Im-Manna-uel, What Is It!? (Exodus 16:2-15) - Sept 24, 2017

Sermon: Im-Manna-uel, What is it?! 

Exodus 16:2-15

Hunger. It is real, physical hunger - extreme hunger. This slave community - “the whole assembly”, adult women and men and children, freshly escaped from Egypt - has been walking, running away, and wandering without eating for days – they are tired. Starving. Cranky. Complaining. Crying out. “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt! Moses, “You have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger!” They have made a grand departure from Egypt - the “exodus” at the sea of reeds - to seek freedom, to seek liberation, to seek hope to reach the “promised land”, only to find themselves in the middle of nowhere, and hungry - very hungry. 

Can you think of a time when you were very hungry? I remember one time, in Mongolia. I joined my University’s religious study research trip to meet Shamans in remote, towns in Mongolia. When my group finally reached one very remote town, where young boys ran their horses across the vast, endless open green hills, guests were welcomed with traditional warm goat cheese and milk. Honestly, (and I regret it now) I couldn’t eat more than two pieces of cheese, and I couldn’t drink the milk. Our group didn’t carry anything to eat; we were solely dependant on what they would offer. I decided to starve. I just couldn’t eat any of their food, even when they offered us a feast with lamb. When my group visited where the feast would be offered for us by the town people, the lamb, which was killed with careful hands to spare its suffering and make use of the whole body (nothing is wasted), … the lamb was put in a big cooking pot which was placed above the fire-hot stones. Literally, the lamb only, in the pot. No water. No salt. Nothing was added. (there’s literally nothing edible on the remote Mongolian hills, yet the people are happy) I just couldn’t eat it because of the smell, and taste. So I starved for three days. 

Mine was a chosen hunger, a stupid choice - if I can choose the s word here - but hunger is an embodied experience, a great equalizer. If there’s no food available, everyone has to go through it – the cry of a hungry baby reflects the same desperate need as the cry of a hungry wolf cub. Hunger is crisis. 

In our faith tradition, hunger as real, embodied experience of crisis and injustice also becomes an important metaphor for our spiritual hunger. Spiritual hunger is also a real, embodied experience. In spiritual hunger, we seek or start a journey where we try to separate ourselves from the world of false images, false truth in order to move into the world of communion in our true being. To live and resurrect in love, meaning and truth, … “Every day.” We have this spiritual hunger. And we have known, from our experiences, that this spiritual hunger can save us or destroy us. Three months ago, I was spiritually wrecked. Then, I realized I had resisted acknowledging my spiritual hunger. I confessed that I needed to recollect myself and rebuild my spiritual self. This honest acknowledgment led me to ask the question: what did I really need to sustain myself? What sustains us? What sustains community? I am sure that at some point in our lives, we all ask similar questions - and the search for answers has led us to come to gather for worship, study, and work here at Immanuel. 

In our Bible story, “Wilderness” is a geographical location. It means an area “Without visible evidence of life-sustaining resources” such as water, bread or meat. In our faith, this wilderness story invites us to see the wilderness also as a spiritual, imagined location in our lives, in our world. The exodus story calls us to engage with an act of imagination, such as… "Where are we, as the slave community that has made a departure from domination and oppression but have not yet reached the promised land? How do we, free and hungry seekers, exist in this messy, miraculous time and space, still seeking, still hungry, and free? How do we experience God in this, our, middle, in-between, “not-yet” place of wilderness?” 

We confess that God sustains those whom God has delivered, but where are we with God now?

In today’s story, God hears the people’s complaints. God hears the people’s outcry. Then, God says to Moses, tell them “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day… At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” 

It is very interesting to note that manna means “Not bread.” God has clearly said it is bread, it is going to be bread but it was not!, When the people found this fine flaky substance, as fine as frost, on the ground, they said to each other, not bread! “What is it!?” “What?” So, playing on words - people call it “mah-na.” meaning "What?!" The most “authentic” or realistic translation ends up with, “What the heck!”, a phrase which my older son loved to use after he learned it three years ago from other kids; his immigrant parents learned that expression for the first time from their child. 

