Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 17th August 2008 by Rev. Kwok Nai Wang. The scripture readings that day were Psalms 146 and Romans 6:15-23.


The Church is God’s chosen servant. So members of any church, that means all of you, individually and corporately are God’s servants on earth. The only purpose why we gather together is to serve God and God’s creation. It begins with worship. Worship links God and His entire creation, inclusive of all human beings. That is why worship in the sanctuary and continuing service in the world cannot be separated. That explains also why worship always ends with a commission. A commission is a dismissal. Dismissal is the end of worship in the sanctuary, but is the beginning of our service outside the sanctuary. The Roman Catholic Church labels a regular worship or a divine liturgy as a mass or missal which alluded to the act of dismissal or sending forth.

A Worship must have a liturgy. The word liturgy comes from the Greek word litourgia which is composed of two words, laos or people and ergon or work. So worship is the work of God’s people. It pertains to God’s people participating in God’s work in the living world.

KUC calls our Sunday morning activity together as Worship; but to many other churches, they would like to use the term Service. Their emphasis is on the Service of God. But as we have discussed before, God and God’s creation are inseparable; so the Service to God, the Creator, and the service to God’s creation must go hand in hand. As God always responds to the cries of human beings and by extension the natural world: as He did with Hagar and her son Ishmael (c.f. Gen 18) and the Israelites in Egypt (c.f. Ex 3). Likewise, today God has chosen us at KUC to serve Him by responding to the cries of people in Hong Kong and beyond.

People from all over the world are struck constantly by natural disasters as well as oppression, exploitation and discrimination partially due to human greed and largely due to poor governance. We all want to control and to lord over people for our own interests rather than to serve the needs of the less fortunate.

When I was growing up, Hong Kong was ruled by the British colonizers at their zenith. I noticed especially the official letters were always signed by “your obedient servant so and so”. Colonial officers no matter how high their positions considered the fact that they were the public servants. Now, no more. The arrogance of the senior ministers, though paid handsomely from the public purse no longer consider themselves as servants to the general public. They have forgotten that their major duty is to protect and enhance the welfare of the wider community, and not just the rich and the powerful.

Our Christian faith has a great deal to offer about this point. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was a servant to all humankind. During his brief earthly ministry of about three years, He served the people in need: He healed the sick; cast out demons; fed the hungry; taught and preached the good news to those poor in spirit. He taught his disciples, “whoever wants to be first must place himself last of all and be the servant of all” (Mk 9:35; repeated in Mk 10: 44). This was what Jesus said about himself: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served; he came to serve and to give his life to redeem many people.” (Mk 10:45).

Indeed Jesus set the example of humble service by washing his disciples’ feet (Jn 13) and served God even unto his tragic death on the cross. Apostle Paul called Jesus’ sevanthood style as Kenosis or the total giving or emptying of himself. (c.f. Phil. 2:6ff)

Finally, diakonia or Christian Service is not so much about what you do; but rather how you be. Like Jesus, it is your life style which can transform your own life and the lives of other people. As God’s servant, we must first of all learn to become like Jesus – Jesus’ servanthood lifestyle: his sacrificial love and the emptying of his life.

To learn to become Jesus, as all Christians must do: it is easier said than done. How many of us would work hard to serve but not for self-gain; i.e. to serve for the furthermost of our status, fame and influence? How many of us are willing to be “nobody” so that the lives of the less fortunate will become more livable and meaningful? or that they would become “somebody”?

In order to be true to God’s calling to be His servant or servants in the world, KUC or concretely we must learn to become a Serving Community.

First of all, I have been quite impressed about the spirit of sharing and the spirit of willingness to serve others of this church. Though a very small congregation with about 50 active members only, KUC has done a great deal over the past decades in its various pioneering ministries. Lately, it is its accommodating ministries. KUC is blessed with ample space, other than this sanctuary building, there are a two-storeyed fellowship building and the two storeyed manse. We use all this space well by housing either temporary or permanently half-a-dozen social service organizations. We are never shy of sharing our limited financial as well as human resources to people in need, both locally and overseas. Our MOF has done a tremendous job.

Now we must take an extra step. All acts of charity are vital, but they are never adequate. For however well-intentioned and precisely executed, they are only stop-gap measures at best. Churches all over the world are often labeled as first-aid stations. They treat the symptoms only but seldom the root problem. Just as a mediocre physician, he would give all kinds of antacid pills to his patients suffering from peptic ulcer; rather than make great efforts to dig into the problem of the patient, that is to find out what really is bothering the patient. What are the causes of his stomach or duodenum ulcer?

