I was in St. Paul, Minnesota, over the weekend to conduct an anti-racism/anti-discrimination workshop for members of the shared ministry teams at Holy Apostles Episcopal Church, which is a bicultural, bilingual mission with a large contingent of Hmong immigrant congregants. For the workshop, we focused on the Episcopal Church's teachings on race, racism, and racial justice as well as an in-depth exploration of culture--what it is and how it impacts people, discrimination and stereotypes, and ways in which we can all improve the ways in which we show our love and respect for our fellow human beings. I was invited to preach on Sunday, and below is my sermon. The Gospel for Sunday was Mark 3:20-35:
The crowd came
together again, so that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat. When his
family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying,
"He has gone out of his mind." And the scribes who came down from
Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts
out demons." And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables,
"How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house
will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is
divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong
man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man;
then indeed the house can be plundered.
"Truly I tell you, people will
be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever
blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of
an eternal sin" -- for they had said, "He has an unclean
spirit."
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside,
they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said
to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for
you." And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" And
looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my
brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and
mother."
* * * * * * * * * *
Good
morning. In Cantonese—“Jo sun.” In
Hawaiian—“Aloha.” And in French—“Bon matin.” I am very pleased to be with
you this morning to share the word of God with you and what it has to say to us
today. Thank you to the Beloved Community at Holy Apostles for inviting me to
be here this weekend to conduct the Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression workshop on
Friday night and Saturday and to be your preacher this morning.
I
have learned from my Native American sisters and brothers to take the time to
introduce myself and where I come from—my family—when I first stand up to speak
to a group. It is a lovely way of being present with a new group of people—to
honor your own family by sharing stories about them and to honor the people you
are with by opening yourself to them, letting them see into your heart, so that
they know you trust them and that they can trust you.
My
Chinese name is Lee Cheuck Guin, and my American name is Lelanda Lee. I am the
eldest child of a Chinese father who was born in the United States of parents
from China and a Chinese mother who was born and raised in China and married my
father in an arranged marriage when my father, his older brother, and their
mother, my grandmother, went back to China to find wives for the two brothers.
My American name is Lelanda, because being Chinese, my family was planning on a
first born son, who would be named Leland after my father’s father who was
named Lee Lund in Chinese. When I, a first born daughter, came along, my clever
father added an “a” to the end of Leland and named me Lelanda.
I
will tell you the story of my family, as I share with you some thoughts about
the nature of being family from the words of this Sunday’s Gospel lesson, which
said:
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing
outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and
they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside,
asking for you." And he replied, "Who are my mother and my
brothers?" And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here
are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and
sister and mother."
In
this Gospel passage, Jesus gave us a new definition of family. He said that
those people—women and men—who sat around him to listen to him teach, were his
brother and sister and mother. They were doing the will of God, listening to
Jesus, the rabbi, the spiritual teacher, and Jesus affirmed—Jesus said, “Yes,
this is my family”—that whoever does the will of God is his brother and sister
and mother—his family.
You
will recall the story of the two sisters, Mary and Martha. When Martha invited
Jesus into their home, it was Mary who sat at Jesus’ feet to listen to him
teach. Martha became upset that Mary was not helping her with the work of
providing hospitality and asked Jesus why he didn’t care that Mary was not
helping her. And in the Gospel of Luke, it was recorded:
But the Lord answered her, “Martha,
Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only
one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from
her.”
The
story of Mary and Martha is another instance in which Jesus emphasizes the
importance of listening to the teachings of God—to the will of God—and then,
following through by doing the will of God. Jesus said very clearly that Mary had
chosen the better part by sitting at Jesus’ feet to listen to what he had to
say.
Now,
do you remember what Jesus said about Mary, his own mother, and the nature of
family when he was dying upon the cross? In John’s Gospel, it is recorded:
When Jesus saw his mother and the
disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here
is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from
that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Jesus
named the family relationship for his mother and the disciple whom he loved by
saying, “here is your son,” and “here is your mother.” It was not a
family relationship based on blood, but a family relationship based on love.
The disciple loved Jesus, and when commanded by Jesus to take Jesus’ mother to
be his own mother, out of love for Jesus, he obeyed. In a way, you could think
of this story as Jesus commanding that an adoption take place—that the beloved
disciple should adopt Jesus’ mother, Mary, and treat her like his own mother.
The
same can be said about the family relationships that Jesus described in today’s
Gospel. Those who sat around him, listening to him teach, were not blood
relations, but they were people who loved Jesus and who followed the will of
God and also loved each other. Those were the people whom Jesus chose to be his family.
Think
about that for a moment: choosing who
will be your family.
In
the most significant way, each of us in this church today has already done
that—chosen who will be our family—by choosing to be baptized into the Body of
Christ. As members of the Body of Christ, we are sisters and brothers to one
another. The more we love Jesus, the more we must love our brothers and sisters
and our neighbors as ourselves.
