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Pastor's Page Bible and Hymnal at First Church

Reverend Doctor Jin Han

God's Undying Passion

“There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2 NRSV).

The image of the burning bush never fails to catch my attention, whether it shows up in the original book of Exodus or DreamWorks’ Prince of Egypt or a country singer’s call to stand still. Fire is a fascinating phenomenon that bears testimony to the beauty of the first creature—the light. Looking at the dawn that glows dim and grows delightful, one can imagine why God did not even consult with Einstein as the first choice thing to make.

What makes the fire in Exodus 3 truly eye-opening, however, is not its blaze. It is burning, but why is it not burnt out? All inflammable objects comes to ashes and dust sooner or later. A giant oak may endure hours, if not days, but how long can a bush last?

Moses must have seen a bush-fire, whose menace comes from the strength in numbers only. How can a bush keep on burning without being consumed (Heb. literally without being “eaten up”)? What did Moses see in the burning bush?

Moses turns to investigate not why it is ablaze but why it is inextinguishable. There he encounters God, who will carry the people of Israel like a mother eagle cares for its young ones through the storms.

God will never stop taking care of the people of God. In life, we may see all sorts of things broken, but God’s determination will never be bent. God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush, and God’s words come with a signature of promise. God will make them come true with such a passion that will never perish. Standing before the ancient testimony of the Bible, we too want to be inspired by God’s love that keeps on blazing from eternity to eternity.

Happy New Year!

February 2011

At First Church, we have just had our Annual Congregational Meeting. It went well. I can recall, in my previous appointment, I had the blessing of having someone walk up to me after the annual meeting to say, “I liked this meeting. What does it take to join this church?”

I imagine that the wish for a happy new year will also be taken in context, as we anticipate the new budget and the new leadership of deacons and elders. We started out the last year with nothing but hope and faith, and here we are, ready to talk about another year of ministry. In many ways, we lived the slogan that our Synod of the Northeast once put out: “Tough week? We are open on Sundays.” Yet, in addition to a regular diet of Sunday services, we had a huge Harvest Festival, which I still prefer to call Oktoberfest, with all the scrumptious pecan and pumpkin pies. We had tons of fun. We also had a stupendous concert presented by the Worship and Music committee (which was followed by another one in early 2011).

We join the celebration of the goodness of the Lord anywhere we find it, for joy tends to be doubled especially when it is shared. By contrast, sorrow tends to be cut in half when we share its burden. On that note, to reaffirm that the Lord gives us time to heal, we have set aside March 13, 2011 as the Sunday in Celebration of Life. We will recognize the gift of life that God gave both to us and to those who have gone to the Lord’s glorious presence before us. Please mark your calendar and bring your family and friends. We will seek to find both our capacity for grief and the hope of resurrection, the beacon that reminds us how precious the gift of life is.

Every Sunday we are indeed reminded of the hope of eternal life, which sustains us through situations of challenges and illnesses, which keeps on taking us to the throne of grace. Yet, the Lord feeds us from the table set up through the precious sacrifice of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Christmas Lights

December 2010

Christmas is a luminous season, and we can tell it is Christmas by its lights. We wrap Christmas trees with strings of blinking bulbs of many colors. Roundly trimmed pine trees in the yards of the neighborhood are dressed in a net of gleaming lights bright enough to remind us of the burning bush. The brake lights of cars lined up on the highways join the festival of lights around the world. About the same time, our Jewish friends observe Hanukkah, also known as the Feast of Lights.

I have been waiting for these lights to come on since Thanksgiving, but I cannot really tell what colors are distinctively Christmas-like. Of course, we need green and red, but also white, blue, yellow, amber, brown, and so forth.

While I cannot really set aside any one color for Christmas, I realize that we cannot have the pageant of Christmas lighting with any one of these lights alone. We need at least two, perhaps, three, and the more, the merrier.

We remember what Jesus said: when two or three gather in his name, he will be there with us. Some folks ask how many Presbyterians it takes to change a light bulb, but I wonder how many it would take to have a church. Two or three! That makes practically any size church overcrowded, and the more, the merrier.

We cannot have a Christmas tree with a single light. The church building may have a single light, but that looks more like a lighthouse. A single light does not make a good lighthouse, for the lighthouse comes to life when it meets another blinker coming from a ship looking for a harbor.

The light at the church also began with a single sparkle, which grew to be the friend of many sinners, who in turn became the light of the world. At the First, we are revisiting the birth of the first moment of the first lumen. We gather at the First Noel to be reminded of the first light, the light that was there even before God said, “Let there be light.” As we light the candle together singing “Silent Night,” we see how one light begins it all.

