{"id":1436,"date":"2009-06-28T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2009-06-28T00:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/news\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2018-08-31T20:58:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T20:58:37","slug":"sermon-looking-beyond-fear-finding-intimacy-with-others-and-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2009\/sermon-looking-beyond-fear-finding-intimacy-with-others-and-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: “Looking Beyond Fear–Finding Intimacy with Others and God”"},"content":{"rendered":"

223rd\u00a0Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren
\nSan Diego, California — June 28, 2009<\/h3>\n

Scripture readings:\u00a01 John 4:13-21, Luke 7:1-10<\/em><\/h6>\n
\"\"
Eric Law preached Sunday morning.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The story of the healing of the centurion\u2019s slave is a cross-cultural or intercultural story.\u00a0 In this story, there was a crossing of class differences — the centurion was doing all this for his slave.\u00a0 There was a crossing of power differences the centurion and the Jewish community which was control by the Roman.\u00a0 There was a crossing of different religions the Romans and the Jews.\u00a0 What allowed all the different people to work across their cultural differences in order to get Jesus to cure the centurion\u2019s slave was love and trust. As read in our first lesson from 1 John, \u201cThere is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most unusual part of the story was that there was no element of fear or punishment expressed in this story. Imagine the tension that could have been there between the centurion and his soldiers, and the Jewish community.\u00a0 There could have been much fear amongst the Jewish elders whom the centurion sent to talk to Jesus. If they didn\u2019t do what the centurion commended them to do, they could be punished.\u00a0 The Jewish elders did not say to Jesus, “If you don\u2019t go, we would be punished for not accomplishing our mission.\u201d\u00a0 No, they actually genuinely cared for the centurion and his slave. They pleaded with Jesus saying, “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” \u00a0There was no fear.<\/p>\n

The centurion could have used his power to get Jesus to come directly. By his own admission, he said, \u201cFor I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”\u00a0 Then why not go directly to Jesus who was a Jew under the control of the Roman authority? The centurion could easily send his soldiers to escort Jesus to his place and commanded him to cure his slave. The centurion certainly had the power to evoke fear to get what he wanted at least get Jesus to come.\u00a0 No, there was no fear used.\u00a0 Because at the heart of the story was love.\u00a0 And love drives out fear.<\/p>\n

First of all, the centurion had to have loved this slave, which was unusual.\u00a0 Slaves were properties, if one died, he could get another one.\u00a0 Why did you go through all this trouble over a lowly slave?\u00a0 Love had to have been central to this relationship.\u00a0 Then there were the trust built between the centurion and the Jewish community.\u00a0 Obviously, they had worked together before.\u00a0 The centurion had built the synagogue for the Jewish community.\u00a0 In that trusting relationship, the centurion was able to be vulnerable and expressed his need for Jesus\u2019 help. \u00a0In this trusting relationship, the Jewish elders gladly went on behalf of the centurion to talk to Jesus.\u00a0 \u00a0Trust allowed them to express their love for each other. That\u2019s why there was no fear involved in this story, because love drives out fear.<\/p>\n

Not only did the centurion not use his power to evoke fear to get what he wanted, he actually lowered himself in a very humble manner when Jesus was getting close to his house.\u00a0 He sent friends to say to Jesus: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesus then commended him for his faith and when his friends went back to the centurion\u2019s house the servant was well.\u00a0 What did Jesus mean when he said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel\u201d?<\/p>\n

This faith has something to do with the Centurion’s love for his servant.\u00a0 It has something do with his willingness to work with the Jewish community which he had authority over.\u00a0 The faith has something to do with his willingness to let go and not use his power to get his way but to use his relationship, humbling himself and letting those who had less power to exercise their power.<\/p>\n

In my work with multicultural congregations, the issues of power and fear were always central to the conflicts involved.\u00a0 To move from fear to building trust and love among the different cultural groups is essential for any multicultural congregation to become a faithful community.<\/p>\n

I was invited to consult with a congregation.\u00a0 The initial request was for me to help them find ways to attract more youth.\u00a0 As I arrived at the church, I noticed that there were many young people around the church, playing basketball, laughing and talking on the church steps.\u00a0 I wondered to myself, \u201cThere are many youth here; why are they asking me to help them to increase their youth ministry?\u201d<\/p>\n

I went inside to the meeting room and was greeted by the group of leaders. I noticed that this group was all 65 years of age or older and they were all European Americans.\u00a0 I recalled right there that the young people outside were Korean Americans.\u00a0 As I heard them talking about their problems, I began to see the fuller picture.\u00a0 They were looking for youth that looked like them when they were young.\u00a0 However, the neighborhood had changed and surrounding their church were mostly Korean Americans now.\u00a0 The church had in fact opened their doors to allow the Korean group to worship there.<\/p>\n

