEIR faith” 

That is, the faith of the paralytic and his friends. When Jesus saw all of their faith in action, that’s what it took. 

In our overly individualistic culture, we’ve built this personal relationship with Jesus as the top goal for the gospel, when so much of the Bible is about THEIR faith, OUR faith. Now I don’t know how well these five guys got along. But try carrying anything with three other people okay.

I’m pretty sure, if I remember correctly, that Steve, our senior pastor, and Brian McMurry, Shawn, and my husband Eugene tried to carry our piano into the house from the moving truck, seven years ago when we first moved here. You have to communicate, so as to not hurt anyone in the process. 

I saw a post by Francesca Psychology saying this,

Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. That means people want a strong community for support, but they are not willing to put in the effort and sacrifice required to be a part of it. Being annoyed is the price we pay for connection and community. It can mean sharing space when it’s inconvenient, showing up when you’d rather stay home, or hosting when you’re tired. Somewhere along the way, our fear of discomfort turned into hyper-independence–strict boundaries, perfect routines, and no interruptions. But when our boundaries become too rigid, they stop protecting us and start isolating us. They become walls. And we wonder why we feel so lonely. We’re paying for convenience with disconnection. We traded the messiness of community for the ease of solitude and lost something vital along the way.” 

You know my algorithm now, chicks into therapy. You see, ideas and wisdom like this is trying to invite us into that community that heals. And how that connection and community isn’t always easy but worth it. The truth is though, the Gospel takes it further. What therapy and psychology attempts to get at a kind of healing and connection, a true holistic healing for everyone calls for not just withstanding annoyance. The kind of healing Jesus offers us goes far beyond self-help notions like,

“so be a villager.”

No, Jesus raises the bar higher and says,

“love your enemies.”

Forgive them. Forgive one another of sins. 

You see, I actually struggled with this concept in these healing stories in the Bible. When this man is paralyzed, he can’t walk. And Jesus says to him,

“Your sins are forgiven.”?

As if it’s because of his sins that he has this ailment? That’s my misunderstood, misused, misinterpreted theology coming at odds with the truth of the message. Because I have heard churches or people tell someone with a very physical condition, even disease like cancer, if only you would pray hard enough, confess a contrite heart of your sins, then Jesus will heal you. And sometimes it doesn’t work out that way and the sick are left with not only the sickness itself but shame and guilt that they could never figure out the right confession to get that miraculous healing. It’s blaming the victim. Some of you might have seen or experienced it too, and think, that’s why I don’t like religion or not sure about prayer or healing or miracles and I don’t blame you. 

Jesus’ power of such holistic healing got translated in a weird transactional theology in which the disease somehow was the consequence of sin. That theology only speaks to the model of a God, a description of God we assume to be one who is transactional, one who punishes in the face of sin, and maybe you’d come to believe in that God so deeply that you have a hard time seeing that God could be any other way. Or that love could be any other way. But let me tell you something, I don’t believe in that God. 

We’ve been taught that God plenty for sure. Here’s how Cole Arthur Riley put it in This Here Flesh. 

“On the day the world began to die, God became a seamstress. This is the moment in the Bible that I wish we talked about more often. When Eve and Adam eat from the tree, and decay and despair begin to creep in, when they learn to hide from their own bodies, when they learn to hide from each other–no one ever told me the story of a God who kneels and makes clothes out of animal skin for them.” 

She goes on to say, 

“I remember many conversations about the doom and consequence imparted by God after humans ate from that tree. I learned of the curses, too, and could maybe even recite them. But no one ever told me of the tenderness of this moment… In the garden, when shame had replaced Eve’s and Adam’s dignity, God became a seamstress. He took the skin off of his creation to make something that would allow humans to stand in the presence of their maker and one another again.” 

Isn’t that beautiful? A God who covers us. 

The God that we see in Jesus has always been in the healing and restoration work, with grace and mercy.

  • Grace and mercy for the ignorant.
  • Grace and mercy for the offensive.
  • Grace and mercy even in the face of injustice or racism.

And that’s why I don’t like God sometimes. Jesus is too forgiving for my taste. Or so I say, for everyone else until that forgiveness is bestowed upon me. 

And it is. That radical, even scandalous gracious, merciful forgiveness that Jesus extends to everyone, and he means everyone, from paralytics, paralytics friends, and teachers of the law who criticize him, everyone, he offers that forgiveness to, even you.

  • For all that you have done.
  • For all that you have left undone.
  • For all the things you’ve said.
  • For all the things you left unsaid.

Jesus forgives you and moves toward you in a scandalous way. In all the ways that you’ve left rubble and damage in your tracks, tearing through roofs of communities that you loved, places that were safe and offered healing that in your desperation plowed through with your one longing, your one longing to simply to be seen, accepted, forgiven, and healed. God sees it all and you didn’t mess it up. In fact, it only brought you to the feet of Jesus. And at the gasps of onlookers, at the side eye of those who judged, you are simply loved, healed, and liberated. Wouldn’t it be great if that were true?

Maybe as you walked into this place today, you felt like you were in some ways symbolically tearing through your own hardened heart roofing system. 

Or tearing through the religious institution, the church, because somewhere in there, you wondered, maybe even hoped, that Jesus would be here to greet you. So you came with some friends. 

Or maybe you came alone, wondering, I’m broken, I’m hurting, I can’t walk. And if there anyone, anyone else’s faith beside my own because it is not strong enough, to carry me on a mat to take me to Jesus? Maybe their faith would rub off on me.

