Sicamous United Church

Sermon, October 20, 2019 by Rev Gloria Christian

“Persist, Pray, and Come Round Right”

By the time Luke was writing his Gospel a generation or so after Jesus died, people were starting to feel discouraged. They were tired of waiting for Jesus to return and finally bring all things to fulfillment, the deepest hope of their hearts. They were tired of being persecuted as a tiny little minority in a great big, powerful empire. They were anxious and suffering.

Our passage this week from Luke is about that waiting and about not being discouraged, about not losing heart. However, we’ve somehow read it more as an instruction to “nag” God with our repeated requests, so that God, like a weary and worn-down parent, will eventually give in and give us what we want.

Of course, this parable is really a lesson about God, about how and who God is, not just a “nice” little story about prayer. Jesus–the greatest Teacher of all time–uses the creative teaching method of using the opposite of something–or, in this case, the opposite of Someone–in order to make a point about God.

For goodness’ sake, he says, if an unjust, disrespectful judge who’s afraid of nobody and nothing, hears the case of a poor widow just to avoid getting nagged or embarrassed by her constant pleading, well, then, how much more will God–the God of justice and compassion, the God of the ancient prophets, the God on the palm of whose hand our names are carved–how much more will that God hear the prayers of God’s own children who cry out day and night from their suffering and their need?

Certainly, Jesus is teaching us something important here about the nature of the God to whom we pray.

Once again, Jesus uses a figure from the very edges of society to teach his followers who has no voice; who are silenced. The “word for ‘widow’ in Hebrew means ‘silent one’ or ‘one unable to speak.’ In the patriarchal Mediterranean world males alone play a public role. Women do not speak on their own behalf”

So, this “silent one” is acting outside the social norm when she finds her voice and speaks up for herself. Maybe it’s because she knows that there’s a special place for her in the heart of God, as the Bible often says. Widows and orphans are all very close to the heart of God and the focus of God’s concern.

We might ask ourselves, then, who “the widows” are in our time: the ones without a voice who speak up anyway in protest of injustice. The news is full of Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, a good illustration of how the highest and mightiest feel threatened by the persistent and righteous protests of this “little ones” they would like to dismiss.

Greta Thunberg is only one example of many however: young people outraged by school shootings in the USA and have marched and organized and spoken up to the powers that be about the risk they take by simply going to school; people who live with disabilities have valiantly protested in the very halls of Parliament over injustice and exclusion; people of color face everyday disrespect and violence, along with economic injustice.

Do we hear the voices of these “widows” in our own time? Are we willing to listen?

The great preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, gets inside this story and explores the heart of this woman. Society may have told the widow that she was a nobody without a voice, but she knew otherwise, and her persistence helped her hold on to that confidence: “She was willing to say what she wanted–out loud, day and night, over and over–whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart…”

The shape of her heart: it makes us wonder about the shape of our own hearts and the health of our prayer life, doesn’t it?

Why does Luke introduce this story as being about the necessity–our need–to “pray always and not to lose heart”? And why doesn’t Jesus end his little story about the widow finally being heard, even by an “unjust” judge, not with a neat little closing statement about “hanging in there” and continuing to pray when we don’t get what we want right away, but with a question about the lack of faith among those who are waiting for the fulfillment of the promises of God?  In 2019, more than 2 thousand years later, many Christians have all but forgotten or in fact, don’t need Jesus to come again in a physical form for he is with us always in a spiritual form.  Jesus is always in our hearts.

Why do we pray? Our prayer life shapes us, too, and helps us to remember who, and whose, we are. It helps to align us with the intentions of God.

How would you describe faith? In this little story about human nature and about the nature of God, I hear Jesus teaching us–as always–about justice, about prayer, and about faith, which he talks about a lot. How often have we heard him say, “Your faith has saved you. Your faith has healed you. O, you of little faith!” It makes you wonder just what faith is exactly.

