Christmas Meditation (December 16, 2007)
Christmas Meditation December 16, 2007
Meditation 1
BI: No outsiders to God
Vancouver has become more multi-cultural than Los Angeles or New York City.
According to the recently released census data—4 in 10 people in here Vancouver were born in another country.
Like almost half of you here, I too was born in another country…
So—was my wife and so was the dog… (in case you were wondering the dog was born in Mexico).
I was born in Tokyo, Japan. When I was two our family moved to New York City (briefly), then to London, England for 5 years (where I developed a British accent—my mother tells me one phrase I tended to overuse as a cheeky seven year old was not necessarily), then we moved here to Greater Vancouver. After high school I moved to Chicago. Then back to Tokyo, then to Boston, then to LA and then back to Vancouver.
Being an immigrant is an adventure, but you also feel a bit like an outsider…
As a teenager in Surrey… I remember my white football teammate and best friend, John McQuarrie trying to feel less self-conscious by reassuring me… “Ken, I see you as a white guy… that just reminded me of how different I was in what was then a white neighborhood… I would have felt better if John would have said… I think of you as black…. kind of like Jerry Rice the star wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers… (check dates), but I was dropping way too many of his passes in practice to draw any such comparisons…
When I got my first job out of undergrad in Tokyo, Japan… I thought--finally, I’ll fit in like everyone… No one will know I’m different… I look Japanese…. I am Japanese… When I was coming home from work late on the Tokyo subway--late as in around 11 p.m. and the subway would be fairly empty, I’d throw off my suit jacket, loosen my tie and sit stretch out like this and people would just stare at me… (like I was really weird). I later learned that in Japan because space is so limited--even when you’re alone in the subway you sit so as to conserve space.
If you’ve ever felt like an outsider because of where you’ve come from or how you look or your social status, your age, or because what you’ve done… or what you haven’t done… know the Christmas story is a story of about an outsider… It’s story is about a family of refugees…
After Jesus Christ was born, and had been presented with gifts from the Magi of gold, frankincense and myrrh, we read in Matthew’s Gospel 2:13:
(13 When they (the Magi) had gone an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod (the reigning King) is going to search for the child to kill him."
Dr. Raymond Bakke an urban scholar reminded me as a young pastor here at 10th Avenue that Jesus was a baby born in Asia… where nearly half of the world is from…
He also pointed that Jesus as an infant became an African refugee when the family fled to Egypt…. and that half of the 18 million migrants in the world are Africans. Jesus lived the African migrant experience…
Jesus was born into a world 2000 years ago--where blood line meant everything. Herod, the Great, the reigning king during Jesus’ birth, had his genealogical records destroyed out of vanity because he wanted no one to know that he was a Moabite (obviously he wasn’t entirely successful)…
Jesus was the one person in all of human history who could have—if he wanted to—chosen his bloodline (do you think he did?). As Matthew makes an effort to note in the first chapter of his gospel, Jesus wove into his family tree people with scandalous backgrounds. He also chose to graft into his family tree the blood of the despised peoples of the world: the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Moabites. Despite the waspy portraits of Jesus you may have seen on your grandmother’s kitchen wall (with praying hands, eyes pointed upward), let’s remember Jesus was born a Jew…. He bore in his veins the blood of the despised and persecuted peoples’ of the world, because he wanted the whole world to know he was giving his life for them…
Jesus was the one person in history who could have chosen his socio-economic status before he was born… He could have chosen to have been born into a family with the net worth of Louis the fourteen, the Rockefellers, and the Bill and Melinda Gates combined. But, Jesus chose to be born into a poor family, literally into a borrowed stable and was homeless for much of his adult life.
Jesus knows what it is to be an outsider and part what the story of God becoming a human being tells us as far as God is concerned there are no outsiders…
Part of what Christmas story tells is that there are no outsiders, no strangers, no orphans to God…
If you’ve ever felt like an outsider—know you’re in good company—Jesus was the ultimate outsider, but you can choose to be on the inside with him…
Meditation #2
Timothy George says that when he was a student at Harvard Divinity School, he learned preaching from Dr. Gardner Taylor, a pastor of African ancestry serving in New York City. George said, “I will never forget those lectures. I remember Taylor telling us a story from when he was preaching in the South during the Depression. The electricity was just coming into that part of the country and he was out in a rural black church that had just one little light bulb hanging down from the ceiling to light up the whole sanctuary. Taylor was preaching away and in the middle of the sermon, all of a sudden the electricity went out. The building went pitch black and Dr. Taylor being a young preacher didn’t know what to say. He stood silent in the darkness not knowing what to do until one of the elderly deacons sitting in the back of the church cried out, ‘Preach on, preach on , Preacher! Preach on! Preach on! We can still see Jesus in the dark.’”
Isaiah says of the coming of Jesus in Isaiah 9:2:
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
No matter how dark you your world may become… know
So during this time of the year, when the nights are at their longest… just remember Jesus said, "I am the light of the world…
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
Meditation 1
BI: No outsiders to God
Vancouver has become more multi-cultural than Los Angeles or New York City.
