wfn.org | WCC Padare Sermon by the Rev. Hong Tan of UFMCC

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^From the News Service
of the Universal Fellowship
of Metropolitan Community Churches

DATELINE: Zimbabwe, Africa

Text of Sermon Delivered by The Rev. Elder Hong Tan
At UFMCC's Worship Service At The World Council of Churches Padare
Delivered Friday 11 December 1998
University of Zimbabwe . Harare, Zimbabwe, Africa

REMARKS BY THE REV. ELDER TAN:
Grace to you from God and the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 1:7). In the words of
the apostolic greeting, I thank you for sharing this celebration with UFMCC.
It is an honour to participate in this Padare of the World Council of
Churches, and to participate in the Unity and Ecclesiology Stream. For this, I
express thanks to His Holiness Aram I, Conrad Raiser, the WCC and its many
staff.  

Most of all, I thank God for you.  The theme of this celebration is "We Have
Come This Far." 

What is in a word?  What is in a name? At this time of Advent hear the words
from John 1,  "In the beginning was the word, the logos, and the word was with
God and in God." Jesus, the Word of God, whispered and longed for, is the
cosmic love child of God.

I was seven when I left Singapore for England. We were forced to leave due to
the Civil War for Independence.  It was hard for the English to say my name -
Hong Tan, especially the Hong part - H-O-N-G. Once, a press report replaced
the G with a K - HONK.  My favorite was when they took the HONK and replaced
the O with a U - HUNK Tan.  There is a God. We have come this far.

But the different sound of my name and the names of my brother, Heng, and of
my sister, Tian, caused something else at the primary school we attended in
London.  On the first morning break, in the playground, we were together and
suddenly, other boys and girls came up to us shouting the words "chinks go
home" and "slitty eyes." They pinched us and spat on us. My sister had
beautiful pigtails and they pulled her hair. The teacher stood nearby and did
nothing about these taunting words. 

Is this how far we have come?

And what were we to do? I realized very quickly that we were the only people
who were not white Caucasians; we were different. My brother Heng (the butch
one in the family), had enough and when the next boy came to pinch me, he
punched the boy. As break ended, I went to the art class. As I was painting,
suddenly, the headmistress came in and told me to stand up in front of the
class. She took a ruler and hit my legs hard. I cried. I was to blame for the
children pinching and spitting at us. I was to blame for my brother hitting
out. She left saying nothing.

Words are important. Names are important. 

It got so bad for our family that we left London to take refuge in one small
room in the poorest part of Liverpool where we found people like us. People
who welcomed us, who saw the beauty in us. We had come so far - half way
across the world. And it seemed our words, our names, our very beings - were
nothing - valueless, of no worth, made poor.

I grew up in a Christian family. But I thought, "How can I sing ‘What a Friend
We Have in Jesus'"?  The same Jesus to whom the headmistress and the spitting
children sang? How could I see the words of God, of Jesus, as anything vaguely
Chinese, as relevant to me? All I saw were images of a beautiful Renaissance
blue-eyed blond Jesus and of porcelain-skinned Madonnas that had more to do
with the headmistress than my mother.

My mother cradled us when we came home crying about what happened.  You see,
Chinese make up 20% of the world's population. Chinese, like gays, lesbians,
bisexuals and transgendered persons, are EVERYWHERE!  The names Hong and Tan
are British slang for "compost" or "muck." As my mother told us to sing the
mantra of survival, "Sticks and stones may hurt your bones, but words will
never hurt you," I started to look in the Bible - and what did I find?

WORDS ARE IMPORTANT. THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF BOTH LIFE AND DEATH. 

Listen to some words from the Scripture.

The Pharisees said "Jesus casts out demons by the prince of demons" (Matt
9:34). To which Jesus said to the blind man "Do you believe I am able to heal
you? Then according to your faith be it done to you."

The Pharisees said to Jesus "Why do your disciples transgress the commandment
of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat." To which Jesus
replied, "And why do YOU  transgress the commandment of God for the sake of
your tradition?"

Then the earth shattering words of the High Priest to Jesus, "Tell us if you
are the Christ, the Son of God. He has uttered blasphemy. He deserves death."
And they spat in his face, and they struck him and slapped him (Matt 26:63).
These were the people to whom Jesus eventually cried on the cross with the
sublime words "Abba, God, forgive them for they do not know what they do."

These words made sense to the seven year old Chinese boy in tears. The Cosmic
Word, Jesus, was not just any word. God loved us so much that the Word was
made in our flesh, made human, to feel, to live and to be an example for us.
We have come this far, because Jesus came this way with us. For me, Jesus
somehow became Chinese. I knew it all along. And Jesus became real for a 7
year old Chinese boy.

The words of Jesus continued to call to me and to us:

He said "Judge not, that you be not judged for with the judgements you
pronounce will you be judged."(Matt. 7:1) And  "Take the log out of your own
eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your sisters' and
brothers' eyes." He said,  "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat,
so practice and observe whatever they tell you. But do not what they do: for
they preach but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear."

Jesus the Word was made flesh - a redeeming, forgiving, lifesaving Word. Words
are of no value without being alive in action. But there was more as I read
on:

The words of a Pharisee to Jesus: "Which is the greatest commandment in the
law" to which Jesus replied, "You shall love God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
The second is "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two
commandments depends ALL THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS."

