Tending Tomorrow: Rev. Dr. Sarah Han & Laura Bevan Alexander
Summary:
Rev. Dr. Sarah Han offers a compelling lecture on preaching in Canada today, casting a vision for an “epic” homiletic that is eschatological, proclamational, incarnational, and Christological. Speaking from her own experience as a Korean-Chinese-Canadian preacher, Han weaves personal narrative with sharp cultural analysis to ask what gospel meta-narrative can hold Canada’s growing diversity together. She argues for a preaching practice rooted in the margins—responsive to pluralism, digital culture, and post-Christendom realities—and passionately calls for Christ-centred proclamation that is lived out in community. Respondent Laura Bevan reflects on Han’s insights through her own lenses of Irish-Canadian identity and theological formation, exploring the implications of marginality, power, and reconciliation in the Canadian church. Together, the episode probes how preaching can be both rooted in particular identity and radically open to God's work among the diverse peoples of Canada.
Quotables:
“You know, I believe that every human being in this world there is a deep longing inside of us for a wonderful narrative of love.” - Rev. Dr. Sarah Han
“And what that means is that the agenda of the secularist world that we live in is to take the divine out of every fiber of society and to remove God from any kind of meaningful factor in the ordinary lives of Canadians” - Rev. Dr. Sarah Han
“You are a minority voice, even though in Canada, we love to be polite, we love to be inclusive, the group of people that experience the most exclusivist attitude here in Canada are actually Christians. And so today I want to venture for all of us to identify that as Christians, as people of color, as women, as people from small places in rural Ontario, all of you fall within some kind of margin in Canada.” - Rev. Dr. Sarah Han
“However, this brings me to an important question, do we as Christians, as people who hold power within churches, as we communicate the gospel, truly believe this?” - Laura Bevan Alexander
“What if, instead of trying to assimilate all of our cultures into a singular Christian identity, we learned to learn from the distinctiveness of each culture within the body of Christ.” - - Laura Bevan Alexander
About Rev. Dr. Sarah Han
The Rev. Dr. Sarah Han is Director of the Tyndale Centre for Pastoral Imagination, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry at Tyndale Seminary, wife to a church-planter catalyst, and mom to three lovely kids. Sarah is a Korean-Chinese-Canadian third-culture pastor's kid turned missionary's kid and much of her formative theology was shaped on the mission field abroad. She is passionate about re-imagining church for the next generation and living out the mission of God in her everyday life. Sarah is a foodie and loves to hike and she and her family live in rural Ontario amongst trees and chickens.
About Laura Bevan Alexander
Laura Bevan Alexander is a dual Irish and Canadian citizen, born in Mayo, Ireland and with deep roots in Ontario’s Durham Region, where she has spent much of her life on the traditional and treaty territories of the Michi Saagiig Anishinaabeg, specifically the lands of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, and other nations covered under the Williams Treaties.
Currently, Laura serves as the Coordinator of the Tyndale Centre for Pastoral Imagination. She holds an MDiv in Contextual Ministry (In- Ministry) from Tyndale University and is a PhD student with NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community, where her research focuses on decolonization and the Indigenous Irish Christian tradition.
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Transcript
[John Borthwick]
Welcome. Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel.
I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Center and curator of all that is ministry forum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen. Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.
Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast. Today, we are sharing part three of four in our lecture series called “Tending Tomorrow: Canadian women, homileticians reflect on the future of preaching in Canada” Today's episode features the Reverend, Dr Sarah Han. She is the director of the Tyndale center for pastoral imagination, Assistant Professor of pastoral ministry at Tyndale seminary, wife to a church planter catalyst, and mom to three lovely kids. Sarah is a Korean Chinese Canadian, third cultures pastors kid, turned missionaries, kid, and much of her formative theology was shaped on the mission field abroad. She is passionate about reimagining church for the next generation and living out the mission of God in her everyday life. Sarah is a foodie and loves to hike and her family and her live in rural Ontario, amongst trees and chickens. Let's listen to Sarah.
