The year of the horse is what we need. In St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, we see a secular word in the Bible. We learn that we are to be ambassadors for Christ. Governments have ambassadors. Ambassadors represent boldly wherever people do not fully understand our values. Ambassadors sometimes take risks. The risks we take for Christ are for love, justice, freedom, and reconciliation.
When someone is afraid to go to church, which is true at about 25 of our congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles because of our government’s cruel, racist raids and kidnappings, we remember to reach out to them and make them feel noticed and loved. We also serve as ambassadors of love to our politicians and say that we demand that all in power obey the golden rule. Practically speaking, that means not hurting innocent people, just as the powerful don’t want to be hurt. Confucius proclaimed the Golden Rule 500 years before Christ. It is the divine law of the universe. The Golden Rule is the Word that proceeded from the beginning of all things. It is time for all governments to obey it.
This is especially important when people come from all over the world and share one land. This is the miracle, majesty, and complexity of the United States, the opportunity to build a truly plural democracy, with liberty and justice for all. In his mighty speech recorded in Deuteronomy, Moses tells God’s people that the promised land is “a land that the Lord your God looks after.” Some across the centuries have read these lines as a warrant to conquer. But we are entitled to read them with our understanding of what the Lord actually desires, which is never to conquer or do violence.
One of the roots of our political crisis is a resistance to plural democracy. Some people living in our land do not wish to share it. I know that many if not most in this congregation have experienced personal and structural racism. We pray this afternoon for all immigrant workers under assault by this government. All are owed an apology whose neighborliness and industry our president reciprocates with cruelty and deadly violence.
This is the land which our God in Christ has prepared for us all to share. He is always watching to see what we, his ambassadors, do and say. He has promised that, in the Resurrection, we will be safe in our ministry and in our testimony. May we be sustained by the strength of the horse and the authority of God’s eternal Word.
[A portion of my sermon at Saturday’s evening prayer service at St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Monterey Park, the Rev. Canon Ada Wong-Nagata, priest in charge, which hosted the annual Lunar New Year celebration for our Chinese language congregations, also including St. Thomas’s in Hacienda Heights and Church of our Saviour in San Gabriel. A magnificent feast followed with music and dance performances by members of all three churches.]
