St Timothy Presbyterian Church in Toronto: Sermons

Scripture Reading

{Transcript}

Happy Easter! Resurrection, that’s a difficult topic. Knowing resurrection is not like a knowing a computer or knowing forgiveness, resurrection, It’s hard to talk about it, no one can explain it. Maybe something that you cannot understand by explanation or visual presentation, we can never do that. Even the early Christians had difficult time explaining the resurrection, even those who experienced the resurrection had difficult time explaining that resurrection to others. First of all, the disciples met the risen Christ- Some of the disciples, but Thomas did not happen to be there. So the they tried explained to Thomas about The resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the failed they couldn’t do that, doesn’t matter what the they tried.

They couldn’t really explain resurrection to Thomas. And this is what Thomas said, “unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe”. Unless I see it, unless I touch it, I will not be believe it, the disciples cannot really let him see it or touch it or anything like that, but next week when the risen Christ came to Thomas, he didn’t need any of what he demanded. Somehow he’s not just seeing the risen Christ. It is somehow that resurrection event happened and he believed and he made the highest confession, that is “my lord and my God” in the Gospel nobody said. Nobody said Jesus was God, They were at most able to say Jesus was the son of God. Nobody was able to say Jesus was God. But Thomas was only the first one who said, my Lord and my god.

So the early Christians had a difficult time explaining the resurrection and understanding the resurrection. For example, when the risen Christ came to Mary, Mary with fiscal eyes, she saw the risen Christ, but she didn’t realize that that was Christ Jesus, she didn’t even know. Another instance, two disciples were on the road to a amass and they were talking with the risen Christ. Jesus was risen and they were talking with him, but all the way to the end they were talking but didn’t know that it was Jesus who was risen. So the early Christians had difficult time explaining resurrection. So we realized that resurrection is not to be understood by seeing it, touching it, explaining it, or proving it, then I realized that maybe the resurrection is a bigger reality then what we can explain by touching it, seeing it or feeling it, is much, much bigger reality.  

when you’re not able to explain it, prove it,  show it, how can we accept the resurrection? That’s a big question to all of us. How can we accept the resurrection? And I realized that we don’t see the resurrection, but we see the power of resurrection. You don’t see the wind, but we see the power of the wind, so we don’t see the resurrection. We thought, but we see the power of resurrection. Then what is the power of Resurrection? I believe that it is hope. When the power of resurrection is crystallized, that is hope. Within you, you have hope, and that is a crystallization of the power of resurrection. Hope is not something that you can see because hope is something that has not happened yet, so you have hope for something which has not happened yet, so it is hard. You cannot really see, so you don’t hope for what you see. This is what Saint Paul said eloquently about hope “for in whole, we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what is seen, but if we hope for what we do not see we wait for it with patience.” So hope is not for what you don’t see, I mean that’s the nature of hope. If you have a hope for tomorrow, you don’t see it tomorrow yet, so you hope for what you do not see, but amazing thing about hope is that hope makes you what you cannot see,  see, somehow that’s what hooked us. hope makes you see what you cannot see.

when you suffer from illness, you don’t see healing. When you suffer from injustice, you don’t see justice. When you suffer from bondage, you don’t see freedom. You don’t see that, but you hope for what you don’t see, but then when you have hope, you start seeing healing justice and freedom. That’s why we fight for our illness, injustice around us and bondage that binds us because we see healing. we see justice and we see freedom. It is hope within us, and our hope will not be in vain. Our hope comes true as Jesus rose from the dead, and will also rise from the ashes, that was a secret of the early Christians I realized, because disciples, when they were around jesus, they were totally helpless and hopeless and incapable, they didn’t have faith. They were doubtful all the times. They always made mistakes they weren’t able to carry on. So many people might have expected that with the death of Jesus, the movement of Jesus will die too. With the death of Jesus, the purpose of Jesus will die too because the disciples would not be able to carry on. That’s what people thought, but somehow that was not the case. Somehow our history tells us that Christianity survived, that. The early disciples carried on, moved on, and even 2000 years later, here we are talking about Jesus movement. They went through so much a persecutions in difficulties, even more persecution when they were with Jesus and now without Jesus, they were able to go through the storm because they had hope. They were able to fight through the threat and crisis, because there was something within them, and that something within them was hope, hope for the Kingdom of God. Hope for the better world, they had that hope and that hope carried them. That’s why Christianity was able to survive. He’s a very small movement. Few people at the most, few hundred people in the beginning and they were able to carry on. That is a power of resurrection.

Today we read words from St Paul. This is what he said. I want to read it again for you. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. I want to know it. I want to know the power of Resurrection, and he said, “and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death. If somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead, not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus happened, and has made me”. So here, very clear picture, He wants to know the power of resurrection and then he will have hope and that hope will carry him so that he could press on. Paul knew the power of resurrection, he didn’t see the resurrection, but he saw the power of Resurrection, he has strong hope and that was why he could press on, my friends. You won’t see the body of resurrected Christ. Even if you see him in your dream, it won’t help you much because the resurrection, the resurrection can not become real by what you see. But as you believe in God, the power of resurrection impregnated.

When you believe in God, the power of resurrection will be impregnated and the hope will be impregnated and then hope will start moving within you like a baby moving in your body. For those who are pregnant, they experienced, they know what it means to have baby moving in their tummy in the same way, the hope moves within you, the power of resurrection is not what you achieve, the scripture never says that Jesus rose from the dead by himself. No. Jesus did nothing about resurrection. Jesus did nothing he just died. And the scripture says, God raised him from the dead. Jesus only had hope, but God raised him from the dead using the hope that Jesus had with him. The power of resurrection is not what you accumulate within you. The power of resurrection is not something that you can get from the world. The power of resurrection is what God gives you, when you trust in God. Harvey Cox, a professor at Harvard University. He wrote many famous books like secular city and so on, and he said this “when I was in prison during civil rights movement, young black men or captured with me and in the neighborhood cell, when Harvey heard the young black men crying out, singing, we shall overcome. That was when I was most cruelly sure about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” When we heard that shouting, screaming and singing, we shall overcome. That’s when he was sure about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Resurrection is not somewhere out there. Resurrection is right here. I’m allowed to sing with us. We are living in a very sad world. Just last week you heard about the bombing in Belgium. We are living in the world of greed, violence, inequality, anger, apathy and meaninglessness, all kinds of discriminations and prejudice. We can easily be victims of the world around us, but let us not leave ourselves powerless victims of this world. You are better than that. I hope that you don’t just become powerless, meaningless victim of this world. If you only think about your own survival, in my opinion, as a victim, that’s a victim mentality. If you only think about yourself, in my opinion, that’s a victim. The people who have hope in them, they will press on to make justice, to make this world better a world, and God will let the power of resurrection work within them. It is not what I do. It is what God does. The power of resurrection make us living, makes us live a meaningful life, not just for myself, for the others around us.

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Scripture Reading

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Loneliness is a silent killer of modern society. I read a very interesting article on the Globe and mail written by Elizabeth Renzetti and in this article Amy Rokak, a psychologist and lecturer at York University who has been researching on this topic of loneliness for more than three decades. And she said “loneliness has been linked to depression, anxiety, interpersonal hostility, increased vulnerability to health problems, and even to suicide.” So loneliness, is not just loneliness, loneliness is very much connected and related to our health. The same research is done in United States and the director of the University of Chicago, center for cognitive and social neuroscience also says loneliness causes all kinds of health problems such as suppressing the immune system and cardiovascular function. And it increases the amount of stress hormone. And he says these changes in physiology are compounded in ways that may be hastening millions of people to an early grave. We’re talking about millions of people and loneliness they said is as bad as smoking or being obese.