[Sarah Han]
Thank you so much to Knox College and to Reverend John, Reverend Sarah Travis for setting up this time. It is such a joy to be here. I did my Masters of Divinity and my PhD studies here at Knox College, and I remember 20-year-old Sarah sitting in these pews on my first week of seminary and just praying to the Lord, saying, “God, where is my place? Where are you going to send me?” And feeling really unsure of where this journey was going to take me. And so, this is kind of a full circle moment to be up here and being invited to come for a lectureship. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church. Both my mom and dad are ordained Presbyterian ministers, and my mom was one of the first woman, Korean Presbyterian woman, to be ordained here in Canada, in Ontario. And yet, growing up, nobody called her “Reverend” in our church. And I remember that everyone called her samunim, which means pastor's wife in our language. And yet, my mom, she really helped to grow our church plants. She did so many things. She did all the things, you know, teaching and then going and cooking soup for everybody after the service. And so, it was a full circle moment for us as well, when I told her I was invited to come here and to teach and that I'm now teaching in preaching at Tyndall seminary. What a full circle moment for us as a family to see that in one lifetime, God has opened so many doors, and he has really given voice to the voiceless, and has surprised us and surprised me with just how faithful he has been. And so, looking forward to today, I was just so excited, even the title of this lectureship “Tending to Tomorrow,” and I'm reminded of the next generation. My daughter, Reina, who's nine years old, who from five years old, would always say, when someone asks her, what do you want to be when you grow up? And she'll say, “I'm going to be a preacher like mommy and daddy.” And so, when I was planning for this lecture attending tomorrow, it was really reinas face that came to mind. What is the tomorrow in Canada and in the Church of Canada that I would love to see, for my daughter to come and take the helm when it is her full circle moment time.
And so I've been so excited thinking about this day, because when we consider the hope filled future that we have for the future of preaching, I know there is a lot of uncertainty, but I hope that we can be reminded and inspired today, that there also is so much hope, so much hope, because when it really comes down to it, engaging in creative ways to communicate the gospel story of who Jesus is, it is one of the most important tasks that we as Christian leaders, it is the most important task that any follower of Christ will take up. Amen, and for those of you who are leaders in the church, students of Homiletics, don't let people discourage you saying you are in a dying field, or what are you going to do with your life? Because I want to remind you that indeed, the harvest is still plentiful, and yet the workers are few, and God has invited us to this amazing work and to join him in telling the greatest story that was ever told and that needs to continually be told.
You know, I believe that every human being in this world there is a deep longing inside of us for a wonderful narrative of love. You know, when we go out into this world, we see people on the street, and sometimes we forget that we are indeed all made in the image of our Creator, who created all things through the power of spoken word. Throughout Scripture, we see that through spoken word, God brought the universe into being. And indeed, when God, God-Self, came into this world, Jesus came as the living Word of God. And so, what does it look like for us to take this living, powerful Word of God into the streets that we live on, the places that we work, into our very own homes? Homiletician Daryl Johnson said that when the Word of God is spoken, something transcendent and life-giving always occurs. And that is why we engage in preaching, and that is why we study homiletics, isn't it? Just to clarify homiletics is the art of crafting sermons. We just need to get that clear, because there's so many times, I'll tell people I teach homiletics, and they'll say, “Oh, what is that?” It is the art of learning how to craft sermons. And the reason we pour so much into this art is because we believe that when the living Word of God is spoken, something magical happens, transformation takes place. That when the Word of God is uttered, the heavens open and the very kingdom of God is brought to life in our midst.
And yet many of our experiences has been that when we take this Living Word into the world, we are confronted with a post-post-modern society here in Canada. And what that means is that the agenda of the secularist world that we live in is to take the divine out of every fiber of society and to remove God from any kind of meaningful factor in the ordinary lives of Canadians. I don't know if they know what it is that they're doing. The emptiness that this agenda is pursuing and the digital age, unfortunately, has only propelled the secularist agenda, and so we find ourselves here in Canada, in a norm where thinking about identity and purpose, both individually and communally—communally, without reference to God—has become normal. What a sad culture that we are confronted with today. Frank Yamada, who is the director of theological studies, director of the Association of theological studies, gave a talk a few years back called “the view from 2040” and he shared three greatest challenges that he sees theological schools and churches facing in the coming decades up to 2040.