When the subject was brought up, many complained about the Korean fellowship: they are noisy, they hang around the church all day on Sunday, they don\u2019t pick up their mess, they don\u2019t contribute enough numbers, etc.\u00a0 There was very little interactions between the two groups except occasionally the Korean group would come to the English-speaking service to report on their growing ministry.<\/p>\n

In the course of the consultation meeting, I studied Holy Scriptures with them and in the process reassured them that it is not their fault that their English-speaking community was shrinking and they had done the best they could. And more importantly, God still loved them.\u00a0 I then suggested that they should do a day-long retreat in which we would have the two language communities to come and have meaningful dialogue moving toward mutual understanding and working together.\u00a0 They agreed.<\/p>\n

At the retreat, after spending a substantial amount of time to build trust through Bible study, prayers, and\u00a0a basic dialogue process, I invited the two groups to go into separate language groups and discuss:\u00a0 What was church like 15 years ago?\u00a0 And what is church like now?<\/p>\n

The Koreans came back and reported that15 years ago, they were in Korea and everybody spoke Korean whether they were in church or out on the street or at work.\u00a0 When they immigrated to this country, the English-speaking world was not very friendly to them.\u00a0 So church now was a place where they could recreate Korea.\u00a0 They were very grateful that they were able to worship here and that was why they stayed around church all day, because when Monday came, they had to face the English-speaking world again. So, every time they baptized a large number of people, they would rush to the English-Speaking congregation and thank them for letting them use the church.\u00a0 They were afraid that if they were not successful, the English-speaking group might make them leave.<\/p>\n

The English-speaking group reported that 15 years ago church was full.\u00a0 They were 2,000 people strong and now they had only 600 people on Sunday.\u00a0 They missed the good old days when there were a lot of young people.\u00a0 They became vulnerable and shared their pain and sadness. \u00a0They were afraid that they would lose their church if this trend continued.<\/p>\n

In their listening to each others\u2019 stories, they named the issues that were the source of their conflicts.\u00a0 The issue for the English-speaking congregation was about loss and grief. They needed to find a way to pass their legacy on in the church.\u00a0\u00a0 The issue for the Korean-speaking was about acceptance in a hostile world.<\/p>\n

As a result of this dialogue, the church decided to create a program called, \u201cAdopt a Grandparent.\u201d\u00a0 Each Korean family that had a child who spoke English would adopt one or a couple of the English-speaking congregation as grandparents.\u00a0 In this way, the need for passing on the legacy was met, and the need for acceptance and learning about the culture of the United States would be satisfied as well.<\/p>\n

How can we assist a multicultural community to move from fear to love?\u00a0 From intercultural conflicts and tension to mutual cooperation doing ministry together?\u00a0 It begins with love.\u00a0 And love drives out fear.<\/p>\n

We begin by reconnecting the powerful ones with the love of God.\u00a0 We need to assist them to recall how God had loved them personally and as a community. We do this by helping them recall the blessed history of the church.\u00a0 We do this through teaching and study scriptures with them.\u00a0 We do this by helping them reaffirm the love of God for them in the past and that God still is present and loves them–independent of how \u201csuccessful\u201d they are in doing God’s ministry. \u00a0In the first letter of John, he said, \u201cWe love because God first loved us.\u201d \u00a0<\/sup>This is how we prepare the historically powerful group to enter into a multicultural community.<\/p>\n

The second step is to help them to trust God enough to let go of their power and listen to the others, like the centurion, who humbled himself as Jesus was approaching and trusted that Jesus would use his power to cure his beloved servant.<\/p>\n

We need to create an environment in which the powerful ones in a multicultural community can be vulnerable, let go of their power, and listen to the others.\u00a0 We need to also assist the powerless ones to share their experience and articulate their concerns.\u00a0 And in the humbling of the powerful and the empowerment of the powerless, the fear melts away and trust is built, and healing occurs.\u00a0 Ultimately, we must trust that Jesus would use his healing power to make us well.<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

–Eric H.F. Law is an ordained Episcopal priest and an author and consultant in the area of multicultural ministry.<\/em><\/p>\n

———————————————————————————————–
\nThe News Team for the 2009 Annual Conference includes writers Karen Garrett, Frank Ramirez, Frances Townsend,\u00a0Melissa Troyer, Rich Troyer; photographers Kay Guyer, Justin Hollenberg, Keith Hollenberg, Glenn Riegel,\u00a0Ken Wenger;\u00a0staff Becky Ullom and Amy Heckert.\u00a0Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford, editor. Contact <\/em>cobnews@brethren.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

223rd\u00a0Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren San Diego, California — June 28, 2009 Scripture readings:\u00a01 John 4:13-21, Luke 7:1-10 The story of the healing of the centurion\u2019s slave is a cross-cultural or intercultural story.\u00a0 In this story, there was a crossing of class differences — the centurion was doing all this for his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89,3],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brethren-annual-conference","tag-church-of-the-brethren"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}