The theme this month has been our Christian heritage, and so I’d like to take up the topic of the heritage we have from the standpoint of how the biblical worldview has affected the development of our modern world. This being the 150th year since KUC was founded, we here at KUC have an exceptionally long heritage within the context of Japan, and I myself have been connected in some fashion for about 1/6 of that time. I first visited KUC about 25 years ago, when I brought Hugh Ross to speak at a worship service, but then the next time wasn’t until we moved down to Kansai in 2007. If I could see your hands, I’d ask for a show of hands as to how many of you were here at KUC that long ago, but it wouldn’t be many, as there is so much turnover in this particular fellowship of believers. I served as interim pastor for several months in 2008 until Gerard Marks could come to serve for a year or so until Bruce Bradbury could come. And then, until we retired and left Kansai in 2016, I served in various capacities, including guest preaching and serving on council. And now with online services, I get to contribute in this digital fashion as well.
For the remainder of my message, however, I want to expand our horizons from just Kobe to the Judeo-Christian heritage as a whole and how that has affected the entire world. Likewise, I want to tie that to the plan and purpose of God in creating this world for us to live in and to develop the character God envisions for us. Among the many aspects of this we could contemplate would be the virtue of patience, particularly as it relates to patience in suffering, but I hope that you won’t think that is something that applies to this sermon itself, as you “patiently suffer” through it! I hope to bring you a word of encouragement based on the encouraging words that God speaks to us through this amazing letter James wrote so long ago. Two questions that arise from our Scripture reading this morning are: Why is it to our benefit to be patient and to trust in God’s timing, and why is it that we shouldn’t “grumble against each other” while we wait upon the Lord? As we begin our thinking concerning these questions, I want to first introduce the concept of “worldview” and what that means. I would imagine that most of you have at least heard the term before and have a vague understanding of what it means. Basically, one’s worldview is the philosophical framework one subconsciously uses to try to make sense of the world as one experiences it. It is literally one’s “view of the world.” Everyone has a worldview even if they are not conscious of what that worldview is and wouldn’t be able to explain what makes up their worldview to someone else. You cannot help but have some sort of organizing principles you use to put together your understanding of what reality is. This, of course, begins from birth (and maybe even before) and gradually develops and gets more sophisticated as one matures. And yet even for those of us who are the most careful thinkers, there will always be a certain amount of inconsistency in one’s worldview, since no human has a full understanding of reality. Likewise, it is important to note that while it is not a simple thing to do, one can even radically change one’s worldview to something that more consistently explains the world as it really is. That is, in fact, what Christian conversion is: namely, when you first accept Christ into your life as your Lord and Savior, your worldview undergoes a radical transformation — or at least it should. Of course, that is something that in reality takes a lifetime to accomplish, as we all have aspects of a “worldly worldview” that remain attached to and often compromise a truly biblical worldview. When you really get down to the basics, in the ancient world, there were only two fundamental worldviews: the biblical worldview and what I term for lack of a better label, the “ancient worldview.” There were, of course, many variations of the “ancient worldview,” but they all held in common the idea of continuity between the physical world and the world of the gods. All natural phenomena, as well as the events that occur in human society, are mere reflections of the world of the gods and are controlled by the gods or by events that occur in the unseen realm of the gods. All ancient worldviews, other than that of the ancient Hebrews, were polytheistic in orientation — and even the ancient Hebrews often fell back into that polytheistic mode in their struggle to come to terms with the biblical worldview God was revealing to them thru his prophets. It was only the worldview revealed in the Bible that held that there is only one actual God and that that one God is utterly transcendent from the world he created. Of course, God is everywhere present within the universe he created, but he is in no way confined to or limited by that creation. God is not the cosmos and the cosmos is not God. God has created everything in the physical realm for a purpose, and unlike all other ancient worldviews — which viewed time as cyclical, analogous to the cycles of nature — the biblical worldview sees time as a linear progression of cause and effect moving towards the goals God has foreordained. The various creation myths of the ancient Near East all involved fanciful tales of primordial chaos monsters producing various gods and goddesses that in turn produced humans and brought a degree of order to the world they lived in. It is common today to hear the biblical creation story being referred to as “myth,” and I suppose that if you have a broad enough definition of that word, I don’t particularly object to the term. In fact, the Japanese word for “myth,” “shinwa,” literally means “god talk,” and in that sense Genesis definitely is “shinwa—God talk!” Nevertheless, when we use the English word “myth” today, we generally mean a made-up story with no basis in reality. And Genesis is certainly not that. The Genesis story is fundamentally different from any of the creation myths that surrounded ancient Israel. It is true that it employs various myth-like symbols, such as the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and “the tree of life,” but Genesis portrays creation in an entirely different way to that of any of the other ancient stories. For one thing, Genesis portrays creation in terms of specific events in real space and time, as opposed to a “once-upon-a-time” type of non-historical, primordial world. Eden was meant to be understood as a real place somewhere in the general region of the Near East or even northeast Africa, though we can’t know for sure where it was in terms of modern geography. And while there are certain aspects of the story that are a bit difficult for us to understand in terms of modern science, the entire creation