Now,
my Chinese family in the U.S.A. was an immigrant family that spoke Cantonese at
home and in the Chinatown communities that we lived in, first in New York City
and then in Detroit, Michigan. My father worked in Chinese restaurants, first
as a waiter and later as a cook, and finally, as a manager, and my mother
worked in Chinese hand laundries and later in Chinese restaurants, also. As
teenagers, my brothers and I also worked in those same Chinese restaurants and
Chinese hand laundries. We had a large, extended family on both my father’s
side, where his parents had seven children who lived, and my mother’s side,
where her parents had eight children that survived. So, yes, my family had many
blood relations.
But
in the U.S.A., my parents and we children also had an even larger family that
was not based on blood, but based on relationships of mutual need and mutual
assistance. The Chinese immigrant communities in the Chinatowns and Chinese
restaurants and hand laundries that my parents worked in were places where we
needed to help each other figure out how to live in the United States, how to
make a living to take care of our families, how to sponsor other family members
still in Asia to come to the United States, and how to get things done where we
didn’t know the English language, and where in the middle of the 20th century
many White and even Black Americans looked at Asian immigrants as being
foreigners invading their land and taking away their opportunities through our
humble hard work.
My
father was the Chinese-American man who spoke both Cantonese and English. Even
without ever using the word “volunteer,” my father was the person who would go
with non-English speaking Chinese immigrants to the hospital or to the
immigration office to translate for them. My father was the one who would fill
out immigration paperwork and income tax forms for those non-English speaking
Chinese people. My parents treated those other members of the Chinese immigrant
community like family, and they became
family to us. We children grew up knowing the Chinese adults in those Chinatown
communities as aunties and uncles and their children as brothers and sisters.
Jesus
said that we must love our neighbors as he loves us, and that is exactly what
Chinese people like my parents did, including those Chinese people who had not
heard of Jesus and were not baptized Christians. Doing God’s will does not
require being a baptized Christian, because God’s great love and grace is given
to all human beings—even those who haven’t heard of Jesus and the stories of
God’s people. God’s power of love is mysterious and generous. God’s love
touches all people, if we let it, if we don’t get in the way. And God’s love gets multiplied so that
more people know God’s love, if we, God’s people, the followers of Jesus,
follow Jesus’ example to love other people, especially people who are different
from us.
Now
skip down to my generation and how I have learned to think about family. I was
baptized at age five and confirmed at age 12 in a very conservative Lutheran
church—the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. From the teachings of the church on
the ten commandments, the catechism, and the teachings of Jesus and his
parables, and the examples of my Chinese immigrant parents, I learned to
volunteer in the community at an early age. At age 12 I could get a work permit
to do volunteer work, where I started in the offices of Catholic Social
Services.
I
was also a teenager in the 1960s during the civil rights movement and learned
about the justice of treating every person, regardless of her or his skin
color, as a fellow human being and a fellow member of the Body of Christ. For
me, family became much larger than just the people in my blood family. Family
also included all the people who had helped my family and who had been helped
by my parents.
My
husband and I lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, for 15 years from 1975 to 1990. In
Hawaii, there are many descendents of Native Hawaiians who lived and taught a
philosophy of loving our neighbors and expanding our families to include people
who are not blood relations. The Hawaiians call the extended family the “ohana,” and they call the family of
choice—the family of people who are not blood relations that we choose to love
as family—their “hana’i” family. That
philosophy of a “hana’i” family of
choice has stuck with me all of these years, because it reflects the family
that Jesus talked about in today’s Gospel.
Jesus
said, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking
at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."
Sometimes it is easier to
figure out what doing the will of God means than we think. We humans often want
to make simple things complicated and difficult, because we think it will show
the world how smart we are, or because we think that surely our God who is so
all knowing and all powerful must be a God who teaches very complicated and
difficult lessons. Yet, the opposite is true. Jesus always taught in the most
direct words about some things that we humans find difficult to do, like giving
up whatever wealth we have, even if we don’t have very much, and sharing what
we do have with others who have even less; like changing our behavior so that
we honor not just our own mother and father, but that we also honor all mothers
and fathers.
In
the Gospel of John, Jesus said:
I give you a new commandment, that
you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one
another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love
for one another.’
What a
beautiful lesson our Lord Jesus has taught us in today’s Gospel—that we look
around us, see the people who are following Jesus and doing God’s will, and
that we not only think of them as our family, but that we love them, honor
them, and treat them like they are truly our family in the Body of Christ. In
the mind of our Lord, family is all about love and loving each other even when
we are not related by blood.
And
so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, I share with you—look around you and see
who needs your love, who needs your kindness, who needs a family to love
them—and make the choice to be family to them. That is the will of God. Amen.