I still don’t exactly understand what it means for Jesus to say,

“your sins are forgiven”

to someone who couldn’t walk, and then he could walk. But then again, I also have come to realize a whole lot more about psychosomatic connections, what mere “stress” can do to your body and the truly holistic work of heart, mind, and body is a mystery that science is constantly discovering new understanding on how it all works together. 

I’ll end with this quote from a brilliant book called Disunity in Christ by Christena Cleveland, a social psychologist and public theologian. I find it more interesting than often some Christian books that simply call for unity for unity’s sake, but with a more sophisticated look at our differences and how to overcome them. 

“There I was convinced that I was defending Jesus by condemning Wrong Christians, when I saw that Jesus was beckoning both Right Christian and Wrong Christian and inviting all of us to know more of his heart. As I read through the Gospels, I noticed that he had a habit of connecting with everybody: conservative theologians, liberal theologians, prostitutes, divorcees, children, politicians, people who party hard, military servicemen, women, lepers, ethnic minorities, celebrities, you name it. 

He was pretty serious about connecting, in spite of natural and ideological differences… Rather than using his power to distance himself from us, Jesus uses it to approach us. He follows his own commandment to love your neighbor as yourself–often to his detriment, I might add–by pursuing us with great tenacity in spite of our differences. He jumps a lot of hurdles to reach us.”

A God who pursues us, that is the God we run to and follow.

  • What would it look like for you to know that?
  • That God relentlessly pursues you with love?
  • Would you run to this God? 

Let me pray for us. 

Healing as Presence

Good morning, My name is Lydia Shiu, My pronouns are she/her or they/them, you can use them interchangeably. I’m preaching today with a word about healing through the Way of Jesus, specifically Healing as Presence. Let me read the scripture text for us first, pray to get us started.

Mark 5:25-34 (New International Version)

25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years.

26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.

27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak,

28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”

29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.

33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.

34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Would you pray with me?

God, 

I’m going to go out on a limb here today and say that I hope that this right here, right now, will be an opportunity for miraculous healing. Not because of my words, but because You have called us here today to this moment. You made us in the image and likeness of you. And in us, you gave us the same everflowing breath of life that hovered over the waters in creations. No matter what followed thereafter, whether there was sin that entered the story, a fall from grace or a falling out of a relationship, the story of you God interacting with the world, the rest of the stories in the Bible, is afterall about restoring us back to that place of wholeness you originally created us to be. So restore us oh God, and help us as we gather this Sunday morning or every other day that the Reservoir community and friends gather in community groups or whatever throughout the week–that we might be in the business or the art and work of restoration and healing, even now. Amen

I have a junk corner in my living room of things that I hopefully would like to mend one day. One is a red and white button down shirt that I really like on my son Jesse. It makes him look so dapper and cute, which I got as a hand-me-down from my friend Cara. The button popped off and I really want to fix it so he can wear it again. The button is in the ziplock bag, you see the ziplock bag? The other is a pair of shorts that are really comfortable and somewhat fits me after having two children. There’s a hole in it, but it is very precious to me. But this junk corner is my little secret. If you ever come over to my house, I would probably hide it in my closet so you wouldn’t see it.

My mind and heart and spirit feel like this little junk corner these days. Like I know I just need to take the time to pull them out, try to do something with them. But it feels daunting because what if I open up the ziplock and the button is not even there. And it takes too much time and effort. So I just stuff it and everytime I notice it, it gives me anxiety and longing and hope and dread all at once. You ever feel that way? 

There are things that my heart is just brokenhearted about these days. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the news cycle, Bri, our Youth Group Director, was giving me a tip to take in only as much as you can pray for. But I really don’t. I consume the news and content about the world happenings and pile up the junk corner with one depressing news after another but I never take the time to tend to it, to mend my heart back, to ground myself in the expansiveness of God under the stars instead of headlines. 

So my talk today is an invitation to both you and me, to bring it down, lay out the torn fabric on our laps, give ourselves the space and the permission to behold the precious and broken dreams and things to say, we must be here and present with ourselves and one another, because Jesus, Jesus wants to see us hold on to that cloak. To notice him. To desperately grab a hold of him with great resolve and expectation. And for ourselves to be seen by him. And that maybe there could be a place of healing. 

I invite us to think about Healing as Presence. In the Presence of Jesus, as one who shows up for us. In the Presence for ourselves, showing up for ourselves. And the Presence for Others, showing up for others. Those are my three points. 

So first, the presence of Jesus. 

In today’s Scripture Jesus goes out of his way to make eye contact and connect with this woman. 

There are parts of this text that perplex me. Mainly v. 29

“Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”

Now I don’t know how that happened or if I believe that it happened but I believe that maybe that’s what she told as her story and how the story was captured. That I believe. I can’t tell you with accuracy how or if instant healing works. I still pray for it, especially when I’m in pain or my kids are in pain. My faith sometimes is not great, perhaps with many doubts, but I sure fling my doubt at God with a fit and say, please, please just make this pain go away right now. 

One year after graduating college, without a job, I was at my parent’s place, just being in the comfort of my parents’ house in my mid 20’s, where my mom did my laundry and cooked me all my favorite Korean foods. And there I was working on my application to seminaries. I was working on my essays, explaining how I feel called by God. But at some point, as the deadline was approaching, I broke out in hives. It was itchy and it spread quickly. I remember typing at my computer and scratching myself in between. We couldn’t figure out what it was. We tried all the creams from the med closet. Since doctor visits are expensive and I probably didn’t have insurance, because, no job, we stopped by the pharmacy where our family friend worked. She recommended a cream too but it didn’t work either. At some point, someone stopped by our house and dropped off a big plastic bag of dried leaves. Honestly it looked like weed.

