InHo Kim – My Faithful Journey

Life Stills of a Korean-American Man/Husband/Father/Pastor

Monthly Archives: April 2009


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My Heavy Feet And Heart

circle of friendsIt is Tuesday night around 9:40pm. It has already been close to 7 hours since the beginning of the Presbytery meeting and most of the 350 or so commissioners (all those who have the power to vote), are still there in this large sanctuary. The soft hauntingly beautiful music begins to play and soon the sanctuary is filled with the glorious, angelic voices of a choir. We all begin to stand and head to the front of the sanctuary to the Table that unites us, where we would partake of the bread and wine of communion and then stand hand in hand as we circle the outskirts of the sanctuary, singing, “Let us break bread together on our knees, let us break bread together on our knees. When I fall on my knees, with my head to the rising sun. . .” Doesn’t that sound like a beautiful way to end a long meeting/gathering of fellow Presbyterians, fellow Christian from the greater San Francisco bay area as we usher in and rest in the presence of Jesus among us. And yet it was the single most difficult thing that I had to do that night. As I held my 4 year old son, it took all of my energy to put one foot in front of the other, to stand in line, to take communion and hold hands in a circle with those I barely knew or didn’t know at all.

You see, just a few minutes earlier, there was a very crucial vote taken in our presbytery, a presbytery that consists of just over 80 congregations. Actually, it was a wonderful way to take such an important vote. It was taken in the midst of worship. With the crisp clear voices of soloists and the choir in the background, with scripture read by our presbytery moderator Chuck Fry, such as “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all, who is above all, and through all and in all”, whose voice by the way is like the voice of God or angels and who I could listen to all day even if he was reading the yellow pages, we all took a vote. It was an important vote. It was a vote to pave the way for our LBGT brothers and sisters to be fully included into the life of our church. In the overall scheme of things in the Presbyterian Church (USA), a yes vote by this one presbytery may have not made too much of the difference this year, but this is MY presbytery, a church that I dearly love. And this year, by the vote of 177-167, we, the body of Christ, couldn’t make possible the way for full inclusion of all of our brothers and sisters. As the results were read, my heart was heavy, saddened and my eyes filled with tears. I hurt for the fellow brothers and sisters. I was ashamed (an immediate Asian response). I was angry.

When I checked the presbytery packet a week before the meeting, I read through this part of the agenda and thought how wonderful it was to have this critical and divisive vote be part of a worship service. And especially ending with communion to signify that we are still united under Christ made such sense to me. But as the vote was read and the music began to play to signal our moment to come forward, I couldn’t do it. My legs wouldn’t move and my feet felt like dead weight. I only stood up and began to move because I was holding my 4 yr old son who was such a trooper to sit with me all that time during this long meeting. It was my son who asked me what was happening in this part of the meeting and what people were discussing. It was because of him that I began to move slowly toward the front of the church to take communion with all those in the room, for I wanted to live out what I have always told him that even in the face of vast differences, we should still love and respect the other. I wanted to show him now and then to tell him someday that even at times when Christians so vehemently disagree with each other, we can and should be able to worship together. But I have to say that it was difficult. It was difficult to approach the table, the table where Jesus ate with and welcomed all, when we as the church, just minutes ago, voted to exclude some of our brothers and sisters from that exact table. And it was difficult still to stand in a circle and hold hands with those who stood at my right and left, those I didn’t know and who may have voted for the perpetuation of exclusion of certain members in our churches.

The last line of the song “Let us Break Bread Together” is “Lord have mercy on me”. That is the last line of every verse in the song. “Lord have mercy on me.” As I stood in the circle and meditated on those words, my immediate thought was for God to have mercy on us for what we have just done. But as I closed my eyes and began to meditate a little more deeply, I realized that I was the one who needed mercy. After this song was finished, a single voice began to sing “Amazing Grace” and others soon followed. I became visibly angry. It took all my power not to let go of the hands I was holding and walk away from the circle. The words to this song would not come out of my mouth. Where was the “Grace” that we are singing about in the decision that was just made? But again upon deeper mediation, then and as I think about it now, it was me who needed the grace, for all those who stood in the circle in that room did not take their decisions lightly. They all voted, like me, after deep searching and with prayerful hearts, minds and souls. Who am I to disrespect and question their integrity? Who am I to hate them for the decision that came from their hearts and voted with their conscience? Who am I to thwart the love and unity in Christ even in the midst of such divisiveness? In the very moment that I thought I should be asking God’s forgiveness for our decision, which I still did, I was asking forgiveness for myself. I felt saddened that the hands of those I was holding was defined by this one vote rather than the many other things that may unite us. And I was dismayed that when push comes to shove, instead of acceptance and love, it became almost impossible to even worship with those who had different views from mine.

Amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound
That Saved a Wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see.

I am not sure I can completely say that I “see” the way God does for I know that I am still partially “blind”, but I can certainly say that indeed God finds me and saves me over and over again. Amazing grace.


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What Happened To Jesus – By Walter Wink

resurrectionEven today, I am on the epistemological journey for my meaning of the Easter event. As I continue to listen, converse with, embody, pray and read, I recently came across an article by Walter Wink that struck me. He speaks to some of what I have been pondering lately poignantly and eloquently. So I would like to share the article. What do you think?

What Happened to Jesus?
by Walter Wink

Considering the weight the early church attached to the resurrection, it is curious that, subsequent to the empty-tomb stories, no two resurrection accounts in the four Gospels are alike. All of these narratives seem to be very late additions to the tradition. They answer a host of questions raised by the gospel of the resurrection. At the core of all these accounts is the simple testimony: we experienced Jesus as alive.

A later generation that did not witness a living Jesus needed more; for them the resurrection narratives answered that need. But what had those early disciples experienced? What does it mean to say that they experienced Jesus alive? The resurrection appearances did not, after all, take place in the temple before thousands of worshipers, but in the privacy of homes or cemeteries. They did not occur before religious authorities, but to the disciples hiding from those authorities. The resurrection was not a worldwide historic event that could have been filmed, but a privileged revelation reserved for the few.

Nevertheless, something “objective” did happen to God, to Jesus, and to the disciples. What happened was every bit as real as any other event, only it was not historically observable. It was an event in the history of the psyche. The ascension was the entry of Jesus into the archetypal realm. Though skeptics might interpret what the disciples experienced as a mass hallucination, the experience itself cannot be denied.

This is what may have happened: the very image of God was altered by the sheer force of Jesus being. God would never be the same. Jesus had indelibly imprinted the divine; God had everlastingly entered the human. In Jesus God took on humanity, furthering the evolution revealed in Ezekiel’s vision of Yahweh on the throne in “the likeness, as it were, of a human form” (Ezek. 1:26). Jesus, it seemed to his followers, had infiltrated Godhead.

The ascension marks, on the divine side, the entry of Jesus into the son-of-the-man archetype; from then on Jesus’ followers would experience God through the filter of Jesus. Incarnation means that not only is Jesus like God, but that God is now like Jesus. It is a prejudice of modern thought that events happen only in the outer world. What Christians regard as the most significant event in human history happened, according go to the Gospels, in the psychic realm, and it altered external history irrevocably. Ascension was an “objective” event, if you will, but it took place in the imaginal realm, at the substratum of human existence, where the most fundamental changes in consciousness take place.

Something also happened to the disciples. They experienced the most essential aspect of Jesus as remaining with them after his death. They had seen him heal, preach, and cast out demons, but had localized these powers in him. Though the powers had always been in them as well, while Jesus was alive they tended to project these latent, God-given powers onto him. They had only known those powers in him. So it was natural, after his resurrection, to interpret the unleashing of those powers in themselves, as if Jesus himself had taken residence in their hearts. And it was true: the God at the center of their beings was now indistinguishable from the Jesus who had entered the Godhead. Jesus, in many of the post-Easter son-of-the-man sayings, seems to speak of the Human Being (the “son of man”) as other than himself. Was Jesus stepping aside, as he seems to do in the Gospels, to let the Human Being become the inner entelechy (the regulating and directing force) of their souls?

The disciples also saw that the spirit that had worked within Jesus continued to work in and through them. In their preaching they extended his critique of domination. They continued his life by advancing his mission. They persisted in proclaiming the domination-free order of God inaugurated by Jesus.
The ascension was a “fact” on the imaginal plane, not just an assertion of faith. It irreversibly altered the nature of the disciples’ consciousness. They would never again be able to think of God apart from Jesus. They sensed themselves accompanied by Jesus (Luke 24:13-35). They found in themselves a New Being that they had hitherto only experienced in Jesus. They knew themselves endowed with a spirit-power they had known only occasionally, such as when Jesus had sent them out to perform healings (Mark:7-13). In their struggles with the powers that be, they knew that whatever their doubts, losses, or sufferings, the final victory was God’s, because Jesus had conquered death and the fear of death and led them out of captivity.

Jesus the man, the sage, the itinerant teacher, the prophet, even the lowly Human Being, while unique and profound, was not able to turn the world upside down. His attempt to do so was a decided failure. Rather, it was his ascension, his metamorphosis into the archetype of humanness that did so for his disciples. The Human Being constituted a remaking of the values that had undergirded the domination system for some 3,000 years before Jesus. The critique of domination continued to build on the Exodus and the prophets of Israel, to be sure. But Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Power of God was a supernova in the archetypal sky. As the image of the truly Human One, Jesus became an exemplar of the utmost possibilities for living.

