Pastor’s Corner – June 22, 2025
“As many of you were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:27-28
The sun was beating down hard when Joyce Jones and I sat in third row seats facing the stage, as pastors from a dozen or so congregations took turns to speak at the Juneteenth celebration in Plano. The underlying theme is “rooted in resilience.” It’s a call to remember and empower the struggle for liberation. I can’t help but think of how emancipation of slavery is linked with the struggles of global liberation; from Sudan to Gaza, Congo to Iran, how the machinery of empire continues to crush and oppress Black, Brown and Indigenous life. Juneteenth is a call to dismantle systems of oppression, policing, incarceration, war and occupation! The truth is our human suffering is linked, so is our liberation.
Jesus knew this truth. His prophetic ministry with the message of good news is about freedom and what it means to be human as God’s children, central to call to repentance and kingdom of God. The exorcism of legions of demons in the gospel reading was a play to imagine with a greater message against Roman power and Paul’s message blurring the line between free and slave, Jews and Greeks and men and women are all to restore our humanity.
This coming Sunday, our lectionary readings remind us of the importance of our faith to see our world more critically through the prophetic ministry of Jesus. As we are led once again to war with each passing day, we need to take lessons from our history in recent memory with Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations that replacing regimes through violence, occupation and war does not work, rather we create more hatred, division and strife. This has been true in Korea and its geopolitics and war and in Vietnam. The inherent traumas and collective suffering has made its mark in so many lives, I could feel it in my bones through generations, leaving scars. Every time a bomb or a missile takes lives, part of humanity is taken away.
Let us come together and hold each other’s space to worship and pray for peace, advocate justice in Jesus name and end all wars! Amen.
Pastor Dae