My mom said it was SSOOK, which I just looked up in English this week and apparently it’s mugwort. Google tells me that it’s good for digestive health, menstrual regulation, that it has anti-inflammatory properties,

“making it beneficial for treating skin conditions such as eczema.”

I chuckled to myself at the thought of my mom and her ancient wisdom ways that Google affirmed. (If you’re playing Lydia sermon bingo, you might’ve just gotten bingo with the mentions of my mom, Korean, food, seminary and ancient wisdom.) My mother boiled the dried leaves and just dipped her fingers into the dark green tea water and dabbed them all over my body multiple times that day. The next day my rash was gone. This is my one and only story of instant physical healing that I personally have. And in another time in my life, I would’ve described it as the devil trying to get in my way of going to seminary, you know they be showing up right when you’re about to bring glory to God, and that God healed me. The overnight disappearance of the rash that was giving me so much trouble for days, spreading, torturing me, felt truly miraculous. Healing through the way of some Korean woman who probably got the leaves on a hike, dried it herself in her backyard as old Asian ladies would, like this

Look at the top left, that’s probably mugwort. This is how they do it, the Korean ladies. Sorry this was important for me to show. So these practices of these moms being moms, this community, was the ministry of Jesus for me and to me as I followed his call into ministry. They showed up. My mom, the pharmacist, the mugwort handler. They showed up for me in ways that were not from a place of power but healing. It wasn’t an expensive legitimized professional institution of healthcare, but I was seen, touched, cared for and healed. 

And so, even though I don’t exactly know how Jesus healed this lady. But I take her word for it. And that he went out of his way to look for her and see her. I think the way of Jesus isn’t just Jesus’ disembodied voice striking you in a metaphysical way, but more often than not, I think Jesus shows up in a very physical way of the church, or the old lady, or a friend’s text, or a warm meal. I think Jesus shows up sometimes in such ordinary ways through ordinary people, that we miss it and look for some holy writing on the wall. 

I think Christians and believers often make the mistake of being too theological and philosophical about the way of Jesus. I was listening to a podcast called A People’s Theology 

An episode about “What Can Process Theology Learn from Liberation Theology?” Process Theology is a way of thinking about God as a kind of developing process kind of way, that God is in this process with us in this life, not just a never changing all knowing God who moves with us. Liberation theology comes primarily from Black and Latin theologians who see God as one who frees people from their bondedness. And the critique of process theology from the liberation theologian essentially explained that you can think your way through about how God is but it doesn’t do anything to not actually put that into real act of liberation of the people to eradicate genocide, stand against colonialism, working to liberate the very folks who are in bondage right now. 

This is essentially my problem with the personal savior Jesus, though I have heard Jesus’ gentle voice in my prayer who saved me from my self-destructive thoughts, but it dwindles Jesus down to a mental exercise rather than a physical one. Jesus shows up not as a thought, but as a presence. I would venture to say that’s literally the central point of Jesus, a God with us, Emmanuel.

  • My invitation is for us to see that Jesus is looking for you now, perhaps through people who are reaching out to you, looking for you, asking, where are you?
  • What’s going on with you?
  • Where in your life do you see Jesus in action, not just in a holy moly theological study way, but a real tangible way that impacts your day?

Go there, grab a hold of that cloak. 

That moves me to my second point, presence, showing up, for yourself. 

I heard a guy say,

“I’m no longer fighting for Social Justice. and started healing towards integrity instead.”

And he started talking about how instead of fighting our enemies, tending to our needs, knowing that when we have the integrity to meet our real needs, it actually gives us the integrity to recognize the real needs of others, even our “enemies.” It gives us the eyes to see that, it’s not our need against our enemies’ needs, but that we’re all one. He offered that healing yourself is an act of resistance and the fight for justice. 

So for you, what does it look like for you to tend to yourself right now? To show up for yourself. Don’t worry about others for now, okay? Just you. What do you need from yourself? The most powerful activists and organizers are doing this first, and doing it after, and every other day to keep that in the fight. 

Here’s a good resource for the work. Our Many Selves: A Handbook for Self-Discovery by Elizabeth O’Connor. 

O’Connor says this in the book,

“Unwillingness to experience the suffering which is ours to bear pushes it into the very deeps of us. This never deals with it. It finds its way back in a disguised form. That form may be an indefinable shadow over the future that fills us with dread. Or it may be, that bitterness and anger become the signs of our refusal to give suffering an audience and to be taught by it. There is a suffering which we overcome by struggling with it, and there is a suffering which we overcome by acceptance. There are even some who argue that all suffering, to be overcome, must first be accepted else we strike out blindly, missing the real point of engagement. If we are willing to experience our suffering, which is what is meant by acceptance, it will in turn allow us to go on to the claims of new feelings that belong to different hours.” 

 

Ancient wisdom Says there is a

“time to weep” (Ecclesiastes 3:4).

It is the wisdom of Rachel: 

“A voice was heard in Ramah, 

Wailing and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children;

She refused to be consoled,

Because they were no more.”

as it says in Matthew 2:18

If you want healing, we must make time for ourselves to weep… before we act. Heal so that we can move. 

  • How can you exercise self care that isn’t in the form of buying yourself something nice, but where you have a safe place to breakdown and cry?
  • How can you give yourself mini-rituals of showing up for yourself with empathy and compassion in your day or your week?

Plan it. Like strategically plan it. And have accountability for it.

  • Who can help you in this?
  • Pray with you about it?
  • Do you have people?