For most of my life I’ve thought faith had to do with believing the right things about God. The faith of our fathers and mothers was handed down in catechisms and religion textbooks and taught to us in classrooms. Keeping the faith was something we did by guarding a treasure of beliefs and handing them down, intact and unchanged, in a kind of lockbox, to the next generation of believers.

Faith was something that you have in your head, when you believe certain, hopefully correct, statements about God.

A little story of an adult who could not swim and the example a child, who has no fear of the water teaching the adult to swim and trying to get her to relax in the water: “It’s okay, just relax. You’ll float, it’s okay.” The child encourages Faith in “trusting in the buoyancy of God. Faith is trusting in the sea of being in which we live and move and have our being”

Do you reminder the person who taught you to float, to trust the buoyancy of the water to hold you up. And I wonder if it isn’t true that we adults, who keep going to our heads to figure things out, need to listen to our children to find our way back to the way of the heart.  Trust the buoyancy of God to hold us in our faith.  Amen.

Reflection September 22, 2019 by Rev Sunny

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1/ 1 Timothy 2:1-7 / Luke 16:1-13

Good Stewards for the Reign of God

Do you like the story of Robin Hood? It has a lot of elements that attract us; action, capable hero fighting evil, and this said hero fighting for the common oppressed people an unconventional way. It’s quite satisfying to see Robin Hood in action. But this attractive story raises a moral question about whether a good purpose justifies theft. Have any of you ever thought, “Although Robin fights evil, and although a lot of rich people are evil, it doesn’t mean he can steal from them.” We know stealing is wrong, but we can’t help rooting for Robin because it’s not like regular stealing; it’s to help the poor. It’s fun to watch Robin in action, but if it happened in real life, it would be debatable whether we would consider him a criminal or not. The one fact about myself today is that I come from an activist background. There was a time, university students in South Korea fought extra hard. I was a part of this student movement. The government would send military forces to break up our peaceful gatherings, so we had to learn to fight back. My brother was even arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail. Those in power called our actions illegal and violent; we called it defence. Robin Hood and his gang would also have called what they did “defence”. Let’s get something straight here; I’m not promoting stealing from the rich to feed the hungry or using violence to fight the evil of the society. The reason why I started with Robin Hood and the student activist movement in Korea is because today’s gospel story is morally controversial, not to mention confusing. Moral values are not always black and white and require a lot of reflection.

This parable contains the word “dishonest” so we are not going to debate whether the manager was dishonest or not; the story says he was.  The manager was accused of squandering the owner’s property, but this is not why he is called dishonest. He is called dishonest because of what he did after realizing that he would soon be fired. He went to his master’s debtors and forged the document about how much they owed him. This parable is very controversial even among the biblical scholars, and some argue that the manager was not really dishonest because what he was doing was to redeem the interest they owed, which was illegal according to the Jewish Law. But since the story calls him a dishonest manager, it is not debatable. There are a lot of different opinions on what this parable says, from which I will spare you (You’re welcome). Instead, let us compare this parable to the Parable of the Foolish Rich. In the parable about the foolish rich, the rich man had more than he could ever consume, so he decided to build bigger barns. He is called foolish by Jesus not because he decided to build bigger barns but because he thinks he can assure his continued well-being by doing so. The dishonest manager in today’s story is different from the foolish rich because he uses the authority he still has in the present order to prepare for the future order, meaning after he is fired. He was not good or honest, but he was wise; he knew that the present order would not last forever. He used what he had to prepare for the future. He was commended for this wisdom, not for his dishonest act.

This is a story of stewardship; how we should use what we have. As God’s stewards, we should acknowledge that what we have in this world doesn’t belong to us, that we are just managers, and use it to prepare for the reign of God that we are called to bring to this world. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the prodigal son used his father’s inheritance money to party and have fun. A wise son would have saved and invested that money instead of squandering it away; that’s what we do if we are future-oriented, isn’t it? Jesus taught us to feed the hungry, welcome strangers, heal the sick, and to speak up for justice. Then that’s what we should be doing with our gifts and possessions. As Spiderman said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” It reminds us that our privileges are to be used for the greater good.