According to the recently released census data—4 in 10 people in here Vancouver were born in another country.
Like almost half of you here, I too was born in another country…
So—was my wife and so was the dog… (in case you were wondering the dog was born in Mexico).
I was born in Tokyo, Japan. When I was two our family moved to New York City (briefly), then to London, England for 5 years (where I developed a British accent—my mother tells me one phrase I tended to overuse as a cheeky seven year old was not necessarily), then we moved here to Greater Vancouver. After high school I moved to Chicago. Then back to Tokyo, then to Boston, then to LA and then back to Vancouver.
Being an immigrant is an adventure, but you also feel a bit like an outsider…
As a teenager in Surrey… I remember my white football teammate and best friend, John McQuarrie trying to feel less self-conscious by reassuring me… “Ken, I see you as a white guy… that just reminded me of how different I was in what was then a white neighborhood… I would have felt better if John would have said… I think of you as black…. kind of like Jerry Rice the star wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers… (check dates), but I was dropping way too many of his passes in practice to draw any such comparisons…
When I got my first job out of undergrad in Tokyo, Japan… I thought--finally, I’ll fit in like everyone… No one will know I’m different… I look Japanese…. I am Japanese… When I was coming home from work late on the Tokyo subway--late as in around 11 p.m. and the subway would be fairly empty, I’d throw off my suit jacket, loosen my tie and sit stretch out like this and people would just stare at me… (like I was really weird). I later learned that in Japan because space is so limited--even when you’re alone in the subway you sit so as to conserve space.
If you’ve ever felt like an outsider because of where you’ve come from or how you look or your social status, your age, or because what you’ve done… or what you haven’t done… know the Christmas story is a story of about an outsider… It’s story is about a family of refugees…
After Jesus Christ was born, and had been presented with gifts from the Magi of gold, frankincense and myrrh, we read in Matthew’s Gospel 2:13:
(13 When they (the Magi) had gone an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod (the reigning King) is going to search for the child to kill him."
Dr. Raymond Bakke an urban scholar reminded me as a young pastor here at 10th Avenue that Jesus was a baby born in Asia… where nearly half of the world is from…
He also pointed that Jesus as an infant became an African refugee when the family fled to Egypt…. and that half of the 18 million migrants in the world are Africans. Jesus lived the African migrant experience…
Jesus was born into a world 2000 years ago--where blood line meant everything. Herod, the Great, the reigning king during Jesus’ birth, had his genealogical records destroyed out of vanity because he wanted no one to know that he was a Moabite (obviously he wasn’t entirely successful)…
Jesus was the one person in all of human history who could have—if he wanted to—chosen his bloodline (do you think he did?). As Matthew makes an effort to note in the first chapter of his gospel, Jesus wove into his family tree people with scandalous backgrounds. He also chose to graft into his family tree the blood of the despised peoples of the world: the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Moabites. Despite the waspy portraits of Jesus you may have seen on your grandmother’s kitchen wall (with praying hands, eyes pointed upward), let’s remember Jesus was born a Jew…. He bore in his veins the blood of the despised and persecuted peoples’ of the world, because he wanted the whole world to know he was giving his life for them…
Jesus was the one person in history who could have chosen his socio-economic status before he was born… He could have chosen to have been born into a family with the net worth of Louis the fourteen, the Rockefellers, and the Bill and Melinda Gates combined. But, Jesus chose to be born into a poor family, literally into a borrowed stable and was homeless for much of his adult life.
Jesus knows what it is to be an outsider and part what the story of God becoming a human being tells us as far as God is concerned there are no outsiders…
Part of what Christmas story tells is that there are no outsiders, no strangers, no orphans to God…
If you’ve ever felt like an outsider—know you’re in good company—Jesus was the ultimate outsider, but you can choose to be on the inside with him…
Meditation #2
Timothy George says that when he was a student at Harvard Divinity School, he learned preaching from Dr. Gardner Taylor, a pastor of African ancestry serving in New York City. George said, “I will never forget those lectures. I remember Taylor telling us a story from when he was preaching in the South during the Depression. The electricity was just coming into that part of the country and he was out in a rural black church that had just one little light bulb hanging down from the ceiling to light up the whole sanctuary. Taylor was preaching away and in the middle of the sermon, all of a sudden the electricity went out. The building went pitch black and Dr. Taylor being a young preacher didn’t know what to say. He stood silent in the darkness not knowing what to do until one of the elderly deacons sitting in the back of the church cried out, ‘Preach on, preach on , Preacher! Preach on! Preach on! We can still see Jesus in the dark.’”
Isaiah says of the coming of Jesus in Isaiah 9:2:
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
No matter how dark you your world may become… know
So during this time of the year, when the nights are at their longest… just remember Jesus said, "I am the light of the world…
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
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