I mean Loneliness has a serious health problems, but thing is, this is quite common. Forty percent of Americans are suffering from loneliness and that figure is doubled in 30 years, twice as many people are lonely now after 30 years. But even though 40 percent are saying they’re lonely they don’t admit it. They feel shameful to say that they are lonely. They never want to admit that they are lonely. Professor Wilcox says for 30 years, I’ve been doing this, and, and they are a readily admitted that they have schizophrenia or they’re depressed and things like that. They could admit it, but not a single person said that they are lonely. But in the course of conversation, they finally admitted that they’re lonely. In other words, many people don’t even know that they are lonely. There’s such a stigma about being lonely, so they don’t want to admit it.

They don’t want to say it but deep inside they feel deep loneliness. We have a very sophisticated, social media like Facebook and yet it does not help a people’s loneliness. I mean these days, even though we don’t meet physically in cafe or a restaurant or we can meet them through the Internet and Facebook, we can communicate. So we will wonder whether we are more connected with others, but the researchers say that they feel more lonely because of Facebook’s and all that It’s like Facebook is like a little hungry child looking through the window,  of a family having great dinner, making conversation with each other and then saying to himself, “why not me?” Because in Facebook they put all the great things that they do, vacation, exotic vacation, and all the good times that they have. And then people who are lonely see their Facebook.

Everybody’s having a good time, but me, kind of feeling. So the loneliness becomes worse for them. In Today’s scripture we see Jesus coming into Jerusalem. It is a celebratory scene. People were ecstatic about Jesus and Jesus popularity was at peak. He was like a celebrity, you know, if he came in modern time and all the flashes everywhere, cameras and every hour and they were so excited about Jesus coming into Jerusalem. Look at what people did. If you go back to scripture, this is what they did. Many people spread their cloaks on the road and others spread leafy branches that they had caught in the field and those who went ahead. And those who followed were shouting, Hosanna blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David. Hosanna in the highest heaven. I mean they took off their clothes and then put it on the road and then they took branches put it on the road and let Jesus please come and walk. And then they were shouting with excitement, “Hosanna you are the king and please come and save us. That kind of atmosphere, ecstatic, celebratory scene. But I was wondering how Jesus might have felt. Would Jesus. Share the same excitement with these, with this crowd. Was Jesus so excited about going into Jerusalem?

I don’t think so. Jesus knew clearly that this exciting crowd will soon be scattered and the disciples would runaway in panic and then he will receive rejection, denial, betrayal, and Jesus will see the disappointment in people’s faces because Jesus will not do what they expected him to do. So Jesus knew that they will be very, very disappointed the problems Jesus knew all that as he entered into Jerusalem. I think Jesus felt all alone in the crowd. All alone.

No one was able to sense Jesus, total abandonment or loneliness in the midst of celebration. They were busy celebrating without really seeing what is going on in the heart of Jesus. You know, like, you went to a doctor and they just diagnosed that you have cancer and you have only three months to live and you came home and your family and friends gathered together to throw a surprise birthday party for you and you didn’t have a chance yet to tell them what you just heard from doctor. And you have only three months to live and they’re celebrating your birthday. You’re there, but you feel all alone.

Jesus’ sentiment is well captured in the scripture. Scripture is not really writing all Jesus this or that they’re just throwing a certain words to capture the mood a verse 11, this is what the scripture says. “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple and when he had looked around at everything as it was already late, he went out to Bethlehem with the 12.” It was late in the evening temple. Usually during the daytime, people come and give sacrifice and pray and all that. In the evening they all leave and so Jesus went into the temple all alone, and he looked around by looking around what would have, what would he have thought? Probably he would have thought about what would happen soon.

The disciples might have been with Jesus physically, but they didn’t understand what their teacher, and master was going through. They had no idea what Jesus was thinking or feeling. When I reflect on last week of Jesus’ life on earth, this one image comes to my mind, the last week of Jesus’ life on earth, being alone. That is the image that comes to my mind. Nobody was able to be with him. He was all alone. It reminds me of the phrase, “we are born alone and die alone.” That’s true. You’re born alone and die alone. As I said a few weeks ago when we reflected on Jesus’ suffering in Gethsemane, Jesus was going through tremendous hardships, agony and difficulties and suffering. The disciples fell asleep. Disciples cannot be with Jesus. That was the reality of Jesus’ last moment. Being alone. Isn’t that our reality? Being alone? No one can understand us completely.

No one can be with us all the way. Deep inside, we are all alone. When we really look at our lives, we are alone. But loneliness and being alone are two different things. Not everybody who’s alone is lonely. Jesus was totally alone, but he was not lonely necessarily. All his life he was like that. He went up to the mountain all by himself. He was all alone in the mountain, but he was not lonely. Well we are different. Many of us are scared of being alone because we are scared of facing our loneliness. We constantly have to distract ourselves. We make ourselves surrounded by people and things to do. We make ourselves very busy all the time. We fill up our schedule as though as though that’s scheduled might fill up our emptiness. Just because you fill up your schedule, that doesn’t mean that you can fill up your emptiness. Distraction does not get rid of our loneliness. It just delays it. You’re just playing blind eyes to it. You don’t want to think about it. You don’t want to deal with it. You just delay it until you have no choice, but to face your own loneliness or aloneness. I mean, I can do that all the times. I can always call friends. I can always do something exciting and I can always do that.

Why? That’s escapism. That’s running away, I mean are stronger than that. What are we so scared of? I’d rather face loneliness or aloneness rather than continuously filling up with schedule so that I don’t think about it. I want to see what loneliness is like. I clearly see it and deal with it rather than glossing over it. I believe that loneliness comes from hollowness, an emptiness inside and realize that this hollowness and emptiness, will never be able to be filled up by making yourself busy or doing many external things. This hollowness and emptiness has to do with who I am and what do I want to do.

These two questions are very important questions and we have to always ask ourselves, who am I and what do I want to do? When these questions are not answered, that hollowness and emptiness will continue. It doesn’t matter how high you go up. Doesn’t matter how many friends you have. It doesn’t matter how great time you have in your life. When these two questions are not answered, your hollowness will not be filled up. Who am I and what do I want to do? The problem is the answer does not come easily. Nor can we find it from books or even life experiences. No. The understanding of who we are and what we really want to do is lifetime journey. It’s a lifetime journey, but unfortunately many people don’t think about this. They say they are too busy. Just an excuse. You’re just making excuses. You just are scared, scared, so deadly scared of facing these questions. We are scared of looking at our hollowness because you will be completely submerged into it because there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer, so people don’t make time to be unknown and also when they are alone they don’t know what to do. Okay, I’m alone. What am I supposed to do? We don’t know. Just being alone.

I’d rather have a party. I’d rather go out with friends so they always fill up again and again. Sometimes only this terrible loneliness is imposed on us. Once in awhile they never choose to be alone to the journey of understanding of who they are and what they really want to do. But if we take this journey boldly with faith in God our hollowness will not scare us anymore. God exists. God is here, so if we take boldly this faith journey to see our hollowness, then this hollowness will scare us anymore. This hollowness will not create devastating loneliness. Of course, the hollowness will never disappear, will never go away, but you will see God’s grace filling up this hollowness. That’s reality. As we boldly take that journey, this hollowness is being filled up by God’s grace, we are taking the wrong direction. Well, if I do better in career, if I do better with money, if I better with the friends, the relationship, this hollowness will be filled up. No, that’s the wrong direction. Our singing group, wrong direction, wrong direction, good name. You’re saying that. Let’s not do that, right? One thing great about Jesus is that he knew exactly who he was. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. That’s the difference. My goodness, when I look at Jesus. That’s who he was. He knew exactly who he was and exactly what he wanted to do. If you have courage and boldness and take this journey, then soon you’ll enjoy the process. You won’t get the result right away, but you’ll start enjoying the process of discovering who you are and what you want to do. You start enjoying when you continuously run away, you can never learn to enjoy this process of finding out who you are and what you want to do because Jesus knew clearly who he was and what he wanted to do. That was why he was able to take the last week of total abandonment.