Could the son-of-the-man material have been lore that grew up to induce visions of the Human Being? Could it have been a way to activate altered states of consciousness based on meditation on the ascended Human Being enthroned upon the heart? It was not enough simply to know about the mystical path. One needed to take it. And the paths were remarkably alike. The ascension was real. Something happened to God, to Jesus, and to the disciples. I am not suggesting that the ascension is non-historical, but rather that the historical is the wrong category for understanding ascension. The ascension is not a historical fact to be believed, but an imaginal experience to be undergone. It is not at datum of public record, but divine transformative power overcoming the powers of death. The religious task for us today is not to cling to dogma but to seek a personal experience of the living God in whatever mode is meaningful.

Walter Wink is professor emeritus of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and author of 16 books. He is best known for his trilogy on the “Powers” and his fascinating interpretation of Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence.


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Love Poem For Good Friday

good friday - via http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7994131.stmIt is Good Friday. I was having trouble contemplating this dark day as the Sun finally broke through the clouds and I was faced with the beautiful blue sky and the perfectly calm blue-green ocean. So I thumbed my way through the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke in his Book of Hours. It is a book of poetry given to me by a good friend as I was graduating from seminary. At times I pick it up and read like I do the poetry in Psalms to help me connect to myself and to God. And today, I stumbled upon a poem titled “I am praying again, awesome one.” It reminded me that ultimately, this violent filled day is about love. It is that the Word became flesh and lived in the world to make us whole again and even in death, refused to condemn but to ask for forgiveness for us; “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:24) Here is the poem of putting the fractured pieces of our lives into God’s loving hands:

I am praying, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea
Sinking into a toxic tide.
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart –
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God – spend them however you want.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours – Love Poems to God


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“I Promise To Visit Soon”

Italy Earthquake

Just last night we began our gatherings for Holy Week. It was also the beginning of the 8 day celebration of Passover. Rabbi Arik Ascherman writes that “Pesakh (Passover) is a time where Jews traditionally clean their homes of khametz (leavened grain products) and that many speak of cleaning our souls of khametz as well.” For us, it was a time to de-clutter our lives, our hearts and our spirit so that we can journey with Christ during the darkest of times and also rise joyously with him. We read scripture, acted out a Holy Week Play, celebrated communion, discussed how our lives connected to this time of the liturgical year and sang together. Then we ended the night in prayer, silently and aloud, for those dark and troubled places in our lives and in our world that is so in need of God’s love, grace and redemption.

We prayed for the 15th anniversary that commemorates that genocide in Rwanda that killed more than 800,000 innocent lives. We grieved over another mass shooting at a Korean Christian retreat center, a center that helped the orphans and the homeless. It is no less than 8 such mass shootings in the past few months. We prayed for the continued unrest and wars around the globe. We prayed for these difficult economic times and for the growing homeless population that includes 1.5 million children, 45% of which are below the age of 6. We prayed for one of our elderly members who had a horrible fall and fractured her elbow and her knee. And finally we prayed for the hundreds of deaths and thousands of displaced families in the earthquake in central Italy.

As I was driving home from this wonderful and spirit filled gathering, I turned on the radio to listen to NPR. The announcer stated that as of last night, there were 272 dead and 28,000 displaced residents in this town of L’Aquila, Italy. After all the news detailing the horrible destruction of that city, the announcer ended this segment by saying “And Pope Benedict has promised to visit them soon after Easter.” Upon hearing those words last night, I felt anger from the tips of the toes to the top of my head. Ok I was hungry, sleep deprived and visibly tired, and I could have been irrational in my feelings, but anger was all I felt.

Here is a town that has been torn apart by this earthquake. As of today, there are 279 dead, countless others missing, just fewer than 30,000 displaced with 17,000 living in tent cities just outside of town. 10’s of thousands of others have fled the city and are lucky enough to have family close by where they can live temporarily. One can not enter its churches, its schools, or most other public buildings because of structural damage. The newly built hospital that was suppose to withstand earthquakes is also crumbling and with one more shake, the experts say that it could come down also. In a country where 96% of the population is Roman Catholic, the Pope says he “will visit soon after Easter.”

Many times, when tragedies happen, the goodness in people shines forth. I remember while working in a nonprofit in downtown San Francisco that worked with underprivileged youth, a young girl was hit and instantly killed by a school bus two blocks from her middle school. Knowing some of the youth who attended that school, several of us went to the school to see if we could be of help, but already gathered were religious leaders, counselors, youth oriented non-profits to help any way they can. When I walk my dog Chewy, I find people walking several dogs at a time, and several of those people, I later found, are pet sitting for those families whose lives have been turned upside down in New Orleans until they can get back on their feet again. I know of scores of churches in the area who still continuously send people to work on homes to rebuild the towns and lives of people of New Orleans.