Do you need to find a community group and build some relationships that can grow into such spaces? Email [email protected] if you don’t have a community group right now, or want to find another one. 

Just as Jesus looked for her, he looks for you. Show up. Let yourself be seen, not in your glory or in a fight but in your pain and suffering, in your brokenness. Let yourself kneel and cry, however that might look for you. 

And lastly, show up for others. 

One of my favorite internet videos of all time is, First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy. Have you seen it? You know what I’m talking about? It’s the one where one guy starts dancing. And by himself just dancing, he’s a lone nut. But at some point another person joins him. This is when it becomes critical, because with a follower the first guy turns from a lone nut to a leader. And because of the first follower, another person follows and now you have a movement. 

So here’s my invitation for you, a real practical way you can show up for others. When someone starts to dance, Be the first follower. Join in. After all, dancing is actually one of my favorite forms of healing. 

One way you can show up for yourself and others in the next few weeks I’ll make an invitation to you, sorry that’s not dancing is:

Faith Into Action, our church’s ministry of social justice, in concert with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, is embarking on a season of building power by gathering and listening to one another. Yes, it’s time for House Meetings. Like I said, it starts with tending to ourselves, finding our own story, and showing up to tell it, and showing up for others to listen to theirs, that is the work we begin with in community organizing. There’s a House Meeting coming up on 

November 9th, 11-12pm

Ministry Center Dining Room

It’ll be led by myself and Julia. And there will be other House Meetings coming up in the coming months. I hope you’ll join us. 

Or if not this, I invite you to come up with a plan, how can you exercise presence for others this week, this month? How can you show up for others simply as a presence? You don’t have to fix anything. Let me repeat that. in fact, please don’t try to fix anything. I know it’s so hard!  Just show up. Just see them and hear them, that is all. 

I’d love to close us with this

Let’s go ahead and do a brief practice of presence, inviting God to be present with you, as you show up for yourself, here and now, and tend to where your heart might be right now with our breath and holy affirmation. If you feel so led, would you join me in doing this together. Maybe put your hand on your heart to have a physical connection. And breathe. And say to yourself. 

  • Inhale: “I am here.”
  • Exhale: “God is here.”
  • Inhale: “I am here.
  • Exhale: “That is enough.”

Amen

 

Discovering the Joy of Living

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. 

Faith In the Dark

Psalm 42[a]

42 Just like a deer that craves streams of water,

    my whole being[c] craves you, God.

2 My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God.

    When will I come and see God’s face?[d]

3 My tears have been my food both day and night,

    as people constantly questioned me,

    “Where’s your God now?”

4 But I remember these things as I bare my soul:

    how I made my way to the mighty one’s abode,[e]

    to God’s own house,

        with joyous shouts and thanksgiving songs—

        a huge crowd celebrating the festival!

5 Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed?

    Why are you so upset inside?

Hope in God!

    Because I will again give God thanks,

        my saving presence and my God.

6 My whole being is depressed.

    That’s why I remember you

    from the land of Jordan and Hermon,

        from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep called to deep at the noise of your waterfalls;

    all your massive waves surged over me.

8 By day the Lord commands God’s faithful love;

    by night God’s song is with me—

    a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I will say to God, my solid rock,

    “Why have you forgotten me?

        Why do I have to walk around,

        sad, oppressed by enemies?”

10 With my bones crushed, my foes make fun of me,

    constantly questioning me: “Where’s your God now?”

11 Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed?

    Why are you so upset inside?

        Hope in God!

        Because I will again give God thanks,

        my saving presence and my God

Alright, it looks like I’m preaching a downer sermon. After the celebrations of resurrection on Easter, there comes a letdown. For the early church and the disciples, there was lots of confusion and fear. They felt lost after their teacher and friend died tragically. We’ve been taking this post-easter time to talk about faith without a roadmap. Faith in the darkness. What does it look like to have Faith when we’re not sure what God is doing? 

And maybe you’re thinking, it’s sunny outside, Lydia. I’m feeling pretty good these days, except for the pollen. I’m in a good place and God is good. I don’t really need a faith in the midst of a dark valley sermon today. 

Look, I’m not trying to pull you down. It’s a rather gentle invitation, to linger those moments of dawn or dusk. I keep trying to invite myself to let me know that it’s safe for me to sit a little in the discomfort before moving on to the next new thing with a big plan. It’s safe and in fact, God actually uniquely meets us there in the uncertain, not yet spaces, in a way that is holy and even fresh and mesmerizing–that’s my invitation. In fact, these dark seasons are the gems, often unexpected gifts of faith, and a natural rhythm and seasons to our faith that we shouldn’t look at as seasons of doubt or faithlessness but normal and integral part of the faith journey. 

Or maybe for some of you, that’s where you are. You resonate all too well with this Psalmist’s prayer. Asking yourself,

“Why are you so depressed?”

“Why are you so upset inside?”

and you can’t seem to shake it off. 

To me Psalm 42 sounds a bit hectic. The drastic contrasts, it goes back and forth from depressed to smile. At times I didn’t resonate with it or were suspicious of it, familiar to the feeling of sitting with someone who tries to turn your suffering into meaning a little too quickly. 

At such a time in my life, I stumbled upon a book called Dark Night of the Soul. I feel like this often happens to me. A book just pops up in my life and I happen to open it up and it’s just the thing I need. The Dark Night of the Soul is a 16th-century spiritual classic by the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross. It’s poetic and it seemed to take me through dark places where I had been residing with raw honest companionship and then take me even further into the dark yet with hope somehow.