scenario is remarkably consistent with what we now know to be true from the study of the natural world. Most notably, of course, is the biblical claim that God created the entire universe out of nothing as he “spoke” it into existence at the beginning of time as we know it. The science of the early 1900s was basically stating the same thing as the ancient creation myths, in the sense that the science of the day held that the universe was eternal and that our world today came out of preexisting matter (though, of course, without the various mythological chaos monsters, etc.). Now, however, we know that the Bible had it right all along. There was a definite beginning to space and time and all the matter and energy it contains, as it simply came into being out of non-existence for no discernable reason — that is, no physical reason that we can measure or understand scientifically. That, of course, is the essence of the “Big Bang” theory for the origin of the universe, and if there was a “Big Bang” (which all the evidence points to), then it follows that there had to be a “Big Banger” — some entity transcendent to our universe that is powerful enough to explain the effect. Only the God of the Bible fits that description. Likewise, recent theories for the origin of modern humans are coming surprisingly close to that of the Genesis story, and the two progenitors of all humans are even referred to as the “mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-chromosomal Adam.” While there is still a deep commitment to naturalism on the part of those who control much of the scientific enterprise (which requires them to believe that we gradually evolved from previously existing animals), the actual evidence is far more easily explained by the biblical model — namely that modern humans suddenly appeared on the scene quite recently (on the order of 50 or 100,000 years ago) somewhere in the general region of the middle east or northeast Africa. As we think about the legacy left to the world by the biblical worldview, I cannot stress enough the importance of this basic difference between the biblical worldview and all other worldviews — be they some form of ancient polytheism or modern scientific naturalism. We can only speculate as to how different our world would be today if the biblical worldview had never appeared on the scene. When you consider the various institutions and concepts that required the biblical worldview to even get started, the differences are profound indeed. The historical evidence proves that much of what we take for granted in the modern world owes its genesis to Genesis and the rest of the Bible. Several years ago, Rodney Stark, a social scientist from Baylor University, wrote a really excellent book entitled “The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success,” and it persuasively lays out the evidence to support his conclusion, with which I wholeheartedly agree. He states the following: “Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls. Without a theology committed to reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to the age of five and many women die in childbirth—a world truly living in ‘dark ages.’ The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a ‘secular’ society—there having been none. And all the modernization that has since occurred outside Christendom was imported from the West, often brought by colonizers and missionaries.” Needless to say, his conclusions are quite controversial, but he has the evidence to back them up. To give you an idea about how that works, let’s take the example of the birth of modern science, upon which rests basically all our modern technology and the society it supports. Secular scientists may suppose that their work can get along just fine without any reference to God or the biblical worldview, and in the sense of doing their everyday science, that is generally true as far as it goes. But the problem with that way of thinking is that science itself could never have even got started without the prerequisite of the biblical worldview, namely the understanding that the natural world is governed by rational laws instituted by a single Creator. All other worldviews believed that natural phenomena are controlled by various gods or are the result of events that happened in the unseen realm of the gods. Thus, the idea that humans could actually decipher any laws that govern the natural realm and use those laws to understand nature and predict what might happen in the future simply did not occur to anybody outside of biblical revelation. Such an idea was antithetical to their basic worldview. In the biblical worldview — with the exception of the times when God miraculously intervenes from beyond space and time — cause and effect are entirely within this world, and thus can be studied and understood. In all other ancient worldviews, however, cause and effect are separated; the effects we see are in this world, but the causes are outside of this world in the unseen world of the gods, and thus they are forever beyond our understanding. This, of course, was true in ancient Japan as well, and I like to use the example of the weather, which in Japanese is the word “tenki.” This word is made up of two characters, “ten” for the heavens (or gods) and “ki,” meaning “feelings.” Thus, the concept behind the creation of this word to express the concept of the weather was “the feelings of the gods,” and that was based in the idea that the weather is controlled by how the weather god feels at any particular time. Storms or other unpleasant weather is the result of the weather god being angry about something or because of its struggles with other gods, and so the only thing one can do is to try to placate the angry gods with sacrifices and magical ceremonies, such as rain dances, etc. Perhaps this past summer the weather god had too much sake and got drunk, and that’s why we had all that rain! Anyway, it doesn’t take much insight to see how such a worldview would short-circuit modern science from even getting off the ground, and this is why ancient societies outside of Christendom never developed scientific thought. It wasn’t until the 16th century in Christian Europe that all the prerequisites for the birth of modern science came together, primary of which was having a biblical worldview. That is why essentially all the early scientists were devout Christians. Science has tended to abandon its biblical roots, but that is a fairly recent development foisted on society by those who simply don’t know their true history. Well, up until now, this sermon has perhaps sounded a bit like a university lecture, and so I want to bring it back to our Scripture reading and how the words of James apply to us today, especially from the