The world abandoned Jesus. Oh my goodness. That’s hard. When you’re abandoned by the world, that’s hard to take. The world abandoned Jesus and he was able to take that because he knew who he was and he knew what he wanted to do. Henri Nouwen said in his book  “spirituality of living”, that when Jesus was in the mountain, he questioned what did he hear and Nouwen’s answer is that he heard this voice. “You are my beloved son.” Nouwen said that Jesus must have heard that in the mountain. “You are my beloved son”, because that was a voice that he heard right in the beginning of the baptism. I think Nouwen is right. And then Nouwen continued with this knowledge of being the beloved Jesus could walk freely into a world in which he was not treated as the beloved.

That’s wisdom because Jesus was so sure that he was beloved. He was able to walk freely into the world where they abandoned Jesus completely. Jesus had a clear sense of who he was, regardless of how the world treated him.

But we are different. We have tremendous pressure to have to prove ourselves to the world. We have to prove our worth. Do you know how great I am? How worthy I am? To our friends, to our parents, to our company, and to even strangers? Do you know how great I am and we mistakenly think then, only then, people say will say that you are great and people love you.

We don’t even know how the world’s expectations poison us, they poison us. You got to be this kind of person to be loved, so we continuously try to meet that expectation just to be loved, how pathetic we are becoming. We don’t even know how this world and this corporate environment enslaves us and poisons us, how we are fooled by the praise of the people around us without even knowing who I am or what I want to do. We cannot continue in this poisonous environment. So this church, including myself, we want to protest against that kind of lifestyle. We don’t condone that. We don’t approve that as authentic living. We may not be able to get away from this world, but we need to come to our senses to truly see who we are and what we really want to do. As we started looking at who we are. Sometimes we may not like it. What you see, you may not like it, but still we have to continue.

As I told you, Walter Isaacson’s, Steve Jobs, I’m slowly, I’m reading it I’m almost at the end and at the end of his journey, he called Walter Isaacson. And then Walter came to Steve Job’s home and then looked at Steve and then it was just bone he was dying. And then Steve said, “you know, I may not be able to read your book when you complete it, but you said a lot of bad things about me, right? And Walter said, yeah, I want to be as honest as possible. And Steve said, good. That’s maturity in a way, as we look at ourselves sometimes we may not like who you are, what we are like right now. That does not mean that we should give up. We continuously and courageously pursue this journey of finding true life. God will help us. These days when I look at people around me, both in congregation or outside, I feel this burden, pain. They don’t have to live like that, they could live much, much better life, and they deserve better life than that. If we are continuously running away from being alone, we cannot do this. We need to be strong to be alone without being lonely let us humbly and boldly. Take this journey of being alone and in our aloneness, God will speak to us and God will whisper to us and will experience our hollowness slowly being filled with God’s grace, that is possible. God created this hollowness so that we could relate to God and that hollowness is to be filled with God’s grace.

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Scripture Passage

Mark 11: 1-11

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Scripture Reading

{Transcript}

No one can live without forgiveness. Why? Because we're not perfect. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. We all do things or did things we should have never done. We all said things we should never have said. We all hurt others intentionally or intentionally, but whether you hurt others intentionally or unintentionally doesn’t matter because being hurt is being hurt. We are not trying to determine who’s right or who’s wrong. We all have regrets. We all have our own painful past. We want to forget and change it or redo it,

But we can’t, simply, we cannot do that. That’s why we need forgiveness. Otherwise, the burden of guilt, shame and regrets will be, too much to bear. They’ll eat us up and they will consume us, and a lot of people do lots of things to deal with their own guilt, shame and regret. Sometimes they punish themselves. They may feel good if they punish themselves for their wrongdoing, but by doing that, we cannot get rid of the burden of guilt or even lighten the burden of guilt. We don’t feel any better. Maybe when you punish yourself, maybe then, but soon you don’t. You realize that you don’t feel any better. Sometimes we are trying to do wonderful things, great things to compensate for the wrongdoing, so we did, but you can never do that. You can never undo wrongdoings that you did by doing wonderful things. It’s just playing games that doesn’t cancel out what we did in the past and sometimes we try to justify ourselves saying that, oh, it wasn’t really, really my fault. I didn’t want do it, but she made it. She made me do it, or he made me do it, like Adam in the Bible, you know, she gave me this fruit.

Well, sometimes we justify ourselves saying that, oh, it’s all circumstances in that circumstance. I have no choice but to do so, but you always have a choice. By doing that, we don’t feel any better or our situation doesn't get any better. No matter how hard we try, we know that we cannot take off an ounce of the weight, of the burden of guilt and shame and regrets. Maybe guilt, shame and regrets are something that we have to suffer through. Maybe. Maybe there’s no other way. There is no way around it, there’s no way to ignore it and avoid they won’t disappear. They’ll still be there. The more you play blind eyes to them, the more deeply they will torment you. The moment we open our eyes it’s right there. Gazing hard at us.

We will always encounter incidents, events, people, and situations that trigger off our guilt, shame and regrets. And then we enter again into dark tunnel of mourning and grief. I once went to Ohio, Columbus Ohio. It was a listening skill lab. So for a whole week I got training for the listening skill and it was wonderful time. The guest speaker was talking about his own painful experience. That once, he had a lecture, and then a couple was coming in and then saw them. They were the ones who gave him so much pain and hardship. After the lecture he pulled a facade. And then said very nicely and kind of how are you, how are you doing? long time, no see every day and chit chatted for sometime. So he did very well. When he came back to the hotel, all of a sudden he had so many hives all over his body and he was heated up and had a fever and he was trembling and he realized that there was still pain left in him. That pain that was caused by this couple, we realized that was within us. Cannot be easily undone. Even our guilt, shame and regress don’t just disappear just because we wish them away. They follow us around and surprisingly they surface sometimes and drive us into deep darkness and even despair.

The problem is there is nothing we can do that’s a problem. There is nothing we can do about it. We cannot forgive ourselves. Can you. You may say that you forgive yourself, but you still feel miserable. You cannot forgive yourself. You cannot undo what you did. You cannot change what happened. You cannot get rid of guilt shame and regrets without decision and willpower. You cannot say, “oh from today. I’m going to forget about it.” You can’t do. You cannot make decision on things like that. That’s why we need forgiveness. That’s where I believe God’s forgiveness comes in. Not really. There’s nothing that we can do but there is God’s forgiveness, but unfortunately many people don’t trust in God’s forgiveness. They try on their own to deal with their own shame, guilt and regrets. They don’t believe there is a power in God’s forgiveness.

Of course, if we can get forgiveness from the people that we hurt, then that’ll be great, but thing is it is impossible. Sometimes we don’t even know we whom we hurt and sometimes the people that we hurt are not around so it’s impossible to do so, so we come to God’s forgiveness. As we come to God’s forgiveness, something strange happens, something wonderful happens. Something we can not do happens within us. Of course, Guilt shame and regrets may not simply disappear just because you come to God’s forgiveness. They don’t just disappear, but they try not to remain as they are. They change somehow their face, the guilt, shame and regrets change. How do they change? They change into a broken spirit, a broken heart. When we come to God with humility, when God’s forgiveness works within us, then guilt, shame and regrets, turn into a broken heart, and this broken heart brings about forgiving heart. This is a process of that I cannot make on my own, but when we come to God, this happens. Guilt turns into broken heart and broken heart creates and forms within us the forgiving heart.

That’s what Jesus meant today in today’s passage. If you read it again, “for if you forgive others their trespasses or their mistakes may say, your heavenly father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Jesus is not talking about forgiving acts, forgiving behavior. Oh, you forgave that, so I’ll forgive you a and you didn’t forgive that and I won’t forgive you. That’s not what Jesus means. Jesus is saying that if you have forgiving heart, then you can forgive others and also you can receive forgiveness, forgiveness from God, but if you don’t have forgiving heart, you cannot forgive others and that you cannot receive forgiveness from God either. That’s what he’s saying whether you have forgiving heart or not, depending on whether you have forgiving heart or not, you cannot forgive others or you can forgive others or you can receive forgiveness from God or you cannot receive forgiveness. Forgiveness from God. Important thing is forgiving heart and that forgiving heart is created when you come to God’s forgiveness and that guilt shame and regret turn into forgiving heart.