1. The first he said, is one of diversity, that when he gave the lecture a few years back, he predicted by 2040 that in the United States, people of color, people of minority, will actually become the majority.
2. Secondly, he said that we need innovation in our churches and schools to keep up with the growth of the digital generation so that we can meet the needs that the next generation will have.
3. And third, he said, we need to focus on the next generation of leaders. We are now, historically, at a time in North America where the millennial generation has now surpassed and outnumbered the baby boomers as the largest group within North America.
Now, I'm sorry to say this to Dr Frank Yamada, but Toronto, we've pulled a fast one on him, and in many ways, we are already here. It's not 2040 but here in 2025 in Canada, especially here in Toronto, we are located in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, we are the fourth most populated city in North America, and we are the most multicultural city in North America. Census has told us that more than half of our residents here now belong to a visible minority, and there are 200 distinct ethnic origins just in the province of Ontario, and there are 160 unique languages that are being spoken on our streets. And this makes us the biggest city with foreign made up individuals in the whole world. What an amazing place you live, right? I'm sorry for the high living cost here in the GTA especially, but it is coming with an amazing gift that we are on such fertile ground where there are so many people from all over the globe who are yearning to hear something good, to hear good news. And so, on the backdrop of all this diversity in our postmodern context, we need a meta narrative for the future, a grand story of what can pull us together as Canadians.
You know, I remember when I was younger Asian, don't raisin, so don't be fooled. When I was younger in kindergarten, we still set the Lord's Prayer in kindergarten and public schools here in Ontario, in Mississauga. My parents remember when they first immigrated to Canada in the 70s that people would close stores—businesses—on Sundays, because that was the meta narrative. Canada had a Christian meta narrative that brought us together. And yet, so much has changed in one lifetime, hasn't it? And so the question I want to ask is, what is an anchoring meta narrative for the next generation? What is the story that is going to hold us together?
Recently, I watched the TV show the Mandalorian with my children. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it. And one thing the Mandalorian’s all say to each other is when they do something that seems out of the norm, that seems beyond what is necessary to do, they will say, this is the way. So, when they love beyond what should have been done, they say, this is the way. When they help out a stranger in need, they say, this is the way, and that has stuck with me. What is the way for Canadians going forward? What is the story that will bind us together? Is it whatever is trending on Tiktok? Is it the latest k-pop song that is trending? What is it that is going to pull us together? And I would love to venture to make a rally cry today that the next generation is in dire need of a gospel narrative that will pull them together, that they will know there is a way that we are called to live, and that this way is the most life giving, transcendent way to live in this world.
Don't let the statistics discourage you. There is a generation longing to hear something good in COVID 19. John Krasinski, those of you who watched the office, he created a YouTube channel called “Some Good News.” SGN, this site, or this YouTube channel, has garnered 2.5 million followers since he's had 100 million views. And the whole point of the channel is just to share some good news in the midst of COVID, of all the terrible things that are happening. And I think it's just testament to the fact that people want to hear good news. Don't think that people's ears are closed, the harvest is indeed still plentiful. And what is the good news that we will share? What is the meta narrative that we can go out and share so that people will look at us and say, this is the way. Sociologist Hamani Bernargie, she's a sociologist here at the University of Toronto, we've talked about Canadian identity quite a bit today, and she said the way to find Canadian identity is actually to listen to the voice of those that are on the margin. Bernargie says that when we combine the voices of those on the margin we will discover and be able to hear the voice of what is Canada. Chang Yun Lee, in his book on marginality, says something similar, he says “in the margins is where we will find God,” that Jesus Christ, is found in the midst of those that are on the outskirts of what is happening. And it isn't those margins that we need to enter into, in order to find God in our present day.