standpoint of worldview. Coming back to the question I posed at the beginning of this sermon, “Why is it to our benefit to be patient and to trust in God’s timing?” The key to understanding that is in the biblical worldview. Why is it that we even exist in the first place? It is because God created us in his image with a specific goal in mind. We are eternal beings who will exist eternally after our physical lives are over. Our time here on earth is for the purpose of preparing us for what God has in mind for our eternal lives in the “new heavens and new earth” that he will create once the purpose of this universe is completed. An atheist looks at life very differently, since if there is no God, then this physical life we briefly possess is all there is. Once you die, that is the end of your conscious existence, and so getting your “fair share” out of life is of utmost importance. Likewise, the things that happen to you in your brief life take on supreme importance. From the standpoint of eternal life, however, whatever happens to you in this short period of time we live on earth seems rather minor — but if that is all there is, then those events become paramount indeed. I don’t mean to imply that the biblical worldview is saying that the events that happen to us in life and our response to those events aren’t important, for they certainly are. It’s just that we can have a very different perspective on them from that of someone who thinks that this life is all there is. Could an “atheist bible” (if there were such a thing) say, “Be patient and stand firm?” Certainly not in the sense it’s meant here, nor could it add the reason, “because the Lord is coming near,” since there is no “Lord” to come near in the first place. In that worldview, it all depends on you, and with so much outside of your personal control, it is all a “crap-shoot” anyway. Life is a lottery, and it is not fair. Bad things happen, and that’s just tough luck. In fact, the problem of evil and suffering is the argument atheists bring up as their prime reason for rejecting the kind of God the Bible portrays. They claim that if such an all-powerful, loving God really existed, he wouldn’t allow such evil and suffering to exist. Well, we don’t have time to go further into that issue this morning, and so I want to focus back in on what “being patient” really means. We started out with the contrast between the biblical, monotheistic worldview and the array of polytheistic, mythical worldviews that made up everything else in the ancient world. To this, I added the relatively recent atheistic worldview as a third option. In fact, those three are the only possible options when it comes to the existence of God or gods. Either there are none at all, there is one and only one God, or there are gods in the plural. So, let’s see what “patience” means from these 3 general perspectives. From an atheistic perspective, being patient is strictly pragmatic. You exercise patience only as a tool to help you get what you want. It is not a virtue to develop, along with the other “fruit of the Spirit” listed in Galatians 5 (namely, love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control). Since your few years here on earth are all there is, you focus in on your own wants and desires. There is no incentive for self-sacrifice, since that is merely subtracted from your “fair share” of life. An atheist may claim that he gets satisfaction from sacrificing for the good of others, but to do so is to borrow from the biblical worldview, since such a virtue has no rational basis in an atheistic worldview. On the other end of the scale, “patience” from a polytheistic standpoint is mere fatalism. Hinduism is a good example of this. One’s position in life (what caste you were born into) and what happens to you in life are due to your “karma” from previous lives, and so “being patient” means to just accept your status in life and make the best of it without trying to change it. Ethics are entirely relative, as a multiplicity of gods makes it impossible to believe that the world has an ethical foundation. Actions that would be pleasing to one god are almost certain to be displeasing to some other god, as the various gods have different wishes and desires. Since no one God brought the universe into existence, no specific god’s character is reflected in the universe. How very different both of these are from the biblical worldview. God’s very nature is reflected in what he has made, and it is this that is the basis for ethics and virtue. The primary reflection is in human beings, as we are the only creatures God created “in God’s image.” When it comes to patience, it is God who is our model. How incredible is the patience with which God treats humanity! The various gods conjured up by rebellious humans are notably impatient — just like we humans are! But God showed not only his incredible love, but also his incredible patience for us in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That is the primary reason we should also “be patient.” Not only do we love because “God first loved us,” but we also are to be patient with each other (and not “grumble against each other”) because God was first patient with us. When James used the word “grumble against,” he likely had in mind the “grumbling against God” by the Israelites during their wilderness experience. If they had been ready to enter the “promised land” right after coming out of Egypt, God would have led them straight up to Canaan. But they weren’t ready, and so God first had to teach them dependence on him through 40 years of wandering through the desert — and that includes patience! In a similar way, God is preparing each of us in this life for the life he has waiting for each of us in his eternal kingdom. “Being patient” and “waiting upon the Lord” are among the many virtues God, in his patience, is trying to develop in each of us. There is so much more we could delve into this morning, but our time is up. And so I want to close with the words James records after he mentions the Old Testament prophets and Job as examples of “patience in suffering.” He closes that paragraph with these words, “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” Boy, do I need to hear that over and over! It is that compassion and mercy that results in God being so patient with me, a weak and impatient human being. I think I’m a more patient person that I was when I was younger, but I still have such a long way to go. And I would imagine that many of you feel the same way — not only about me, but about yourselves as well! So, as we close, let’s hold onto those words. “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” That is part of the very character of God, and it is what he is trying to develop in us as well. As our closing hymn, I’ve chosen “Be Still, My Soul.” You’ll notice that in the very first verse, after declaring that “the Lord is on thy side,” it encourages us to “Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide.” What we need, of course, is to learn the virtue of patience in general as we learn to wait upon God and his timing for his great plan for each of us. And we can do that because, “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” May you all experience that compassion and mercy as you allow God to develop patience in your soul, along with love, joy and the other fruit of the Spirit. God’s richest blessings on each of you.
