The Fourth Week of Advent...

Early morning view from the Tao Fung Mountain on which the
 Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong is located.
Not many people get a view like this from their workplace!

We celebrated graduation for two Lao, one Cambodian, two Mainland Chinese students...

and one very proud American student... who happens to be
our pastor's wife at Union Church!

After many many work hours in front of computers, books, and lecture notes,
it was wonderful to get out into God's creation...

and smell the flowers! (yes- many
flowers blooming in Hong Kong
in December)

Sunday Wayne had the privilege of baptising four young people.

the newly baptised were given gifts wrapped in red
 - the color of celebration and the Holy Spirit!

I think it's cool to see Chinese characters written
on Wayne's forehead when he's celebrating communion!

The youngest member of the Tin Yiu Life congregation - ready for
her first Christmas.

"That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means... 

Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going on our new grace-sovereign country." 

[Romans 6:3-5 The Message remix]

All Saint's Night 2010

The All Saint's service started in the dark at the fishpond up on the mountain. From there we walked with candles lit, under the arched entrance gate of the Tao Fung Shan cemetery, up, then down the uneven stone steps, until we assembled around an outdoor altar, scratchy cypress trees at our backs.

We read out the names of those who had died, Chinese names, and American, Norwegian, Japanese and Danish, while looking at the flickering faces of the wondering children and somber adults. 

We ate bread, dipped in wine, we squinted up at the few stars which managed to pierce the Hong Kong gloom, and we remembered the question the two men in gleaming clothes asked the terrified women at Jesus' graveside.

"Why do you look for the living among the dead?"  [Luke 24:5]

This All Saint's Day, 2010, we are the living.  We dare to believe that those who have entered the mystery of eternity are, through Christ, awake, alive, and love us even better than they were able, on earth, to do.  They are the saints!  And we, we are in the process of becoming.
 
O blessed communion, fellowship divine! 
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee for all are Thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!  -- [Hymn: For All the Saints, 4th stanza]

Teacher, Preacher, Cook

She preaches, she translates between Chinese and English, she cleans the candle wax off the altar... and she makes a mean red bean cake for after-church dessert.  What's not to like about this woman?

Meet Josephine, one of the students at the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Hong Kong, who has also graciously agreed to tutor me in Cantonese.  

She was  the preacher at tonight's worship service at Tao Fung Shan. As a woman personally acquainted with the chasm between academic Christianity and people of the local church communities, the chasm between the rich and the poor, she aptly pointed out that the poor man hoping for crumbs under the table of the rich man in Jesus' famous parable (Luke chapter 16) would never have had even that chance here in Hong Kong... the rich man's guards would surely have escorted the poor man away well before he got so close.

We don't usually even SEE each other, we rich and we poor of the world. 

But Josephine opened up that story for us tonight, and we were convicted... and given great hope that we can live lives differently, in Jesus Christ, who is both the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich.

It's cool having a Cantonese tutor who's also a preacher.  And who feeds me red bean cake from time to time, too!

There was once a rich man who wore expensive clothes and every day ate the best food. ²⁰But a poor beggar named Lazarus was brought to the gate of the rich man's house. ²¹He was happy just to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. His body was covered with sores, and dogs kept coming up to lick them.                       -- read the rest of this story in Luke 16:19ff

It's good to come back to church!

This morning I read an interview with the author Anne Rice about why she has left the church.  Again. Maybe permanently.  She says there's just too much hypocrisy and conservative politics in the church. Christians have made a bad name for themselves and she doesn't want to be associated with "them".  Ms. Rice has a point, doesn't she? When people hear the word "Christian", their first thought is usually NOT good news! or grace!, much to our shame.


Just minutes later I read a blog post by my good friend David Couper, an Episcopalian priest.  He told about being on the way to church this Sunday, when he  received a message on his phone, telling him that recent test results showed that his wife's cancer had returned. With a vengeance, it appears.

At church, David was surrounded by love.  More than that, he was given God's Word with the promise of God's utterly dependable faithfulness in all circumstances.  (You owe it to yourself to read his blogpost.  Go ahead, click on the link above)

So which is it?  Is the Christian Church a good thing or a bad thing for those of us who want to be friends & family with Jesus Christ?

Ok, so here's how my weekend at church was: at both the morning service (at Union Church on Hong Kong Island) and at evening church (up the hill from my house at Tao Fung Shan) I saw light, and laughter, human kindness, and a divine perspective that we human beings really and truly are created by, loved and washed up by, and meant for, the Eternal One.

If only we could all look & feel like this when coming out of church!

I think Anne Rice has an important point, and one we "church-goers" can't ignore. But this Sunday, back in Hong Kong, I must say, it's good to come back to church!

¹⁸ Even when I am old and gray,
       do not forsake me, my God,
       till I declare your power to the next generation,
       your mighty acts to all who are to come.

    ¹⁹ Your righteousness, God, reaches to the skies,
       you who have done great things.
       Who is like you, God? 

                                       Psalm 71: 18-19

No Camera at Easter

Happy Easter!!!
He is risen, Alleluia!

Much to our 15 year old's delight (!) we got up at 4 to climb the hill to Tao Fung Shan for the 5 o' clock Easter sunrise service.

While it was still dark, we heard again the ancient reading of the witness who said that Jesus of Nazareth was raised, he is not in the tomb. Close as we are on this mountainside, to massive stone tombs and graves, it was not hard to imagine the tiredness of the women that first Easter morning, the mixture of hope and amazement and fear that accompanied the message of the resurrection.
"With this announcement, everything changed," our preacher, John LeMond, reminded us.

Then we set out on the short rocky trail (a bit treacherous in the dark) to the Tao Fung Shan cross, a huge stark white cross set on a cliff overlooking the many towering buildings that form the Shatin city center.

As the sun rose and as the birds contributed some very loud morning choruses, we celebrated Holy Communion, serving each other in a circle: "the body of Christ broken for you," I got to say to my son. "The blood of Christ shed for you", our son got to say to his father.

I had forgotten my camera and was really ticked off about that until I got to thinking, well, there were no cameras at that first Easter either, now were there? Maybe there are some things better told with words that can evoke and bend and echo, rather than be confined to a camera's fixed eye.

Lent 4

Sunday night at Christ Temple (up the mountain at Tao Fung Shan)

The preacher is Chinese, from Hong Kong. Her face radiates love as she tells about the circle of poor women she tutors, who struggle to learn... not to "get ahead" for themselves, but to be able to help their own children with their homework. So that their children might live a better life. "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works," (Ephesians 2:10) we hear from St. Paul, and in Josephine's gentle sermon, we can see how this is true.

Next to me, a man who left his own family and his own country so that he can study to become a more effective pastor, counselor, community leader. In his home country the government claims that to follow Christ means disloyalty to your culture and nation. He doesn't know what awaits him when he returns, but he will return. He walks "by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Next to him is the researcher from Mainland China, who seems to still be glistening from his baptism, here in this sanctuary, a few weeks ago. "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope... one Lord, one faith, one baptism..." (Ephesians 4:4-5)

Across the room is a tiny Swedish woman, an impossibly young pastor, with intense eyes. She sings with gusto and beauty. Speaking with her afterwards, she has a way of peering up at you when you speak, you have the feeling she hangs on every word. She explains to me how she counsels Swedish expatriates living in Hong Kong, via conversations on Skype. "Surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you." (Ephesians 3:2)

We sing without accompaniment, the sound is full-throated.

Tonight's Eucharistic bread is dark, fortified with either molasses or squid ink :)

I leave church well-fed.