The study done on churches by the Flourishing Congregations Institute, they've realized that actually now in Canada, if you identify as a Christian, you are now part of a minority. You are a minority voice, even though in Canada, we love to be polite, we love to be inclusive, the group of people that experience the most exclusivist attitude here in Canada are actually Christians. And so today I want to venture for all of us to identify that as Christians, as people of color, as women, as people from small places in rural Ontario, all of you fall within some kind of margin in Canada. And so, as we think about the margins as we think about the diaspora, the world that is at our doorsteps here in Canada, what is a grand metanarrative of the gospel that we can share in order for the next generation to be able to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. And so, I'd like to propose a homiletic from the margins, for the margins that speaks to all those that you may encounter in your everyday life. And there are four points that I would like to share today.
1. Firstly, how do we have a missional homiletic? A homiletic that is looking outwards that is, firstly, Christological. And what that means is, in the sermons that we preach, how do we place Jesus Christ at the center of what it is that we speak about? You know, I think so many times we shy away from saying the name of Jesus because we are afraid of the response that we will receive. And yet, how do we be centered on who Christ is, and how do we allow the good news of our resurrected and risen Christ be the source of that explosive joy that we experience when we come into an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. How do we allow Christ to be the center of the sermons that we preach, so that we are infusing our listeners with a crystal, centric lens with which to view the world.
a. You know, when people go out into this world, they are in the realm of the enemy, and there are attacks on their spirituality to have them find their identity and value in so many other things, except in Christ and so, how do we remind people that they have a Savior that has completed the work on their behalf, especially in this Lenten season, how do we remind people not just to look at Christ on the cross, but to remember Christ sitting on the heavenly throne, inviting us to share in His power and to share in His resurrection.
2. Secondly, as we are focused on Christ, how do we be proclamational in our sermons? How do we focus on proclaiming the gospel of who Jesus is in every space that we are given to share a meta narrative of how to live this life? Homilitician Paul Scott Wilson, he argues that the purpose of preaching isn't simply to preach the text. You know, all the work we do in historical criticism and knowing the context, all of the culmination of that should be to preach the gospel within the text. That when we preach sermons, we aren't inviting people just to hear about who Jesus is, but we are inviting them to come and to encounter Christ within the text and allow the sermonic moment to be one that is transformational, as people meet with their risen Savior. Daniel Wong and Matthew Kim both homileticians and professors are preaching in their book “Finding our voice; a vision for North American preaching.” They assert that those of us on the margin, which we've now discovered all of us, are on some margin, if we identify as a Christian, that we need to find our voice of how we will articulate this meta narrative of the gospel. What is your unique voice?
a. You know, it took me many decades to realize I love these grand homiliticians before me, but I don't have to be exactly like them. I can be Sarah Han and know how the Word of God is infused within me and all the layers of who I am and how that becomes the lens through which I can speak the good news of Jesus Christ wherever we go. And so how can we do that? How can we be proclamational through the very fiber of how God has uniquely shaped every one of us? And how do we have a hermeneutic, an interpretation of the word that comes from that unique lens, and I would love to see in the future of Canadian preaching, a hermeneutic that comes from Korean Canadian, second born people like myself, a hermeneutic that comes from Tibetan people who are here, a hermeneutic that comes from refugees that have come into our country. That the makeup of all these interpretations from unique voices becomes that grand meta-narrative that we can share with the world.
3. Thirdly, as we proclaim the gospel, how do we not just proclaim it, but how do we live into it in our everyday both as individuals and as communities. How do we be incarnational in the way that we deliver this meta narrative of the gospel? You know, preaching cannot just be one moment when a sermon is given and then it is done, but the sermon needs to go beyond the pulpit and be something that is lived out by the community of believers that call itself the church. The church itself becomes the interpretation of the gospel as we reenact and as we rehearse together the words that we find within the text. You know, over lunch, we had a discussion of how sometimes it could feel so unsettling, you know, how do we know where our home is, where it is that we belong to? And I hear this a lot, this narrative of feeling unsettled from a lot of, you know, bi-cultural people like myself, who say “I don't feel like Canada is home. I don't feel like Korea's home. I've lived in the United States that doesn't feel like home either.” And yet, I love to say, in response to that, that is a great thing. It is good to feel that home is not here on Earth, but we want to incarnate the kingdom of God wherever we go, that we would remember our identity as eternal beings, and as we live out the words of the scripture in community, that we would truly be like aliens of this world. I believe, when we are incarnating the gospel within our communities, we will have people who have never heard the name of Jesus, walk into our church doors and say, “What is wrong with you people, what is different about you?” And that we would be able to say, come and live with us and experience who Jesus Christ is in the flesh.