St. John of the Cross offers a startling perspective: sometimes God removes our felt sense of divine presence—not to punish us, but to purify us. Not to punish us but to purify us. He says,

“In the dark night, the soul learns to love God for God’s sake, not for the consolations of God.”

We often associate God’s nearness with emotional highs or answered prayers. But in the dark night, God strips away every idol, even our ideas about God, until we are left with only the ache. This ache becomes holy. 

I remember reading the words that felt like just a string of words, in a vernacular foreign from my 21st century mind, in a strange ancient lingo, it described to me my own predicament. 

Words like, 

“God thus leaves them in darkness so great that they know not whither to go with their imaginations and reflections of sense. They cannot advance a single step in meditation, as before, the inward sense now being overwhelmed in this night, and abandoned to dryness too great that they have no more any joy or sweetness in their spiritual exercises, as they had before, and in their place they find nothing but insipidity and bitterness. For, as I said before, God now, looking upon them as somewhat grown in grace, weans them from the breasts that they may become strong, and cast their swaddling-clothes aside: He carries them in His arms no longer, and shows them how to walk alone. All this is strange to them. For all things seem to go against them.”

I’d read words like this and looked over my shoulder, wondering, is St. John of the Cross watching me, for this is how I felt.

maybe you’ve, “somewhat grown,” up and God weaning you.

St. John says if you don’t go through this kind of dark night of the soul, that you’ll be weak. For those who pray happily without much suffering, he says this:

“Now spiritual men generally, speaking spiritually are extremely weak and imperfect here, though they apply themselves to devotion, and practise it with great resolution, earnestness, and care. For being drawn to these things and to their spiritual exercises by the comfort and satisfaction they find herein, and not yet confirmed in virtue by the struggle it demands, they fall into many errors and imperfections in their spiritual life; for every man’s work corresponds to the habit of perfection which he has acquired. These souls, therefore, not having had time to acquire those habits of vigour, must, of necessity, perform their acts, like children, weakly.” 

He’s like,

You weak! You haven’t been through stuff! 

Oh but I have. I have seen the dark. I have made a home there and my meals were tears, tears for breakfast and tears for dinner and tears of midnight snack and all. Tears mixed in with a lot of spicy Shin ramen and kimchi in the moonlight. 

Cole Arthur Riley, a more modern voice to holy in the dark, was sharing a practice that her household does. Once a month they have a day where they don’t use any artificial light. She talked about her curiosity about darkness and light, and the power in being able to control light and how that’s formed her whole life, and how the absence of that power would’ve formed her ancestors. She talked about how the light switch gives us control and also ties us to work and productivity, how the natural rhythm of the night brings us to rest because you can’t hustle and grind till 12am, how you just have to wait until the next day. The invitations of just sitting in the darkness, again, as she talked, reminded me of the safety of my own late dark nights when I didn’t have to perform, or fake it, or pretend, but just be. She posed that such practice could translate to things like,

“how willing we are to sit with dark seasons of someone’s life, how willing we are to sit through someone else’s pain, how inclined we are to flip the proverbial switch to brighten things up and be known and seeable and calm again.”

That be me. Give me any situation, any hard thing and I have the gift of putting a silver lining on it. It’s been my gift and curse–it was how I coped and what I had to survive some of my own traumas. But it also repressed the feelings, ignored the pain, invalidated the experiences. So such an invitation, to not turn on that light switch to switch things up from pain to fun, well that was really hard for me. And yet might be precisely why St John and St Cole’s invitations to the dark with holiness felt so safe for me to enter into with them. 

It is scary. Like I said, I loved fun. In high school I lived in Wichita, Kansas where there wasn’t much to do for teens. And so it isn’t the safest thing to do but, we’d race cars. I mean I didn’t drive yet but we’d all pile into a fixed up Honda Civic or Toyota Supra with spoilers and  rims and just drive around fast, chasing each other. Like Tokyo drift, but you know Kansas drift. And we’d do this one very very dangerous thing. Please don’t ever try this, you could die. We’d drive on a highway, going like 60, and for a few seconds turn off the headlights. You can’t see anything, even the freeways with street lamps, like it’s dark at night. We’d all scream in fear for a few seconds and turn it back on. You realize how truly dark it is out there and how even the headlight, it literally only shows you a few feet in front of you, and we trust that to drive around and apparently that is sufficient. 

It feels like that sometimes in life, driving weight headlights, or right now in our country, where we really don’t know what’s going to happen with our rights, healthcare, finances, or whatever down the line and it feels like we’re going 80 in the dark. It’s a bit scary. 

Earlier this week I went to a GBIO’s listening session. It was in the basement of an old Black AME church in Cambridge where maybe 20-30 of us gathered. It was organized by a few of our own Reservoir’s Faith Into Action core team leaders which happen to be made up of poc’s, women, or queer members.

In the listening session, the first story that was shared was from a man in a suit. He is a professor at Tufts and he shared about how he teaches his students in communication and engagement with social action sometimes through op-ed in newspapers outlets. But since the abduction of one of the Tufts students recently by ICE, he thinks twice and he can’t ask the students to do that project. He was almost in tears, just broken by this situation, his pride and life’s work interrupted by the administration. 

And then we broke up into groups and shared. An older woman concerned with women’s reproductive rights as a retired ob gyn, again, her life’s work, threatened. A man sharing how his niece can’t get a job after paying her time in prison trying to raise a daughter of her own, and how he volunteers at the local grassroots effort to protect immigrant neighbors from ICE. As I heard stories after stories of folks heartbreak, concerns, I too felt sad and angry.