Then, ok, it is what the heck, but the question, “What is Manna, anyways?” – which rained down as 'the bread from heaven’” - inspired many scholars to investigate to find what it was. 

When I took a Learning on Purpose course at The Center for Christians Studies last summer, Janet Ross told her students that manna was quail’s poop! Or, at least, the poop of sea birds. It is quite obvious from the reading of verse 13, “In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was…” manna! There are also records which tell us that in the middle East, certain sea birds come to the land. People who are lost in the desert find that seabird’s poop and their droppings have nitrate that will sustain a person. 

So the point of the ‘What is Manna’ question is, (quite funny to think that what is manna question is really asking what is what…) that what sustains us is the unexpected. And it is not just that the unexpected was surprising. More than just surprising. Something yucky, something disgusting, something painful, something hard to swallow, something we want to avoid turning into food, something sustaining. The point is that something disgusting may end up being nutritious. God likes using Paradox and Irony, God uses them in our lives, only waiting for us to really see what our manna is, and ask what we can do really about it with faith. 

It is a great lesson for us to think about when we are in spiritual hunger, when we are spiritually, physically, emotionally, hungry, when we engage with new discoveries, or hard truth. When we go through embodied hunger experiences, how will we open ourselves up to think through, to live through, to pray about formation and reformation of our true being? In these moments of deep hunger we are invited to think and act in the presence of God.

Last Sunday, I shared with you the message that the real miracle is not water, or not the dry ground which disappears so quickly; it is the people who entered the sea as free people. In today’s story, the real miracle is not Manna, the “fine flaky” substance, as fine as frost. Manna was the unexpected gift from nature - there was no supernatural miracle. It is just how we find ourselves as part of the earth, humbly accepting - when we need the sustaining power from nature, the earth, God, and God says, indeed, “the whole Earth is mine”! All things are in God and God is in all things. If then, what is the real miracle? I suggest that the transformation of perception may be the miracle (the original idea comes from Janet): Being transformed with our renewed sense and perception about what is holy, where God is, who we are with God, how we will live in this world and ‘what questions’ we carry with us may be the miracle. Creating a Manna community which works differently from the way the world works, (from corporation model to communion model, for example, where scarcity of resources does not create domination, oppression and inequality) may be a miracle. In a Manna community, we ask and see what is truly sustaining, what we really need if we want to eat, engage, and embody that which is going to transform into good food for the world. 

God has called us to be the beloved, chosen community of Yahweh 

who knows God, 

who knows the gift of freedom, 

who is eager and strives to learn together in community that 

“Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing work to end the past wrongs and dominations.” (Bell Hooks) 

and to live and resurrect in love, truth and communion, … “every day”, not just on Sundays. 

With God, and in God, we live in non-linear time - not straight, but non-linear, detour, queer, strange, or unusual time. True “promised land” time is never in the “present”, always “beyond.” Always “beyond.” Utopia is always in the future. It is not just in the future, though, it’s also always in the past - in the imagined past of a perfect, beautiful world - the garden of Eden. We always find ourselves in the middle place and time - the messy, miraculous, middle time. Manna time ("What the heck" time).That is our time. Our place, every day, in our community, Immanuel: Im-Manna-uel, hungry, seeking, fed, free church. God allows us to play on words, because God knows God likes to do it, right!? 

To finish up, I’ll finish my story which was unfinished in the middle of this message: I was spiritually wrecked last Spring. I asked, “Am I alive? What - Manna - is it that I am going through?” I asked those questions. Now, in Immanuel, every day, I see that every cell of my mind, body, spirit is healed, upright now to live, to be alive, and I come into leaf, the green leaves of one, happy spiritual self. May we be the presence that inspires our neighbours, our city, our world to come into leaf, the green leaves to know their true being in our, communion, Manna world.