So many people live with a hardened heart. They just simply don’t know how to forgive. They just simply don’t know how to receive forgiveness. This world is filled with people with hardened hearts, revenge, anger, animosity, hatred, they’re continuously ready to attack each other. Just a little thing fires up there are so angry and get back to you. This world has become such a world of hatred, hardened heart. By ignoring guilt shame and regrets, we develop hardened heart. Then we become people who don’t know forgiveness. Then these things will consume us and destroy our heart. That’s not the way to live. That’s not the way to build community. This is not the way we relate to each other by ignoring them, by justifying them by simply suffering them will not help us deal with our guilt, shame and regret. They will torment us within us and slowly make us people we don’t want to be, but with humility and faith. When we come to God, God helps our guilt, shame and regrets change into broken heart, and then we’ll experience the power of God’s forgiveness. God is alive, God is alive and God’s forgiveness is alive.

What, we cannot do God did and God does. And through forgiving heart we can finally be free, free from our own guilt, shame and regrets. And we are free to embrace others and forgive others,

You wanna see concrete example in the scripture? The concrete example is David. David lived with his guilt and shame and regret, but he came to God for forgiveness and this is what he prayed, “create in me a clean heart, oh God and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.” He didn’t try to deal with his own guilt, just leave it for awhile. He didn’t try to deal with guilt on his own and shame he came to God. This is action of David coming to God instead of suffering all by himself or justifying, he just came humbly came to God. Restore Spirit within me. Do not cast me away from you create in me a clean heart. When he did that, he realized the broken spirit is formed within him. That guilt turned into broken spirit. He experienced and that broken spirit he recognize and so he’s next passage. He said this, “for you have no delight in sacrifice. If I were to give a burnt offering, you will not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise” Within himself. saw broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, but also he realized that God will not despise that.

That’s different from guilt. That’s different from guilt. Jesus once said, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God. That poor in spirit is broken heart, broken spirit. It is the heart that is formed within us. When we come to God’s forgiveness. Let us come to God’s forgiveness. Do you have a heart to forgive others or to have a hard time forgiving others? Do you forgive your parents? Do you forgive people who hurt you? Have you received true forgiveness from God? God can make you free.

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Scripture Reading

{Sermon}

Suffering for Others Sufferings

I’m wondering what Christian saviour looks like, what Christian Messiah looks like. I think Isaiah portrayed Christian Messiah very Clearly. He carried our diseases, was wounded, was crushed upon him and was the punishment. That’s what Christian Messiah looks like and that is the Messiah we believe in, that is a core of our beliefs in a gloomy picture. That is what our Christian saviour looks like. There is a profound truth here. Our saviour suffered for our suffering. That’s what our saviour looks like. Our saviour suffered for our suffering. Isaiah said he was wounded for our sins, that’s what our saviour did. This week I meditate on the saviour who suffered for others, suffering that is so beautiful. Anybody suffering for others suffering, that is the most beautiful thing that you can see. We see that in our parents. The parents truly suffered for the suffering of their children. In the YF meeting many parents shared about parenting and all this stuff. At the end, this was what I said, There are a lot of things that you can do for your children, but I’d like you to do just do one thing, suffer with them when they’re suffering . Just simple, suffer with them when they’re suffering. Our parents did that. They suffered when we suffered. They cried when we cried. They knew that we could not say everything that we went through, but they just didn’t even ask questions. They just felt it in their body. So that is the concrete example that we see about human beings suffering for others suffering. But you may say that, oh, they’re not really others. you know, children are their extensions, but still what parents did was admirable and I'm always forever thankful for what they did for us. You know, suffering for others suffering, that is the highest value and noblest ideal and the most admirable action a human being can emulate. That is what we Christians believe at the core of our belief.

God saw the suffering of human beings because of their sins, and he sent Jesus Christ and Jesus suffered to heal us from our suffering. That’s what we believe at the core. What is more amazing is that Jesus did not suffer for the noble, worthy or great people who are worthy enough for others to suffer for. This is what Saint Paul said, “For while we’re still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Christ died for the ungodly, not for the respectable people. Not for holy people, not for godly people, but Christ died for the ungodly . Sometimes we say, why should I suffer for people like that? they’re not worth it. They don’t deserve my sacrifice. They don’t deserve my suffering. Why should I suffer for people like that? We say that but Jesus died for the ungodly, regardless of who they were, doesn’t matter. They can be worthless people. They can even be people who give you a hard time regardless of who they are, Jesus simply suffered for the people who are suffering, doesn’t matter what costs, doesn’t matter for what reason. Maybe for their own sins and maybe their own reasons, but it doesn’t matter who they are, just for the people suffering. Jesus suffered. You know it’s like a tree that gives shade to the tree cutter in the summer who comes up. He’s about to cut that down, cut down the tree, and he just wants to rest before he does that. And the trees still provide shade.

How can we suffer for those who give us a hard time? And why should I suffer for them? You know, sometimes I realize this, the people who gave me a hard time, I realized that they were suffering from their own pain. I didn’t know that before, why couldn’t I understand that?, what did I do to you? why do you make me suffer?. That's when I realized that they are suffering from their own pain. When I saw that, I was able to embrace and understand that they are suffering. That’s what Jesus said on the cross, Jesus said Forgive them for they do not know what they’re doing . In other words they do not even know what they’re suffering from. They are not even in touch with their own pain and they’re putting their suffering onto me. Forgive them. I think that’s what Jesus is implying. They were not even aware of their own pain and suffering and they imposed their suffering onto Jesus. Suffering for others suffering. That’s a healing that happens, healing is not powerful people correct the powerless, weak people. Healing is when powerful people empty everything they have and suffer with the powerless people. That’s when healing happens. Isaiah said this “By his bruises we are healed, by Jesus' suffering, we are healed . I realized that, oh, there is a powerful healing in the suffering for others suffering. People don’t like suffering. People run away from suffering. People reject to be suffered, we are scared of suffering, but you know what? When you’re scared of suffering or you’re running away from suffering, you become victims of suffering, and you become enslaved to your own suffering. Only way to deal with our suffering is to go through the suffering, not to go away, not to go sideways, but through it. Only through the suffering we can overcome our own suffering and especially when you are able to suffer others suffering, you’ll see the amazing power of healing in that suffering. That’s why suffering for others is so beautiful, but I don’t see that. I don’t see that around me. Whenever suffering comes, we are not able to embrace any kind of suffering, whether it is my own suffering or others suffering we just reject it from our body. Healing can never happen.

My friends, when you see or when you hear other people’s suffering, don’t even try to console them or give them advice. Simply suffer with them. That is the best thing you can do for them. Be there feeling the pain they go through. Don’t try to correct them or even boost them up. Sometimes people who are are suffering, they are very unreasonable. They don't make sense. They say things that don’t make sense. Do things that don’t make sense? They’re very unreasonable. Don’t try to put reason into them. You don’t need to teach them. Just simply suffer with them. If you can try to feel every pain that person feels, that’s so hard. That’s why healing doesn’t happen. That’s the greatness of a person who is able to embrace that pain of others who say, no, no, no, no. That’s your problem. That’s your suffering. Jesus when Lazarus died, he wept at the last moment of his suffering. What he simply wanted was his friends, his disciples to be with him. Luke says, His sweat turned into blood . His suffering was so severe and what Jesus simply wanted was, Be with me in this time of suffering but his disciples could not do that. This is what Jesus said “I am deeply grieved even to death, remain here and stay awake with me to stay with me. Just be with me, could you not stay awake with me? Just one hour?” staying with people suffering is so difficult. They cannot do that. They cannot do that for their master, for their friends.