Honestly every time I go to any GBIO event, this is how I feel. And actually, sometimes, this is why I don’t like going to them. Because they are downers. I sometimes feel more overwhelmed, more hopeless. This one elderly woman with an accent just shared that she recently got a $800 bill from Eversource. That’s it. She came to this meeting and that’s all she shared. I so wanted to ask her to pull out her bill and call Eversource myself because I felt so angry for her. 

And at these listening sessions and GBIO meetings, they keep saying that this is power. This sad group of ragtags gathering, complaining and fed up, sharing our issues that impact our own lives or families with sometimes impossible ridiculous maddening situations–apparently is power. They call these listening sessions and 1-1 relational meetings, power meetings. It’s confusing to my empire building trained eyes. Where? Where is this power? 

And yet, in such a sad place, this Psalmist filled with grief and taunting enemies says:

“Hope in God; for I shall again praise, my salvation and my God.” (v.11)

It feels abrupt for me. I’m like, how, how did this psalmist make the move from being depressed to praising? It’s not. It’s not a move. There is no movement. 

The psalmist doesn’t say I feel hopeful. They are commanding their soul: Hope.

This is the work of faith in the dark. Not optimism, but resilience. Not clarity, but commitment. Not light, but a voice in the dark whispering, Keep going.

And so the evening of listening ended with no solutions or strategy. They just asked us, who wants to do another listening session. Again my efficient mind doubts,

“we’re just gonna talk some more again?”

It’s what resilience and commitment in action looked like. Resilience doesn’t FEEL resilient–it feels hard. 

It’s easy to love God in the light. St. John is vicious with his words. He calls it

“spiritual gluttony,”

that we please and satisfy ourselves by serving and pleasing God. Staying close to the sweetness, to devotion and the results of that devotion in return that we feel. This darkness St. John describes, isn’t even simply a call to be faithful when God is hidden. 

Sometimes when we’re going through a season of suffering and have bouts of doubt, many of us might think of Job, a character in the Old Testament famous for going through all the worst suffering and never denouncing God, and the teachings that often drew how strong Job’s faith was. Oh he never denied God in his situation we’ve been taught. But here’s a quick tip in reading the Bible in post-deconstruction or post-evangelical method. Don’t look for the hero in the story. Don’t look for the faithful character and resolve to be more like them. Look for what God is doing in the story. 

What is God doing in the dark? St. John says that in the absence of all the benefits of God’s gifts, you are left with the mystical union with God. Complete surrender and intimacy with the Divine. No joy, no comfort, not even the goodness of God but just Godself. When all is stripped away, prayers fall flat, ideas seem meaningless, no answer, no service, no satisfaction. 

St. John says for this Job character,

“God left him in misery, naked on a dung-hill, abandoned and even persecuted by his friends, filled with bitterness and grief, covered with worms: then it was then the Most High, Who lifteth up ‘the poor out of the dung-hill’, was please to communicate Himself to Job in greater abundance and sweetness, revealing to him ‘the deep mysteries of His wisdom’ as He had never done before in the days of Job’s prosperity.”

Dung-hill. Are you on a dung-hill? Good. Your spirit is not being weakened. God will meet you there. In the dark. God will purify and fortify you and strengthen you there. God will give all that you need there, humility, readiness. All that you don’t need is destroyed there. There, you rest. You rest in God. 

I’m going on a sabbatical in a few weeks. I can’t believe I’ve been working here as a pastor for seven years already. I’ll be gone for three months, June-August. This is my last sermon before my sabbatical. And then I’ll be back. But one of the reasons I came into ministry is because I love to be close to Jesus. I joke that God put me on a short leash, that’s my evangelical theology coming out, an authoritarian God ha ha… but timeless teachers like St. John teach me freedom.

I’ve said this to someone who was really struggling once, he felt like he wanted to be more like Job and have faith but right now, he doesn’t even know if he believes. I told him,

wherever you go, to the farthest end of yourself or you think even from God’s grace, there you’ll find God.

I’m not in some dark period of my life right now, thank God the Dark Night of the Soul doesn’t hit me like it did last time I read it, but I hope even when I’m taking a break from preparing sermons or daily weekly doing the work of the church and ministry, God will meet me, not with things to do but with just rest. With just union. With just presence. I hope that for you too. You don’t have to do anything or be the perfect Christian. God’s love is already with you and church sometimes just reminds you of that. That you are deeply deeply loved and held by the love of God.  The presence of God is in the light and the presence of God is especially in the dark. Let me pray for us. 

Jesus, your presence on this earth with us showed us that God is here. That God cares for us. You are the visible being to the divine mystery. We thank you that you revealed yourself to us, showing nothing but love, justice, forgiveness, and healing. Show us that to each of us today. Love, justice, forgiveness and healing we pray. Even in the darkest of our nights. Amen. 

God Is An Asian Mom

John 21:1-14 Common English Bible

Jesus appears again to the disciples

21 Later, Jesus himself appeared again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. This is how it happened:

2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus[a]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other disciples were together.

3 Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.” They said, “We’ll go with you.” They set out in a boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing.

4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples didn’t realize it was Jesus.

5 Jesus called to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?” They answered him, “No.”

6 He said, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” So they did, and there were so many fish that they couldn’t haul in the net.

7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard it was the Lord, he wrapped his coat around himself (for he was naked) and jumped into the water.

8 The other disciples followed in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they weren’t far from shore, only about one hundred yards.

9 When they landed, they saw a fire there, with fish on it, and some bread.

10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you’ve just caught.”

11 Simon Peter got up and pulled the net to shore. It was full of large fish, one hundred fifty-three of them. Yet the net hadn’t torn, even with so many fish.

