Your Ancestors Need You

Transcript

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[0:00] Good morning, Foothill! Greetings from Ghana and Aqaba, which means welcome. So, by the miracle of the internet, welcome to Ghana. We wanted to film the first little part of my message today from outside so you can see a little bit of where we live and hear some of where we live.

[0:25] As you can see, we live on a hill. We're living with a wonderful family who actually, for a long time now, have played a very vital and important part in IFES, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which is actually InterVarsity's umbrella organization. So it's a deep honor to be living with them. And we do get to live on this beautiful hill. Behind me, you might be able to see bits of Accra, the city, which is below. But up here on this hill, it's cooler. Praise God.

[1:04] About a half an hour drive up the hill, we get to the town of Akropong, which is where the Akrofi Kristaller Institute is located. And that's campus for me. That's where I've been going to study. And the town of Akropong is kind of important in the history of Christian mission here in Ghana. The Presbyterian missionaries were able to have a fruitful ministry for the first time in Ghana, up in Akropong. And so the Institute is there. It's in one of the original buildings that the missionaries built. And it's also right next door to the First Presbyterian Church of Ghana. And so because of your support for me, you've had a big part to play in my being able to come here. And I'm able to be a part of a historic ministry here in Ghana. Akrofi Kristaller is the Presbyterian archive for the country. And my schoolmates, the PhD candidates at Akrofi, are doing really groundbreaking and important research. They're researching the religious and cultural histories of the over 100 people groups here in Ghana and the impact that Christ has had on them. And one of the things that really excites me is that they're publishing. They're publishing not just in English, but they're also publishing in the mother tongue languages of some of these people groups.

[2:40] And so it's really exciting. It's a privilege and an honor to be able to study at Akrofi. And I'm so grateful to you for letting me be a part of that. Of course, most of our work has been on African theology and African culture. But for my final research project, the faculty really encouraged me to investigate my own cultural heritage, Chinese culture. And this has been a real blessing to me. And that brings us to today, actually. The reason why Hans-Erik and I picked today for me to preach, All Saints Day, is because my big research project this term has been on Asian ancestor veneration. So East Asian cultures, and I focused on Chinese and Korean cultures, they have for thousands of years actually traditionally engaged in ancestor veneration. So worship is really the wrong word. Asians don't worship their ancestors. But a big part of Asian culture is honoring and remembering our family members who have died, our ancestors. And they do it through various rituals that they practice throughout the year. And they'll do things like put food out for the ancestors in front of photos. At funerals, I remember as a little kid folding paper money to burn for my grandfather. And then a very important part of Asian ancestral veneration

[4:21] is writing people's names. On tablets. And putting them on a table or on an altar, actually. So that we always remember and honor our ancestors. And hopefully, you'll be able to see some connection here with All Saints Day. Why do we as Christians celebrate All Saints Day? It's a day when we come together to remember those who have died in Christ. A day when we remember our ancestors. Why does this matter to Christians?

[5:03] So this morning, what I'm going to do, I'm not going to exegete our text of Hebrews 11 the way we might normally do at a service at Foothill. But what I'm going to share is some of my reflections on the book of Hebrews and what I've learned from my research into Chinese culture. One of the things I discovered was that when I came to the book of Hebrews from my Chinese heritage, I started asking different questions of the text. And it meant that I saw different things.

[5:42] So before I get going, though, I do want to give us a quick overview of the book of Hebrews just to locate us in the text. We don't know who for sure wrote the letter to the Hebrews, but we're pretty sure it was someone very close to Paul. The theological content of the letter tells us that. And some people think it might have been Priscilla and Aquila, which is super exciting for me because there's the possibility that a woman has had a hand in writing the Bible. And from the content, we're also pretty sure that the audience of the letter were Jesus-believing Jews, possibly in Italy. So we have a community of Jewish people who have put their faith in Christ, but now they're starting to face some persecution for that.

[6:36] And because of that, they're tempted to give up on Jesus and go back to their purely Jewish ways. And the whole point of the letter to Hebrews is the authors are saying, don't do that. Don't give up on Jesus. Hang in there. And actually, this is the point of our text today. If we go to the very end of our reading, Hebrews 12, verses 1 to 2, the writers are saying, run the race. Look only at Jesus, who endured the cross and now sits at the right hand of God.