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We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord We are one in the Spirit We are one in the Lord And we pray that all unity May one day be restored Chorus: And they'll know we are Christians By our love by our love Yes they'll know we are Christians By our love Good morning, some of you may know and have sung this tune many times! It was written in the late 70’s but still sung today. During the September Sunday Services at KUC, we have been hearing and learning something about KUPC history, traditions, inheritance, legacy, historical identity, and so on. And today, I would like to narrow down our focus to our Church’s name “Kobe Union (Protestant) Church and discuss ''how much the word “UNION” means to us as Christians and members of this Church. As a matter of fact, unity of the church or unity of Christianity has been a great issue for Christians. As today’s scripture informed us, among the very early Christians, there was division. I for Apollo, I for Paul, and I for Christ! Apollo seemed to be Paul’s colleague as a missionary who brought the Christian Gospel to Corinth. But it was his version of the Gospel and somehow different from Paul’s one In the Epistle of Galatians, Paul challenged the followers of James, the brother of Jesus, and even called some members of the Galatian Church as “foolish.” (Gal 3:1) From that time on, Christianity has struggled to hold its unity. But looking at a chart of European history, the Western Church, mainly Catholic, which had it headquarter in Rome separated from the Eastern Church, which is the present the Orthodox Church. And going against the Catholic Church, the Protestant movement started, which added further more division into the many denominations, or groups, and sects. During this August, I had the laziest summer vacation in my life because of COVID-19 and heavy rain. I mainly stayed at home watching cable net TV dramas and reading books on British history. Among them, one common big issue is religion, precisely Christianity, and to which denomination one belongs? And this issue is related to the state and national levels as well as personal and family concerns. For example, the story of two Queens in Great Britain in the 16th century, one is of course was Queen Elizabeth I and the other Queen Mary of Scotland. Catholic or Protestant is not their personal choice but the nation’s. Then the Protestant faith was divided Anglican (Church of England), and the Presbyterian, led by Rev. John Knox. In one TV drama I watched called Downten Abbey was about an English aristocratic noble family. The family had three daughters. The youngest daughter was determined to marry an Irish boy who was a chauffeur (the driver for the family). The difference of their social class and the faith caused a great argument. There was a big discussion or argument as to which faith their child should be brought up in, as Protestant, or Catholic? The eldest daughter got married to a Jewish young man. How will the tradition of this English noble family be inherited to the next generation? Of course, they are all of the Christian faith, except the Jewish family, who had a great understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures as their Bible. Talking about Kobe Union (Protestant) Church, the founder and the first Pastor of ours was Rev. D. C. Greene. He also designed the first building at the Kobe Concession (Kyoryu-chi), next door to the present Kobe Daimaru department store. He was originally a Congregational missionary to Japan. During the KUC Bible class on Thursday night, we were talking about Doshisha University and on the Imadegawa Kyoto Campus where there is a very old church building which was also designed by Rev. Green. If you go there, you can somehow find out what Kobe Union’s first church building looks like. His denomination, Congregational, was one of mainline Protestant denominations, but different from Catholic or Anglican. So, when he first organized KUC, they even claimed the church as “Union”, but separated from the Catholic church, the former Nakayamate Church, now Kobe Central Catholic Church built in 1870, or from St. Michael Anglican Church started in 1887. The name “Kobe Union Protestant Church '' has significant meaning which shows that we are not Catholic or Anglican. Personally, I will introduce my family denominational background. My grandfather was a minister of the Baptist Church, his wife was one of the very first women minister in Japan of the Japanese Congregational Church. Their daughter, my mother, got married to a pastor of Reformed Church, and I went to the theological school of Kwansei Gakuin University which is Methodist origin. What is my denomination that I grew up in? Good question! I think it is the same question for the Kobe Union Church members. Kobe Union was originally a church for the English and German-speaking foreigners who stayed in Japan either temporarily or permanently. The members of the congregation had quite a variety of the denominational differences, at least they were all Protestant, and called their church as Union who certainly laid their great faith in the word of God, as St. Paul insists, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (I Cor 3:7), and KUC members received this testimony more seriously than any other churches. Yes, we may have differences in our faith backgrounds, but within each context “God has been making it grow!”, that is not to see the differences but to see our one God! One very important element of KUC church life I should like to recommend, is “listening to each other and praying to God,” because, “ we are co-workers in God’s service.” We are called to be Christian not for our own individual sake, but for God's mission. If I may quote one more St. Paul’s remark to us at this point, he says, “For he (Christ) himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14) In other words, KUC is a peace prevailing congregation into the world, society, local community and among Christian people all over the world as a sign of Christ’s peace through the union of us. Singing “we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord!” Let us pray: Merciful God, please give your encouragement and guidance to fix our eyes only to you to make us one true body of Christ. We will always listen to our members’ witness and appreciate the differences as a fruitful dimension of our faith, and give thanks to you who have given it as our privileges. We pray in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Amen. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2016&version=NRSV
