Made in the Community of God

Sermon

In the wake of a historical and generational imperialism, colonialism, and class oppression in South Korea, a phenomenon occurred within the identities of its already very collective and communal people. What can only be defined as a cultural concept of sorts, this phenomenon is called han.

It’s hard to even consider this a concept, because to this day, there is no singular definition accepted across Koreans. Instead, it can only be understood as a sorrow, melancholy, pain, and to be honest, resentment, that is unexplainably shared across anyone who is born on the Korean peninsula.

Embedded deep in the ways Koreans view not only themselves, but one another, it is, again, unexplainably generational. Young Koreans today, born long after the historic circumstances that first birthed this han within the Korean people, continue to experience it within themselves, and more importantly, with one another.

It is this han that has motivated much of South Korea’s activist history—a concern for this shared sorrow and melancholy most clearly exacerbated in the lowest “classes,” making their pain, our pain.

My own parents met during one of the numerous student movements during the ’70s and ’80s.

And of course, if there is han, a collective sorrow and melancholy, there must also be jeong, the collective joy, love, celebration, in response to the resilience and restoration of a fractured inequitable Korea.

It’s understood that each Korean experiences both this shared jeong and han. It’s part of why we see many Korean-American communities isolate and self-segregate—there is an understanding that the community will hold one another as their own.

With my father as the pastor of a small church, it meant my mother was quite busy doing a lot for the church and our community—preparing the lunches, flowers, singing in the choir, and playing the organ every Sunday. This also meant that I was raised by an actual village—a village of trusted adults and friends, and what was essentially a large family.

And so, it makes sense that many Korean immigrants tend to congregate towards their own peoples, why Koreatowns are so prominent throughout the states. There’s a trust in the collective embodied empathy.

In the states, we have this unprecedented opportunity for what shouldn’t be considered a melting pot, but the opportunity for a tossed salad of culture—each ingredient contributing its own distinct and necessary flavor to create a beautiful dish. And still, we see so many segregated communities, many justified and necessary, and many as the response to the continued marginalization and minoritization of certain people groups.

But what does it mean for us to transform our idea of community from a melting pot to a tossed salad?

What we find here in Genesis is that this han and jeong seem to reflect exactly what we have been created for—created to be in community, and not only that, but the kind of God-crafted community where each person is inherently embodied within one another: “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”

There are actually two accounts of human creation in Genesis. The second one is this one we read earlier today, and is the one unfortunately often used to marginalize and justify the subordination of women to men, which I don’t think I have to tell this community, is just scripturally and theologically all wrong, but that’s another sermon for another time.

The first one that comes up in Scripture is found near the end of Genesis 1 and, like both accounts, is used to marginalize non-binary and trans-identifying peoples. It reads about humans, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

A challenge in reading the Bible is figuring out what to do with these apparently contradicting stories. Were women and men created together? Did woman come from man? Did animals come before or after?

One thing we definitely cannot do, and unfortunately, is what has been done, is just pick one as…more true.

Instead, this challenge asks us to consider this fact that there are accounts of creation, and ask what does it mean?

What does it mean that both seem different in what they tell us about the creation of humans?

In Genesis 1, it’s made clear, everyone within the spectrum of this binary has been created in God’s collective image – “our image.” And in Genesis 2, it’s also made clear, God created one person, and then the other person. Because “it is not good that one should be alone.”

If we don’t just pick one of the two stories to tell us about humans, we can instead get a beautiful weaving of two accounts that come together to show us God’s intentions with our creation. And because we’re Presbyterian, I tend to think in threes, and these are the three things that seem clear to me when we take these two accounts together.

• Everyone that falls within the spectrum of humanity has been made in the image of God – according to our likeness, God made them. And I also appreciate what Mary Fulkerson says about being created in the image of God: “the imago Dei [is] a task, a display of gratitude, not simply a feature of the human soul.” Because…
• Second, humans were created to be in community with one another – “our relation to God is inextricably connected to our relation to our neighbor.” It is not good that one should be alone. And being in community is a task—but a task that is meant to be life-giving and a gift.
• And lastly, we learn that the task of this gift is acted out from within us.

Building out the kind of God-crafted community means that in order to see in our neighbor our own selves, we have to look within our own sense of creation. What is that I as a person desire? Who and how is that I have been crafted to be?

When I was in the fourth grade, we were invited to bring our favorite foods for a potluck. At that young and oh-so-naïve age, I was not yet fully aware of the kind of racism and stereotyping that was so normalized outside of my young bubble. And so, of course, I asked my full-time working mother to make my favorite food enough for a little bit over 30 people. And she lovingly did.

That day in class, as soon as I opened the fish cakes, my classmates immediately scowled at the smell and look of this very particularly Korean dish. Enough comments were made that my teacher asked me to cover it up or set it outside.

I was devastated.

And never again did I even think to introduce anything of my culture to my non-Korean school community.

I did have this one friend though, Michael. He happened to be the only one to try the dish, and while he didn’t scowl, he did laugh with me about why no one else would dare try it.

I didn’t know it at the time, but he hadn’t even thought twice to try the food—this was a gathering of each of our favorite foods, and so of course he was going to try everything, just like he wanted everyone to try his favorite food.

Eventually in middle and high school, as expected, I started to find more Korean and Asian friends, with trust in a shared experience, and I simply avoided circumstances like those in the fourth grade.

Unfortunately, few people in my life have embodied the kind of compassion Michael extended to each of his classmates—he recognized that within himself, there was a deep desire to be seen and known, and he knew that in each of us, there would be that same desire.

And even more sadly, I think there are only a few spaces in the world that have embodied the kind of compassionate community that radically recognizes the shared desires ingrained within us from God. And so, self-segregated spaces and communities remain necessary.

Empathy, or trying to live into another’s shoes, can be impossible, but what is possible is to find within, and for, ourselves, compassion; the capacity to be compassionate to ourselves, allowing us the capacity to be compassionate to each and every one of our neighbors—even when and especially when we cannot understand our neighbor.

This is no admonition against empathy—it is a beautiful thing when we can understand one another’s situations, and it brings people even closer together into community. There are just limits to who we can truly empathize with and limits around those who may even desire our empathy.

Nor does this mean that we are compassionate to the perpetration of harm.

But when we begin with compassion, the bounds we put on a God-crafted community completely disappear. Because we then approach each person first with love, knowing that’s what we deserve for ourselves, and so, what those created in the imago Dei deserve as well.

This is how we can make this tossed salad not only in the states, but in the global community of God. By recognizing that each ingredient, each person, is vitally important, not for what they contribute, but for the very nature of who they are.

God’s gift of community has unfortunately been made to become a tiring task today. With the busyness of our schedules, the masks we believe we have to put on for each other, and the pressures and expectations we place on ourselves because we are Asian, women, queer, Black, it has been made to feel unsafe to be as vulnerable with one another as God has created us to be. May we, as a people, learn to investigate deep within ourselves our own needs, and so, our neighbors and their needs, so that we can live into the beautiful task of community, creating spaces for healing and restoration, allowing for ourselves and our neighbors to show up in the full freedom of God.

Amen.