[7:18] And so what do the ancestors have to do with this? What has Asian culture got to do with this? Well, Asian cultures, I discovered, are all about family. Family is everything. And it's the very basis of Asian society. And at the core of family is the virtue of filial piety. Filial piety. And that is the duty to honor your parents and your ancestors as a good son. And it is actually sons who are supposed to lead the way in this. But all children, sons and daughters, as good children and good descendants, are to honor our parents and our elders during their lifetimes and also after death. And so Asian people venerate their ancestors because that is part of their understanding of what it means to be family. It's part of what it means to be a good participant in your family.

[8:35] And so I came to the book of Hebrews asking, what does it say about family? What does God have to say about family? Actually, it says quite a lot. And when we read Hebrews asking this question, it leads us to see the beauty and the wonder of what God is doing in his family.

[9:04] So I have a few reflections to share about this. The first thing we see is that family matters to God. Family matters to God. And actually, family matters to God so much that he is in the business of gathering to himself a family. A family of God. And right from the beginning of Hebrews, right from the start of chapter 1, we see that God is gathering us into his family through the work of his firstborn son, Jesus. The Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the divine first family. And Jesus lives out perfect filial piety. He lives a life completely and utterly obedient to his Father. And why does he do that? Why does he obey to the extent that he obeys?

[10:09] He does it so that we can be faithful to him. So that we can come into God's family. We see in chapter 2 that he does all of this in order to bring many sons and daughters to glory. And so in Hebrews chapter 2, and I'm reading verses 10 and 11, it says, For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, to perfect the originator of their salvation through suffering. For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified, that's us, are all from one Father. For this reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

[11:03] This kind of blew me away. I think I am very used to thinking of this. I think I am very used to thinking of this. I think I am very used to thinking of our salvation as being put right with God. And that is absolutely true. In Christ, we are put right with God. And that is vital. And that is important.

[11:23] But when we ask of scripture, why is God going to all this trouble? It kind of blew me away to realize that God is about building his family. It's not only so that we will be reconciled to God. It's also so that we will be reconciled to each other.

[11:49] And this is fleshed out more in other parts of the New Testament, especially in Ephesians and Galatians, if you want to look more into it. But it's wonderful that I am a child of God. But it's also important. And amazingly wonderful to see that I am a sister. I am a brother amongst many sons and daughters of God.

[12:16] God is about building his family. And he's doing it through Jesus, his firstborn son, our perfect eldest brother. The second thing we see when we look at Hebrews is that God's vision of family is way bigger than ours.

[12:45] One thing that really struck me when I read over our text for today is the first verse of Hebrews 11. It says, Faith is confidence in what we hope for, the assurance of things not seen. And I thought to myself, why is the author starting with this? Why is the author talking about things? Why is the author talking about things we can't see? It just kind of jumped out at me as I was reading.

[13:10] And then actually I noticed from the very beginning of the letter, Hebrews is all about the spiritual realities that we cannot see. From chapter one, we see the throne room of God. We see angels and God's companions. And we see Jesus, the superior one at the center of it all.

[13:38] And that's one thing that really is interesting about Asian and African cultures. They totally understand the idea that there are realities that we cannot see, which is why Asians put food out for their ancestors. There's a sense that the spiritual realm is separate and different to our realm. But at the same time, it's not totally different. When a person dies, there's a sense that they're still themselves. They're still people. They're still human. And in this realm that we can't see, if they're human, they'll probably need food. They'll probably need money.

[14:25] But family is limited to the family we can see. The virtue of filial piety is limited to the family line. I will venerate my ancestors, but it's not proper for me to venerate somebody else's ancestors. You would never do that. And actually, the Jews were kind of operating out of the same paradigm when it comes to family, right? So to be the people of God, to be Jewish, you needed to be a descendant of Abraham. You came from one of twelve tribes, descended from twelve brothers. This is a really big thing in Asian cultures, too. Genealogy. You can see physical evidence with someone's name on it of who you're descended from.

[15:16] And for the readers of this letter, in wanting to go back to Judaism, the writer is saying, you have lost sight of what God is doing in the unseen realms. You're wanting to stick only to what you can see. But God is doing something bigger.