The Pope, who some say is the incarnation of God on earth, or the second in line to Peter, the rock, the foundation on which the Church is built, will not visit this little town in their time of need. So I thought maybe he is not in Italy or anywhere close for him to visit before Easter. No, he is in the Vatican. Maybe this little town of L’Aquila is too far away even in Italy for him to travel to during Holy Week. So I Google mapped it from Rome and it is only about 100 km away. That is about 62 miles. So in the Pope’s eyes and for the powers that be in the Vatican, it is far more important for the Pope to be part of the Holy Week services than sneak away for even a few hours to care for one of their own just 62 miles away. It reminded me of George Bush flying over New Orleans during its hurricane decimation and never landing. Call me unfair for the comparison but it’s just what I am feeling at the moment.

This also reminds me of the religious leaders who rebuke Jesus for bringing God’s love and healing to those who especially need it on the Sabbath. As the Gospel of Mark states:

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ 4Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. 5He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. (Mark 3:1-6)

The Pope’s inaction is a reminder to me, even in my difficult, sleep deprived, busy week, to not let the work of the church hinder the work of God’s love and grace to those around me. Or else verse 5 should be ringing in my ears when Jesus “looked around them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness . . . “


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My Daughter’s Not So Gentle Reminder Towards Holy Week

IsabellaMy 4 year old son and my 9 month old daughter have already taught me much about myself and life in general. I have learned of the depth of my love, the width of my patience and the height of my endless joy. I have learned to see the world anew especially through the eyes of my son. I have recaptured my creative side in making up stories with my son at night, drawing and coloring all that he imagines, and even molding fantastical worlds with play-doh and moonsand. Through my daughter, I have learned to laugh even in the most serious of moments, and to put down my laptop and Blackberry to focus on what is the most important in life, the attention that she oh so demands. And finally, as I enter into the final week of Lent and Holy Week, she is reminding and teaching me of something else.

You see, my daughter is teething. It is the time when her sharp little teeth are breaking through her tender gums. I hear that if adults have to go through this process, none of us would be able to bear it. She is feverish, in pain and just downright uncomfortable. I remember my son going through this process, but it wasn’t so bad for him. For my daughter, it has been awful. Her normally happy go luck disposition, laughs and smiles are gone. She is cranky all day. She has problems with naps and especially sleeping at night. Just last night, my wife and I had to take turns for three hours just to put her to sleep for the night and of course, she would still wake up 4-5 times throughout the night. And isn’t it just perfect timing since my wife and I are both pastors at separate Presbyterian churches during one of the busiest ecclesiastical times of the year.

I can honestly say that I am suffering. No I am not equating my suffering to Jesus’ suffering during Holy Week, and my wife is definitely worse for wear since our baby girl only cries out for her mother, but I am suffering nonetheless. There is the lack of sleep, the sore and tired back from carrying her constantly, a patience that is running thin, the crunch time of the busy week ahead and the lack of “cave time” that I desperately crave and need as an introvert. Oh I am suffering and can’t wait for Easter for the most obvious of reason that Monday comes right afterwards and I can take a little breather from work and in hopes that my suffering daughter might be over her teething and onto happier times.

During these hectic church seasons, I at times forget to take the time to breathe and journey through the liturgical season myself. In creating and helping our faith community experience this season of Lent and Passion Week, I either ignore and/or forget to experience it for myself. But this week, it is my daughter who won’t let me forget. As she suffers, I also suffer along with her. I suffer mainly because of the residual symptoms caused by her teething, but in caring for her, I also journey with her in her pain.

One of the most amazing experiences that I have had in my life was when I participated in a group that practiced the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius for 5 months. It was during my third year at San Francisco Theological Seminary, when I was immersed in an internship at a local church. The exercises began in Advent and ended with Easter. The 20 of us gathered together for 4 hours each week to learn from and talk with each other about our experiences of the exercises and how our lived lives connected with the Jesus of the Gospels as he lived it. Being a Presbyterian all my life, I have always known and celebrated the liturgical calendar, but I had never fully and truly lived it until I experienced these exercises. I remember Lent being the most difficult time as we delved deeply into the darkest of places in our lives, our community and our world.

As I enter into Passion Week, a prayer for myself is to not be a bystander during this time as if I was just reading a story or viewing a movie. It is that I would fully enter and participate in the Jesus story even in his darkest of times. So I want to thank you Isabella for your gentle and not so gentle reminders.