Let us pray. Lord, your word is a lamp to our feet and light to our path. Please speak to us by the work of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen. As you might have picked up from Pastor Claudia’s sermon last week, the sermon theme this month is “Our Heritage,” a series we chose in part because this year our church is celebrating its 150th anniversary. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, a committee was formed and has done a great job collecting all the historical records of our church, archiving them as official records, and putting them together on our website. You can actually see them there now if, when you go to our website, you go to one of the tabs on the upper right corner of the screen where it says “more” and click on “150th Anniversary.” There you can see more about the history of our church; the names of our former pastors, and memories of all the joys and challenges the church has experienced throughout all its seasons, as told by members of our church who were present in those times. If you want to know more about the history of the church, I would suggest that you also watch the videos made about our history posted on the 150th anniversary page on our website, or reach out to Tabuchi-sensei. Before the pandemic, he was leading classes on the history of our church and, had COVID-19 not interfered, he had been planning on taking us on tours to all the places where our church building used to stand because, if you didn’t know, our current building is actually the third church building that the KUC congregation has had in its 150 years. Last week, Pastor Claudia talked about that time in our history where we almost lost our church building. While we know that the church is more than just the physical building, our building can serve as a way to show who God is when we use it for others as God is to us, a shelter and a refuge, as it says in the book of Psalms. Of course, KUC is no stranger to using the building as a place of refuge and safety. After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 Kobe Union Church, which had been spared much of the damage that had been experienced down in town, opened its doors to become a shelter for those who had lost their homes, or whose homes had been too badly damaged. Goods and resources were brought to the church building and the church functioned as a resource center as well. On one occasion, a church member who I was speaking with told me that church is a special place for them because, on Sundays, we can separate ourselves from all the things which the world holds valuable, and focus solely on God. This sense of security, knowing that the church is a place of shelter and refuge, means even more to those who are marginalized and oppressed, like those who have been bullied, abused, and discriminated against, such as foreign minority communities. There are so many different ways that a church can be, and in which our church has been, a shelter and a refuge, a place where all people can escape to safety and security. But despite all this, there have been times in our church’s history when our church was no longer a place of shelter and refuge. In 1941, on the morning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Rev. Dr. Harry Myers, then the pastor of Kobe Union Church, was arrested and imprisoned, sent to an internment camp. Later on, many others within the church were also placed in internment, though a few were able to escape. As a result, Kobe Union Church lost her pastor, and a large number of congregants too. For Reverend Myers and the members of the church in internment, they had lost their place of shelter and refuge. Kobe Union Church then turned to the German church, with whom we were sharing our church building, and asked for their help. The pastor of the German church at the time, Rev. Liemar Henning, began to serve KUC as well, preaching twice a month and shepherding the church which had suddenly dwindled in size while the allied German church grew larger in number. https://www.evkobe.org/deutsch/150th-anniversary-of-kobe-union-church/ In this incredibly challenging time, the imprisoned Pastor Meyers and the rest of the church members in internment shared the light of Christ, expressing the goodness of God even from within the prison walls. The church secretary and organist at the time, Miss Mioko Kadotaa, recalled that Pastor Meyers encouraged the church to memorize any of their favorite Bible verses because “they could be a great help...at any moment whenever we were in need.” (https://www.evkobe.org/deutsch/150th-anniversary-of-kobe-union-church/mioko-kadota-memories-during-december-1941-and-1945/) In the Christmas season of 1942, some of those in internment who had been receiving some financial assistance from the church, sent their portion of money back to KUC to be used as a benevolence fund; money for the church to use specifically to help those who are most in need. With the money collected from the KUC members in internment, Miss Kadota went to City Hall and got the names of Japanese families who had lost the husband, father, son, or whoever was the breadwinner in their family, to the war. The people at City Hall were amazed that people from an enemy country would give their money to support Japanese families. In that moment, Miss Kadota reminded them that it was Christian tradition to share the Christmas joy most especially with those who were in need. After getting the necessary information, Miss Kadota divided the collected money equally, and sent it to thirty different families in need. As time went on, the war finally came to Japanese soil, and the bombs began to fall all over the country, including in Kobe. The church did not escape the bombs either. The record in our archives says , “Systematic bombings by B 29’s hit kobe on March 5, 1945. In a second raid on June 5 at 5:30 in the morning, the Kobe business district was wiped out, and the church was hit by incendiary bombs with the intent to cause fire. The caretaker was helpless: there was no water-- the mains had been disrupted. When the fire was over, only the concrete shell of the sanctuary and fellowship hall and the upper floors of the manse remained. The end of the war was only 70 days away.