Acknowledging the hard work done on our behalf
The Rev. Theresa Cho helps draw the APCE Annual Event to a close
LOUISVILLE — The Annual Event for the Association of Partners in Christian Education closed on Saturday as it opened, with worship and insightful preaching by the Rev. Therese Cho.
Cho is pastor and head of staff at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. She also preached during opening worship of the Annual Event.
According to the liturgy for Saturday’s service, God spoke through the prophet Ezekiel during the Babylonian exile about the need to “turn from their wicked ways and live.” God told Jeremiah, “I will forgive their wickedness and I will never again remember their sin.”
“Even the most foolish among us is loved,” the liturgy made clear for the crowd meeting in person in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and online. “Even dry bones will draw breath and know that God is God.”
“We know the good news is not for us alone. It is a light that is meant to be spread,” the liturgy stated, “a feast that is meant to be shared.”
Drawing from Gal. 3:23-29, Cho noted that the community of Galatia Paul was writing to, in modern-day Turkey, “was trying to discern what makes them a community,” she said. Was it circumcision? Knowing scripture? Believing a certain way?
It was much more. “Jesus’ ministry was about bettering the lives of people by restoring them to God and one another, showing them how to love their neighbor,” Cho said. “If we aren’t addressing real-life problems, then the faith we practice is hollow.”
She showed the well-known clip from 1969 of Mister Rogers and François Scarborough Clemmons, known in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as Officer Clemmons, soaking their feet together on a hot day. “They didn’t want Black people to swim in the swimming pools,” Clemmons said years later. “Mister Rogers said, ‘that’s ridiculous.’”
“When I see this clip, I think of the time Jesus washed Peter’s feet,” Cho said. “Here’s Mister Rogers and Officer Clemmons doing that together.”
Cho recalled earlier ministry when she would carefully hold babies being treated at a San Franciso hospital. “I would hold children connected to way too many machines,” she said. “I would hold them very carefully so they knew in my arms they would not be poked or prodded or disturbed.”
“I didn’t have to know how to make them better,” she said, “but I had the arms to hold them. I wonder if that’s what the world could use now — cuddling. Presence.” She identified being present as one of the most difficult things students must learn in their chaplaincy training, “to witness the most vulnerable moments in a person’s life. It can call us to listen to their story and not tell ours.”
“I feel that’s when we have narrowed the gap — when the tears start flowing and we start to see one another as a child of God, a neighbor, and even divine and holy.”
Cho taught those in worship a pair of commonly used Korean phrases. One is used to acknowledge a server or barista “has been doing the hard work.”
“It’s been hard, huh? It’s been difficult” throughout the country in the past week or two, she said.
The second phrase is a goodbye phrase and serves as “an acknowledgement you are doing the good work,” she said.
“There have been generations before us and there will be generations after us that have been and will do the good work,” Cho said. Actions in Minneapolis and “in cities across the country are evidence of that, that what remains is love.”
She ended her reflection with a word of thanks. “Because you are you, I know there is a God greater than anything I can ever imagine. Because you are you, I have been loved into being,” she said. “Because you are you I know that loving my neighbor is not a solo endeavor but a community action.”
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