A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 22 October 2017, Asia Sunday, by Rev. Po Kam-cheong. The scripture readings
that day were Jn. 8:12, 14:6.
1.Introduction
Brothers
and sisters in Christ, peace be with you. Today is Asia Sunday.
It is suggested by CCA, an ecumenical organization with more than 100 members
from more than 20 countries. KUC has an indirect relationship with CCA, because
HKCC is a member of CCA. This year is a special year for CCA. It is her Diamond
Jubilee. Last week, I was in Yangon to celebrate the CCA Diamond Jubilee with
more than 1000 people from all over the world. We came together for an Asia
Mission Conference to reflect on the mission works of Asian churches also. The
theme we have today, “Journeying Together: Prophetic Witness to the Truth and
Light in Asia” is also the theme of the Asia Mission Conference. We read two
verses from the Gospel of John: 8:12 and 14:6.
They are the words of Jesus Christ. The theme has several key words, “Light”,
“Truth”, “Prophetic Witness”, and “Journeying Together”.
2. Light
Jn.
8:12 says, “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’”
Light and darkness are the most common experience of human beings and every
form of life. One of the earliest experiences of a new born baby is light also.
The first thing God created was light. In Gen.1:2-3: “The earth was a formless
void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept
over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was
light.”
Nearly
all religions use light to symbolize God, the life in God and the final
destination of humankind. Light means life, and darkness means lifeless or
death.
Jesus is the light of the world. He radiates the
light of God and shows us what is the abundant, authentic life. Although people
with power tried to kill him, those who were in darkness rejected him, he
was still himself and could be himself. He used all his energy to love and to
serve those who were oppressed, poor and marginalized. He is the light of the
world.
Those
who follow him will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
They will become light and shine in darkness, changing the environment they are
in. Just as Jesus said in Mt. 5:14-16, “You are the light of the world. A city
built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the
bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In
the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” There’s no need to make
the light shine, because light will shine by itself. The only thing one needs
to do is to put it on a lampstand so it will provide the light for the whole
house. Light should be in a dark place, otherwise there’s no need for light. To
be a follower of Christ and light to others, one does not have to do a lot of
things, but to share the light from Christ and be yourself with the image of
God in you.
We found those Christians around us
that shone their light through darkness. I met one in the Asia Mission
Conference who impressed all the participants. She is Sister Sudha Varghese. Her
voice has become the collective voice of an entire community’s women force. She
has emancipated a whole community of girls and women in the Musahar community
in India, facing the worst forms of sexual exploitation and oppression.
The
Musahars, who subsist on rats, are the most downtrodden among India’s
downtrodden or Dalits - and they would have remained so if it had not been for
the efforts of Sister Sudha who made it her lifelong mission to uplift them. The
Musahar people are landless agricultural labourers who were never paid
adequately for their work; their other occupations include cleaning toilets or
brewing liquor for the dominant caste. Their women and children worked in the
upper caste homes and were often sexually exploited. Schools were out of bounds
for them; the ones who dared to go dropped out owing to the discrimination they
faced from upper caste classmates and teachers.
Child
marriage was common. Girls were married off at age 10 and had 3 to 4 children
by 20 and barely old enough to look after one child. And that was the first
issue that Sister Sudha had to face when she wanted to start a school for
girls: the mothers said that at 10 the girls got married, not started school. Sister Sudha started with 20 girls at
first. They not only learned from books but learned to draw, color, and sew. Then
they went on to mainstream government schools after Class 6. Tuition classes
were arranged to help them pass Class 10 Board examinations.
After
the two boarding schools for girls, she started “Joyful Learning Centres” for
small children. The elderly received clothes and health care. Her next focus
was the Musahar boys who spent their time drinking and gambling. She found that
they were interested in cricket and got them bat, ball and cricket gear. Soon
they became winner of tournaments with other teams.
