Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church

Cornel Barnett
Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church
San Francisco, California
February 10, 2008

“He set his face to go to Jerusalem 1″

We have just heard that the title of my sermon, “He set his face to go to Jerusalem”, is taken from the passage read by Alvyn. It is spoken during Jesus’ descent from the mountain of transfiguration. Last Sunday we heard about Jesus’ brief sojourn on the mountain during Joshua’s fine sermon of the event. On the mountain Jesus was seen as his true self, a bright and shining manifestation of the divine. This is the theological “high point” of the Gospel.He now comes off the mountain and sets his face towards Jerusalem. In other words, he is looking to his death on the cross and his knowing sense of the resurrection that would ensue from this death.

We have proof in the text that suffering and death was on his mind. He says to his disciples, “Let these words sink into your ears: ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands’.” The disciples have no idea of what he’s talking about. And they move on.

Today is the First Sunday in Lent. We are on the road with Jesus as he journeys to Jerusalem. We walk the walk with him. Some of us have made Lenten commitments by the way of praying, fasting, and works of compassion in order to identify with this walk and to focus on the cross. Our disciplines and sacrifices remind us of the major sacrifice Jesus made of behalf of humanity. He gave his life for the salvation of individuals and the world.

His love was so great in a loveless world that those in it couldn’t stand it so they bumped him off in short order. When injustice, greed, hate, inhumanity, exploitation, and discrimination are challenged, the perpetrators of these evils often get rid of communicators of love, justice, and compassion. That was Jesus’ fate.

On the road to Calvary we can be assured that Jesus was thinking of all these things. How could he avoid the pain, suffering, and evils of the world around him? They were constantly in his face. In the passage today he is confronted with a boy who looks like he’s having an epileptic fit. He has a history of this illness. He is convulsed by what is called an “unclean, demonic spirit.” Jesus heals the boy. Jesus then speaks about betrayal and death. He then hears his disciples jostling for superiority among themselves in the sense of the “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” story where the wicked witch says, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?” It’s a selfish, self-centered superiority. We then hear of another expression of demons and finally a story of an inhospitable Samaritan village. We heard in our Bible Study last Wednesday that inhospitality was a terrible thing in the culture of the day – and today, we might add.

As Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem he was certainly bothered by what early Reformers called our “diseased and fallen world.” Nevertheless, he continues his journey.

All this brings us to San Francisco today. The biggest thing in our fair city in the last week, mainly because this is San Francisco, was the celebration of the Chinese New Year – the new lunar year. I wanted to emphasize this in my sermon, but how does one speak of celebration – a happy occasion – in the context of Lent?

Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle provided the answer. This was New Year’s Day and an article spoke of the opening that day of a special exhibit on the settlement of Chinese in California. The article begins: “Chinese Americans are an American success story these days, but when Chinese first came to California they found it difficult to put down roots in hostile soil. That is the theme of ‘The Chinese of California: a Struggle for Community’, a major newexhibition of paintings, pictures and artifacts at the California Historical Society in downtown San Francisco. The exhibition opens Thursday at the beginning of the Lunar New Year. ‘What a great way to start a new year,’ said Sue Lee, executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America, one of the three co-sponsors of the exhibit. She adds, ‘In Chinese society, the New Year is a joyous time, but this exhibit of more than a century of Chinese life in California is sometimes painful to see’.”

The following words begin the tour into the exhibit: “From the gold country of the Northern California to major metropolitan areas and beyond, the Chinese American struggle for basic human rights in an often hostile environment defined the formation and personality of Chinese communities throughout. As state and federal legislation removed constitutional guarantees of equal protection under law, Chinese Californians had to fight for their basic human rights and even for the very existence of their communities. This is their story.”

The Chinese in the US have walked the walk that Jesus walked on this his road to Calvary. As Jesus contemplated the evil forces in the world and those against him (which we see time and again in the gospels) so our Chinese American community contemplates its history and those forces that railed against them. Some areas of contemplation are:

One, the words written in one of the rooms of the exhibit: “Almost always perceived as foreigners – regardless of how long they and their ancestors had been in the US – Chinese Americans continued to find their stories left out of the historical interpretations of many events in which they played key roles – including the 1969 centennial of the completion of the transcontinental railroad.” Imagine that! Thousands of Chinese helped build these railroads and they were not mentioned and recognized a hundred years later.

Two, when Chinese were not being persecuted, they were ignored as people who did not matter. An 1865 water company bill from Tuolumne County in the Mother Lode is on display. The customer’s name is simply “A Chinaman.” “It was as if we had no names and we had no families,” said Sue Lee. “We were just Chinamen.”

Three, Jesus must have thought about and prayed for his oppressors and strategized how they could be overcome. For him it took the cross and resurrection. The Chinese in California had to deal with Geo C. Perkins, State Senator and Governor, who promoted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. A glass table is devoted to him in the exhibit. As Governor he declared Saturday, March 4, 1882, a State holiday for “anti-Chinese demonstrations.” Nearly all trades suspended work that day to march on the day and it was said that they did so with “great unanimity.” Chinese could not immigrate to the United States after 1882, when the Oriental Exclusion Act prohibited Asian immigration. The act was repealed in part in 1943, and restrictions on Asian immigration were not lifted until 1968.

In going to the cross Jesus identifies with the suffering of the world. In the resurrection we see God’s triumph over death and evil. The road to Easter follows through the cross of Good Friday. This is the road we all travel and it’s the road our Chinese Americans have traveled to affirm their rightful place in this world, in the US, in California, and in this our city. It’s the road we all travel to be whole in Christ.

The 1960s spawned the civil rights movement, which also swept over California’s Chinatowns. Gilbert Woo wrote in an editorial in the Chinese Pacific Weekly in 1963: “Were it not for the African Americans fighting for equality, I am afraid that even now we would not be able to buy property outside Chinatown.” Sue Lee says, “Our future is closely linked to the future of other ethnic minorities in America. The exhibition stops at the 1960s. The Chinese California story continues to today.”

And that’s where we are today as we continue the Lenten journey in Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church, San Francisco. We conclude Part 1 of the Lenten series of Jesus setting his face to go to Jerusalem. Next week we hear of a new community and focus.

In closing, I’d like to thank our Chinese American members for providing the refreshments for today’s fellowship time in celebration of the Chinese New Year. We are fortunate to share the history and celebrations of the Chinese American community here at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church. Kúng He Fa Choy. Amen.