EAM KOREA (2nd of a Series)
UNITING OUR MISSION: THE FUTURE OF ASIA-AMERICA PARTNERSHIP
(Keynote speech of The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, 26th Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church at the Episcopal
Asia-America Ministry Consultation held on September 30-July 5, 2015 in the Cathedral of St. Mary
and St. Nicholas, Seoul, Korea)
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| Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori being welcomed by the Korean Folk Dancers |
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| Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Archbishop Paul Kim of the Anglican Church of Korea |
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| The EAM Participants in Ganghwa Island, Korea where the Anglican Church of Korea first begun. |
If we’re
willing to look back several millennia, we might recognize that the first witnesses
of the gospel in the Americas had Asian roots.
The indigenous peoples of the Americas migrated there from NE Asia more
than 20 thousand years ago.[1] The first witnesses of an Anglican service in
the Americas were Native Americans looking on as Sir Francis Drake’s chaplain
held a prayer service north of San Francisco Bay in 1579. One of the first two people baptized by
Anglicans was Manteo, a Croatan chief, in 1587; the other was a baby, Virginia
Dare, born to parents who were part of the “Lost Colony” off the coast of what
is now North Carolina.[2] The first recorded Chinese Anglican service
held in North America took place in 1871 in Virginia City, Nevada. Asian roots are deep and pervasive in The
Episcopal Church, from Ah Foo who ministered to Chinese miners and railroad
workers in Virginia City and Carson City in the 1870s,[3] to
Hiram Hisanori Kano, who worked with Japanese immigrants in Nebraska beginning
in the 1920s. He was the only
Japanese-American in Nebraska to be interned during the war, apparently because
as a priest he was seen to be so dangerous!
We are giving thanks here for the first Hmong congregation in TEC, now served
by Fr. Toua Vang.
The
Asia-American experience in TEC is not simply a history, but an unfolding and
growing reality in North America. While
the Latino population has been the largest immigrant presence in recent
decades, the latest census projections in the United States indicate that
immigration from Asia will make that population the fastest growing by 2025.[4]
What does
this mean for TEC and for our varied contexts, and not only in the US? What does it mean for the Anglican Communion? Certainly the presence of various Asian
cultures has been an expansive blessing for this church, and has offered other
cultures a broader and richer understanding of what it means to love God and
neighbor with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. We learn that God is worshiped in ways that
are broader and deeper than what we first knew: the deeply quiet reverence of a traditional
Japanese liturgy; the surprising vigor of an Igorot gong dance; the liveliness
of a Chinese dragon dance welcoming a new bishop in San Francisco or Los
Angeles; the feathered smudge, drum, and flute of Native Americans.
The gifts
of migration move in both directions, from Asia to America, and back
again. We are slowly growing into the
great dream of the last half-century, that we might become Mutually Responsible
and Interdependent parts of the body of Christ.
I’m going to speak primarily of what I see as the gifts of Asian sending
contexts for The Episcopal Church. I
hope and expect that others might speak of what is received here in Asia.
The most
powerful witness of the churches and provinces of Asia for their brothers and
sisters in TEC is two-fold – the creative and contextual forms of ministry in
those varied places, and the overriding focus on reconciliation and
peace-making. Yesterday we heard
powerful accounts of the difficulties that early missionaries had evangelizing
in several Asian contexts, particularly when there was a refusal or inability
to recognize what God was already doing in those contexts. Certainly one of the prophetic leaders in
shifting that dynamic was Roland Allen, who in the early twentieth century
claimed a missionary method like the apostle Paul’s. Allen said he believed his duty was to bring
the scriptures and the sacraments, and then get out of the way, encouraging the
gospel to take root in native soil.[5] The vigorous trees of life that have grown in
varied Anglican-Episcopal contexts in Asia have borne fruit that when planted
in other soil has begun to deeply bless that context. That fruit looks and tastes a bit different
than it does here – and we’ve heard some of the challenges that come of
expecting it to be identical, particularly for new generations.