We see lots of suffering in this world. Just every day we are bombarded with people who are suffering. Just last week, two instances, one person, different cities goes there and then kills three, four people and then killed himself and all that, then there was a trial going on about this drunk driver who killed the whole family, the three beautiful children and their father hearing the news on the way to the hospital, he even tried to jump out of the car to kill himself. He had that desire. So much suffering, so much pain, so much violence around us and suffering increases with human advancement and technological breakthrough. Was human suffering reduced? No. As you see people suffering around you, I hope that you may all learn to suffer with them.

Jesus called us to do what? simple. Jesus called us to suffer with those who suffer. That’s what Jesus did. I don’t have any ambition, I don’t have any greed whatever. Just suffer with those who suffer, that’s the best thing you can do. All the disciples of Jesus Christ did many amazing things in life, they simply suffered with those who suffered and all of them were murdered. Let us not runaway from suffering by finger pointing at those who suffer. By doing that, you’re killing the spirit of that person. Don’t finger point at them. There is a way of avoiding suffering, running away from suffering. When the woman was caught in adultery, everybody pointed at her and then she just said, First person who has no sin, cast the first stone , they soon realized  their own suffering, their own pain. Don’t finger point at those who suffer. In Buddhism, they have this thing about an arrow, when the arrow hits your body, it hurts, but when the second arrow hits the same spot, you don’t get hurt twice as much, but more than 10 times. Sometimes when we go through suffering, we blame ourselves and that is our second arrow. Other times, others will blame you and that needs a third area, that is not just 10 times 20 times but, hundred times more it hurts. As you are able to embrace the suffering of others, that’s suffering. Pain can be healed. Christians are those who suffer with those who suffer. That’s what it looks like. That’s what great Christians look like. I don’t know anything else. When I say great Christians, they are the ones who suffer with those who suffer. Very last thing. I wonder whether, that is what love is, right? Suffer with those who suffer. You know another word for love is compassion, right? compassionate. You know the word compassion comes from come and passion. Come is together, passion is suffering, in other words you suffered together. You suffer with that compassion that I believe is in love. Suffer with those who suffer.

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Scripture Passage Philippians 2: 5-11, John 19: 1-11

{Transcript}

These days I reflect on humility and sacrifice. These two words keep coming to me, humility and sacrifice. Partly because we’re doing our Philippians study and we know that humility is a very important virtue for Christians.

What does it mean to be humble? There’s a lot of distorted images about being humble, so today I’d like to think together with you what it means to be humble. People misunderstand humility. It is not necessarily self pity. What does humility look like? It is hard to talk about humility in a concrete way because we now question what it looks like when it is in our daily lives. What do humble people look like? Sometimes it’s not quite clear. Also, humility is not a quality that modern society values very highly.

Modern society does not look at humility as a very important quality for their lives. They see no useful value in humility. I mean, humility is okay in interpersonal relationships, but how does that make my personal life happy and meaningful? Does humility do anything for that? Confidence? Yeah, we can see confidence is very important. Confidence is more important than humility they say. Being capable? If you are capable in doing things then you can be happy, you can do a lot of things very well. So being capable is more important than  humility. Being admired by people? You know, people love you and people admire you, people adore you. That boosts my self esteem, that is really good, so being admired is more important than humility. Being humble? That is a sign of weakness and admitting that we are weak is not necessarily an easy thing to do for modern people. We want to be strong. Modern society recognizes the value of strength. You have to be strong rather than being weak. Humility is a sign of weakness so I don’t want to be humble.

We have to ask, is humility or being humble, a sign of failure? Is humility, a trait of weak people? Is humility a natural result of being defeated? “You’re not as popular as other people so you have no choice but to be humble. You’re not as successful as others so you have no choice but to be humble.” Humility is the natural result of being inferior, being defeated, failing?

When I read Jesus’ life, we know that Jesus is humble and Paul said that Jesus is very humble, but I don’t see that kind of weakness in Jesus’ life. I don’t think Jesus was humble because he failed. To Jesus, humility was not a sign of failure. I don’t think Jesus became humble because he was crucified on the cross. ” A humiliating death made him humble.” I don’t think so. It’s not that Jesus failed everything in life and had no choice but to be crucified, and as a result he became humble. I don’t think that’s what we believe about Jesus. Jesus was not made humble. Jesus chose to be humble. Jesus was not made humble. Jesus chose to be humble. Jesus chose to take the cross and Jesus chose to empty himself and Jesus chose to become a servant. That was his choice.

Why? Because that’s what big people do. Being humble, that’s what big people do. People who see bigger things in life can be humble. Jesus was so big that he didn’t have to boast about himself. He had everything so he didn’t have to boast about whatever he had. He didn’t have to prove himself to the world. Jesus clearly knew who he was, he was the son of God. He didn’t have to prove or show to the world who he was. To Jesus, humility was not a sign of failure or defeat, but a sign of greatness. Jesus knew himself very well.

A lot of us depend on other people to tell me who I am. If they love me I must be lovable. If they admire me I must be admirable. They all praise me, I must be good at whatever I do. We always depend on other people to prove who we are or to know who we are. Jesus did not have to depend on other people to tell him who he was. He knew who he was and he simply lived as he was. That’s humility. Jesus knew who he was and he simply lived as he was. He didn’t live to inspire other people, or to really show other people who he was. He just simply lived as he was. He didn’t have this distorted sense of ego. He didn’t have to hide his weaknesses with his bloated ego. We do that all the time. When we have insecurity, when we have inferiority within us, we try to cover it with this bloated sense of ego, but Jesus didn’t do that. He didn’t seek for people’s approval either. That’s why he was hated. He didn’t seek for people’s approval. He was free from that. He was very comfortable with himself and lived comfortably as he was.

I realized, humility is the power to be yourself. Humility is the true power to be yourself. It is different from the power the world bestows upon us. It is the power that comes from within. It is not the power other people give me externally. It is the power that comes from within and that is when you know God, when you know his power, that power comes from within, and from that power you can be yourself. That is what humility is. True humility does not beg for the power the world gives because they already have enough power within themselves. True humility does not get sucked into power because it knows true power. True humility does not bow one’s head before the power of the world. That’s why Jesus was crucified. Because he did not bow his head to the power of the world. He could have sucked up to the power of Pilate and asked for salvation, “save my life.” Pilate saw all kinds of people. He crucified so many people so he knew how to scare them. Pilate approached with that power and he tried to scare Jesus. Jesus was not scared. Jesus was not threatened. And then Pilate asked, what kind of person are you? You are different from others. I could scare them! They were begging for their lives from me. You don’t do that. So Pilate asked Jesus, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you, and you refuse to speak to me?” And this is what Jesus said. “You have no power over me unless it has been given to you from above.” Jesus saw different power. The power from above. Pilate said Jesus was innocent three times in the scripture. If you know that the person is innocent and you have the power to release, then he should have released Jesus, but ultimately, what does he do? He handed him over. He had no power to release Jesus. He didn’t even know that he had no power to do so. Jesus did not at all bow to the power of Pilate. He was strong. He was not afraid. That is what true humility looks like.

Humility that comes from being humbled, if you’re humble because of your situation, because of a failure, that humility can disappear very quickly when the situation disappears. But humility that comes from a clear sense of who he or she is will never disappear. Always the same. Just because you’re highly exalted, you will not become proud. Just because you’re humbled and crushed, you will not feel miserable, pitiful, and small. Only in humility we can live an authentic life. When we have humility, we will be able to live with confidence in all situations. We can stand tall in all situations. Nobody can make me small. We will not be shaken by how people treat us. In humility we can overcome our conflicts with ourselves and we can be truthful to ourselves and in the end, that is the way to be truthful to God.

As we are comfortable with ourselves we can be comfortable with others too. I wonder whether that is the way to be happy and meaningful. Humility I realized is an essential quality to live a happy and meaningful life. May god bless you with Jesus’ humility. Live confidently knowing that Jesus is with you and He called you, and God called you. You are my beloved child. That’s all that matters.