Five Characteristics of "queer of colour critique"

Theoretical framework 

Proposing the theoretical framework from “queer of colour critique” movement in secular cultural studies 

Five characteristics of “queer of colour critique” that will be really interesting (Listen at 52:50)

1. “Question Identities” 

It challenges the essentialist notions of races and sexuality. Rather than seeing races and sexuality as “born this way” but as things are “constructed”. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have skin pigmentations, but defining our identities on the bases of that is a constructive thing. Like Foucault said, before the 19th century, no one would have imagined defining oneself in terms of the gender of the person they are attracted to. The notion of homosexual is strange if you think about it. Not as the natural thing. 

The whole notion of “constructed identity”… it gets complicated. What’s Asian? … When we talk about the essentialism of race, what does that mean? 

It is not about identity politics: ‘I am more oppressed than you.’ But it’s really about “building coalition.” Building coalition and honouring how you are the same, and also different, in terms of how you are valued and devalued. In terms of messy-ness, not essential characteristics. 

2. “Both/and thinking” rather than either/or thinking

Book, “Disidentifications” The whole analysis on queer of colour performance … He says it is very interesting to see they all exist in the middle of the third space - instead of choosing one pole or the other, whether it is male or female, or whether it is in queer or of colour, instead of choosing, you can “identify” with both and also “disidentify” with both. Disidentification is the methodology for survival. Rather than rejecting either or both, you choose what is beneficial for you. (adopting queer community as it is helpful, but leaving racism behind as it is not helpful.) It is very much like postcolonial theory: the notion of hybridity. As Homi Bhabha says, Hybridity is like the stereo wall ? between two forces: the colonizer and the colonized meet in the middle. In the middle space, top and bottom get reversed. Something weird is going on in that third space. 

3. “Multiple oppressions”

Rather than just focusing on one single oppression, queer of colour critiques theorists look at the way in which multiple oppressions are “interlocking”. South Asian Muslim body post 9-11, as sort of intersection of all these “deviances” There’s deviant religion, deviant sexuality, deviant race, .. It’s deviancy. vs “Homonationalism” 

4. “Non-linear time”

Thinking about queer and time. <Cruising Utopia> Cruising Utopia True queerness is never in the “present,” always beyond.  Utopia is always in the future. It’s not just in the future, though, always in the past. To think about “queer time.” How queer people exist in queer time and space. Non-linear sense of time in relationships and job trajectories… (not like “straight folks” grow up, graduate from high school, college, get married, have jobs, and you get kids, have carrier, kids leave, retire, sort of that linear trajectory.) Thinking beyond linear time is what queer of colour critiques folks help us to think about. 

5. “Fluid boundaries.” 

Instead of focusing on only United States, queer of colour critiques are really good about talking about international boundaries… (change and shift) issues of immigration, migration, globalization… they are really hot topics and yet intersecting them to queer studies is something that we need to do more of. The idea of coming out is always a universal thing, but do we expect everyone to come out in the same way? (culturally different process and many different ways can be possible.) 

Concluding 

5 characteristics/themes of queer of colour critiques which make liberation theologies of the past “undone.” It is what makes the queer of colour folks at the margins critically shift how we do theologies by bringing that actually to the center.

You move from 

• identity basis (“I am born this way” kind of thing) to “questioning identities” 
• either/or thinking - liberation verses to oppression - to really “both/and thinking of third spaces”
• singular oppressions of sexual/gender identity as the core front to “multiple oppressions” 
• linear time (“It gets better”) to really “queer time” 
• national borders (US as the center of all things) to fluid boundaries (not just the rest of the world, but also what boundaries do to the notions of sexuality and gender identity) 