From the Book of Jeremiah, we heard God’s call for healing actions for the cries of suffering. God wants us to be the balm of Gilead and heal the suffering world and its people. God’s people are suffering. God’s creation is suffering. Our greed is hurting animals and plants as well as other humans (the powerless and marginalized ones). There are animals losing their habitat, which threatens their survival. There are animals going extinct. There are a lot of God’s beautifully created people who suffer because we are negligent to their suffering and full of prejudice. Let us listen to God’s call, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?” We should stand up and say, “Here I am, God. I will be the balm, the physician healing your creation.”

From First Timothy, we are also called to pray for everyone, especially those who are in high positions, those who are in power. That’s an interesting lesson to learn, with our election coming. We know that a leader can make or break an organization and its people. We saw how because of one president, poor people gained access to health care. We also saw how because of one president, a lot of people have lost their rights, privileges, and have to fear for their safety. Meanwhile, our youths are fighting for the government to act in the climate crisis, and those in power won’t listen. We need to pray for our leaders and make sure to elect a party that cares about the ordinary people, marginalized people, and the environment.

Let us use our material possessions to help those in need. Let’s use our compassionate heart and the gift of the gospel of Jesus to love God’s people and heal their suffering. Let us use our intellect, privileges, and voices to speak out for justice. Our ministry for God’s reign is the stewardship God needs from us. Let us be the good stewards of God who work to bring God’s new world order, God’s reign to our communities.

Reflection September 8, 2019 by Rev Sunny

Jeremiah 2:4-130/ Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16/ Luke 14:1, 7-14

You Are Enough, We Are Enough

Today’s one fact about myself is not new to a lot of you, but I am a piano student; I am training in classical piano, which I started last year with a teacher who was a member of my congregation in Kimberley. One of the pieces I am currently practising is of a French composer named Erik Satie, and some of his greatest pieces were influenced by minimalism. Are you familiar with minimalism? In music, minimalists believe that we don’t need many notes for the piece to be beautiful. Listen to the piece I am currently practising. (Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1) This is one of the good examples of a musical piece with minimal notes being strikingly beautiful. No, I didn’t choose it because it had few notes; but it helped.

Speaking of minimalism, are you familiar with a reality show called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo? In this show, Marie helps people reduce their clutter, downsize, and organize their homes. It’s easy to relate to these people receiving help from Marie because I, like a lot of people, own too much. When we organize our things and try to downsize, Marie’s method asks if something sparks joy for us. If it doesn’t spark joy, we should get rid of it. I am hoping to use her advice to organize my clutter, which gives me headache since I moved from a basement house to a no-basement house.

Anyway, in today’s gospel text, Jesus tells his followers to understand the cost of discipleship before following him. He says a lot of things here, but the essence is that we should abandon our obsession to this mortal world. Those who are too attached to their family, material possession, or anything else in their lives are not fit for God’s kingdom. He said his followers should hate their family and abandon all their possessions, which we should not take literally. It was more literal to his immediate followers 2000 years ago, but that’s because they believed that the end was imminent. We don’t live with their sense of urgency, and only those who join radical cults that teach the end is imminent abandon their families and possessions. But since we need our families, friends, a place to live, and so on, we should understand from this teaching that we should not let ourselves be too attached to anything that belongs to this mortal world. We need a bit of minimalism in our lives. We need to simplify our lives.

I was thinking of why we might be obsessed with anything. Some of us are workaholics, some of us are shopaholics, some of us are addicted to legal or illegal substances. I once had a boyfriend who grew up poor, and now even with a large income, he is constantly in debt. He spends money like it’s a revenge to his past poverty. We might binge eat or shop because we are not happy with our lives. We might try to fill the void inside us with food, substances, or material possessions. Then we can also understand that the solution to being obsessed with these things might be to fill the void inside us with emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Listen to what the Psalmist says in Psalm 139 about our relationship with God. God has searched us and knows us through and through. God made us, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made. If we are aware of this and maintain a loving and intimate relationship with God, we might be able to confess, “I don’t need all these material things because my God, you are enough for me. Your grace and love are enough to satisfy me.” We can confess this because our Creator tells us we are wonderfully made, that we are good and worthy enough, no matter what people in the world think. This knowledge of God’s relationship with us should help us to love and value ourselves. Who are we to say we are not good enough when our Creator said we are fearfully and wonderfully made?