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1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Of God’s love, John goes one step further. He said, God is love. You don’t just see the trace of God’s love. For God is love, so whoever does not love does not know God because you can only know God through love like this year’s theme is press on to know God, but with own love. We can never know God. You cannot know God intellectually. You cannot know God by feeling it. You can only know God through love. Love is like a key to the door of Gospel world. When you don’t have that key, you cannot open the door and you cannot see God to enter into garth’s world and to know God. Only way to know is the love. There’s a lot of people don’t know God because the traitor Noga through Internet. You can only know God through love and whoever loves also knows God because God is love. It’s life is all about love. God is all about love, nothing less, nothing more. God is all about love and that’s why Jesus Christ came. It’s very simple why Jesus came. Jesus came simply to show us that God loves us. That’s why Jesus came. That’s the only knowledge that I can know.

Jesus came to show us that God loves you and God is Love. John 3:16 that you all know, for God so loved the world, for God so loved the world that he sent his only son, Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world. You’re just very clear and then John in the gospel makes it more clear. He says this, God’s Love was revealed among us in this way. God sent his son into the world so that we might live through him. The Gospel Love was revealed Molars and by sending Jesus Christ to Os. First Corinthians chapter 13 is a beautiful chapter about love, but this chapter has to be read in connection with chapter 12. Without chapter 12, 13 doesn’t stand-alone. Chapter 12, Paul talks about the gifts of the spirit, gift of tongue, gift of prophecy and gift of all kinds of gifts that he talks about and he teaches about gifts. But at the end of chapter 12, this is what he said, but strive for the greater gifts and I’ll show you a still more excellent way. That’s how he ends. Chapter Twelve and goes into chapter 13 about love. Strive for the greater gifts and I’ll show you a still more excellent way. I don’t think Paul is saying that love is the greater gift. I don’t think so. Try for more gifts or the beautiful gifts. But what he’s saying is love is the best way, most excellent way to use our gifts. So whatever gift you use, if you use it, that becomes the most excellent. If every gift of teaching, if you do that with love, that gift of teaching becomes the most beautiful gift. If you have a service, then if you do that with love, then that service becomes and that that devotion becomes most beautiful. Devotion in a service doesn’t matter what you’re doing in your life. But if you do that with love, that becomes a most precious thing. You may not work in UN human are working the universities. And you may just do labor work, whatever. It doesn’t matter what you do. If you do that with love, then that becomes the most precious thing. But even if you do the most honorable job in the world, if you don’t do that with love, that becomes nothing.

If I preach to you every Sunday with love, then that becomes the most precious thing to me. And for me, that’s what love does. Love completes what we do. Love makes everything perfect. Paul saw that very clearly when he said this in 39, he says, for we know only in part, we prophesied only in part. That’s the only part, but when the complete comes in other windows, love comes. The partial will come to an end and will become complete. Love makes everything complete. When love touches it, everything becomes complete. When love touches knowledge, the knowledge it becomes complete. When love touches our devotion, our devotion becomes complete. When love touches our faith, our faith becomes complete. When love touches our life, our life becomes complete with our love. You can never experience the completeness of life if we want to experience the completeness of life, we have to learn to love. Jesus was once asked by people, what is the ultimate goal of life? And Jesus said, simply love your God and love your neighbor as yourself. Love does what you just said, the ultimate goal of life. Love your God and love your neighbor as yourself. I realize when there is love, there’s a perfect harmony between God, me and the neighbor. When did it? There is no love. It becomes all disconnected, but when there’s love, there’s a perfect harmony between God, me and neighbor. That’s what she’s a see. Harmony of life comes from love.

Narcissism. I believe that is a critical illness in the modern world. Self-Obsession narcissism is the greatest enemy that we have to fight against in the modern world. I think many, many people suffer from narcissism. Sometimes spiritual narcissism, political narcissism, or any other kind of narcissism, narcissism all around me. I think narcissism is the greatest enemy of the modern world, but narcissism, unfortunately, is not self-love. Narcissism comes from the lack of self-love, lack of love, an emptiness of oneself. If you love yourself so much, then you don’t need to be obsessed with yourself. You can’t forget about yourself. Rather you can let go of yourself when you love yourself so much. Well, cause his narcissism is a lack of love. We feel for ourselves. When true love comes, narcissism will go. When true love comes, we can accept ourselves as we are and we can embrace our neighbors and we can accept Gospel love my friends. Love isn’t a feeling so some somebody said, love is a verb. Love is an action. No love isn’t that action either. Love is simply accepting cost, love. That’s what love is. Love is the orientation to life. There are only two orientations in life. One love the other power. Are we going to live your life with power or are we going to live your life with love? A lot of people know how to live with the power so they accumulate power so they so they can live a good life, so they only know how to live with power, but you better learn to live with love. Then your experienced tremendous empowerment. Courage, Paul Tillich said courage to be. When you learn how to live with love, then there is a courage like Jesus to the cross. He was confident he did not send it to anyone. He was powerful, strong because of love. Thank you. When you learn, learn to live with love. You can live with confidence. You don’t need to suffer from insecurity or inferiority complex. When you live with love, when you learn to live with love, you will experience tremendous power. Love begins. Accepting Gospel love. We are not patient, but we can accept God’s love that is patient and then we’ll learn to be patient. We are envious or boastful and arrogant and rude, but we can accept God’s love in Jesus Christ that is truly humble.

Then we will learn to be not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, and not rude. We have loss of anger within us, but we cannot accept God’s love that is not irritable or resentful and we would learn to be gentle, kind and merciful. Love begins by accepting God’s love and love will change us. Love has the power to change us these days. I’m reading a biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Steve jobs was a born from German, a mother and then Syrian father and as soon as she was born, they cannot raise him. So he was adopted by this family jobs and he had a turbulent life when he was a child. He wasn’t interested in school until his fourth grade when he met a very special teacher. Imagine a Teddy Hill. She saw Steve and then saw him a gift to them with many talents and intelligence and gifts. And then you will waste. She saw him, but he doesn’t do anything. He did not really live his life fully, but he saw potential. She saw potential in him so much he. So he tried to do. She’s tried to do all kinds of things to make him a really living life fully. But you can do that. And then she used to bribe him. I’m sure that beyond a doubt that is not the best way to teach. I know that that’s not the best way to teach. That’s all she could think of. She used a bribe. She gave a set of math questions to Steve Jobs to do it. And when he brings it next week and there are answers, then she would give him a large candy. And then she said, I’ll give you $5. And it’s Steve Jobs. He got the math question very easily. He just finished all the problem set and then give to her. But later he said I did all the homework every week when she gave the math questions. I did all the math questions. Not Because of candy or money, but because I wanted to please her. But that is what teachers love. A troubled kid changed his life. If she weren’t around, I don’t think I would have written my sermon on the computer that he created. Love makes life beautiful. We human beings have to learn to live again now with power, but with love. We have to learn to live with love and then I hope that you do that and then share that insight with each other. The life the world would become a much better place as we learn too. As you live with power, the world becomes ugly, but as we learned to live with love the world, all of a sudden changes becomes a beautiful place to these Valentine Day.

So why don’t you turn around and say Happy Valentine’s? Don’t be shy. Say, Happy Valentine. Can we say once more this time around? I’m sorry, but I love you. Why don’t you turn around and say, I love you. Joy is so serious about telling. I love you too. Jacob Law. Isn’t that supposed to be voluntary? It’s not supposed to be a romantic a day. Actually, people turned it into commercialized. Love is supposed to remember Saint Valentine who was martyred during Roman times an around the fourth century, he sacrificed his life for fellow Christians. So he became the same. Valentine. He sacrificed his life for the people who are, who suffer under Roman power. He learned how to live with love, not with power. He didn’t obey the power of the world. He’ll be to the commandment of love. We thank all those who sacrificed their lives out of their love for people. We thank our parents who sacrificed their lives out of love, out of their love for their children. We thank all of those soldiers who sacrificed their lives out of their love for their country.

