How Honourable You Are
Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12
January 29, 2023
St. David’s United Church, West Vancouver
Hyuk Cho (The Rev. Dr., Director of UC Formation and Studies)
Good morning! I bring you greetings on behalf of the Vancouver School of Theology. It is my
great honour and pleasure to be your guest preacher on VST Sunday. I heard about your
fascinating ministries from Rev. Bob Burrows, who is working with me at West Point Point Grey
United. Congratulations to Rev. Philip Francis for your new ministry and witness to God’s
mission here at St. David’s United. This is my hope and Rev. Fransis’ that St. David’s could
offer much to VST as a potential learning site in various ministries, particularly in the further
development of intercultural ministries and VST also could offer various leadership and learning
opportunities to St. David’s. I hope we can develop a mutual relationship for God’s mission
together.
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O God, our rock and our source of hope. Amen.
When I was young, I used to watch my father practise yoga. He would assume various positions
and meditate. He often said, “Yoga is good for the body and the mind,” but it did not seem
important to me at the time. One day he caught my attention by standing on his head. He braced
his elbows on the ground, lifted his back, straightened his knees and then lifted his feet up
toward the ceiling. It looked great. I wanted to learn that pose so I could show off to my friends.
I practised that headstand pose over and over, but I kept falling down; it was not easy.
Even though I couldn’t hold the pose for long, after much repetition, I gradually learned to do it.
Interestingly, when I stood on my head, I saw the world differently. The world was upside down.
Grass stretched up in front of my eyes. Trees grew down. Birds and clouds flew under my feet.
When I stood on my head, I saw everything in a new way. There was not much difference among
the height of human beings, the grass, lumps of earth and stones on the ground; all were
relatively the same from my new perspective. The ants no longer seemed as small as I recalled.
Adults seemed no taller or bigger than children. And even small children looked tall.
Here in Canada, I took lessons in yoga; there were only two men out of the dozen people in our
class. It looked to me as if yoga was for women, but, of course, it is for anyone. Some scholars
even suggest that Jesus must have learned yoga. During the “lost years,” those between Jesus
being 12 and 30, we don’t have any record of Jesus’ life. According to the history of the Mar
Thoma Church in South India, Jesus spent some time in India. I don’t know if he learned to do
headstands there, but I do know that, in the record of the Beatitudes, Jesus speaks as if he were
looking at life and the world upside down from the conventional perspective.
I muse that Jesus must often have stood on his head to see things differently, because his
messages often turn conventional wisdom and the world’s value system upside down and inside
out. At that time, conventional wisdom must have put it this way: blessed are the clever, for they shall not be fooled; blessed are the strong, for their enemies shall fear them; blessed are the
wealthy, for they shall never go hungry. Doesn’t that sound more familiar? This is still our
conventional wisdom today. We are trying to be clever, strong, and wealthy. We believe these
aspirations will surely make us happy.
However, Jesus sees things differently. He says, blessed are the poor, the meek and the
sorrowful. We might react by thinking he is making a bad joke or being sarcastic. Whoever finds
happiness through being hungry and thirsty for righteousness or by being reviled and persecuted?
Rejoice and be glad in that! No one with any sense is going to agree with any of these biblical
descriptors of happiness and values. But Jesus does not ask for anyone’s approval; he just invites
us to view the world differently.
We see this view in the prophet Micah. The prophet Micah lives in a time of difficulty and
hopelessness. Micah observes rampant injustice in his society. Throughout his book, Micah asks
how God can use Israel as the medium of God’s blessing on the nations when Israel is sinful and
shameful. In their unjust society, Micah challenges himself and his people to how such a nation
can be the instrument of God. He asks, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and
to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God (6:8)?
In Jesus’ time, the people were politically oppressed, culturally colonized by the Roman Empire
and economically forced to pay huge amounts of taxes and religiously stigmatized as “sinners.”
The people had absolutely no room to step backwards from keeping the law. Out of the depth of
the people’s suffering, Jesus sees his ministry. His inaugural sermon grows out of these
circumstances. So, we too can hear his message.
I am wondering what Jesus’ message would be to us if he were living in our time. In our human
history there were frequent epidemics and pandemics. The medieval Black Death (1347-51) and
the Spanish flu (1918) caused many deaths and severe illness to human beings. However, in our
day, the quality of health care has been greatly improved. With a disease prevention system,
public health and personal hygiene in place, we human beings have been successful in
overcoming the outbreaks. I am confident we are going to overcome this pandemic, COVID-19.
In this pandemic, the entire world has learned how to control viruses and we know how to
prevent their spread. Perhaps more fearful than the new virus is the virus of hate and exclusion.
The most dangerous virus is a mix of fearmongering and racial stereotyping.
In Jesus’ sermon on the Mount, his message is about the blessing of the oppressed – the poor, the
mourners, the meek and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. If Jesus were here today,
he would bless healthcare workers and those who are suffering from the virus.
From the ground level, we may begin to see more clearly God’s blessed ones in places it would
hardly have occurred to us to look. We may begin to realize that the blessed ones are not just
people we can help but people who can help us to see what we can do together for the common
good. From a different perspective, we may begin to see that those who have been bruised for
peace and justice are not the sad ones but the happy ones, because they have found something
worth being bruised for, something worth living for and something worth dying for.
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From a different perspective, we begin to see what God sees and how God acts. We can be
companions with God and with God’s blessed ones. According to a Biblical scholar, the
Beatitudes would be translated in our day as: “How honourable” or “How full of honour.” In this
regard, I would say how honourable you are the people at St. David’s United. How honourable
you are who do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
We are all blessed, as we, when we stand on our heads, share God’s dreams for the world.
Perhaps I should resume the yoga practice of standing on my head and meditating. So that I too
gain a new perspective, God’s dream, and, of course, to maintain a healthy life. Will you join me
in practising yoga? Thanks be to God for this new dream from the ground. Amen.