“ (https://www.evkobe.org/deutsch/150th-anniversary-of-kobe-union-church/90-years-of-kobe-union-church-iv-trial-by-fire-during-war-1942-1956/ and “Kobe Union Church 1871-1989 On the 60th Anniversary of The Ikuta Cho Building) You might be surprised to hear this, but once the war ended the church did not focus on rebuilding the church building. Of course, people did not stop coming to church for worship but, when they did, they simply met in the open air. When winter came they met in one of the rooms of the former church manse. (KUC History by Morse Saito) The archive tells us that the cost of rebuilding was very expensive, prohibitively expensive in fact. But that wasn’t the reason why the church didn’t rebuild. In fact, other Union Churches were able to rebuild through the use of war reparation funds; money paid to them by the Japanese government. (From KUC History by Morse Saito) It wasn’t that the church didn’t have the means to repair, but that the Kobe Union Church congregation had made the deliberate decision not to repair because they wanted the Japanese people, their lives and livelihoods, to be rebuilt first. The archives say that, “About 70 percent were suffering from latent or active tuberculosis,” after the war. “Most were dressed in ragged old military and school uniforms. One banana cost a day’s wages.” (KUC History by Morse Saito) The KUC congregation felt that they could not take more from Japanese people in order to repair the church building. Not when they were already facing so much. So they continued to worship inside and outside the unrepaired church building for the next six years. But even still, the life of the church did not stop. The broken building did not stop them from serving God and God’s people. By 1947, a women’s support group had been formed and, soon after that, a full Sunday School program. Then, by 1952 a men’s group was formed, and by 1956 a Business and Professional Women’s group, a Saturday evening program for English-speaking Japanese and foreigners, and a professionally-directed choir had all come together. (https://www.evkobe.org/deutsch/150th-anniversary-of-kobe-union-church/90-years-of-kobe-union-church-iv-trial-by-fire-during-war-1942-1956/) We often hear it said that, “when we go through a time of trial, our true character is revealed.” When things are happy and rosy, of course it is easy for us to live and act as Christians. It is easy to do good things, easy to keep the faith. When we have financial means, and the emotional space to do and be good, proclaiming Jesus is Lord comes easily, since we can simply point to all these good things and say that they come from the Lord. But when all those things are stripped away, when our physical shelter is destroyed, and the things that once brought us a sense of safety and security are taken away, as it was for the congregants and pastor of KUC during World War II, as it was when the church building was broken by the bombs, or when the community was shattered and shaken and so many homes were lost or destroyed during the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake; in moments like this, what comes from our mouths, and the actions we take, reveal who we truly are. Pastor Meyers’ call to memorize any Scripture verses was a call to encouragement. The KUC congregant’s decision to continue to worship in a broken church, choosing not to rebuild until the lives of the Japanese people around them were rebuilt first was a call for showing care and compassion. A group of believers gathered in songs of praise, confessing Christ as a redeemer, were leading people to a place of hope that homes and cities would be rebuilt again after the earthquake. And what is it that sits beneath these great demonstrations of faith and strong practices of kindness and compassion? What made them able to say and do all these things, when no good seemed to remain in the world around them? I believe that these people had within them a faith and trust that echoed in our today’s Scripture reading, Psalm 16. The writer of Psalm 16, King David, declares that he knows the Lord God personally, as his Lord. To him, the Lord is not simply some distant king who governs the nations from afar, but a Lord who personally and intimately governs all aspects of his life. He also knew that this relationship with the Lord was the portion which had been given to God’s people as their heritage (Psalm 16:5-6), their inheritance from generation to generation. After forty years of wilderness, after a seemingly unending series of rocky paths and winding roads, God set apart the the tribe of the Levites and said that they were not to be given a land in which to settle or inherit, as were all others within the nation of Israel, but were given instead the Lord God as their inheritance instead. (Deuteronomy 10:9) (When we talk about words like “heritage” and “inheritance,” we often think about them as things of the past that we choose to bring forward into the present, something we honor by actively including it in our modern lives. An inheritance is something passed on to us from someone who has died, for example. World Heritage Sites are places that have some significant historical meaning attached to them; something of the past that we choose to recognize today. Sometimes, in some families, when the will of a deceased individual is unclear, there can be fighting and arguments among those who remain behind. It becomes a guessing game because, while the inheritance honors the will of the one who died, it remains something solely of the past. Not something that remains active today. But this is not the case for our heritage as Christians) When we declare “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you…” (Psalm 16:2) Among all the things available that seem to secure our lives, we choose the Lord as our portion and our cup...as people of God have done (Psalm 16)”, we enter in to that heritage as a living relationship with our Lord. This heritage is not a thing of the past, but something that is present, here and now. We enter into a living, present relationship where the Lord welcomes you among God’s people and, in that,, we can say we have a goodly heritage (Psalm 16:6). And unlike the abstract feeling of an ancient worldly heritage, or the unsure expression of an inheritance passed down from some unknown relative, there is something uniquely wonderful, something so pleasing and delightful, in a heritage that is active, alive, and living with us today. There is absolute security in this relationship. “Because the Lord is at my right hand, I shall not be moved” (Psalm 16:8) or shaken. There is a trust that the Lord will not give me up to Sheol (Psalm 16:10) , that is the place of death where there is no remembrance of God. When the Lord is at my right