Most of all, we think Jesus Christ who sacrificed his life out of his love for humanity, my friends, you’re talented, gifted. Just learn how to live with love. You’ll make all the difference in a life.

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Ephesians 3:14-21

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Scripture Passage

2 Corinthians 9:1-15

Jesus said not to worry about tomorrow, but it is not always easy not to worry. When life gets tough, the first thing we do is a worry. When we look at ourselves, when things don’t go well, the first thing we do is a worry. Last Wednesday we had a Korean speaking ministry session meeting to prepare for the congregation meeting that was held today. It is not easy to take care of the finances of the church like Brian, the chair of Korean speaking ministry, had said. The chair of the finance committee has to worry about the finances of the church at all times, whether we have enough budget, whether we have enough income, things like that they have to continuously worry about. But Brian shared with us a very interesting experience he had with his mother.

He was worried. And then, seeing him worry about finance, his mother talked to him. She said, Lee, never worry about the finances of the church. God will take care of it. Won’t God provide resources? When you try to do good work when you try to do God’s work, won’t God provide resources? Why do you worry? Don’t you worry? God will take care of it. So he said he learned not to worry about finance. Actually, we should not worry about anything in life, period. It is good to have a woman of faith as a mother, isn’t it? We always learn from them and it doesn’t matter how old you are, you always learn something from your parents. The very next day I got a phone call from LA out of nowhere. She never called me [the caller]. But I did a wedding for her {the caller} and she knows about our church. She’s the second generation and she appreciates how valuable the ministry is that we’re doing here at Saint Timothy. And she said she and her husband would like to tithe for our church. She said, “you’re doing a valuable ministry. I too, I want to contribute to that”. She had never called me for several years. I haven’t seen her since. They live in LA and they wanted to do the offering for our church, it will probably be in US dollars.

Good time. I mean more than the money, It wasn’t like God’s teaching was that you don’t worry about finance or you don’t worry about my church. God will take care of our needs and our church. God will guide us using whatever resources are out there. We just have to trust and do whatever needs to be done. I don’t know whether I shared this with you at the ESM prayer retreat, but there’s a church on Spadina and Harbord called Knox Spadina. It is a Presbyterian church and it’s part of our denomination. Actually, the first Korean Presbyterian Church started from that place, the first immigrant church, and that church rented the building and started the Presbyterian church there. That church has a beautiful story. In 1827, a generous person named Jesse Ketchum donated three acres of his land.

There’s a school in downtown called Jesse Ketchum and my son went to that school. Jesse Ketchum did a lot of good things, not only for the church, but for society, for the school, and things like that. So he donated three acres of his land and the church still owns one acre. And do you know which land that is? It is right across Eaton Center Hudson’s Bay place on Queen Street. The rental fee from that land is $3,000,000 just from the rental. And in 2015, three family members pass away. They left a bequest which is $140,000. So even without income from the church members, they have at least 1.5 million dollars as a budget. They do a lot of mission work and a lot of good things. People who love the church left the money for the church as they passed away. St Paul’s mission wasn’t just to go around to preach the gospel. One of the important missions of St Paul was to collect offering funds for the Jerusalem church and he wrote to Second Corinthians in chapter nine to teach them about the offering and let us reflect. Simply have it, to reflect on what he had taught.

This is the first thing that St Paul said: “The one who sows sparingly, will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully”. The first principle is that you give. You give little, you gain little. You give a lot, you gain a lot. It’s not an economic principle that Saint Paul is talking about. That’s what life is like. If you think big, life becomes big. If you think small, your life becomes small. If you only think about you, life will be about you. If you think about others, then life will be for many, many people. If you just live your life benefiting yourself, then you’ll benefit only yourself. But if you live your life benefiting others, then you’ll be able to benefit so many people with your devotion. Like Jesse Ketchum, who powerfully gave. He gave for 200 years. The church had continued because of his generous donation. His school still exists and there are a lot of students and children who had graduated from that school and benefited. So if you think big, life will become big. If you think small, life will become small.

Second one: “each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver”. It doesn’t really matter how much you give. It has to come from a generous heart. Concretely, you give out of your thankful heart. The offering is not the result of financial resources that you have. The offering is a result of your abundant heart. Just because you have more money, it doesn’t mean that you’ll give more. But as you experience God’s grace more, then you’ll be able to give more. The offering is directly correlated to the grace that you experience in your life. Jesus Christ gave all his life and everything that he had for us. As we experience that grace, the love of Jesus Christ, then every single thing that I have belongs to you. My talent, my time, my passion, my financial resources, all of that belongs to you.

Next one is: “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work”. In other words, God will provide what we need for our good work. God will plentifully give. That was what the mother of the finance chairman meant. You don’t worry, God will give. God will take care of the church. So when we do good things, the resources will be there. And the next one is similar: “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. ”

And the last one is: “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity which will produce thanksgiving to God through us”. As we share in the blessings we receive, it will produce thanksgiving in some people. That was what the couple in LA did. Because of their generous donation, we are thankful for them recognizing our ministry, praying for our ministry, and supporting our ministry. We have confirmed again that this ministry is valuable and that we are doing something very valuable. There are a lot of people who live their lives benefiting others and those people will be thankful someday. We just talked about the orphanage in Korea. Yesterday I had a session meeting and Barbara is working really working hard going around interviewing different people and helping out orphans in Korea. Whatever she does will benefit many people. Your life, your donation, your gift will produce Thanksgiving somewhere in some people. Saint Paul understood the beauty of the lifestyle of giving – giving is a lifestyle.

We have to cultivate the lifestyle of giving and that is our philosophy. Whatever we have, we share to benefit others. That is a life philosophy. We don’t live for ourselves. As Jesus lived for us and lived for God, we live for others and we live for God. Generosity begets generosity. Generosity begets abundance and not just material abundance. It means the abundance in life, a life of thanksgiving and a life of gratitude. One very interesting characteristic of people who give is that they’re always thankful. They’re always happy by giving their gifts to others. They become happy and thanksgiving and gratitude become part of their lives. My friends, we are indebted people.

Basically, we are all indebted people. All the joy we enjoy and all the happiness we live with comes from God and comes from other people. You could not have done it on our own. Last Thursday I had dinner with the KSM members and a man had told me, “Reverend, if there were no church, then my immigrant life would have been so difficult. I don’t think I could have survived. How important this community is! We become friends and we have people to talk to. We pray together. We worship together. This is wonderful that we have this kind of church”. There’s an African saying: “because you are, I am”. That’s a wise thing to think “because you are, I am”.

If you aren’t there then I am not here. Because you are, I am. Because God is, I am. We owe all our happiness to God and to others and I’m very thankful to you for your generous donations and gifts and what you do for this community. Because of you, we can all enjoy life’s happiness, laughter, and joy. I thank God for this community, and this community is very unique and very special and that’s what I believe. That’s why I gave my whole youth to this community. I came here when I was 34, so all my thirties, all my forties, all my fifties. That’s my prime time!

I gave all of them to this community because I do believe that this community is unique and special. If I can at least make one decent spiritual community, then I’m very happy. I’m very happy about that. Our children will be able to drink fresh water from the fountain of this special, beautiful, precious community. Generosity is our statement that we cannot have made a life alone. Generosity is the expression of our gratitude to God and to all others, for walking along with us to build a life together. Generosity is our belief and our philosophy that life’s good is to be shared with others. The true blessing is to live a life of giving. That’s a blessing. If you live a life of giving you are a blessed person, the blessing is not to receive. The blessing is to give from the life of giving. Thanksgiving comes from the life of giving. Compassion comes from the life of giving. Joy comes in from the life of giving. Deep satisfaction comes from the life of giving.

