Posts

Showing posts from April, 2014

Sermon: If Easter Had A Face - My last sermon at CUC (April 27, 2014)

Image
Sermon: If Easter Had A Face Text: John 20:19-31 If Easter were a human person, like any other regular human being that I could meet face to face, I would like to ask, “Hey, Easter! We meet again this year, one more time. Yet, it is not just ‘another time’. Since I have known you, every year you come to me with a different face, with a different look. Hey, what’s up?” I imagine Easter as a human person and it makes sense to me only if she has a face, just as Jesus, the Jewish healer, wisdom teacher, Kingdom of God movement initiator, who breathed his last breath on the cross, had a human face. Easter has a human face. The communal resurrection of Christ has a human face – people. People. People who resurrect with Jesus. The communal resurrection of Christ comes after, only comes after the communal crucifixion of Jesus. Only after we communally experience and respond to and share the sufferings of another, only after we give our ears to the cries of the people in bewil

Children's Time: Birds On the Wires (April 27, 2014) - My last message for the children at CUC

Image
Children’s Time: Birds on the Wires Happy Easter! Today is a very special day for me; this is my last Sunday to worship with you and everyone here at Chemainus United Church. I have been so blessed to be your minister and friend for the past two years. Knowing you personally, calling your names, blessing the water with you each Sunday morning, and this part of worship – this time with you with stories and wonders – have been a joyous part of my life. Hmm, so, … how do I feel about this? How do I feel about this ending – that I need to say goodbye to you, today? I am sad, I am very sad. Here is a video clip that I have been hoping to share with you. One morning, a man called Jarbas Agnelli was reading a newspaper, and he saw a photograph of birds sitting on some wires: This picture! (on the power point screen.) He was so inspired by how these birds – I think they’re crows – were sitting on the wires –. What do you think he decided to do? (Receive the answers.) He w

Easter Sunday Sermon: The Communal Resurrection of Jesus (inspired by John Dominic Crossan's The Communal Resurrection of Jesus and The Communal Crucifixion of Jesus) April 20, 2014

Image
Sermon: The Communal Resurrection of Jesus   2014 Easter Message from Kairos: Resurrection is indeed a daunting invitation, isn’t it? It is all the more true when we think that the Resurrection is not confined to the event that happened one time, at a single point in human history, 2014 years ago, to Jesus himself, alone. Resurrection is a communal experience made available through Christ that works through the Holy Spirit. Jesus rises up, not for his glory, to be praised and extolled like a celebrity, like a superstar (Well, I have to admit that one of my favourite musicals in my high school years was and still is Jesus Christ SuperStar.). But that has been how Western Christianity has envisioned resurrection so often throughout history: Jesus arising in splendid triumph from an open tomb, Jesus emerging in muscular majesty, alone, alone, alone… Look at this icon from the Eastern Christian tradition. It is a banner hanging in the small shrine-chapel in Jerusalem tha

Good Friday Service 2014 (April 18, 2014)

Image
Declaration of What Ails Us I imagine what it would be like if someone came to this church for the first time in their life and wondered what this specific time, traditionally entitled as the Prayer of Confession and Assurance, is for. How do you think you could explain it to them if they didn’t understand the meaning of words we use commonly during this time? What is sin? How do we understand it? This quote is from Ludwig Bemelman’s classic story, Madeline ; In the middle of the night, Miss Clavell turned on her light and said, “Something is not right!” Something is not right. Something has gone wrong. There is something “wrong” with us. There is something “wrong” with us and also with how we, as a community, as a society, as a world deal with situations that affect others’ lives seriously – human suffering through injustices that our own complacencies may perpetuate - something wrong with our own brokenness, indifference, apathy, or wrong choices. Som

Sermon: Our Universe Has A Bias Toward Justice (April 13, 2014)

Image
Sermon: Matthew 21:1-11 Last week, one of my friends shared some sad yet also inspiring news via Facebook.   The headlines read as follows; “Jesuit Murdered in Syria: Ignatian Family mourns.” “ The Ignatian family mourns the loss of Dutch Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt, who lived in the war-torn Syrian city of Homs, and was killed on Monday, April 7, 2014.” You may well ask how I can introduce this ‘murder’ story as inspiring news. Abduction and murder hardly seem like cause for inspiration - but then we would be forgetting that how anyone dies should never be as important as how they lived. Until I saw this Facebook post, I didn’t know that this great man of faith even existed. Yet his words that are now shown on your power-point screen caught my eyes and heart. “I don’t see Muslims or Christians. I see, above all, human beings.” To give you some brief information about who he was, this man of faith, a Dutch Jesuit priest, has worked in Syria since 1966. I

Children's Time: "Jesus, Cheese! (or Kimchi!)" (April 13 2014, Palm Sunday)

Image
Children’s Time Good morning, friends. Isn’t it wonderful that we sometimes do very special things together at worship, like parading and waving palm leaves and branches? When I was young, I remember I wondered why we had to use palm branches? In Korea, palm trees don’t grow naturally. I have never seen real palm trees in my neighbourhood, or in any place I have visited in Korea. Why wouldn’t we wave, for example, forsythia branches, cherry blossoms, things like that, to welcome Jesus?   Forsythias are everywhere in Korea at this time of the year. Here in Vancouver Island, it is also not common to see palm trees grow, but we do have one, don’t we? Can you guess where? We have one at our church - a wonderful one. But have you wondered why we began our worship with waving palm branches today? Our Bible story tells us that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the largest and most important city in Israel, many people living there, young and