Sermon: Enter the Sea (Exodus 14:19-31), Sept 17, 2017

Sermon: Enter the Sea 

Exodus 14:19-31

It’s not the warm, baptismal water we pour into the font, with care and love for a child’s baptism. It’s cold, dark water, a sea edged with reeds, at early nightfall. You could see people running, running breathlessly, without a glance backward; running towards the sea. And there they come to an abrupt halt, on the edge of the world they have known, in truth, the only world they have known - the Empire of Egypt where, from generation to generation, they have spent hundreds of years in slavery. The exodus is happening, under the charismatic leadership of Moses, and yet, here, on the edge of the world they have known, is the water. And it is the deep, dark water of the sea of reeds. Is it the end? Is it death, waiting? Where’s the divine promise of God’s salvation, deliverance and liberation? People have to think quickly. The Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen are fast following! 

In the Bible, water is very often where people go to experience “transcendence” with God: transcendence from what they were captivated with, with either oppression or sin, to become a new, free creation. Water is where people experience beginning, opening up, like the waters in the creation story, like a baptism. In some languages, the meaning of “to begin” cognates with “opening up”. Genesis tells us, on the very first day of creation, “When in the beginning God created heaven and earth”, the earth was unformed land, and the mighty spirit of God (Ruah) was vibrating in the darkness, sweeping over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be” and there was. The light, water and land, all living things in water, on land and in the air - wild animals and everything imaginable. God says, “Open up”, “Let there be”, and the Words become an invitation to diversity!

And so the water - here, in today’s story, Exodus - must be where God’s people will transcend with God to their beginning, to the “opening up”, to what they have not yet embraced as the new reality for their life - freedom. 

This water will be presented here in today’s story as a paradox, as it so often is in the Bible: water as chaos and water as grace; water as destruction and water as rebirth. These people of God do not have the luxury of rumination, today. They have no time to reflect on the meaning of the water before them; they have to make, today, now, a path for grace, a path for freedom. 

Over the course of our lives, most of us have grappled with life experiences which require of us those moments - the moment of paradox to choose grace, to find the path for freedom, happiness and liberation. We have lived those moments in which we really need to ask questions and seek answers, or “live with the questions” as Rainer Maria Rilke advised young poets. 

Rilke writes in his book, Letters to a Young Poet, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Do not… seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will… gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day, into the answer.”

The miracle of God’s liberating love, as the Bible witnesses, is that God’s Word comes with the teaching of two opposite wisdoms being one. We have to really hear and understand the wisdom of the sense of urgency, which means “It is now! It has to be done, now! You have to make the right choice, now!”. This is the wisdom on one side. 

Interestingly, the wisdom on the other side is waiting: being patient and trusting. The contrasting wisdoms of the urgency of now and and waiting lead God’s people onto the path toward freedom. In our story today, at the edge of the world – with indrawn breath of terror and fear of death, people cry out “There is no way to go forward! There is only the sea!” 

They can do nothing other than wait - wait for God: wait for God to do what only God can. It is a brutal situation, but we know that moments such as this are the only moments where we will learn our ultimate dependence, our radical dependence on God. Sometimes we have to acknowledge that there’s nothing we can do to change a devastating situation. But… Radical dependence on God shouldn’t come from a sense of human hopelessness, or helplessness. It should be the opposite, because God is not the name of the fix, the rescuer - faith is not testing God to show us God’s effectiveness.

Rather, God is the name for the process of searching. We should understand God in a true, spiritual way. God is deeply present, and “vibrating” in the process, in our process of searching. Last Sunday, I shared my favourite concept of what religion is. “Religion is the passion for the Impossible.” Now, I wish to introduce another concept which seems very relevant to today’s reading. “Religion is a search for meaning when you don’t have it in this world.” In today’s reading, I see the people of Israel in a search for meaning, in a search for meaningful lives when the harsh rulers of Egypt make it so hard to find; they are oppressed. Seeing their agony, Moses tells them, this is not the only world that is possible. We can have another way to live through God-given freedom. When there is no hope, there is hope. And there is dignity! 