hand, we find that, actually, the opposite happens. The Lord will keep us. The Lord will show the path of life. (Psalm 16:11) And this active, living heritage is intimate and ever growing as you see in the Psalm 16. You hear the Lord gives counsel. (Psalm 16:7) Not only do I speak to the Lord, but the Lord speaks. The divine counsel of the Lord becomes part of what my heart instructs. (Psalm 16:7) God’s counsel is deeply embedded in me and in my heart and it can speak to me even at night and in my sleep. Hearing the Lord leads me to act. I keep the Lord ALWAYS before me (Psalm 16: 8) and let the Lord guide me. It is because I realize that the Lord is all I ever need. I realize that the Lord is the only heritage and inheritance I truly need and need to pass on. No even one worldly heritage could be more dear to me than this. When we declare the Lord is our Lord, that is when transformation happens. As long as we have the Lord with us, as long as we embrace this living heritage, we will be ok. We are secure in the Lord, our refuge and our strength. This is what our senpai, our older brothers and sisters in faith, believed in. This is what moved them to act with love and compassion even in times and places when love and compassion seemed risky, dangerous, or illogical. They lived in the safety and security of the Lord when they had a great and beautiful church building, lived in the safety and security of the Lord when their pastor was taken to prison along with much of their congregation, lived in the safety of the Lord when they could no longer have physical fellowship, or when the church decreased in size because war separated the people, or when the earth shook and the community suffered. They knew that no matter what happened, their heritage could never be taken away from them because the Lord was always with them. The Lord held their lot. (Psalm 16: 5) (Resting firm in the assurance of God’s security, they focused instead on serving Christ and their community, loving their neighbors with all they had to give. When things get tough, it’s natural for us to have a narrower vision, to focus on what has been lost and become preoccupied with it. Worldwide, the community of faith has been dwindling in size for decades. Fewer and fewer people have been going to church, and now that the pandemic is upon us, many churches find themselves struggling even more not only in numbers of people, but in finances as well. We often hear the lament that, “the church used to have so much more people, so much more money; there used to be so many programs, events, and things to do!” But today, I want to invite us all to remember that Goodly heritage we have in Christ. The heritage of a people who, in the midst of war and imprisonment, did not lament their struggles, but reached out with generosity to their community, showing the love of Christ to a people who were amazed to see love overcome the hatred of wartime enemies. In this prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, much like the time of World War II for our church community, we find many among us struggling physically, emotionally, and financially. Rates of suicide and depression are higher than ever, domestic violence is up, and working hours are down but demans are high. People have lost jobs, homes, and resources. Some have lost co-workers, friends, and family members to COVID. People live in fear, wondering what will happen if someone we know gets COVID; or worse, what will happen if we get it? And this fear grows when we see that our medical system is overloaded, and people cannot access the treatment they need on time. These are the moments that people wonder just who, or what, is governing their lives. These are the moments we declare that the Lord is our Lord. The Lord is the Lord of all. We are a people who believe in the Lord, and believe in the goodness of the Lord which is handed down from generation to generation as our heritage, which calls us to serve radically in this challenging time we live. We are called not to build up our treasures on earth, not to rebuild our own home or resources, but to look out and care for those who have less, the least of these; those who are most affected by this pandemic. We are called to respond to the actual needs that people have in this time and place. Just like our church being deliberate in not rebuilding our sanctuary all those years ago, Just like Miss Kadota striding purposefully into City Hall to seek out those who most needed help, we need to practice intentionality and discernment, figuring out how our actions can be a real and present help to the community around us. Right now, people are exhausted from dealing with the COVID pandemic. And in response to that, we have begun planning a workshop, hosted by TELL(English speaking mental health support organization), on how to deal with COVID exhaustion. Right now, mothers in particular are exhausted, wrestling with how to navigate raising children while living in a world where social distancing and isolation is the new normal. In response, we have started zoom gatherings for them. We have a care ministry, which we use to get groceries and other necessities to people within our community who are in need. People find themselves isolated, and in desperate need of good listeners; someone who can help them feel heard, who can meet them where they are in life now. And in response to this need, we have created “revealing through sharing” groups, where we do exactly that. And of course, in the midst of all of that, we continue to try to help people connect with the Word of God, our bread of life to sustain us throughout the week, inviting them to worship and give thanks to God in all circumstances. If you, or someone you know, are in a place where your burdens, anxieties, and worries just feel too big for you to carry, let alone to serve others, I want to encourage you to read this Psalm, and embrace the security and safety you can find in the Lord. Every day, in the midst of your struggles, try to pause, try to look into the mirror and declare for yourself “You are my Lord..” (Psalm 16:2) “The Lord is my chosen portion. (Psalm 16:5) The Lord is the inheritance I was passed down. I have a goodly heritage (Psalm 16:6). ” Friends, we have a relationship with Christ; a relationship which is given to us as a living and active heritage of love and compassion. Be secure in this heritage and go out to serve the Lord and our neighbors, just like our brothers and sisters in the faith have loved and served the Lord throughout the 150 years of Kobe Union Church. The Lord is our God, and we have no good apart from the Lord. Amen. “For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures” (Rom. 15:4). How familiar are you with your family history? Do you