She
helped those women to file a case at the police station for rape by the upper
caste men. She taught them to protect themselves and recognized their dignity. She
lived in a mud house in the midst of the Musahars and received death threats
because of her work. She learned not to show fear. She said, “I have lived a
thousand lives and died a thousand deaths. If you kill me, there will be
hundreds to take my place.” From a young girl who wanted to dedicate her life
in service of the poor, Sister Sudha has become the colossal figure of love and
hope for India’s marginalized people.
In
the Asian context, there’s a lot of suffering. We hear the groaning of creation.
We see the massive destruction of the environment and the fatal endangering of
all life on earth. Global warming and climate change affects all forms of life.
People on the move are increasing in large numbers today in different
categories: war refugees, climate refugees, migrant workers, internally
displaced persons due to conflicts and violence, victims of religious and
ethnic persecutions and the prey of human trafficking. There are those who are
excluded and marginalized, like the dalits in India. Another kind of suffering
is caused by the intensification of poverty and inequality in unjust systems of
societies. Asia is also under the threat of war due to the competition among
nations, like North Korea. Darkness is around us, we need more light to shine
in Asia to expel darkness.
3. Truth
Jn.
14:6 reads, “Jesus said to him (Thomas), ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the
life.’” Jesus was a man of integrity. He always spoke the truth, even at the
risk of endangering his own life. Those people in power hated him but the poor
people liked him very much. He taught his disciples to be people of truth. In
Mt. 5:37 he spoke about oath taking: “Let your
words be ‘Yes, Yes’ and ‘No, No’; anything more than that this comes from the
evil one.” Following Jesus way is to live a life of truthfulness and that will
lead to an abundant life.
Vaclav
Havel was the former president of the Czech Republic, a famous playwright, poet
and political dissident. In one of his books “The Power of the Powerless,” he
told a story: A shopkeeper hung up a banner on the window of his shop: “The
working class of the whole world unites!” Havel asks, “Why does the shopkeeper
have to do this? Does he really care about the working class in the whole
world? Does he really think of how to unite the working class?” No. He did so
for many years because everybody had done the same. He did so to protect
himself from fault finding by those in power and was ready to say a lie. We
build up a society of mistrust and falsehood if we are going to lie in public
life to protect our own safety. Then, an empire of falsehood and darkness will
rule over us.
If
you visit Mainland China, you will experience a very different kind of social
and political system from HK. You cannot Google, WhatsApp, send or receive
email, access to a lot of websites. Of course, you cannot bring in Apple Daily, Mingpao or any books that
criticize the Mainland government. There is censorship. Everything is under
control. From childhood, children will be taught to love the country and hate
the enemy. People will conscious about the lines that they should not cross
over, a lot of them don’t need to be spelled out clearly.
In
the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and even before and after that,
people will read the news the other way round. When the news said, “The whole
country is in solidarity,” it meant that something happened and there’s a crisis
within the party. When a banner was hung up on the wall of a community with
words like, “We strictly follow the one child policy,” it meant that a lot of
people had breached the restriction. People believed in rumors but not the
reports in the media. The foundation of this kind of society is shaky because
it is not based on truth.
In
HK, we enjoy the freedom of speech, assembly and the rule of law, etc. When we
watch the news on the TV or read them in the newspaper, we usually will trust
the media and believe that the news is true. There’s no political censorship. We
try to build up a society that based on truth. However, as the ‘one country’
becomes stronger and is trying to swallow up the ‘HK system’, the atmosphere
changes. HK is more polarized now and it is not easy to know what is true and
what is false. People from different political stands have their own stories
and points of view and are not going to listen to others. We are in a “post-truth”
society. No one cares about the truth but only his/her own point of view.
Emotions drive. This will not benefit HK but ruin it. We need truth in this
kind of situation more than ever before. Let’s speak in truth with love to our
society. As Paul said in Eph. 4:15, “Speak the
truth in love.”
4. Prophetic Witness
Now
we come to “Prophetic Witness.” Prophets are those people who speak truth to
those in power and the society, warning people against evil, idolatry or
destruction and ask them to turn away from their wrongdoings, follow the laws
of God and to do justice in the society. They were social critics in the Old Testament
times, and we found similar kind of persons in the history of China.