And so Moses “opens up” the sea - the deep, cold water - the paradox of chaos and grace, destruction and rebirth - the extraordinary place where people transcend the slave mentality of generations to cross over to a new beginning with God. The Bible says, in verses 21 and 22, “Then Moses held out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea away with a strong east wind all night long, and turned the seabed into dry land. The waters were divided asunder, and the Israelites went through the sea on the dry ground, while the waters formed a wall to right and left of them.” 

When people embrace transition, or transcendence with God, they stand at the transition, the transition from the mystery into the miracle. And the miracle is not the water - not those two walls of water - on the left and the right, pushed aside by the strong east wind, the wind of God. No. Then what is the miracle? Where do we see the miracle, if it is not the water? The miracle is not the seabed, turning into dry land. It is just the seabed, turning into dry land. No matter how spectacular it is, it is soon-to-be-erased, something that will disappear, something that will be only recounted orally and in the image of the poetic mind, only in the mind of the storytellers. It is the land which will have no trace, mark, proof of existence, once the waters return. The miracle is the people who “entered the sea.” Seeing the dry land appear, 

Eli Wiesel vividly captures the moment: “The leaders of the group, urged on by Moses, pushed forward: Don’t be afraid, go, into the water, into the water!” 

Then, “Moses suddenly ordered everyone to a halt: Wait a moment. Think, take a moment to reassess what it is you are doing. Enter the sea not as frightened fugitives but as free people!” (Messengers of God) 

Imagine with me, do you think that people walked into the dry land, laughing and smiling, and shouting for joy? They might have, but I imagine where they are standing is a very fearful, life-and-death crossroad - adrenaline heightening their senses, choosing ‘flight’ over ‘fight’… They are not entering the dry land with a sense of safety, security and joy. Their logical minds would be telling them that the high walls of water could revert back to flat sea while they are walking on the dry land. They have never before heard that anyone has ever trodden the muddy seabed, and survived. However, they enter the sea. It is not ‘they enter the dry land’. They entered the sea, and they did so as free people. 

One point of this story, among many, may be that we, the human race, (not angels), we, the mixed beings (good and bad), “Sinful beings seek justice”. (Niebuhr) We seek freedom. We seek liberation. We seek true happiness. We seek the meaning of life, in the only world we have known, being called to embrace the paradox of the urgency of the calling of now AND of the waiting. 

You see, being left or being right may be not the question this story puts before us. Because the miracle is always with the people who define the new path, built when God pushes the walls of water aside to the left and to the right, by the wind of God. The miracle is never in the safe middle, but with the people who can enter the split, surging, divided, dangerous water with courage, hope and strength as free people, seeking justice. To enter the sea: the deeper, the true reality of our lives - our political, economical, sexual reality of our lives. Ultimately, the rich-poor polarity, patriarchy, racial injustice, inequality, and violence must not be allowed its destructive and harmful power. We call on God to transform it, so that our neighbours, therefore us, find the exhilarating, breathtaking self and God in marching, searching and dreaming with God.

To conclude this message with my short testimony: on the Saturday night before my first Sunday worship with you here, last week, I found myself anxious: trembling with fear, gingery, fretting whether people would accept me and my message. When I woke up in the middle of the night, the Spirit inside of me nudged me, saying, “Do not be afraid. Acceptance is not the right question. You are not in the harmful water - where you always struggled to know whether you would be accepted. Think again. Reassess where you are. Know that you are on the wave of the Spirit. Free yourself from a survival mentality. Open up to the Spirit. Leap on it, flow with it, fly with it. Your state has changed! Go with your people, together to be free people to do God’s work.” 

To which I could only reply, “Amen”. 

