Do Not Settle

What we read today is one of my favorite Bible passages. It tells us what it means to be a Christian. Not only being a Christian, but it tells me what it means to live a decent human life. I think this passage especially speaks to those immigrants and the children of immigrants. And I will reflect on that today. But first of all, what does it mean to be a Christian? When somebody asks you, what do you mean by being a Christian? How would you say? Is being a Christian changing from bad person to a good person? Is that being a Christian? Being immoral to moral? That's not what happened to Paul. Paul's conversion was different. Paul was not an immoral person. He was deeply religious, disciplined, committed, and respected. He was born of Hebrews. He was Pharisee. Astoriciousness, he even boldly claimed that I am flawless. So Paul's conversion was not from being a bad person to a good person. Paul's conversion was something deeper. To me, Paul's conversion is movement from settlement to journey. That was Paul's conversion. He moved from believing that he had arrived to realizing that God was calling him forward. He used to think that I had arrived already, even in spirituality. I'm flawless. But God is calling him to go forward. Being subtle to journey. That's the character of being a Christian. If you're a Christian, this is how we live. And good life, this is how the good people who live good life live. Yes, Christian conversion is movement from being subtle to taking a journey. When you look at today's passage, verse 4 to 6, read it and see how well established he was. If anyone else has a reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel and of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew bone of Hebrew, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Very well settled. Very well established. He was very confident. He was right in the center of his society, not only in the center, but he was at the top of the class in his society. But somehow that settlement was shattered. That's verse 7 to 8. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss. I regard them as rubbish. Before he was confident, but now he sees that as rubbish, refuse. He threw away all his very well established existence and started a new journey. That's verse 12 to 14. I press on toward the goal. What shattered his well established identity, well established life? He found Christ. Or rather, I should say, he said, he was found in Christ. Because he was found in Christ, that settlement was a rubbish. And now he is taking a new journey. He was Christ, who shattered Paul's well established belief and called him to take a bold journey. That's what it means to be a Christian. Jesus Christ sometimes shatters your well established identity to start a new journey. And after that, physically and literally, Paul's life was a journey. He went to all the different cities. So when you read Acts of Apostles, first journey, second journey, and third journey. So Luke talks about Paul's journey. So when you summarize to this passage, it's like this. Verse 4 to 6 is settlement. Paul knows who he is. He has identity, status, achievement, righteousness, and belonging. And verse 70, 11 is disruption. Christ enters his life and changes the value of everything. What was gained becomes lost. And then lastly, 12 to 14, his journey. I have not already obtained this. I press on. That's a summary of the passage you read today. This became a good guidance for me. As an immigrant, I always lived on the margin, experiencing in-betweenness. I feel many times that I don't belong to either world, Canada or Korea. Always my existence was in-betweenness. That was my existence. I'm not fully first generation. I'm not fully second generation. And yeah, when people ask, where are you going to cheer when there's a soccer game between Canada and Korea, I always say, oh yeah. I want to cheer both. Dr. Sang-yeon Lee, who was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, he said this. This kind of existence is liminal existence. He said, liminality is a situation of being in-between two or more worlds and includes the meaning of being located at the periphery or edge of a society. That's what liminal existence is all about. And the liminal existence used to bother me because I don't belong either world. When I visited Korea, I felt that. Realize, I'm not really, really Korean here. And I feel that here all the time. My wife used to the ministry in a Canadian church in the first few years after ordination. Every time she came home, she told me, you know, I feel like a missionary in a foreign land. That's how she felt. But over the years, I realized that marginality is not something I should just endure and accept. I realized that the marginality, marginal place, is a creative place from which something new becomes possible. From the margin, you can sometimes see what people at the center cannot see. This marginalized existence, and this marginalized existence is not just immigrants, but that is what Christians are. Paul became a marginalized person. He chose to be marginalized. Early Christians, they were fine as Jews, but they chose to be marginalized in that early church, just few hundred. Jesus chose to be marginalized by coming to this world. This is chapter three you read, but in chapter two, Paul is talking about Jesus emptying himself to become like us. So he emptied himself, entered into the marginalized place. He didn't come to Jerusalem, he came to Galilee. And Galilee was a marginalized place. That's why people said, oh, what good can come from Nazareth? And then Nazareth was in Galilee. It's not Jerusalem, but Galilee. The temptation of the center is