As God’s beloved children, we shouldn’t think about our worth or worry about mundane things; but instead trust God and seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness. God will shape us into lovers and warriors of justice and equality like a potter shapes clay into whatever vessels he or she needs.

There is spiritual value in minimalism. During Lent, for example, the traditional church teaches us to fast, pray, and give to charity as a part of our Lenten spiritual practice. The virtue of fasting lies in emptying our body and preserving mental energy to better focus on God. Do you experience feeling tired and drowsy after eating a big meal? That’s because digestion requires a lot of energy. By fasting, we can use that energy to focus on God. The virtue of giving to charity lies in reminding ourselves that we have more than enough to live, and there are others who don’t have enough. We can share our possession and be thankful for what we have.

Today is the first Sunday of the Creation Time. Starting from today until Thanksgiving Sunday, we will reflect on God’s beautiful creation that includes God’s wonderfully made people. We learned from Genesis chapter 1 that God commanded humans to care for all of God’s creation. Today, we reflect on God’s creation from the perspective of minimalism. Our greed resulted in harming Mother Earth. Our desire to own more and better things resulted in the amount of garbage that we cannot handle. Minimalist musicians create music with few notes. Minimalist eco-warriors consume little and produce little garbage. Let us begin our responsibility as the carers of God’s creation by simplifying our lives. Let us reconsider our material possessions. Whatever doesn’t spark joy in our heart has to go. Jesus told us to abandon our possession to follow him. Let us abandon greed and find joy in simple and non-material things. Let us maintain a loving and intimate relationship with God, who created us wonderfully and calls us worthy. Let God’s love fill us so that we don’t become obsessed with material possessions, and that we can confess, “God, you are enough for me.” With our faith in God’s love, instead of obsessing with material things, let us use our time and energy bringing God’s reign on earth with our service to God’s wonderfully made people and our only home, Mother Earth.

Reflection August 25, 2019 by Rev Sunny Kim

Jeremiah 1:4-10/ Psalm 71/ Luke 13:10-17

Pride and Prejudice, and God’s Reign

It is my belief that everyone, with no exception, has prejudice against something and someone. I also believe that bigotry can take such a subtle form that those with privilege cannot feel microaggression happening. Microaggression is a very subtle form of bigotry. For example, when I went to a medical clinic because I needed a doctor (not in Sicamous), one of the receptionists, instead of just telling me that due to the shortage of doctors they were not receiving new patients at the moment, said the service was for residents only. Did you get it? She assumed that I was not a resident because I look like this. Attila didn’t pick up it even though he was there witnessing the whole thing because he looks like that. But as I said, no one is free of prejudice and here’s the one fact about myself for today. I am passionate about social justice issues. Justice for the LGBT people are the closest to my heart. But when I first started theological school, I was once on the other side of microaggression. We had a very attractive professor, who is gay. I said among our small group of classmates, “Too bad he’s gay; he could have made a woman happy.” I am NOT proud of this statement; I was younger and stupider. What I said is microaggression because my statement assumed heterosexuality as the norm, as what the receptionist said assumed being white as the norm of her town, which was also my town.