One of the
gifts of the Anglican Communion in recent decades has been the focus on Five
Marks of Mission, with an implicit expectation of variation in different
contexts.[6] That framework exemplifies the kind of
theologizing we can do together, and it’s become an important marker in
thinking about and acting on God’s call to reconciling the world. I want to encourage you to learn to put these
into your own language, and what I’m going to offer is only an example.
Reconciliation
is the foundation of God’s mission, and our response and partnership comes
through deeply owning that vision of a healed world, giving our heart to the
goal we call the Reign of God, by believing it and acting on it (Mark I). We share that mission by forming others, and
being formed ourselves, as students and disciples of that good news vision
(Mark II). We partner with others to
relieve the suffering in this world, through concrete response to particular
human pain and dis-ease (Mark III). We
come together to change the human systems of domination that sustain and permit
human suffering, injustice of all kinds, and the particular evil of war and
violence (Mark IV). And as Anglicans, we
are newly re-awakening to the original human vocation – tending the garden in
which we’re planted (Mark V). There can
be no long-term hope for achieving that vision of peace and justice if the
earth cannot sustain life, and life in abundance, for all its inhabitants.
Each of the
cultures and languages represented here is partnering in God’s mission in a
variety of creative ways. I’m going to note
just a few of the very creative missional endeavors taking place across this
hemisphere.
Proclaiming
good news: following the earthquake,
tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Sendai, Japan, the NSKK responded by caring
for particular communities in specific ways.
In one small community, relocated residents were housed in shelters
built into shipping containers. They
were modest, and very functional, and church workers soon learned of residents’
deep hunger for the social and emotional support that people had known in their
former homes. For one thing, their
housing didn’t have traditional soaking tubs.
Church members began to offer tea ceremonies in these communities – to
people of varying religious traditions or none.
The NSKK stood in solidarity with a fishing village where most of the
wives were Filipino immigrants, often isolated from the rest of the community –
so they offered language courses and social support. Yet another initiative hosted a bakery that
employed mentally disabled and joyous young adults. Reconciliation in that crisis recovery
context reminded people of their basic human dignity and value, in ways that
were specific to the need. That walking
together is a quiet and deeply authentic way of proclaiming good news in deed
and word.
Form new
disciples: The Episcopal Church in the
Philippines and the Iglesia Filipina Independiente are clear about their desire
to share resources, like a seminary. The
two traditions largely work in different geographic contexts – by choice, out
of a theological and ecclesiological belief that they shouldn’t be competing.[7] All human communities have something to learn
from that witness, for the tense struggle between identity and collegial
partnership is as old as Cain and Abel.
Education
efforts by Anglicans and Episcopalians everywhere help to form human beings for
life in community that will lead to more abundant life for all. Some of those disciples are overtly and
avowedly Christian; others become stronger Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and
Muslims, and all have the lively experience of creative encounter in a diverse
environment. Rikkyo University in Tokyo;
Nanjing Theological College in China; St. Andrew’s seminary, Brent School, and
Trinity University in Manila; several bilingual kindergartens and St. John’s
University in Taiwan; Ming Hua and other educational institutions in Hong Kong;
and Songkunghoe University here in Seoul are all engaged in forming citizens to
take their place as agents of change in their local communities, nations, and
the world. The vision of change they
inherit and discover through these institutions is about abundant life for all.
Learning
that vision, making it one’s own deeply enough to say that I believe it, and
give my heart and soul and being to that vision, is the fruit of practice and
habit. We learn to love our neighbors as
ourselves from guides who help to form habits for the journey. It may look like sharing a meal with a lonely
and frail elder, tutoring a school child, feeding a hungry person, or gathering
for worship with people and in ways that challenge us all. Those habits include the courage and will to
reach across fear, difference, and violence in search of peace, knowing that
justice is essential to peace. I will
come back to this, as I think it is the particular gift of many provinces in
this part of the world.
