Advent One: Mary in the World (1) "Struggle to be the Sun Again", Dec 3, 2017

Advent Message (1) 

Struggle to be the Sun Again

Matthew 1:18-25 

When I was in grade two or three, (I don’t remember exactly when) my parents decided to become Roman Catholics, and I was baptized with my brother. My aunt became my godmother, and she picked Maria Angela (Mary Angel) for my Christian name from a book she liked. Since then, Mary’s statues or sacred paintings were everywhere in my family home - in the living room, in the dining room, in my parent’s room. Mary wore a white garment, her feet gently stepping on red and pink roses, the same colour as her apple cheeks and thin pink lips. She had a high nose, eyes downcast in meditation in her beautiful, European face. I was taught to revere her even though she was in the form of a plastic statue; an image, not a real person. I gave my respect, with fear and awe - wondering and worrying, what if a miracle happens right now just because I was looking at her. This is my background, one that has made me really yearn for a way to search Mary, find Mary, to really see Mary. Let’s think about it: If we hear the nativity story every year, and if the narrative always repeats the same few options/views about Mary - Mary, the pregnant virgin, Mary the humble maid, Mary, the blessed one, Mary whose sexuality is automatically assumed to be heterosexual just because… Just because we let the story be told, the same way, every time. Why don’t we try to discover Mary in our own terms, from the voices from the margins, from the Third World, from women themselves?   

This book, Struggle to be the Sun Again, was written by Chung, Hyun Kyung, in 1990. It was published about two years after I was baptized. She wrote it as her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Dr. James Cone, one of the most highly influential black liberation theologians at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He wrote “The Cross and the Lynching Tree”. Dr. Cone encouraged her to write about, “something which hurts you the most.” and to describe it simply and plainly. I find that Chung, Hyun Kyung speaks slowly and warmly, but when she makes creative rituals they are intense, strikingly beautiful, deep with meaning. One ritual she presented to the World Council of Churches immediately evoked sensation and controversy and even fear (among Korean church authorities and theologians). For this ritual, she was threatened and eventually ostracized by Korean churches and chose to leave Korea. Chung herself became a tenured professor at the same seminary as Dr. Cone. Chung wrote her book to empower her liberation process as well as that of her community - searching and finding a home in the Asian women’s struggle for “full womanhood/liberated humanity.” In her book Struggle to be the Sun Again, what was impressive to me was that she opened up about her own journey of finding her birth mother. When she met her, and she looked at her, she met God. Her sobbing mother looked like an icon of God through which she could clearly see what God was telling her about her mission. She wanted to practice theology in solidarity with and in love for her mother so as to resurrect crucified persons like her, by giving voice to their hurts and pains; for those who are silenced and whom the silence never protects. I’ve personally never met Hyun Kyung, but I adopted her theological methodology who said, in the interview she took when she was a theological student, 

“I realized one day my image of God is now like a middle aged Korean woman looking like my mother, very warm, affirming, very available, strong and down to earth. When I pray, she came to me. That image is the image of God. It’s very liberating because when I pray to God who is white, who is old, who is a man, it was difficult for me to be connected with him.” 

When our worship elders asked what I wanted to do for the Advent services, I hesitated, because I had some fear of judgement, because I know feminism can inspire a backlash in churches, but I trusted our elders and Immanuel, and said let’s find Mary in the world. 

Creative and talented worship cluster elders of my church,
Immanuel United Church,
made "Romi" (Mary) for Advent services, 2017

Mary in Asia, Mary among us, Mary in indigenous communities in Canada and in Latin America, and also Mary among the poor women lemon vendors who sit on the pavement in the hot summer, in the streets, in the old market places, in Buenos Aires. 