Prejudice is one of the vices that Jesus constantly challenged his followers to overcome. The gospel story we read today is a typical story of pride and prejudice. According to the Jewish Law, one is not allowed to do any activity that constitutes as ‘work’ on the sabbath. I’ll give you one example, I was once invited to a Jewish Passover meal, which takes 3 hours and required me to sleep over. The family forgot to leave the bathroom light on before sunset because turning on a switch is considered ‘work’; because sabbath and Passover start at sunset on Friday. They had to ask this Gentile to turn on the light at night. Anyway, the point is that Jesus disobeyed the Law by healing this woman. What the leader of the synagogue says to criticize Jesus is technically not wrong. But what is evil about this criticism is that he twisted what is right and good to participate in evil, which in this case is pride and prejudice. The reason why his attitude is evil is in what Jesus says; “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free form this bondage on the sabbath day?” Do you remember the story of Jewish leaders criticizing the disciples of Jesus for picking grain in the field to feed themselves on a sabbath day? Jesus shut them up by saying sabbath was made for people, not the other way around, meaning, “Get your priorities right!”

Which is more important; rules and laws or people they were designed to benefit? For Jesus, people always came first. Law was written to protect the vulnerable. If the law has to be broken to save someone, quoting the favorite Christian question, what would Jesus do? Jesus would not even blink an eye and choose to save and help. Disclaimer; I am not in any way encouraging you to break the law. I’m just saying no law is perfect and without loopholes. Sometimes we have to choose our priorities according to God’s kingdom values. A lot of pious Jews in Jesus’ time abused the loopholes of the Law for their benefit. Jesus always reacted with indignation at the pride and prejudice of the privileged people, leaders of his society. From this we learn that God hates pride AND prejudice. Thinking we are better than others and judging others who are not like us are against God’s principles of compassion and justice. Jesus constantly taught humility; “First shall be last and the last shall be first,” for example.

We are taught to be humble and compassionate to one other. Why do you think God chose Jesse’s youngest son David to be king of Israel? Why do you think God chose the boy Jeremiah to be one of the most important prophets of Israel? Why do you think God’s son was born of a poor family? It’s because God values humility more than anything. Only when we are humble can we completely trust in God’s care and guidance. Only when we are humble can we see each other as God sees us, with compassionate love.

No matter how much power, wealth, knowledge, and status we have, compared to the power of God, we are nothing. We should humble ourselves and confess, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. In you, I seek refuge. You are my hope, my trust from my youth; from the time of my birth, I have leaned on you.” Let us trust God as if we were young children relying on their parents for protection and guidance. We know what comes of the foolish children who defy their parents’ guidance and strike out on their own. Read the story of the prodigal son, who thought he could take care of himself just fine. If we can humble ourselves and see one another as God sees us, we will be able to see beyond each other’s skin colour, gender, culture and religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, different ideas and lifestyles, and overcome our impulse to judge each other, considering them wrong or inferior. Judging from the teachings of Jesus, we know that pride and prejudice are against God’s kingdom values. Let us pray and strive to be humble, so that we can treat all God’s children with compassion and work to bring God’s reign of justice to our communities.

Reflection August 11, 2019 by Rev Sunny Kim

Isaiah 1:11-17/ Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16/ Luke 12:21-34

Seeking God’s Reign

I am revealing one thing about myself every Sunday, and today, I should start by saying, I’m not proud of what I’m about to confess to you. I’m a worrier. Not a warrior, although I am that too sometimes. And sometimes there are people in my life who make me feel ashamed of being a worrier. Now I’m going to tell you about my piano teacher Arne, but first, please promise me you won’t tell him that I mentioned him in my sermon since he is coming this weekend. He’s the kind of person who, although he doesn’t have much, doesn’t shy away from helping people in any way possible. But from what I observed, because he’s such a good person who loves and helps with everything he has, people tend to take care of him. His previous car was a gift and so is his current car. A good friend recently passed away, and his family decided to give his car to Arne. After a church function involving abundant food, our ladies would ask me if I would deliver all the leftover food to him, since he was my piano teacher and we met regularly. He is single and we worry about whether he eats properly or not. He dined with us after my piano lessons. It was wonderful sharing lessons and meals together once a week. Learn from Jesus; eating together creates bonds. Anyway, he’s such a selfless person that I believe God will keep providing for him through the many people in his life, including yours truly.