The last
Mark of Mission has to do with caring for the earth. The Church in the Philippines has been
prophetic in working with farmers to rediscover and honor traditional agricultural
techniques, and improve them without the use of seeds which require excessive
use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
The Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project (KEEP) and the Asian Rural
Institute are other examples of long-standing mission work that seek to
reconcile human beings with their environment.
Working toward the sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture is a
hallmark of the Polynesian church’s mission; the church in Bangladesh
challenges the world to address climate change and the coastal flooding they
are increasingly suffering. So, too,
does the plight of the many island peoples of the Pacific, who are seeing their
garden soils and drinking water become increasingly salty and their ancestral
lands slowly sink beneath the sea.
Seafarers missions seek to sustain the life and livelihoods of those in peril
on the sea.
I want to
return to the form of reconciliation held up in the 4th Mark of
Mission: challenging violence and seeking
peace. It’s worth noting that any
concrete work that seeks to end violence always confronts unjust systems that lead
to and sustain violence. That
confrontation can elicit violent response, as Jesus knew and experienced. Human communities often descend into violence
in the face of scarce resources, whether that scarcity is real or
imagined. The expansionist lust for
power, territory, or the ability to impose a particular worldview are
variations on that same theme of scarcity.
The wars that have been fought in this part of the world in recent
centuries, the imperial and colonial adventures of regimes both local and
foreign, and the ongoing and varied alliances of some powers against others all
tell the same sad human story we know from Genesis, Exodus, the Roman
occupation of Palestine, and more recent conflicts.
The Christian
witness in Asia has had a checkered history, just as it has in other parts of
the world. Many of the early Christian
missionaries came as part of colonial and imperial expansionism. At the same time, many of those early
witnesses to the power of God in Jesus Christ demonstrated what they professed
by literally giving their lives, as white martyrs and red ones. Their witness continues to change hearts, and
to make reconciliation and peace-building more possible. The peace-making initiative of TOPIK[8]
seeks not only peace on this Korean peninsula, but an expanding possibility of
peace throughout this region and the world.
When we see the selfless action of even a few, it gives courage to the
many, and the cause of peace advances.
For the love demonstrated in the quest for peace does cast out fear.
The world
needs that confidence that peace is possible, particularly in this anxious and
fearful season. We know that the
resolution of conflict in one part of the world gives impetus and confidence to
its resolution elsewhere. The current anxiety
about economic conditions, the wanton and degraded violence of terrorism, and
the storm clouds of climate change and potential food shortages are all
contributing to the violence around us.
The world was in a similar state some 50 years ago, as people were building
bomb shelters at home, hoarding food, and foreseeing the imminent end of the
world. The strong and faithful hearts of
a few found the courage to draw back from violent response and seek peace. We need the same courage now, and there is
abundant example and leadership represented here.
The work of
TOPIK began by seeking to end the Korean War and to reunify families separated for
more than 60 years by a suspicious ceasefire.
This province has brought together the churches of old enemies to make
peace. Those efforts continue to expand
beyond Korea, Japan, and the United States, and the reconciling and
truth-telling experience in South Africa and Ireland, and Canada’s
reconciliation journey with First Nations peoples have energized the work and
offered new and particular avenues for building a culture of peace.
Those
examples, and others yet to be shared or developed, are essential in the face
of current territorial claims in the South China Sea, and the resulting fears of
that expansionism are threatening the gains for peace in Article 9 of Japan’s
constitution. The same fears are prompting
calls for a re-expanded US military presence in Subic Bay and Okinawa. Christians know in their bones – those dry
ones into which God continues to breathe life – we know that war is never the
answer. We cannot hope for peace by
cutting off the ear of the empire’s servant, or through armed rebellion. We can hope for peace through the painful
work of seeking and offering forgiveness, and through loving those who appear
to be former and current enemies. The
first TOPIK conference went to North Korea to celebrate Eucharist and to offer
relief supplies to a flooded village.
The ongoing efforts of this province to feed the enemy are a profound
gift and witness to the rest of the Communion and the world.