Passionate Friendship - Sept 10, 2017 (Romans 13:8-14)

Sermon: Passionate Friendship

Romans 13:8-14

Three months ago, when I decided to seek a community where my gifts and passion could join with those of others, I found myself in a time that was very challenging, yet spiritually very deep and rich. I kept revisiting the process of examining my sense of purpose and reconnecting to God. I was periodically discouraged and overwhelmed with a sense of failure, yet strangely, I sensed that I was also empowered by discerning God’s fresh calling; I was deeply grateful. Applying for Immanuel was a leap of faith at that difficult time, but it was worth it, absolutely was worth leaping to this amazing, faithful community, Immanuel. After the interview in June, and even after being called, the last comment Ian, the chair of the search committee, made at the end of the interview made me smile, and I owe deep thanks to him because that comment really helped me understand what my true, authentic strength may be - “Deep and challenging.” (So, here’s a heads-up for you: I am deep and challenging.) When I was called to schedule the second interview, I had a stark sense of realization about who I was going to meet, with the possibility of being called here. I shared, presented, and showed my “challenging” strength as honestly as I could at the interview, and I was accepted! This was an unbelievable gift I received before I barely knew Immanuel. I thought, in this community, I can be me, and I will not need to change myself because it is ministry. And in its true meaning, if I am called to authentic leadership, I shouldn’t change myself. My personal vision statement I shared during the interview process was:

Embracing Diversity 

as Opportunities to Innovate 

through Creating a Positive Core and

extending Radical Welcome,

therefore, Making a Future, together,

inspired by the holy stories of God and God’s people. 

Another gift I received from Immanuel was quick in coming. Ian advised me that Immanuel might get busy more slowly than Meadowood (my last congregation) and I might not see many people when I started in September. To my surprise and joy, I was again amazed to see so many loving people take time to come out to meet me and offer me an exceptional welcome with hugging, kissing, notes, emails, gifts, shared stories and a birthday cake. After last Thursday’s Council meet-up, following Richard’s favourite habit, I counted how many Immanuel folks I met within my first week: twenty! Can you believe that? I am still truly amazed and will do my best to really see and appreciate what kind of unique, strong, welcoming and inclusive community of people I have joined. You are one of a kind!

In this sense of the gift of blessings, I invite us to hear the first line from the Romans text that Lynn Strome read for us. Verse 8. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

How will we understand this message? I am inspired to share that the friendship that crosses borders, the friendship that transgresses restrictive societal norms, the friendship that is nurtured at the margins is a true, liberating, hard-won expression of love. I was amazed by your welcome, not because I felt, “Oh, I’m feeling like people treat me like a lovable princess here!”, but because through your welcome I could see your deeply nurtured sense of friendship - passionate friendship toward one another -. From my experience, I see why and how such genuine, loving, passionate friendship is a hard-won privilege, how it is transforming people’s lives, and therefore how it becomes a true gift that grows community. 

The theme of friendship is very important to me. To me, friendship is a theological question. It is a question about how we let God in us “dissolve” restrictive boundaries of Self and the Other through the action of love, genuine curiosity and compassion. In ministry, it is an expression of faithful intention of how we become interested in somebody’s life for the benefit of the well-being of the Other, beyond self. For a long time, since I moved to Canada, I have struggled a lot to know how I can become somebody’s friend. If it is a friendship, I thought, it should start and be nurtured on an equal basis of mutual interest, and with the sharing of natural fondness. 

Some friendships seem more “natural” to start and nurture joy - especially, if they are between people with the same ethnicity, culture, gender, language. I personally observed that “Non-whites” or POC (“persons of color”) can form friendships more quickly because they may feel “safe” with each other. Other friendships can be harder - when two people or the group is composed of White and POC. There are many factors which contribute to making such friendships harder to start and nurture. “White privilege” may play a powerful role among many other factors. Yet through the last decade, living in Canada, I developed some fear that others may see me through stereotypes rather than trying to see past the surface.

For example, I may not receive overtures of friendship from some people, because of their lack of interest in an Asian, immigrant woman, speaking English as their second language. I projected that fear onto myself until very recently, something which may have grown from my lived experience, but which has also become poison to nurturing positive self-recognition. Even though I am a visual minority, very ironically, the painful part of this experience of racism and sexism comes from “invisibility”. To illustrate, let’s imagine that you sit with your small group at class for a discussion. You are one of the three in the group, and the other two begin to talk with each other, shutting you out - even though you were the first one who said “hi” to them. They make no eye contact, or the eye contact is made late. They don’t ask your opinion or do it at the end.

