Progressive Adventism

This is a sermon I gave recently at a student gathering.

There I was.  An F.O.B., lost in what seemed to be a maze of hallways at Andrews Academy.  Anxious, nervous, but also excited, I finally found where my 8:30 Personal Religion class, my first class in the Promised Land.  Timid and shy and scared I was that I had a difficult time gathering up the courage to open the door.  "Everyone is going to stare at me!  What am I going to do?  They’ll think I am so short and small and clumsy.  And how am I going to greet the teacher?  Do I bow or wave?  How should I introduce myself? Should I use my official Korean name or my American taken name?  Will they understand my broken English?  Will they accept me?"  The year was 1983.

I took a deep breath and opened the classroom door.  And my life has never been the same since.  As I entered, I felt some eyes.  But there was no snickering.  Yet there was to be no relief as the teacher, Mr. Borton asked me for my name.  I had registered late.  "Juhyeok Nam," I barely got it out of my throat.  "Pardon me?"  "Juhyeok Nam," I was almost swallowing the words back in.  "Could you repeat that once again, please?"  "JUHYEOK NAM," this time it was too loud.  And I did hear some scattered snickering in the background.

Finally, I had to spell out my name for the class roster.  "How do you pronounce that again?" Mr. Borton meant it to be a kind gesture, but I felt so naked and dissected.  I don’t look normal, I don’t speak normal, I don’t act normal, and even my name isn’t normal.  In short, I am abnormal.  The teacher was waiting, and I had to answer.  "Juhyeok Nam."

"You?Yuck?"  "No, Juhyeok." "Jew?Yuck?" "No, but okay…."  "No, I want to get it right. So it’s Jew Heck?"  I nodded.  "Jew Heck?"  I nodded again knowing he’ll never get it right.  "Good! Welcome to Andrews Academy, Jew Hock."  I smiled at him queasily.

It’s been a quarter-century since and life in America has taught me special lessons in emptiness, alienation, and loneliness.  America has sculpted me in an incisive yet a profound way that my native Korea could never have. 

Today, from the word of God and the experiences of Jesus, we want to explore what emptiness, alienation, and loneliness have to do with following Jesus Christ today.  I don’t suppose that we all have gone through the same cultural and religious experiences, but I believe that there are many experiences that we hold in common.  And the insights that we’ll share today are applicable for us all.

Christ Emptied Himself

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:5~8, RSV).

Have you ever wondered why Asians, especially Chinese-based East Asians which includes Koreans, are fond of bamboo trees?  What is that makes the bamboo so special?  I’ll give you a hint.  Listen.  Bambooooooo, bamboooooo.  What is it?   It is the hollowness.

I don’t know why, but Asians place a great value upon hollowness, in other words, emptiness.  Often, for Asians, emptiness is more valuable than fullness.  "The Way is always empty.  It never fills up after much use.  It is the deep and profound origin of all things," said Lao-Tzu in Dao De Ching.  The Oriental artist usually spends more time on and give more attention to the allocation of empty space than to actual drawing.  The harmony and tranquility so typical of Oriental art are often effected by the creative use of empty space.

Consider the game of go, or baduk in Korean.  The main point is not to conquer or to eat the opponent up, but to use the black and white stones to create empty spaces.  One of the most famous temples in Kyoto, Japan is called the Ryoto Temple.  They say that it is famous because of its nearly empty garden.  In the garden you do not see anything but the white sand and several groups of rocks.  Nevertheless, hundreds and hundreds of people visit the temple everyday to stand there and meditate on the empty garden.  Emptiness for Asians means more than nothing.  It carries a positive value.

In Philippians 2, Paul speaks positively of the emptiness of Christ.  He challenges us to make that emptiness ours.  We may think that emptiness comes only from not having everything right in our lives.  It also comes from not being fully understood or accepted.  It can be such an unpleasant, painful, and tentative feeling.   But still for many of us, still trying hard to establish presence in the larger world called America, emptiness brings back that is not at all a foreign experience.  Emptiness that comes from uncertain identity is one of the most painful psychological experiences. 

Identity Crisis

In the Korean culture, I’m called generation 1.5—the in-between generation that came to the U.S. at ages 10-15 or so. Generation 1.5 can speak both Korean and English quite proficiently but with accent—English with Korean accent and Korean with American accent.  We are quite bicultural and can blend into different social situations quite well.  As much as we have learned to appreciate both cultures, though, we often feel lost between the two and find full identification with neither.

The identity dis-location that generation 1.5 experiences is not so unique, though.  The 1st and 2nd generation immigrants, in their own ways, experience it in their own ways.  Being a member of a minority group (whether racial, ideological, cultural, etc.), regardless of which generation you belong to, always raises questions about identity vis-a-vis the larger society.

In many cases, the identity crisis compels the minority group to work extra hard to excel, receive approval, and find security and respected status in society.  That’s certainly what happened to Koreans to who came to the U.S.  Most Koreans who came to the U.S. since the passage of the 1965 U.S. Immigration Act were high professionals in their homelands.  They came to the U.S. and started or worked for service-oriented businesses that did not require a lot of English: hamburger stands, barbershops, grocerty stores, restaurants, laundries, maintenance companies, and others. Soon they came to recognize the high premium that the American society places on professional licensure.  They also saw that the healthcare sector required less English and a limited set of specific skills to succeed.  So for many of them becoming a healthcare giver became the chosen path to American dream and to the recovery of the respected professional status they once held in Korea.