12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples could bring themselves to ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord.

13 Jesus came, took the bread, and gave it to them. He did the same with the fish.

14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Let me pray for us

Liberating and loving God, we come to You today not with certainty, but with longing. We seek Your presence in a world where many roads lead to confusion and pain. Open our ears to hear Your voice from the shoreline, and our hearts to trust You, even when the way is unclear. Speak through this Word, speak through our ancestors in faith, and speak through our communities that long for wholeness. Amen.

My husband and I recently attended my daughter’s kindergarten parent/teacher conference. Miss Pappo showed us some of the worksheets and drawings Sophia did. One was a math problem, a worksheet with five crayons drawn on it. They are starting to do word math problems. The question said, color two green crayons and three blue crayons to make five crayons. She had done it but also she flipped the paper over and in the back she wrote down the various ways you can come to a 5, 1+1+1+1+1=5 and 5+0=5. Miss Pappo was saying that the problem was just figuring out the green and blue crayons but that she kept going to practice all the ways. 

My husband and I talked about this in depth as we walked back. He’s the one who’s been working on math with our Sophia and he pointed out how good it was for her to be figuring out different ways to solve the problem. I wasn’t sure what was the big deal and asked why that’s so good. He said, that’s something that I had to learn, he was a math major, that there are often different ways to get to the answers. In doing math, it’s not as important to get the one right answer but figuring out how to work through the problem in various ways because more often than not, later when the problems get more complicated, the skill to figure out a problem in different ways will help you more. Show your work right? It’s learning how to problem solve, not just get the answer. 

This conversation made me think about faith. Because I am not a math person. But I felt the same way about figuring out faith. That there isn’t just one way to do faith and doing faith the right way isn’t the goal. It’s the working out, meandering, faith seeking understanding through, that is the real work of faith. 

Post Easter we’re talking about Faith without a roadmap. Jesus appears to the lost and confused disciples, in a moment when they aren’t sure what to do with themselves. Some of them had begun to hear about and have seen Jesus risen. But resurrection doesn’t immediately bring direction. They are not launching a movement yet. They are not preaching to the nations. They are waiting. Disoriented. And in that liminal space, Peter says,

“I’m going fishing.”

Black liberation theologian James Cone in his book “God of the Oppressed,” he talks about how after he’s studied theology and philosophy at depth, studying Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich, and upon having written much about,

“what the scripture has to say about black power and liberation?”

he still felt that something was missing and went back to draw from his faith experiences of the black church community. For Cone, it wasn’t just about thought and theology but a lived experience of the people that shaped and defined faith. He often quotes songs, gospels, everyday lyrics like “this little light of mine” to draw theological conclusions about who God is for the people that are actually experiencing and living with God. 

That’s what today’s story looks like for me. Who is this resurrected God? Well it’s in the lived experience of the people. In their workplace, at their spot, their daily ritual, their boat, their water, their table, their meal. 

So the disciples go back to doing what they know best, fishing.  Sometimes, when the path forward is unclear, we reach backward. We return to the familiar. Not because it’s the best option—but because it’s the only one we know. But their return to the familiar is fruitless. And yet, they show up. It’s at least something to do right? 

My mom did this when our family would face a challenge, a phone call from Korea saying someone died when we can’t afford the plane ride back for the funeral, when one of us got really sick when we didn’t have health insurance, she would just pull something out of the freezer, a ball of brick in a plastic bag. I didn’t know what it was. It could’ve been anything. She takes the plastic cover off and microwaves it and bam it’s warm sweet purple potatoes, an instant dessert and a nutrition bomb. 

Sure it didn’t fix the problem. But it brought us back to the table, you gotta eat no matter what’s going on in your lives. And that’s why I love this Jesus in this story. 

He comes up to them and says,

“Children, have you caught anything to eat?”

Jesus doesn’t shame them. He meets them in their failure. Have you been able to find anything to eat? Jesus’ care is physical. Embodied. Before doctrine, before direction—He checks on their wellbeing. 

Again, that’s some of the best ways my mom showed up for me. Not suggesting to fix the problem. But you know, don’t you hate it anyways when you tell someone something that happened, and they give you advice and tips or solutions to try to solve the problem instead of asking how you’re handling it? It’s like, yes honey, I know what I’m supposed to do, but I’m trying to share with you how it’s affected me. 

What Jesus offers to us in times of confusion and pain often isn’t a solution or a roadmap but care. 

Delores Williams, one of the founders of Womanist theology, a pioneer in thought at the time in a landscape of Black theology from only men and female theologians white, she is the author of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk which bore from her dissertation that was title, “A Study of the Analogous Relation between African-American Women’s Experience and Hagar’s Experience.”

Williams taught that Jesus’ presence in the world wasn’t just about sacrifice, which is a departure from how his death on the cross is often talked about, a transactional solution to the sin of the world, which in fancy theological terms is called propitiation theology. Williams says that Jesus’s resurrection appearance was about survival, sustenance, and solidarity. Survival, sustenance, and solidarity. Williams draws faith strength not from victory or conquest but

“from watching Black women hold together their families and churches.”

It’s not about conquering death but surviving life. The strength in the resistance of survival, the daily struggles of putting food on the table, speaks closer to me than saving the world. 

The Easter story maybe is not just about victory. I don’t want to jump to that. As much as I love me some new life and hope, I’m grieving everything still. I can barely go fishing like I used to and I come up with nothing. I’m tired and I forget to eat. I don’t even have an appetite these days. I’m just trying to get through the day. And sweet Jesus comes along, not with a blueprint for my work that is set before me, but with just a question, how you doin, you catch anything? There’s no admonishment. Just a gentle voice from the shore saying,

“maybe try the otherside?” 