To those for whom life’s hurt comes from “invisibility”: their cultural identity invisibility, their poverty invisibility, their sexual identity invisibility, when you have “wild space” (the part of you that does not fit the conventions of society), and you feel it is risky and not safe to share your struggle - your invisibility hurts. If you can’t share the truly beautiful complexity of who you are, your sense of identity, your questions about life and faith, isolation can be very hard for you, and for anyone. In this sense, friendship is a theological question, a ministry action, a life-long journey to find power to connect to each other, to connect to the world, and more importantly, connect to yourself.

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul tells us, in verse 12, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” How does the imagery of “darkness” and the “armor of light” make sense to us? Traditionally, black/dark has a negative association with evil, the regrettable past, the “colonized”, while white/light represents goodness, triumph, the power to “colonize”. We need to challenge these interpretations because this unfair polarity only supports the fundamental hegemony of white supremacy. Therefore, I would like to invite you to see that our concern may be more about the state of “apathy”, not darkness: apathy as a sense of unrelatedness to the Other or the other’s lives, especially those who are systematically cast out. Marginalized. Not fully included, within church or in our society. Apathy is, in my understanding, the attitude or sense of being privileged, oblivious, to think that we have the right to not know about the other’s struggles and pains.

In contrast, we can understand putting on the “armour of light” as undergoing a process of “self-emptying.” Imagine, only when emptying ourselves of our selves, can we let the light in, let it dwell in our heart, in the mirror of ourselves: reflecting others truly in their complexity of hopes, dreams, fears and passion. 

We embrace the ultimate reality of interdependence, interconnectedness with the Other, as it is beautifully described, “I am because you are, and you are because I am.” 

I have a dream for Immanuel. I hope that we can nurture a passion for the Impossible: passion for an unconditional love. Passion for absolute justice. Passion for an unconditional welcome. Passion for unconditional hospitality. These are passions for the Impossible, because they seem impossible in our ordinary lives. Passion for the Impossible may seem an act of dreaming, not setting a SMART goal: Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. 

Our contemporary, corporate world tells us to set a goal first, dreaming later only when you have time to do it. But I would say, we can set up a SMART goal only when we have a dream; but dreaming - we must do it now. I have a desire to invite us to the act of dreaming, because dreaming is unsettling. The act of dreaming is, ultimately, God’s unsettling work through us. 

To dream, we need to know our passion, to know our strength, and to have the confidence to know that, though many things may seem impossible to us now, we can still endeavour to accomplish them. The vision I have for Immanuel is that we will embrace diversity in our midst and in the world, not as barriers but as positive and transformative opportunities to innovate. Passionate friendship, that you have been so beautifully nurturing, in the community of Immanuel, may not be the solution, but can be the essential context for this vision. I hope you know that the culture of passionate friendship you have already beautifully deepened at Immanuel, if we intend to reach out, can save peoples lives and change the world.

Friendship is Passionate, because it is, essentially, love. 

When I tried to pronounce Eileen’s name, she warmly told me to remember, 

            “I lean on you.” 

We are passionate beings, warm beings, human beings. We are beings who know the quality of love, intimacy and belonging. I think, physically, emotionally, spiritually, metaphorically, letting others lean on us, lean on our chest, as the beloved disciple does to Christ, is a breathtakingly beautiful thing. 

Passionate friendship is challenging. Passionate friendship crosses borders. Passionate friendship transgresses norms. Passionate friendship nurtures the vulnerable. Passionate friendship can be a life-line, liberation, hard-won self-expression and self-recognition. 

Let us treasure it, and foster it with our neighbours, outcasts, ourselves, and with one another. This is both a letter from our future, and promise of the future to come.