There are
other examples. Anglicans and Episcopalians
are offering lament in the face of seeing fertile ocean habitat destroyed by over-reaching
commercial fisheries, coastal communities threatened by rising sea levels, populations
nearby and far away threatened by changing weather patterns, forest clearing,
mining and the ongoing rapacity of human hubris. Our members are making lament, telling the
truth of human and planetary suffering, and seeking concrete ways to respond to
that suffering.
The church
in Pakistan continues to be a remarkable witness in the face of religious
persecution and oppression, and their lament has begun to make a difference in
the ruthless and sordid application of blasphemy laws. The senseless violence of bombing seems to
have increased the strength of the church – and their commitment to
peace-making.
God’s
mission, and our response, seeks peace in all things, for all people, and all
creation. We seek a garden of harmony
and abundance, yet we live in the midst of greed and violence. The response Jesus teaches is about deep
friendship, seeking the image of God in those who differ from us and those who
oppose us. That motivation to go seeking
friends, and to love the neighbor, drives our part in God’s mission. It is particularly evident in the
opportunities for building friendships in Christ in the midst of communities of
difference. It is at the root of the
experience of Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry.
Boundary and border crossing is the call of Jesus to find a friend in
unexpected places, particularly in the face of enmity, difference, and “the
other.” The very experience of
migration, and moving across a national border, is a witness to that kind of
courage. EAM communities bring that
courage in abundance, and it can be contagious – contagious enough to plant a
new virus in our DNA that disposes us to see the new person as friend rather
than enemy.
EAM’s
congregations can be provocative pockets of counter-cultural courage in the face
of difference, and that gift is urgently needed across the world today –
certainly in the US, caught up as it is in anti-immigrant prejudice and fear in
so many places. That gift actually
increases the resilience of communities where the settled folk begin to
interact with the newer ones.
Communities become more hospitable to people from other states,
cultures, nations, religious and economic backgrounds once they’ve discovered
an unexpected friend. That reality is
certainly being played out in parts of Europe right now. It is at work in schools in Israel and
Palestine that insist that children of all three Abrahamic faiths be educated
together and in one another’s languages.
We affirm that Jesus’ migration into human flesh made deep and
reconciling friendship more possible between God and humanity, and among human
beings themselves. When the image of God
migrates on earth and begins to develop deep and reconciling friendship, the
same reality obtains.
That
creative reality is built into the nature of creation as well. Biologists talk about hybrid vigor, as the
greater health and adaptability of the offspring of slightly different parents. It’s especially important in rapidly changing
environments, or disrupted contexts. The
greatest diversity of biological communities tends to occur along the borders between
more stable environments. If we really
believe that God is beyond our full knowing, then we might reflect on the
diversity of the human images of God. Befriending
a greater variety of humanity can only show us more of who and what God truly
is.
The
violence of this world is born of scarcity and a desire to control resources
for the sake of one nuclear community.
The weapons of mass destruction we seek to eliminate are thus aptly and
ironically named. The threat they pose
makes us all part of the same nuclear community. Peace-making is about befriending the other
for the sake of the One who has made us all, and for the sake of the One of whose
body we are all a part. That is our
vocation as followers of Jesus – who calls us friends, who laid down his life
for his friends. The continuing surprise
for most of us is that he included the whole of the human race, and the whole
of creation. We live in hope that we
might imitate that kind of friendship. Arigato, kam samida, she she, thank you,
Jesus, for making us friends.
[7] Charles
Henry Brent, on discovering the work of the IFI in cities, proclaimed that he
would not “set up an altar against an altar” and moved to the highlands to
proclaim good news.
[8] Toward
Peace In Korea. The first conference’s
communique: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2007/11/towards-peace-in-korea.aspx and the second: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/data/files/resources/5054/COMMUNIQUE-OF-THE-2ND-WORLDWIDE-ANGLICAN-PEACE-CONFERENCE.pdf
A recent update:
http://www.abmission.org/pages/topik-towards-peace-in-korea-.html
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