Prophets like Isaiah, Hosea and Amos
all spoke on judgment and hope to the Israelites, pleading for social justice
and transformation of inequalities in the society.
They are heroes because they had to face the
danger of their own lives. They responded to the call of God, took up their
responsibility and spoke the truth. Their words were recorded in the Bible and
in history. Those prophets will be remembered and their influence lasts longer
than those kings and emperors of their time.
Many
churches in Asia often have a prophetic voice in their situations. For example,
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, after winning the election,
said that he would concentrate his time and energy on internal issues. But, for
certain, the U.S. could not escape from international affairs. Since the new
leader in North Korea is continuously strengthening their military power and
has conducted nuclear tests, the U.S. had to react and the tension between
these two countries has heightened. They threatened each other that they will
destroy their enemy. South Korea is the nearest country to North Korea and they
are afraid of war but their only choice is to follow the stand of the U.S. In
this situation, the South Korean Church voiced out for peace and continuously
tried to develop relationships with the North Korean Church, although it is
against the law of South Korea. They urged the governments on both sides to use
all their efforts to solve disputes. To be a peacemaker and to have a prophetic
voice is not an easy job in difficult times. In polarized situations, those who
advocate for peace often will be seen as weak and even treasonous. The church
in those situations needs to have faith and courage.
I
serve in the Hong Kong Christian Council. One of our important tasks is to
voice out on important social issues, either in response to government
consultations or actively express our views on social policies. The Church is
not the government, we don’t need to endorse what the government had done. The
Church is not a political party, we don’t have to gain the votes from the
citizens. The Church cares for the people because this is a concern originating
from our faith. The work of the Council to speak out on social issues is like a
fire alarm, to alert the society to take suitable actions. Of course, there may
be false alarms and we were all frightened. But if we dismantle the alarm
system because it’s too noisy, when there’s a fire, we will not escape. This is
also a prophetic voice.
5. Journeying Together
Whom
should we join hands with on the way to justice and peace for the realization
of the kingdom of God? Christians only? How about people with goodwill? How
about those who also fight for justice? How about those from other faiths?
Rev.
Dr. Wesley Ariarajah, an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Sri
Lanka, former WCC Director of Inter faith Dialogue for 16 years, said to us at
the Asia Mission Conference last week: Asian churches inherited the mission
theology from the missionaries who came with colonialism and military power,
using a lot of resources to ‘conquer’ and ‘occupy’ the souls in Asia, preaching
a gospel of the only way and only truth. In their eyes, all other religions are
idolatrous. This kind of mission theology refuses to accept other faiths and
neglects the value of the existence of other faiths. It seriously hampered the
relationship between the Christian faith and other faiths. Dr. Ariarajah argued
that this kind of mission theology needs to go through a process of
decolonization. Christian churches in Asia should respect other faiths as the
search for the mystery and meaning of human existence. In many Asian countries,
Christians are in a minority. We should not have a mentality to become the
majority of the society through mission work. Otherwise, it will create
religious tension and social instability. We can and should journey together
with people of other faiths for the realization of the kingdom of God. Buddhism
spread all over Asia peacefully and did not endanger the existence of other
faiths. It became an indigenous faith of many Asian countries although it was
foreign in her origin. Christianity should learn from them.
Jesus said, “Those who are not
against me are with me.”
6. Conclusion
We
are on a journey to the kingdom of God. Christians from different denominations
and traditions should go hand in hand to seek justice and peace in our own
society and in the world. We should follow the footsteps of the prophets and
Jesus to witness to the truth and become shining lights in our context. We also
could join hands with people of goodwill and other faiths, to stand with those
who are poor, deprived and marginalized and seek for a better society.
May
God bless us with His strength and joy, use us as an instrument of peace, so
that the world will know that you are God of all. Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, October 22, 2017