I was very glad to find the chapter in Chung’s book, Who is Mary for Today’s Asian Women? when I opened this book for the first time in a very long time. Chung writes, “If Jesus, a Jewish man, became a symbol of new humanity for Asian women, transcending historical, geographical, and gender boundaries, so Mary, a Jewish woman, also became another symbol of new humanity for Asian women through her words and deeds. Jesus and Mary, therefore, are two models of the fully liberated human being from whom Asian Christian women find their source of empowerment and inspiration. Yet many Asian women feel closer to Mary as a model for full humanity than to Jesus for the obvious reason that Mary is a woman. In most Asian churches where the maleness of Jesus has been used against women in order to legitimize the sexist ideology of women’s inferiority, women have found comfort and self-worth through the presence of Mary, an invaluable woman for human salvation.” 

Marianne Katoppo
from the bibliography of the chapter,
 "Who is Mary for Today's Asian Women?"
I shared her image to show the congregation
 the face of Mary.

“Asian women think that the Protestant tradition’s repudiation of Mariology and its imposition of an all-male theology shows the church’s avoidance of responsibility to address women’s place in realistic terms. Under this attitude of the church Asian women have been forced to be altered to Jesus through male eyes as the sole model for full humanity.”

Astrid Lobo

“If the Protestant church has succeeded in oppressing women by eliminating Mary, the Catholic church has exercised control over women by domesticating Mary.” 

Mary is tamed as a passive, obedient, yes-woman or humble maid who does everything men want. She is “sugar-sweet, fragile, with eyes either modestly downcast or upturned to heaven - not quite here and now.”

When I first read these descriptions, I was blown away, because they really speak truth to my experience. 

By the time I was married to my husband, who was just ordained in the Korean Presbyterian church as the young assistant pastor, and lived with him at church, (It’s my answer to James Cone’s question: “Write about something which hurts you most”) I had internalized all the cultural and church patriarchal expectations about what the ideal woman should be. I was ready to cast myself into becoming the perfect combination of Mary and Angel (Yes Mary and Smiling Angel). Then, during the two years living on top of a church, (literally on top – our home was a small apartment on the church roof) my husband became a ‘prince’, and with the honorary title and role - of Samonim, meaning the honourable wife of the ordained husband) inside the marble and stone of Mary Angel - Maria Angela - myself, I became the shadow of the patriarchy. I changed into a depressed, dependant, silenced and sad shadow of my former self. The breakthrough was made when I discovered Chung, Hyun Kyung’s book accidentally on someone’s shelf, and decided to read it, overcoming the suspicions about feminism I had at that time. Then I found the poem, written by a Japanese woman poet, Hiratsuka Raicho, in 1900's, The Hidden Sun, which changed my life course ultimately, enabling me to restore my faith and passion about my life, to redirect it to follow the hidden Sun within me. 

“Originally, woman was the Sun.

She was an authentic person.

But now woman is the moon.

She lives by depending on another

and she shines by reflecting another’s light.

Her face has a sickly pallor.    

We must now regain our hidden sun. 

“Reveal our hidden sun!

Rediscover our natural gifts!”

This is the ceaseless cry

which forces itself into our hearts;

it is our irrepressible

and unquenchable desire.

It is our final,

complete,

and only instinct

through which

our various

separate instincts

are united.”

Reading this poem, I immediately identified myself with this poet, who claims that “Originally, woman was the Sun. She was an authentic person. But now woman is the moon.” Only then I realized that I had become the moon. Then it became clear to me that God has shown a liberating love for me; I owe it to God to reach out to those who have become the shadow and the moon to shine their original worth and brilliant light. 

Our lights need to be united!

Romi, 2017

Asian women claim that they have right and responsibility to rediscover the Mary who is liberated and liberator. 

I see Mary - in the story of our Bible today. Mary not in marble or stone, not in the statues or images, but the real Mary who you and I really can connect to and whose liberation is bound to ours. Is her liberation dependent on Joseph’s help? Partly and it’s important. Joseph helped make her world safer in an ultimately difficult time. However, the only power that brings her liberation comes from, and ultimately is, within her: her original Sun-ness, the Emmanuel power within her, free from the restrictive norms and rules, free in order to serve God. Mary dreams a better world. She sings, a new heaven and earth is possible. Real, living woman Mary reclaims, Reveal! Rediscover! Rejoice!