4. And lastly, as we incarnate the Word of God, how do we be eschatological in the way that we preach, in the way that we share a meta narrative of the gospel. And what that means is, how do we keep in mind our identity as citizens of the kingdom of God? The greatest hope that the disciples and the Apostles in Scripture had was that they were waiting for the return. They thought two weeks after Jesus has resurrected, that he would come back to take them into heaven. And yet, over the decades and the centuries, we stopped holding our breath, didn't we, and we've almost forgotten that the great hope that we have as believers is that our lives have yet to really begin. Our lives here on earth will end, and then our eternal life will begin when Jesus comes to take us to our true home. And so, as we preach sermons, how do we remind people that what we experience in church is just a foretaste of the heaven that is to come. You know, I love wondering and imagining what it will be like when we are truly reunited as a family under the banner of Christ in our eternal home. What will that be like? And so how can we infuse into our sermons an idea of the kingdom of God that is to come and allow that to be the real hope with which people are able to face their everyday lives. We are citizens of a heavenly world, and that is the meta narrative that our generation and the generation that is to come is just longing to hear.
And so, in summary, how do we be eschatological, looking to the kingdom of God, and then how do we proclaim that “P” proclaim it in our sermons, and how do we incarnate and live that out through communities of faith. And then how do we do all of that centered on “C” that is Christ and imagine my glee that this creates a beautiful acronym of EPIC with pastors. We love our acronyms. How can we be Eschatological, Proclamational, Incarnational and Christological, Christ centered. And how do we have an EPIC meta narrative of the gospel, that the word of God would indeed come alive, and that even though you know we keep saying there is a dark generation ahead of us, there is a dark world out there. What hope we have that the darker a place? Gets the brighter a light shines when it is put into that darkness. And it is my hope for our next generation that as they share this epic meta narrative of the gospel of Christ, that we would be able to usher people into a daily freedom that rests in living in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Amen. Thank you so much.
[John Borthwick]
And Dr Han's respondent is Laura Bevan Alexander. Laura is a dual Irish and Canadian citizen, born in Mayo, Ireland, and with deep roots in Ontario's Durham region, where she has spent much of her life on the traditional and treaty territories of the Mishi saga anishnabeg, specifically the lands of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nation and other nations covered under the Williams treaties. Currently, Laura serves as the coordinator of the Tyndale center for pastoral imagination. She holds an mm div in contextual ministry in ministry from Tyndale University, and as a PhD student with n,a,i, i, t, s, indigenous learning community research focuses on decolonization.
[Laura Bevan Alexander]
I tried really hard to put this response into Irish, similarly traditional background, but it didn't work out so well. So, you'll have to bear with it. But thank you for your thoughtful and provocative paper. I believe that I speak for many of us, that anytime someone can share a point of view from a specifically Canadian standpoint, I feel encouraged but also relieved to hear something that represents who we are just a little bit more specifically.
It was it's rare to find a nuanced reflection, I've heard many today, not just yours, but a nuanced reflection on how homiletics can speak directly to the context of our nation. And I thank you for not just focusing on the mechanics and some of the other details of what makes a good homiletician, but thank you for speaking from your perspective, a non-dominant second generation Korean woman's perspective, I appreciate that. Your argument, that we've already arrived at the 2040 that Dr Yamada foresaw, is convicting and challenging for me. I'm a local ministry leader, a doctoral student in theology, and someone who deeply loves Jesus's church. Your work, your paper brought me great pause. The depth of your analysis pushes us to reconsider not just how we preach, but who we are preaching to and where we are preaching from. Your focus on story in the narrative brought up a lot for me as I think about what is a meta narrative, what is a homiletic for Canada that can provide a renewed, meta narrative of the gospel that speaks to an eclectic nation? What is a story that can do that?