God And Pronouns

July 2010

We are God’s pronouns through baptism, and God is our antecedent. As pronouns have no life of their own, our life has no meaning without God. Pronouns add flavor to our daily speech, and we want to be faithful pronouns of God, who enriches this world through colorful creation. Every pronoun that refers to God’s creation eventually points to God’s glory.

In the beginning, God’s second person speech brought light into being. Heaven and earth were created by God’s “hey, you!” imperatives. Every corner of the universe has heard the voice of the Creator, who called them out of darkness. Everyone is the product of that voice who speaks to us.
God’s first person speech tells us what the Lord has done for us. It reminds us that the Lord comes through the redeeming quality of the Exodus: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the bondage of Egypt.” In the same way, Jesus is I AM that stands before us as everlasting first person speech.

As God continues to speak through the centuries, we value the voice of tradition that has handed down to us the testimony of our mothers and fathers. Their voice tells us of God in the third person. We recognize that some parts of history are “off the wall,” but we understand that the forbearers of faith wrestled with the questions that consumed them in their own time.
Among all pronouns, many of us balk at using the third person singular pronoun, “it,” for God. God is not a neutral thing. Yet, the Oxford English Dictionary says that there is a special use of “it.” It speaks of someone who is “exceptionally fashionable” (Draft Additions December 2008). God is our ultimate “it friend.”

May God bless you as you think of God in all manner of life!

"Crisis" and Mother's Day

May 9, 2010

What do “mother” and “crisis” have in common? Let’s take a detour and find out.

We commonly associate “crisis” with a disaster. Circumstances that invoke the word seem to suggest that crisis accompanies a downfall, as if the letter “d” naturally follows the letter “c.”

We take special measures to prevent crises. We spare no expense to pull ourselves out of a crisis. What is this crisis that spawns misery in the world God created so lovingly? I looked into the entry under “crisis” in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which states that the word came from the Greek root meaning “discernment.” The original meaning of “crisis” apparently has to do less with “collapse” than with “circumspection.” Crisis is a time that calls for discernment. Yes, it can go down, but it can also carry us on eagles’ wings.

The notion of danger is closely associated with the word crisis in places where Chinese characters are used. The word that translates the English “crisis” is 危機 (wēijī in Mandarin), which is a combination of two letters, one meaning “danger” (危) and the other “opportunity” (機). In this representation, crisis spells not only a threatening situation, but also a precious opportunity. Today’s crisis is an opportunity.

When we take a closer look at the Chinese word wēijī (危機), we find something even more illuminating. The first letter that means “danger” (危) apparently started as a picture of a person who is in a dangerous situation like at the edge of a high place. It conjures a picture of a person who is kneeling on the edge of a cliff. The second letter (機) can also mean a machine like a loom. When we put them together, we are greeted by a picture of a person who is working on a loom to weave a fabric.

On this Mother’s Day, this pictogram reminds me of the mothers who have been weaving so courageously in the face of life’s vicious challenges. They did not flinch at the danger of the edge of a cliff, for they read crisis as an opportunity to care for their children in a way no other could ever do. Thanks be to God who gave us mothers.

How to Find Your Day of Easter

April 4, 2010

This year Easter came early enough to have the cherry blossoms of Washington D.C. coincide with the week leading to Easter. I did not make it to our capital city, but I can imagine how beautiful it must have been to spend the Holy Week under the blooming trees that remind us of the new life Christ has given to us. I am happy for all who could be under those cherry trees.

This year the wondrous time came on April 4. Well, we did not get there according to the time of spring flowers, but by the ancient practice of computing the day of Easter. Christmas is an immovable feast that always comes on December 25. Easter seems to have its own mind. Of course, if we would ask the ancient church fathers how come Easter is a movable feast, they would tell us with a gleam in their eyes, “What are you talking about? Easter always falls on the same day. It is the Sunday after the first moon after the vernal equinox, which is March 21.”

This may sound like ecclesiastical gobbledygook, but it is a quite meaningful formula that turns an ordinary day into a special festal occasion. Before Easter finds us, the spring equinox (from Latin aequinoctium, “equality between day and night”) has to come first. In the cold winter, the night is long, but ever since the winter solstice (from Latin solstitium, “the sun stood still”), the day has been gaining on the night. On the equinox, the day finally catches up with the night. Light triumphs over darkness.

Once we pass the spring equinox, look for the full moon, which this year came on March 30, the Great Tuesday of Holy Week. In the West, the full moon is often associated with strange behavior, but in the East, the full moon means plentitude. Easter comes with the light that has overcome darkness, to the earth blessed with the sign of abundance, and with a reminder of God’s creation.

Here is a way to learn this precious math. Say, Easter is SAFE. Easter is Sunday After

Full-moon after Equinox. It is quite appropriate to call Easter safe, for the word “safe” came from the same root as “salvation.” May Easter the SAFE Day keep you in God’s grace through Christ our Lord!

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