[15:39] So as good as family is, it's good for Asian people to honor our parents and grandparents. It's good for Hebrew people, Jewish people, to be children of Abraham. As good as these things are, if we only focus on what we can see, that vision is also kind of limiting.

[16:11] The family we can see is good, but that vision to focus on them only is limiting. So I was trying to think about what our Bay Area equivalents to this might be, and I thought, maybe it's our sociological or socioeconomic group. Or for me, I thought about my work on campus at Stanford and amongst faculty, university faculty. And I know that sometimes my sights can get limited to engineers and people with PhDs.

[16:46] That's kind of limiting. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's so much more to humanity than that. I also think that in our home countries, in the United States, it's election season. We can limit our vision to our national interests, to our national identity. But it's been really interesting for me to be here in Ghana. I've become so much more aware of the concerns of people from other nations and so much more aware of how other nations view the United States, for example. To focus on what we see is not bad. But it's limiting.

[17:30] And in response to this, the author of Hebrews is saying to their readers, lift up your eyes to what you cannot see. Lift up your eyes to the throne room of God, where Jesus is reigning over all things. And the example Hebrews points to for these Jewish Christians is actually their own ancestors. They're saying, look at the greats of your family.

[18:05] Don't think they're great because their focus was on what they can see. If they had, they'd all have quit while they were ahead, right? Because Abraham never saw his descendants numbering greater than the stars. Joseph died in Egypt. Moses never set foot on the Promised Land.

[18:30] And Israel could have stopped at the Red Sea or at the walls of Jericho. But somehow they had a vision of God. They saw that he had more for them beyond what they could see. And the amazing thing when we look at today's text is that the unseen part that they were waiting for, is us.

[18:59] Hebrews 11, verses 39 to 40. And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us, they would not be made perfect.

[19:24] All of us. The readers of Hebrews, the Gentile churches Paul planted, and every other person in history who puts their trust in Jesus Christ, we are all joined together with these witnesses in chapter 11 to form an amazing, wondrous family. And they are not complete. They do not receive what they were promised. Until we come in to the family of God.

[20:02] I just want to pause here for a moment to talk about some of the realities of what we do see. What we can see. Family isn't easy or good for everyone. We know that not everyone is from a happy or a healthy family. And we also know that not everyone can fulfill the expectations of family. For some of us, to follow Christ might mean that we have broken relationships with our family, because they've been opposed to it. Actually, Tom Lynn, the current president of InterVarsity, has been very open in sharing his story about how when he felt God's call to be in full-time ministry with InterVarsity, his family were really not happy about it. And they were in deep conflict for a long, long time.

[21:06] Kwame Bediako, the founder of Okrofi Kristaller Institute, where I'm studying, he also fell out with his father because following full-time ministry was not what his father had planned for him. By God's grace, both of these people were reconciled to their families in time. But sometimes following Christ means that our relationship with our earthly families might be broken. And one of the important comforts that comes from this word about God's family is that if we are in this situation, we're not alone.

[21:50] God, by his grace, gives us a heavenly family that's real, the church. And so if that's your situation, let that be a very real comfort to you. Some of us maybe are not fulfilling our culture's expectations of family.

[22:14] So if you're single, and I was single for a long time before I was married, maybe if you can't have children, that is a huge expectation of family in Asian culture, in African culture, actually I'm going to say in Western culture too.

[22:33] If we don't fulfill that expectation, family can be a hard thing for us. And in these moments, Jesus does not wallpaper over these things. I love that in Hebrews 11, they include Sarah in that list. She doesn't always come over so well in Genesis. But the authors of Hebrews recognize her faith. She had to go through a lot, a lot of shame. I'm sure it was not easy for her to not be able to bear children and carry Abraham's expectations of her to found a nation. And that in addition to her own culture's expectations of her.

[23:22] In Hebrews 11, we also see Hagar, a prostitute. I guarantee you she was not fulfilling even her Canaanite culture's expectations of her. And over and over, we see in the Bible that God sees us in these places.

[23:43] But here in Hebrews, we are also reminded to look beyond the now. To see past the hard stuff and to fix our eyes on Jesus and his promises of the unseen. And when we do these things, I think we see two things come out of that.