This question goes beyond the technicalities of preaching or the mechanics, like I said, it invites us to engage in a broader theological and cultural reflection about the nature of the gospel in its power to speak into the lives of people who live in what we know to be one of the most diverse nations in the world. Your focus on the marginalized, especially the epistemological privilege that liminal and marginalized voices offer us, is timely and critical. Emphasizing how God's mission flourishes in the margins, and how the church must recalibrate itself to center these voices. However, this brings me to an important question, do we as Christians, as people who hold power within churches, as we communicate the gospel, truly believe this?
As pastors, preachers and theologians, we often position ourselves as the vehicles through which God works, the ones that are the agents of transformation and hold power as the gateway to relationship with Jesus. If we look at the life of Jesus and the actions of his disciples, we see a profound challenge to that perspective. Jesus's ministry was defined by his consistent engagement with those on the margins the cultural practices of care for the marginalized in Judaism—the widow, the orphan—extended in Jesus beyond mere cultural convention. They became a part of the spiritual formation and ecclesial practice that Jesus embodied and that his disciples were called to live out us included.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Jesus' teaching is what we see in Luke 6:20-26 where he speaks to His disciples about the downward pull of his kingdom. His words are startling and subversive. “Blessed are you who are poor Woe to you who are rich. Blessed are you who weep now and woe to you who laugh now.” These words would have been as difficult for Jesus' disciples to hear as they are for us to comprehend today, they challenge everything we know about power, about poverty, affluence, power and oppression. Jesus was not just teaching about the realities of the kingdom of God. He was reorienting the way that his followers thought about status, worth and the movement of God in the world around us, Jesus was revealing to us just how little we understand of how the Creator works today. Henry Nouwen in his book, “Compassion” reflects on this downward pull of the kingdom writing, “this is the way of Jesus and the way to which he calls his disciples. It is the way that at first frightens or at least embarrasses us. Who wants to be humble, who wants to be last?” These words are especially poignant for us as we think about the application of this concept in our own Canadian context. Are we prepared to be humbled in the same way? Are we prepared to be last to quiet down and listen as marginalized voices lead us to challenge our systems of power? Historically, the church in Canada, particularly the majority Church, has been led by a European and Western voice. Our worship practices, our systems of governance, and even our preaching styles are often deeply influenced by western epistemologies and axiologies. For many Canadian Christians, these systems make sense. They resonate with their cultural identity, their theology, their history and their lived experiences. But for others, those of us from colonized, marginalized, refugee or immigrant communities, these systems are inherently foreign. They are not our ways of knowing, being or worshiping, the ways that are familiar or indigenous, indigenous to our cultures, and in fact, for many, these systems represent the legacy of colonialism, the way in which their voices are silenced, their cultures are diminished and their practices dismissed in favor of Western, often Imperial, ways of doing church. While not in Canada, my ancestors, ways of knowing, being and practicing their faith, was silenced by colonizers. My Irish language, the language of my great grandmother, used to pray to hear the gospel message in words that reached her heart at the deepest level. My people's poetry and music commonly used to worship Jesus were outlawed, sorry, and made nearly extinct in the face of colonization. Our ways were replaced by foreign and unfamiliar words and melodies that no longer reflected our identities or our stories.
[Laura Bevan]
This is the story of First Nations, Metis and Inuit people of Turtle Island. And many of your stories here today, many immigrant and refugee and settler stories as well. Canada's rich diversity its indigenous people, immigrant communities, refugee communities and settler populations, is not reflected in the structures of the church in Canada, the stories we tell in church, the hymns we sing the Scriptures we prioritize and the ways we organize our communities, often overlook, ignore, or outright reject the cultural richness that exists within our communities.