This is my experience and the experience of the cultural group I belong to.  But I think this dream of upward mobility and social integration is one that we all share.  It is the dream offered by this "melting pot" called America.

Kenosis and the American Dream 

Christ’s kenosis, or self-emptying, has something poignant and profound to tell us about our quest for status and upward mobility.  Christ’s emptiness was by no means painless.  He came from the glorious center and the zenith of the universe to the dusty, nameless roads and hills of Palestine.  What was in the mind of Christ when he chose, not ended up, to come to this earth amid the bloody, mucous discharge of Mary as an illegitimate son and to die once again covered with blood as a criminal?  

Many speak of Jesus as a marginal Jew.  He lived most of his life away from the center of action, away from the limelight.  He went to Jerusalem only when he had to.  His eyes were focused upon the marginal members of society.  You’ve encountered the list before??the crooks, the poor, the sick, the prostitutes, the tax collectors.  And he challenged and confronted the ruling elite of the day—the Pharisees, the Sadduccees, the Sanhedrin, the rabbis, the scribes.

In every age, God’s people lived away from the center.  Abraham came out of his thriving civilized environment.  Even before Abraham, God disbanded the Tower of Babel and called his people away from it.  The Israelites came out of Egypt.  In John’s Revelation, God’s people are called the remnant; they called out of Babylon, or Rome. Each of these civilizations offered an attractive dream filled with beautiful human ideals.  Yet the biblical message carries a certain rejection of it.

But as Christ exemplified for us, it wasn’t just rejection.  God does call His people away from the center but only as a witness to the center.  The focus is not on escaping whether to a certain ideal or even to God.  It’s on this:  "You are the light of the world.  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden."  You are the light TO the world from a hill.  God had John the Baptist become "a voice crying in the wilderness" as a warning to his fellow Jews.  To the remnant, God gives the message, "Come of her, Babylon!"  God calls his people to talk to the center, take interest in the center, and lead them to reject the values of the center.  Thus, those who profess to be followers of Christ, the Kenotic One, cannot be too close to the center, nor can allow the center to suck us in.  

This is a particular challenge for me as a Loma Linda Adventist.  If you’ve grown up in North American Adventism, I needn’t explain further.  Loma Linda University is an institution created to offer Christ’s healing ministry to the world, as part of what Adventists have believed to be God’s end-time remnant message.  But after a century, it also offers the ministry of upward mobility and future affluence.  My wife, a 1st generation immigrant herself, after being unable to find employment as a teacher, is now pursuing dentistry at Loma Linda’s dental school.  While the desire for living a productive life of useful service is there, we cannot deny that the possibility of a comfortable, stable life—and that upward mobility thing—isn’t there.

Can we have it both ways?  Can we pursue upward and downward mobility at the same time?  Can we fill up our lives while being kenotic?  Can we be away from the center yet exert a meaningful influence upon the center?

"With great power comes great responsibility."  This memorable line from Spider-Man 2 uttered by Peter Parker’s uncle, Ben, has a message for us in the context of our discussion.  Christ shows us what we can do with whatever power, influence and wealth we amass in life.  He emptied himself, says Paul.  This self-emptying is different from some meditative self?purging.  His emptiness had the singular purpose to be a servant and to live a life of emptiness and servitude even unto to death.  What did Jesus empty of himself?  If you empty something, it’s got to go somewhere, right?  The law of the conservation of mass!  Well, I don’t know if that’s true in the spiritual realms.  But consider these words of Apostle John:  "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. . . .  And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace."  Whatever Christ emptied of himself, he gave them all for us.  And Paul calls us to live with that mindset.  "Have this mind in yourselves," he says.

In our drive for the center, in our obsession with upward mobility, it is easy to forget that it is Christ’s emptiness that saves us and that we too are called to be empty? Emptiness before God and emptiness before man—that is a saved individual.  We fill and ought to fill our lives with good and wonderful things of life.  But we must be equally committed to a life of emptying.  

The richer we get, the more educated we get, the more powerful we get, the more we fill ourselves — the more difficult that emptying gets.  It’s because we come to identify ourselves with the wealth, status, knowledge, and power.  This is why self-emptying and sacrificial giving ought to be committed to and practiced from early on in your life—while you are students, while you are young.  

The challenge is there for the taking.  The challenge to avoid the center but to become the voice of conscience for the center.  The challenge to live in the margins, to be marginal Adventists.  The world is too much with us in this church.  The spirit of accumulating more and getting larger and larger is with us.  We’re confronted with the challenge to live prophetically and to proclaim a voice of prophecy advocating downward mobility—for the benefit of the world.  

Become marginal nurses, marginal doctors, marginal business professionals, marginal teachers, marginal engineers, marginal artists and marginal pastors!  The margin is reserved for those who empty themselves for their world, who will accept the call to be God’s voice on the earth.  There is where true freedom is.  Do not let your insurance or your status or your bank account or whatever your pet peeve might be dictate your self-emptying. 

Yes, the best way to become empty is to give.  Give love always, give courage, give wisdom, give comfort, provide care, provide learning, foster self-confidence, make them happy.  Give your time, give your money, yield your rightful opportunities, give hope.  Until the day we die, whatever our profession, our personal and family relations make take us, let us be committed to a life of filling so that we may empty.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.