[24:08] The first thing is that our vision of faith, our family, is way too small. God is building a family beyond our imagination. And it's the family that comes together through faith in Christ. And so it's family that transcends ethnicity, nationhood, economics, and the boundaries of cultural expectations.

[24:40] And the second thing that comes out of this, and it's equally important, is that though this family is enormous, it's cosmic, it is not complete without us. We each have a vital part to play in this family.

[25:01] And our ancestors need each and every one of us to be a participant, in God's family, for them to be complete. So God's vision of family is way bigger than ours. The third reflection is that death does not end our family relationships.

[25:27] Asian, and actually African cultures, have kind of intuited this, right? The whole point of ancestral veneration is this deep down, understanding that death does not end our family relationships. And we see in Hebrews that not only is this true, but in Christ, this truth is filled out and made whole.

[25:56] In Christ, we don't need to be afraid of death. Either our own death, or that of others. So in Hebrews chapter 2, and I'm reading verses 14 and 15, it says, Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself, likewise also partook of the same, so that through death he might destroy the one who has power over death, that is the devil, and free those who through the fear of death were subject to slavery, and that he might destroy all their lives.

[26:39] I think the truth of this really hits home in light of our scripture today. Chapter 11. We're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Our ancestors in Christ are alive, and they're watching. And in this time of COVID, this is an important thing to remember. And today, All Saints Day, this is an important thing to remember.

[27:04] Death is not the end. And so today, for our loved ones who have died in Christ, we remember them. We honor them. We learn from them as we remember their lives. And we are a part of them, and they are a part of us. And they always will be. We can't see them, but they're there. And we need them, and they need us in order to be complete.

[27:40] This is what we mean by the communion of the saints. And this is why we celebrate All Saints Day. Because together, we are part of this continuum. We are part of the family of God. And death will not separate us from each other.

[28:02] And so finally, I thought I would share some practical applications of all of this. The first thing, and there's many, many more, so have a think about how this bigger understanding of family might be applied in your life. But the ones that I came up with, the first one is, I think this understanding of God's family encourages us now, to open our eyes to who is in our family. And in the U.S. context, this means, amongst other things, paying attention to our black and brown brothers and sisters who are trying to tell us that they are suffering, and that they are not being treated well. We need to pay attention to them and join with them to remedy that, because they're family. And I'm so grateful that our church is working with us, through the racial justice team, to work out what we in our church needs to do to walk in this direction.

[29:14] The second application that I drew from all of this is that we can be encouraged to learn from our ancestors. I mean, in a very real sense, we do this every Sunday. Because the Bible is, amongst other things, lessons from the lives of our spiritual ancestors. But if we can take a lesson from Asia right now, the traditional Korean family gets together up to eight times a year to honor their ancestors. And a big part of this is getting together as a family around a meal to remember them, to remember their wisdom, to remember the good things they have passed on to us. And I wonder, what if in some of our potlucks, or the COVID equivalent of a potluck, whatever we work out that might be, what if during these times when we get together, we take some time to remember and to learn from Pastor Jim Gatterland? He's one of our ancestors. To learn from the lives of some of the people, whom we've named today. They're our ancestors.

[30:34] And what if we took some time to learn from Martin Luther King, or Frederick Douglass, or Rosa Parks, our ancestors? Or one of the Christian faculty whom I work with is a Latino scholar named Robert Chao Romero. And he has written a book called Brown Church, and it's full of stories of Latino Christians. What if we spent some time learning from our Latino ancestors? Or our Asian ancestors? I actually think this could be a lot of fun, and it would bring us into a deeper realization of what completeness in our family of God will look like.

[31:27] And finally, the third application I came up with is actually a thing that Foothill does so well. We're reminded to be family to each other. Some of those brothers and sisters who maybe have got broken relationships with their earthly families for whatever reason, Foothill needs to be family to them.

[31:53] And I do think we do this super well. And then the other kind of add-on to this, which is always more of a challenge for all of us, I think, is to invite people to come in, to join this family of God, because it's good. It's wonderful.

[32:14] And so today, this All Saints Day, let's remember that in Christ, God is building his family. And it's a family beyond our imagination. And he's calling us to be a part of it so that together we will be complete.

[32:35] Thank you.