In our attempts to foster a united identity in Christ, we sometimes inadvertently erase the very differences that make us unique. We focus so heavily on a shared identity in Christ that we neglect the particularities of cultures and stories that make each one of us who we are. What have the consequences been of the gospel message being communicated the loudest in our context, by and large by colonizers and settlers who view this land we're standing on today as a commodity to be owned. What would the Gospel story gain in Canada if it were communicated the loudest by people who are the most connected and in relationship with this land? What if, instead of trying to assimilate all of our cultures into a singular Christian identity, we learned to learn from the distinctiveness of each culture within the body of Christ. What if we leaned into the uniqueness of the diverse cultures in Canada, seeing them not as barriers to unity, but as essential parts of the body of Christ that enrich and deepen our understanding of God.
As you suggest. Dr Hahn, perhaps we need to learn to approach our relationship with Jesus through the lens of our unique cultural particularities, rather than a way to abandon our heritage and adopt a one size fits all Christian identity. The apostle Paul speaks to this idea in his letters to the Corinthians and the Ephesians. In Second Corinthians, chapter five, Paul writes that “in Christ, there is a new creation all the. Has passed away and everything has become new.” This is a radical statement of reconciliation, not just between individuals and God, but also between different cultural and ethnic identities. Paul himself, an oppressed and colonized man within the Roman Empire, speaks from the experience of being under Roman rule, where identity and status were determined by one's relationship to the Empire. For Paul, being in Christ was subversive. It meant that one could no longer define themselves solely by their relationship to the Empire and to power or to the structures of oppression. They were defined instead by their relationship to Christ and to one another as fellow members of the body. This concept of being in Christ is what allows the church to be a space of radical reconciliation. Reconciling diverse peoples and cultures to one another through the work of Christ.
As Curtis Paul de Young notes in his book “radical reconciliation in a world where identity was often shaped by one's relationship to Rome by being as it were in Rome, insisting on a self-definition exclusively by being in Christ was subversive at best and treasonous at worst.” In this new identity, all cultural identities are honored, not erased, and we learn to see one another through the lens of Christ, not through the lens of human divisions. The challenge, then, is for those of us who hold power in the church to embrace this downward pull of Jesus's kingdom. Do we who have been given a platform and a microphone in the church, willingly decenter ourselves and lift up the voices of the marginalized? Do we risk telling the stories of the marginalized, knowing that these stories may challenge us and make us feel uncomfortable knowing that in doing so, we are sure to lose power and influenced by the world standards.
If we did, I believe the Spirit would have much more room to move in our communities. If we listened for and valued the voices of indigenous peoples, immigrants, refugees and marginalized communities, we would hear the gospel in new and powerful ways, we would experience a fuller, more beautiful picture of the Creator who is reflected in the diverse stories and knowledges of all of our people.
Ultimately, as you suggest, the answer to the question of how we can develop a uniquely Canadian homiletic may lie in the willingness of those of us who hold the power of communicating the story of Christ, to follow the example of Christ, living in the downward pull, humbling ourselves, centering the voices of the marginalized, and looking to those without power for leadership. Perhaps the answer begins with turning to the voices in our country who have never had power; the First Nations, Metis and Inuit people of Turtle Island and asking them,
“what is your story of the Gospel for Canada?” Dr Hahn, you mentioned a day where we might have more and more hermeneutics coming from some of these marginalized voices. And it's a great encouragement to me that this year there is a hermeneutic being published by First Nations scholars and theologians and authors coming out of First Nations communities in the United States, Danny Zacharias and Chris Hakla Tooby. And I'm looking forward to that. And it's been such an encouragement to me to know that some of these voices are becoming more and more evident and we are given more and more access to them. So once again, thank you for your paper and for your thoughtful and challenging reflections, and for the opportunity to engage in a larger picture of what it means to have a homiletic for Canada. Thank you.
[John Borthwick]
Thanks for listening to part three of four of the Klempa lectureship series. It was recorded in the chapel of Knox College Toronto. Next time, we will hear from the Reverend, Dr Joni Sanken, we hope you'll join us for our final lecture in the series.
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Until next time, may God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do, may you be fearless. Not reckless, and may you be well in body, mind and spirit, and may you be that peace