settlement. Privilege can make us believe that nothing needs to change. People in the center want to be settled, but life on the margins can give us different kind of openness. The ability to imagine that things do not have to remain as they are. They can change. That's what people on the margin always think about it, dream about it, imagine about the change. That is what it means. That is important in living a Christian life, not only a Christian life, but a meaningful life. Meaningful life is not just being settled. Meaningful life always pursue something greater, something more wonderful. Settlement can be a temptation. And Jesus Christ saved Paul from that temptation. Paul used to think that I am flawless. I'm not the person to change. They are the people who need to change. Not me. That's why he went to persecute Christians and tried to correct them. But when he met Christ, everything changed. He clearly saw that, how wrong he was, how imperfect he was. He used to think that flawless, that's rubbish. Thinking that I was flawless, that is rubbish. Paul realized. He saw the bigger reality. A few weeks ago, I shared with you about Moses calling. Moses' second period of his life, 40 years of immediate, immediate, it was life of settlement. He was very comfortable, but that wasn't an illusion. God shook him up, woke him up. Don't settle there. Take the journey. And then after that, his life was in the wilderness, journey in the wilderness. In that journey, he experienced something he never experienced in his life. He experienced God. He experienced that life could be very different. My friends, do you want to settle in Oasis? Oasis is not a place to settle. It is a temporary place where you rest a little bit, but you have to move on with your journey. Are you trying to settle in Oasis? Life is a constant journey. There is no such thing as settlement. There's a temptation and there's illusion in some ways. Something new always comes. Something challenging always comes. Every moment, you cannot stay at the same place. I used to take young people to Agonquin every year. Sometimes more than 30 people. So many. In order to take more than 30 people, you have to rent about 15, 20 canoes. And all this fleet of canoes, we went to Ireland. We even played capture flag in between two islands. And it was fun. But one day, I went out because I was tired of those guys. So I just went out in the lake. And it was so peaceful, quiet. Nothing moves. The water was just still and very quiet. So I lie down and fell asleep. It was nice. About 15 minutes, I probably slept. And then when I woke up, I was in a totally different place. I couldn't even see. Where am I? Where is my island? I couldn't even recognize where I was. I thought that I was still. But there was an undercurrent that takes me somewhere that was very strange and foreign. The whole time, the current was carrying me somewhere. Life always moves like a current underneath. You cannot just wish that everything will be the same. Life always changes. Situations always change. There's no neutral place in life where we simply remain as we are. Even when we think that we are settled, life is moving. The question is not whether we move or not. The question is whether you will take the journey consciously with Christ. That is a question. My friends, do not be afraid of living on the margins. Do not spend your whole life trying to get to the center. That's not your journey. You're on the margin and trying to get to the center. That's not a journey. That God wants. Do not make success, security, recognition, or belonging. The final destination of your journey. If God gives you these things, receive them with gratitude. But do not settle there. An oasis is a wonderful place to rest. But it is a terrible place to stop your journey. Paul had everything that could make a person feel settled. But when he met Christ, now his journey was journey to know. I want to know. Journey. Even resurrection is not something that is given automatically when you die. Resurrection is that I try to attain resurrection. His attitude, even towards resurrection. I try to attain resurrection. I want to know Christ became the journey of his life. There is still more of Christ for you to know. There is still more truth for you to discover. There are still ways in which your eyes need to be opened. There are still things within you that need to change. There is still work God wants to do through you. So don't settle too soon. Especially those who are retiring or retired. Don't settle too soon. When you feel like you're standing at the edge rather than at the center, do not despise that place. God may use that very place to open your eyes to things you could never see from the center. Whenever I go to PCC meetings and other Caucasian ministers and all that, they always appreciate the perspectives that I bring to the table. Because I come from the margin. People in the center cannot even see. Let your marginal experience become a source of spiritual creativity. Let it give you new eyes, new imagination, and new way of seeing the world. And from there, take that journey. Until you die, you have to take it. The moment you stop journey, your health deteriorates. Your body decays. Your thinking becomes deteriorated. The moment that you stop the journey. I told these two 90-year-old people in the first generation, don't stop. You have to still take the journey. That's what life is. Journey, consistently, constantly. And you'll find something wonderful in life. I never experienced that I was there in life. But when you take the series journey, you realize, I now see what a wonderful life this is. May God bless you in your spiritual journey.