Jesus' words sprung to life!  When we love God and each other - where we are,
good or not so good - the welcome of Jesus is to ALL, not just the favored
few. Not just the frozen chosen. Not  just the wealthy sitting on their food
mountains. Not those who boost world debt by speculating with yet more MMMG -
macho male money games.

Jesus said that on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Somehow it started to make sense. We have come this far - and we can go
forward. This was my Jubilee!  I would NOT be stopped by some poorly informed
children who were probably only repeating their parents' behavior. We have
come this far, but we deserve better. How do we enable the churches' Jubilee
here?

What will it be like at the next World Council of Churches Assembly? What does
the he future hold? Someone once said, "The future is not what it used to be."
It may be beyond our traditions, our "tablets of stone" practices from often
holy men. I thank God for the WCC's Decade of Solidarity with Women, but there
is no solidarity without accountability. I am reminded of a Chinese proverb
from a Chinese woman politician friend of mine which says, "Will the man who
thinks the problem is too difficult to solve, get out of the way of the woman
who is sorting it out?"  We have come this far; yet we deserve better NOW.

In a time of HIV, here we are in Africa, in the epicenter of the epidemic,
where up to one in four people carry the HIV virus and where 95% of the
millions with HIV do not have access to drugs which can save lives. Here we
are where survival is a luxury for those with money to buy life. I thank God
for the many churches, religious communities, and NGO's bravely bringing hope.
But yet all too often there are words that bring death. AIDS is not the
scourge from God for immorality.

How can such words be more important than the sanctity of life? Where are the
words of love of all of our neighbors, of ourselves, of God? We have come this
far; yet we deserve better; there is so much farther we have to go.

In a time of world debt, of global, economic, psychological, spiritual debt
and poverty, of the rape of our young girls, women, boys and men, in a time
where mental ill health will be the main cause of death in the next century,
in such a time where are the words of love of neighbors, ourselves, our God?
We have come this far; yet we deserve better; there is so much farther we have
to go.

In the time of Matthew Shepard, an American youth, killed because he was
honest about being gay, killed on a wooden fence - like Someone else we know -
in the time of increasing teenage suicides because they have been thrown out
of their homes and churches, in a time when young men and women have been
drugged, electrocuted, and forced to be something that they are not - where
are the words of love of our neighbors, of ourselves, our God? We have come
this far; yet we deserve better; there is so much farther we have to go.

I believe the words of Steve Biko echo to us today - "The most potent weapon
in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." A Zulu proverb
sums it up this way: "He who hates, hates himself." We are called NOT TO BE
VICTIMS BUT TO BE VICTORS IN CHRIST. An Ahsanti proverb says, "If you
understand the beginning well, the end will not trouble you." If we understand
"In the beginning was the Word, the logos, the Christ, IF WE UNDERSTAND JESUS,
and not the Pharisees and Sadducees, the end will not trouble us.

Why? Because nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
There IS more that binds us together than that which separate us. We need to
forgive - especially our enemies. Forgive our enemies; it drives them nuts. 

Dare we risk to listen to each other from the SAME LEVEL PLAYING FIELD than
from positions of power and domination? I applaud His Holiness Aram I, who
said, "Jubilee calls for reconciliation - a new beginning. There is no growth
without risk." Yet we must grow together responsibly, challenging and
understanding and respecting each other. This is the call of God. Or are we so
self-obsessed that we are like the Cameroon proverb - "a chattering bird
builds no nest"?

The real issue here is MORE THAN world debt, it is MORE THAN, racism, sexism,
homophobia, ethno-nationalism, ablism, ageism. We can try to remove these, but
the underlying causes will STILL BE THERE. "The real disease is fear of life -
not death" (Haguib Mahfouz). The greatest obstacle to life, to love, is fear.
It has been the source of all defects in human behavior throughout the ages
(Mahmoud Mohammed Taha). Humiliation, slavery, and fear have perverted us to
the bone; we no longer look like men and women. Humans must be granted the
respect due to them (Mohammed Dib).

I am an optimist.  I believe God's Spirit has blown through this WCC Assembly
showering millions of new visions for all of us. Dare we give words, voices,
spirit to these? O do we kill the visions by the death of silence - the sin of
secrets? Conrad Raiser challenges us, "Any vision which does not inspire new
forms of acting remains a distant utopia." OUR VISION MUST BE UTOPIA NOW. Are
we so frightened to do anything which may possibly upset anyone - as if by our
so doing, we are protecting God?

Our Gospel words are important, because God does not need protection. They
proclaim a shocking good news. They come abruptly alive in the flesh of Jesus,
who shockingly redeems ALL, forgives ALL, welcomes ALL, hopes for ALL, gives
new life for ALL. The words of God that transform, of miracles that happen, of
mountains that move, of lives forever changed, of temple tables of power
turned over, of curtains of status quo torn open forever. 

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE - a new dawn is coming because of us - here and now.

We have come so far; we have so much farther to go. Let us go together. Let us
go with the words of Desmond Tutu, with which I have taken some liberty to
rephrase: "My humanity is bound up in yours, for...we shall be free only
together: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and heterosexual. We shall
survive only together: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and heterosexual.
We can be human only together: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and
heterosexual Christians. 

Let us make the words of Jesus alive, together, let us see our dreams come
true. 

And let us see our God turn to us and rejoice in hope.

Thank you.  Amen.

(END)

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