know your ethnic heritage or the names of your ancestors? Erik, who is recording this video for me, if French. Right, Erik? he Those of you who are Japanese, how far back can you trace your family? I took one of those DNA tests once although I already knew my ancestry. In recent years, the business of tracing one’s ancestry is popular in the US and technology now allows people to research and connect their ancestry like we couldn’t do before. I am French, Scottish, and Irish. My family name is Genung and the first Geunons were French Huguenots. These were Protestants who escaped Catholic France. In my ancestro’s case, that was in 1657. French Huguenots had a choice – convert, get executed, or leave. Lucky for me my ancestor Jean Guenon choose to leave and went to Long Island, New York. Anyway, I am proud of my French heritage! Here is a book written about my ancestors Anyway, I would like to talk a bit about our KUC heritage and our Christian heritage in light of today’s scripture. Big topics for a sermon! We almost lost Kobe Union Church – the building - during the war. On December 21, 1942, our KUC church secretary, Miss Kadota, was returning home from Osaka. As she got onto the Hankyu train, she bumped into Rev. Dr. Toyohiko Kagawa, her old friend and her former Sunday School teacher. Dr Kagawa was on the same train going to his monthly visit to his church in Nishinomiya. They had not met for a long time so Ms Kadota said it was the Lord that led her into the carriage on that particular train where Dr. Kagawa was standing. The minute he saw her, he told her, “Kadota-san, you have no more church of your own.” It was shocking news to Miss Kadota but equally surprising to Dr. Kagawa that the church members knew nothing at all about this matter. He said that Hirano Church had completed all negotiations to take over KUC as foreign property confiscated by the Japanese government and they were sending a man to the Ministry of Finance on December 27 with the payment. Ms Kadota said; “The 15 minutes train ride from Nishinomiya to Kobe was the longest ride I had ever experienced. As soon as I returned home, I telephoned Mr. Hansen who immediately came to my house and I told him the news.” (Mr. Hansen must have been a church member. We do not know his country of origin nor position in the church.) “The next morning Mr. Hansen went to Mr. Taniguchi’s office and asked him to consult with his nephew, who was Vice-Minister of Finance. The German-speaking group was told they could stay. But Rev. Hennig, the pastor of the German-speaking congregation at KUC (who also had studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York before the war) made it clear to the Ministry of Finance that the Germans would leave if the English-speaking worshippers were driven out. Eventually, a compromise was worked out, largely through the goodness of government officials, whereby English, German, and Japanese-speaking peoples could share the building. Although a sale transfer was actually completed and the name “Sannomiya Kyokai” placed over the Church gate, the worship services continued for all. There is a note recording the attendance at the 1944 Christmas service held in English that 13 different nationalities were represented – 17 Japanese, 6 Russians, 6 Swiss, 5 Germans, 2 Swedes, 2 Danes, 2 Americans, 2 Englishmen and one each of Indian, Dutch, Turk, Finnish, and Hungarian. The note concluded, “Enemy sat with enemy to celebrate the most wonderful of all birthdays.” In spite of many difficulties, it seemed that the Church would safely make it through the War. But systematic bombings of Kobe by American B-29’s began with a raid on the Hyogo area of west-central Kobe on March 5, 1945. In a second raid on June 5, the Kobe business district was wiped out, and Kobe Union Church was hit by incendiary bombs. The caretaker was helpless because the water mains had been disrupted and there was no water for fighting the fire that the bombs caused. When the fire was over, only the concrete shell of the sanctuary and fellowship hall and the upper floors of the manse remained. It is such a shame as the end of the War was only 70 days away. Anyway, if you go to the KUC website then to the EKK website and go to the page on our 150th anniversary, you can see some photos and more articles. (https://www.evkobe.org/deutsch/150th-anniversary-of-kobe-union-church/ ) Pastor Akiko will also share more of this story next week in her sermon. This is our heritage. As Christians, we have own heritage. We are a distinct spiritual family and our history is traceable not through a DNA test but through an ancient text – the Bible. In the Bible we see how God has worked through the lives of people. The Hebrew scriptures show us our Judeo-Christian roots. We learn who we are and why we’re here. But the Bible does something more significant than just show us our Christian heritage. It points us to the God who has shaped our past and future. It tells us not just where we come from, but whose we are — the children of a God who loves us.
The words in the Bible, with the help of the Holy Spirit, instructs us in God’s character and how God relates to us, God’s children. If Paul’s words are not enough, we have another compelling reason to pay closer attention to the record of our spiritual pedigree: Jesus taught that Scripture spoke not merely of those who had gone before, but of the One who was to come. Jesus taught that it spoke of Him. See Luke 24: 27 where is says, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Looking throughout the Bible. We can see how God determined to save us by sending us his son Jesus. We have hope for the future even if it is unknown because we see what God has done for us. As Christians, we are people of hope. This is not the same as being optimistic. People of hope may have some hard times along the way. People of hope know that God goes with us every step of our way. We look at our Christian heritage and for our 150th anniversary, we look at our KUC heritage. We have hope for our future. We are doing some wonderful things at KUC and with our online global ministry. We are connecting with so many people through ZOOM classes and will be offering more classes this fall. It is exciting to see how our vision for the future will enfold. I am 62 years old now so I probably won’t be around when we celebrate our 200 year anniversary at KUC, but I have hope that those in the future look back at what our heritage has given them. We look at the past which gives us hope for the future. Let us pray. O God, you are our help in ages past and our hope for years to come, you are our shelter in storms of our lives. Be our guide while life shall last and our eternal home. Amen. |
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