I remember very vividly some three decades ago, I was involved in a social work agency. One type of social work it did was youth work. My colleagues and I believed youth work should be more than providing young people with recreational activities. It must be developmental, aiming to develop young people’s intellectual, social and psychological potentials or capabilities. In other words, the primary goal of youth work is to develop young people into whole persons. The philosophy behind: it is important to give fish to the poor who are in need of fish. But it is far more important if they can be taught the skills of fishing as well. Modern days theory goes even one step further. Those who are concerned must also make sure that there are fishes in the river or at sea. That’s why protection of the environment and good governance are also very crucial in solving the poverty problem.

We must constantly be concerned about wider and deeper issues if we are dedicated to make this world a better place for people to live in. Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador in the 1970s once made a comment about his experiences of advocating for the basic rights of the poor and the powerless in his own country: If I gave rice to the poor, they called me a saint; when I asked the question why so many people did not have enough rice to eat, they labeled me a communist”. Archbishop Romero was assassinated by the military regime in 1981.

It is never easy to probe into the problem behind the problems. It is because when you do that, you are rocking the boat and the rich and the powerful who want to keep the Status Quo (or keep the things as they are which are to their benefit) are not going to like it.

One of the most serious problems in Hong Kong and indeed throughout the world is the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. The rich and the powerful always have the upper hand to use the power and influence to get what they want.

Years ago, the President and the CEO of Coca Cola had a private audience with the Pope. The Pope was ailing and was very soft spoken. All his aides saw was when the Coca Cola President said $1 billion, the Pope shook his head; when he was offered $2 billion, he still shook his head; finally $4 billion, it met with the same negative gesture.

After the Coca Cola President departed, the Pope’s aides asked why he should refuse such generous donation. The Pope embarrassingly answered: You know what was the condition for the $4 billion donation; he asked us to instruct our faithful to say “Coca Cola” instead of “Amen” at the end of their prayers!

This is the awesome power of the big corporations in the whole social process. Globalization means an easier way for them to expand or even to lord over in the whole world.

What can we do? Superficially, “nothing”. But please as responsible Christians, we should never take “doing nothing” as an answer. However difficult the situation, there is always something we can do. At least we can and we must keep vigilant on what is going on in the world and especially around us.

This is what Jesus taught his disciples in the parable of the ten wedding attendants (or literally ten virgins) in Mt 25:1-13. The moral of this parable is that we must stay awake to wait for the coming of our Lord. It can be interpreted that we must be on guard of the worldly powers for they would invariably make decisions only befitting to their interests and ambitions.

For example in 1999, the Hong Kong government requested the standing committee of the National People’s Congress to overturn HK’s Court of Final appeal (CFA) decision regarding the right of abode for mainlanders. In order to get the support of the citizens in Hong Kong, the government claimed that if it followed CFA’s decision more than 1.6 million people from the mainland would come and live in Hong Kong and together they would drain HK’s financial resources in the region of HK$ 2 billion.

Many concerned people including churches and Christians in Hong Kong at the time were sleeping and not watching, so the Beijing and HK Governments got what they wanted.

We must be vigilant and dare to speak up. Our voice no matter how weak sometimes can change the course of history.

In 1986, a group of concerned people in Hong Kong gathered together at the Furama Hotel and talked about the future of Hong Kong. A Proposal known as the 190 proposal came out at the meeting. It called for gradual introduction of direct election in HK’s legislature. It was followed by a rally in Ko Shan Theatre in November that year. This triggered off the Quest for Democracy in Hong Kong. There was no direct election in 1988 as demanded. But direct election was introduced in 1991. 18 of the 60 seats in the legislative council were returned by universal franchise.

To speak up means to expose the fallacies of the decision makers; or it means to fight for the welfare of the masses.


Oftentimes, the Church fails to speak up because they have no stand. I have been told by church leader after church leader in the past five decades that the Church should never take side. This is to avoid conflict and schism within the Church. But let us reflect deeply on Jesus’ teaching about the final judgment as recorded in Matthew 25:31-46.

In his teaching, Jesus fully identified with the have-nots: the hungry, the thirsty, the people who have no clothes, the strangers, the sick, the prisoners, etc. Jesus told his disciples that if we serve one of the least of these brothers and sisters, we are serving Jesus himself.

Apostle Paul in the New Testament lesson this morning described the fact that Christ has set us free from sin, that is, from our worldly values and personal ambitions so as to become Christians or followers of Christ i.e. to become slaves of righteousness. As slaves of righteousness, we must not be afraid to stand alongside the weak and the young, the oppressed, the exploited, the marginalized. This is Jesus’ demand on KUC, as God’s serving community on earth to-day. Let us all rise to the occasion and answer Jesus’ call! Amen.