Sermon / ADVICE FROM THE CLERGY : On Honoring Asian Roots in Worship

An African-American staffer was our keynote speaker last year at a meeting in Chicago of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He led off each plenary session by teaching his predominantly Anglo, multi-ethnic group a traditional African-American spiritual. That became a highlight of the conference.

I was asked to speak for five minutes one morning in my capacity as a trustee. Taking my place behind the lectern, I looked out at the sea of faces and said, “I’d like to begin by teaching you all an Asian-American spiritual . . . except that we don’t have any.” Everyone laughed. So did I. But I’m not laughing anymore.

How can it be that, in spite of our own long history of enduring hardships, prejudice, poverty, hatred, injustice and servitude, my Chinese-American Christian forebears never created their own brand of music, never established paradigms for the Chinese church like our African-American brethren did? Unlike them, we have never purposefully recovered and redeemed the rich remnants of God’s image that are reflected in us as Chinese- or Asian-Americans. We have been content, in the main, to adopt the predominant forms and ways of the “parent” European-American churches--church architecture and aesthetics, preaching styles, organizational structures and policies.

This is not to say that God has not in fact accomplished a great deal through “copycat” ministries like these, but what have been the hidden costs? Could it be, as many of us ethnic-American Christians have dutifully adopted Eurocentric forms and philosophies, that we have inadvertently overlooked aspects of God’s image in us and our cultures? Is it possible, while we have been perfecting our “accent-free English,” that we have forgotten how to speak the language of our people’s hearts?

Redemption is a critical concept for us Christians. It is at the core of our understanding of what it means to be saved.

Recently, The Times ran a story about some residents of the city who hold yard sales every weekend throughout the year. These weekend capitalists replenish their stock by frequenting other people’s yard sales. If they see enough decent stuff at a sale, they will offer the proprietor one price for the whole lot, then truck it all over to their yard. In doing so, they effectively redeem both the treasures and the trash. It all belongs to them because they paid for it all. And what might be junk to one person is seen as a gem by another.

God sent Jesus to redeem every part of us. And our cultures are definitely an essential part of who we are. So why is it that we ethnic-American Christians--especially those of us with religious roots in Asia--are so quick to dismiss our ethnic portions as being devoid of any redeeming value? Is it possible that we have disregarded authentic parts of ourselves because we have been convinced that they are now incompatible with our faith?

For the last several years we at Evergreen Baptist Church have been experimenting with a style of preaching that is more Asian-American, and we have received a great deal of encouragement from Asian-Americans, whether Christian or not. Based on our understanding of how we typically make important commitments, we have designed a less confrontational, more gradual approach to evangelism. We even created a more Asian-American atmosphere in our sanctuary, and even though it is atypical, it feels like home.

One day, some Asian-American Christian will be teaching some other group of believers how to sing an Asian-American worship tune. We may not be the ones to write those new songs or to design the new buildings. But we have been given the awesome responsibility to get things moving in that direction. There are buried treasures just waiting to be redeemed.