We are made not to have our hunger filled by trying to fill it. This is a misunderstanding. You can never fill your hunger by trying to fill it, you’ll become more hungry. The more you try to have, the more hungry you will become, but the more you try to give, you realize that you don’t need much. You realize that you already have it. We already have everything we need. Whatever we have is an extra bonus. Those things, if we have it we are thankful. If we don’t have it, we are fine. We already have everything that we need. Life is made that way. Jesus taught us, you can only fill your hunger by emptying yourself by giving. That’s Jesus’ philosophy. You empty yourself. Then God will fill it. As we get to know God, we realize how much we have received and from that realization, true sharing can come.

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They said last Monday was the blue Monday, it is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. Cliff Arnall, a former lecturer at Cardiff University was commissioned by the UK travel agency in 2005 to find the most depressing day of the year as a way to market winter vacation. So he figured out all the statistics and everything came together. And then he said that the third Monday of January is the most depressing day of the year. I don’t know how accurate that is, but January is not an easy month to get through for many people. Christmas spirit and cheer has worn off and you have likely broken your New Year’s resolutions. By this time, 75 percent of Canadians break their resolutions for that year. Also, it is cold outside and your post-holiday credit card statement has arrived. So considering all of this, the third Monday in January, is the blue Monday. You know sometimes life can be depressing, especially when our needs are not met.

When our stories are ignored and where our emotions are not validated and rejected. Life can be depressing. I can be as good as that person, but people never recognize me. They always recognize that person, but they never recognize me. Always. She’s more popular than I and people listened to her and that people pay attention to her but not me. So whenever you experience these kinds of injustice or unfairness in life, when your stories are not heard, when your emotions are not validated, it can make life depressing. I read an article on Thursday about why Oscar nominations are so biased towards white actors. It was written by Cameron Bailey, you probably know him as the artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival. This was an article written by him and he said, it’s about who’s experiences count, whose stories get told, who’s emotions in the movie theater are validated and are amplified by awards and who’s are rejected or ignored. Right now there is controversy in the academy awards, which resulted in Will Smith saying that he was not going to attend a protest against the academy. Spike Lee and Michael Moore did not want to attend. because the last two years straight there was no nomination for the black actors, not a single one. There was one British woman actress actually said maybe black people are not good actors. And Michael Caine “They got to be patient”, patient for what? Anyway, we can see how black people are treated in the United States very well. When you read the book “Between the World and Me Written” by Coates, Ta Nehisi, the columnists at the Atlantic. It’s a good book. Read it. I highly recommend that you read it. It was just told as it is.

Sometimes we are insulated in our own culture, in our own small surroundings. We don’t know what’s going on out there in the world. The kind of things that black people experienced in the United States. In the book, he said, just because you have a black body and only for that reason, your life gets ignored, threatened and treated like a criminal. When we finished this passage at TBS (Thursday Bible Study), just two weeks later, a famous black tennis player, was standing in front of an expensive, luxurious hotel in Manhattan and all of a sudden police came and they pinned him down on the street and arrested him for no reason. So when you have a black body, you’re guarded, your thinking “what’s going” on all the time. So when you receive that kind of unfair treatment, and injustice in your life, even if you receive only one unjust action in your life, you will guard yourself. Sometimes it can be depressing. Life can be depressing. When this happens we shrink, we become small. We get angry. Why are these things happening to me? When you receive that kind of unfair treatment anger rises up within you. But soon I realized that the anger does not remain as anger. If anger remains as anger. It will be energy or power, but the anger does not remain as anger. Anger turns into helplessness and powerlessness. Immediately you feel angry, but soon that anger turns into helplessness and powerlessness.

That was what the Israelites experienced at the time of Ezekial. They were invaded by superpowers around them. I’m sure many small countries in the world experienced that the by the superpower country, the United States. Especially with this oil crisis and all that, a lot of small countries will be affected by that. Israel at that time was invaded continuously and threatened continuously by the superpower countries around them. You know, when I was in seminary, I was seriously thinking about studying Jews and Koreans because they share a similar history and similar experiences. Korea was also very much invaded and threatened continuously in their history, thousands of years by the superpower countries around them. And they were once also invaded and then colonized by them. And the Israelites experienced getting colonized as well. They lost their land, their identity, their home and their families. They were completely cut off from their hope. They said “We have no hope. We have no temple. We have no nation. We have no identity. I lost my family, my sisters and my wive’s were raped. We have nothing to look forward”. That’s how they felt. At first, they felt angry, but soon that that anger turned into helplessness, hopelessness, and powerlessness. Ezekiel saw that powerlessness and helplessness in this way. This is what he said. “The hand of the Lord came upon me and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley. It was full of bowls”.

Ezekiel was a prophet and he also experienced this kind of injustice, powerlessness, and helplessness. Somehow in a vision, he saw dry bones in the valley. It was like the spiritual condition, mental condition or national condition of the Israelites at the time. The dry bones in the valley, but Ezekial proclaimed this: “Yes, I see dry bones in the valley, but God did not leave them there alone in the valley. God did not ignore them. God did not ignore the injustice God did not ignore people who are oppressed by the power of this world”. That’s why God sent Jesus Christ to us. When we suffer from our own sins and misery, and then the difficulties and the way we are suffering in the valley, God did not leave us alone. God sent Jesus Christ. Jesus came down into the valley and then lifted us up. And that’s what Ezekial proclaimed God is not going to leave them alone there. God saw the helplessness and powerlessness of his people and God chose Ezekial and told him “Go and restore the spirit”. That is our God. Whenever you are helplessness, powerlessness, and hopelessness, God will lift you up. Restore Your spirit. God told Ezekial to go and restore the spirit of my people, and Ezekial said “How? How do I do that? How do I restore the spirit of the people”. And God said “Speak to them. Speak to them. Speak the word to them. Prophesy.”

“Does that make any difference? They are dead and dry bones. Speaking to them. They don’t even listen to me. They can’t even listen to me. Speak to them?” (Ezekial talking). “Yes. You speak to them” (God responding). And Ezekiel, spoke prophesy to them and this is what happened when he did this. The breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet a fast multitude. When I wrote that tears flowed from my eyes. I wrote this on Thursday at 5:00 in the morning. As soon as I wrote the tears flowed from my eyes. Dry bones, dead bones stood up. They overcame their helplessness and hopelessness. They stood on their feet, got opened their dark graves and brought them up from their graves. Yes, life can be gloomy. Life can be difficult. At times we feel that life is not fair. We become weak and small. We shrink and we feel a tremendous loss, and experience hopelessness. I’m not going to sit there. I’m not going to live like defeated soldiers. I’ll protest that. I’ll never do that. I hope that you never do that either. We need to stand on our feet. We are not alone. God is with us. God speaks to us. We have God’s word with us. They’re the people who live by the word. You are Ezekiel prophesying to each other. We need to prophesy to each other. We need to bring each other out from our graves. We should be Ezekiel to each other. Let us not put others down. Who are you to do that? Let us not kill each other’s spirit with our poisonous attitude.

Our circumstances can be gloomy, but we have each other and we have God and we have this community. Prophesying, that’s what we do. We breathe life into each other. Prophecies are not about fortune telling about the future. Prophecy is speaking breath into each other. Simple words of encouragement. We speak to each other. That’s what prophecy is. Whenever we gather together, we need to prophesy to each other. At the prayer retreat, I realized how powerful words can be. Words have power. We share our words of encouragement with each other. Every Friday we gather together. We prophesy to each other. During TBS we prophesied to each other. Every Wednesday, women gathered together. We prophesy to each other. We strengthen each other. We empower each other. I realized that the words have the power. If you don’t have the words, you cannot resist. You cannot protest against your own powerlessness and helplessness. The world is full of injustice. How can you reconcile that? How can you reconcile and live on? If you have the word, then you’ll have the power to protest against that. That’s why the scripture says gather together as often as possible, so if you have every opportunity to learn the word, come. Only on Sunday, it’s just a ritual. You got to learn about the word. You got to speak the word to each other.

Let us be a prophet to each other and we’ll stand together on our feet and will fight against injustice that is going on around us.

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