Today, we read a very familiar gospel text about God taking care of our needs. This text deals with the issues of anxiety and trust. As a worrier, this text feels very personal to me; this is like God saying, “you of little faith” with arms folded. One thing that a lot of Christians tend to misunderstand about this text is thinking that things like what to eat and what to wear are not important; but this is our privilege talking. Those who struggle to provide for their basic needs can’t think like that. Contrary to this belief, Jesus is saying these things are extremely important. The reason why disciples should not worry is because God knows that we need those things, and also because worrying cannot change things. So, the moral of the story is this; “Don’t worry about your basic needs because God already knows you need them. Instead, focus on God’s kingdom and live as faithful disciples. Then God will provide for you.”

I think it is normal that I thought of Arne while preparing this message; his life is a living testimony to the verse, “Strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” I think I should pause a little here to explain to you about God’s ‘kingdom’. The original Greek word that we often translate as ‘kingdom’ is basileia, which mostly refers to an abstract and political realm, and not a physical space. A more accurate translation would be ‘reign’. For example, I could say, “During the reign of King Henry VIII, England broke up with the Roman Catholic Church,” although he also broke up with some wives and broke some of their heads along the way. Anyway, a lot of times, I will use the term ‘the reign of God’ and when I do, know that it means ‘the kingdom of God.” Because basileia means a political ‘reign’ and not a physical space, when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, it means bringing God reign on earth. It is a subversive message. A lot of people don’t realize this, but the ministry of Jesus was socially subversive in nature. To bring God’s reign of love and equality on earth, inevitably, the unjust social order has to be replaced. As we have read in Isaiah chapter 1, God doesn’t want burnt offerings and other sacrifices from us. To translate this into our context, God doesn’t want our Sunday morning worship services, reading and meditating on the Bible and praying a lot; what God wants from us is our worships, meditations, and prayers to lead us to a lifestyle of loving service and works of justice. Disciples are called to work for this just reign on earth; we have to do the work. When we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” it expressed the speaker’s will to participate in making it happen. God works through us. There are a lot of sufferings in our world and a lot of people cry out, “Where is God in the lives of the suffering people?” It can lead them to losing faith in God. But read the gospel message and we can realize that the followers of Jesus are called to do God’s will of love and justice. God is all about love, and social justice is what love looks like in public; that is why we should strive to bring social justice. We fight for social justice because we care and love. The love that God requires of us is from Isaiah 1:17; “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Orphans and widows are the symbols for the most socially vulnerable and marginalized people. We are told to defend them and help them. That is what it means to seek the kingdom of God, or God’s reign. In Henry’s reign women got replaced and beheaded, but in God’s reign, needy and marginalized people are given basic rights and dignity, no less than any privileged people of the society. Our job is to work for this world where no one has fewer rights than others; everyone has the rights to provide for their basic needs and have basic human rights such as the right to get married and seek happiness, and live as oneself without worrying about being bullied, hate crimes, or being discriminated against in jobs or housing.

Can we trust God’s care and not worry so we can focus on faithfully doing God’s will? What enables us to not worry comes from faith. According to Hebrews chapter 11, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We heard about the ancestors in our faith who lived by faith, such as Abraham, who left his home at the age of 75 for God’s promised land, who had to trust God’s promise to give him a son and heir while his wife was barren and they were both very old. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “We live by faith and not by sight,” reinforcing the idea that faith is trusting something we cannot see. Faith is trusting in things we cannot see and waiting for God to lead us to wherever God means us to be. But we do not NOT see; we just see through the eyes of faith and trust. As I mentioned last Sunday, last Sunday’s lesson is connected to this Sunday’s. The foolish rich person wanted to build barns to hoard his crops. He worried about taking care of himself instead of trusting God. Today, we heard about birds in the sky and flowers in the field without a care for whom God provides.

Can we follow God’s guidance blindfolded even when we are guided toward scary roads? Let us consistently pray that God will give us strong faith that will help us to overcome our anxieties, so that we can live properly and faithfully as God’s children and the followers of Jesus; bringing God’s reign of compassion and justice to our world.