After they end up catching a bunch of fish,

“9 When they landed, they saw a fire there, with fish on it, and some bread.”

He’s already cooked up something, he’s already there to offer us, give us, nourish us, to feed us. He doesn’t start with theology. He doesn’t lecture. He feeds them. He says:

“Before you preach about me—come eat with me.”

This breakfast is Eucharist without the ritual. This moment reminds us that ministry begins with care, not control. With presence, not power. The risen Christ is a cook and a host.

I’ve quoted two Black theologians defining faith and finding God in their lived experience and in the lived experiences of their people and their community. I go to Black theologians because they often give me an access point to the unimagined, the unknown. Though the Black experience and my Asian experience differ in so many ways, it gives me a ramp, a starting point for the detour from the “central” narrative, even the “central” point of the gospel being about Jesus who died on the cross to pay for our sins, to the expansive views of Jesus who died in solidarity of the oppressed and resurrected in order, not to defeat death and come back and be like, “told you so, I win!”, but to be present, to be with us again. That was his present! He wanted to check on his friends. Make sure they are doing okay. That they weren’t just lost at sea, mindlessly working with no result. That they weren’t going hungry, skipping meals, lost and naked. 

Seeing Jesus, not as a conqueror of death, but a caretaker has completely transformed my relationship with God. Look, God-talk, theology are all metaphors. And if that metaphor works for you, great. But if it doesn’t, how can we create new metaphors that bring new revelation and new insights to try to get at a God that is so big and wide, that no one can “own” the final word on God. This has been for me, a journey of decolonizing faith, sorry I won’t just take your word, for me, because you are bigger than me, I know me and I know my God. That has been the journey in which I have been trying to pave a way through faith when all the roadmaps I’ve been given feel like it’s written in a different language. 

Theologian Kwok Pui-lan, a pioneering Asian feminist theologian, has paved the way for me to realize that I am allowed to find my own faith. Kwok Pui-lan, in her Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, helps me explain the insecurity of doing my own theology by naming my context and history, saying,

“There is still the colonial legacy of looking toward the West for guidance and tutoring. This is especially evident in the liturgy, organization and life of Christian churches in Asia. For a long time theologians read Barth, Brunner, and Tillich,” (this is like exactly what James Cone was saying!) “trying to solve theological puzzles for other contexts with no relevance for Asia.” 

I don’t think I mention this too much, or maybe I do, kind of a big deal in my life, about eight years ago I accidentally founded a thing called Progressive Asian American Christians, PAAC for short. It started as a Facebook group. It’s actually how I found this job at Reservoir, Steve posted on it. And over the years I’ve found people like Kowk Pui-lan on it, and others who are on the journey. 

When you don’t have a roadmap, you gotta find others on the journey. The disciples didn’t have a map. But they showed up in a boat together, even if one of them was getting naked and jumping into the water.. They fished together and they came up with nothing together. That’s where faith begins: in community, even when the nets come up empty.

These days it feels like that alot. Even with some of the social justice work and efforts, it feels like the nets come up empty. We did a series on Radical Hospitality a few months ago and gathered many of you to volunteer your home or time to support immigrants. Since then, we haven’t housed anyone and honestly sometimes the work feels fruitless. But it wasn’t and shouldn’t be about how much we produce. But it’s brought some of us together. It’s not a lot of us but we’ve been able to share some groceries with someone in need, just start having conversations with someone who’s in pain. It doesn’t feel like there’s “something to show for” with this “initiative.” 

In seminary I wrote a paper about how women’s work is not counted in the GDP. And in height of the 2000’s and 2010’s tech boom in the bay area, I remember sitting around with a bunch of girlfriends at a bar in SF, laughing, how hilarious it was that all the up and coming new companies, AirBnB, Uber, Doordash and so on were all roles that your mom used to do. Home, rides, meals. And how thankless the work was for the women that’ve been doing it all these years. And now, it is SO expensive to get groceries or food delivered! Because it was always “expensive” for your mom’s back! You just never knew. 

So here’s an attempt at faith without a roadmap. After reading this scripture text, thinking about my own experiences, and reading black theology – God is an Asian Mom. God will roll up her sleeve, pick the bones off your fish, grill it, and make bread and have it all ready when you get back home from school/work. God carefully peels the fruit and puts it on the table listening to you talk about your day. God doesn’t force the next step on your problems with fixes but gently suggests, honey have you tried talking to them? God, when you’re going through stuff will ask you,

Have You Eaten? 

Which is the theme of the upcoming PAAC conference that’s happening in Seattle, July 11-13th, “Have you Eaten? Rest from the Rage.” If you are Asian or have any Asian Christian friends that would enjoy affirming Asian space, please let them know about it. There’s not many of us. But we really need to be together. 

Because we really need to be together. In the midst of the confusion, in the midst of the pain. In our suffering, we might not even have the solutions or the answers. But we need to come together for one another, nets empty, but belly full. I pray that we will encounter that Jesus who throws us an impromptu beach BBQ, right when we need it the most. 

Let me pray for us. 

God my bread baker, a BBQ pitmaster, one who holds me close when I’m hurt and crying like my mother did, we thank you that you show up to us in unexpected ways. That even when we thought you were dead, far, distant, unrelatable, you find your way and show up and speak to us in our mother tongue. Please keep doing that. Please keep showing up for we need you. Feed us and show us your way, that we may know your love and go out into the world, not to just solve big problems, but just simply be like you, being present, caring, loving the world like you did. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.