Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the Council of Baptist Churches in Northeast India
This is my first time in India. I traveled from San Francisco to Chicago to Newark to Mumbai to Kolkata to Kuwahati to Tura to Garo. I have traveled over 30 hours just on the plane. But it is so good to be here among Baptist friends!
When I was thinking about making this trip, I realized that my journey here began last July when I met many of your Baptist leaders at the Baptist World Alliance Congress meeting in Izmir, Turkey. Every night at this beautiful city known also as Smyrna, one of churches in the Book of Revelation, my new friends and I would take a walk along the boardwalk facing the Aegean Sea. On these leisurely walks to work off another big dinner, we would talk about dreams and plans for ministries. I heard about the ambitious but faithful plan to build a new Christian university. I learned about the fact that there are 9 conventions that make up the CBC-NEI.
Soon after the BWA, I attended the American Baptist International Ministries Missions Conference at Green Lake when we celebrated 200 years of American Baptist foreign missions with the work of Adoniram Judson and Ann Hasseltine to Burma. And suddenly, I heard from you that Baptist missions have been in Northeast India for almost 180 years too. There were William Carey who first came and then many, many others. Pretty soon, I felt that your invitation for me to come all this way from the United States to be with you in Garo is indeed a call by God.
Izmir is also the city where St. Polycarp was a Christian martyr who gave us the adage, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” My flesh was not that willing to come but my human spirit inspired by the Holy Spirit has given me strength and will to be with you this weekend. Praise be to God!
We Belong to God’s Family
The convention Scripture lesson is from Ephesians 3:14-21. This is a little prayer by Paul that brings the first half of Ephesians to conclusion. The prayer begins talking about belonging: “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes it name” (3:14-15). There’s a connection in the Greek between father and family that cannot be rendered in English. We also lack an adequate word in English for family that means the entire line of relatives descended from a given father.
I am not yet familiar with Northeast India but families in the United States are quite nuclear, meaning that the emphasis is only with the immediate family—father, mother, son and daughter. Very few families spend time or even know other members of their extended family. Americans buy cars just big enough to fit their family of 4 in along with a pet dog.
The image in Ephesians is clear; we belong to God’s family, no matter what our race, clan or tribe. We belong to God and therefore we are members of God’s household. I think this is the reason why I became friends with your church leaders in Izmir and at Green Lake, Wisconsin. We had not met before but we have always been in God’s own eyes, members of God’s household. We belong together because we are God’s family.
Paul is filled with joy and gratitude that all followers of Jesus Christ are part of God’s own family—there is no “us and them,” no insiders and outsiders. All are part of God’s family.
Becoming Family
Unfortunately, we still see divisions and differences. For us to become more of the family of God, we must be strengthened in our inner being—from inside out—by the power of God’s Spirit. This is not a matter of becoming stronger ourselves but by having Christ dwell in our hearts.
The issue is letting Christ in to change us. Having Christ dwell in our hearts is like to having a new person move into your household. If they’re just visiting, it is all rather easy; you simply offer hospitality and try to practice good manners. It would be okay for the guest to leave his dirty sock on the floor because you know that the guest will be leaving soon.
But if someone moves in to stay, everything changes. At first you might try to hold on to your familiar patterns and routines, and the new member may work hard to accommodate you and stay out of the way. But eventually they make their mark. Conversations change. Relationships realign. Household tasks increase and responsibilities shift. Now you want to set down some rules for the guest.
So it is when Christ moves in to the hearts of Christians. This isn’t merely tweaking old patterns; everything changes.
I am sure that the reason why you have 9 conventions is because you have nine distinct cultures or histories or languages, traditions, and ways of life. And you are most comfortable when you are meeting separately in your 9 conventions but it is when you come together like now, we make changes to accommodate. We hear different languages and try hard to have conversations. We may even go out of our own ways to help someone else who is new to this convention. Soon we are learning to change our familiar patterns to welcome others into the household. And prayerfully in time, we would change permanently.
This is when we become God’s family.
My Family
My new Baptist friends in Izmir and at Green Lake wondered how did an Asian person like me become to be the President of American Baptist Churches in the USA. Many of them have always associated American Baptists to be white or Anglo American just like the missionaries who first came to India.
Let me tell you my story. My testimony is that if it weren’t for American Baptists, I would literally not be here today. The American Baptists welcomed my parents to become family.
My father was in the US when World War II broke out and the US was pulled into the fighting. Heavy casualties have been sustained by US forces fighting two fronts: Europe and in the Pacific. In need of more soldiers, my father was drafted into the US Army even when he wasn’t yet a US citizen. They needed as many able bodies as they could find. My father served in Germany and having served honorably, he was granted US citizenship.
During all of this time in the 1930s and 40s, my mother and older brother were still living in south China. They had survived the war with occasional Japanese soldiers coming to their village looking for food and supplies. My mother would tell me stories of how she would run with my brother up the forested hills to hide until the Japanese soldiers left.
Now with citizenship papers in hand, my father found the mission outreach of the First Baptist Church of Boston to help him sponsor my mother and brother from China to America in 1947 just in time to escape the Chinese Revolution of communism. My home church assisted many other Chinese families to come to the US. I was born soon after in 1949. I grew up at the Baptist church, attending Sunday school and the Baptist Youth Fellowship, and serving the church in many ways. If it weren’t for the kindness and mission outreach of Baptist people at First Baptist in Boston, I wouldn’t be here today.
Christ was in these people’s hearts that instilled in them that all people including the Chinese are also full members of God’s household. Be mindful that First Baptist was primarily composed of white Americans. They could have not helped. They could have turned their faces away. They could have denied the Christ working in them from the inside out by the power of the Holy Spirit. But they didn’t and that is the reason why I am here today. Christ dwelled in their hearts and God’s family is made a little more whole, no matter what our race, clan or tribe might be.
By the way, my home church in Boston will be celebrating its 350 years of continuing Baptist witness and I’ll be their anniversary speaker this June. Before, Chinese were objects of missions but now Asian Americans are partners sharing in the mission of the church and spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ all over the world and now in Northeast India too!
The American Baptist Churches in the USA is considered to be the most diverse denomination in America. We now have a non-majority denomination meaning that no one group makes up more than 50% of the total membership. American Baptists in the US are the most diverse denomination of all of the Protestant groups. We are just at that threshold of becoming a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual family of God. While you may perceive those demographical statistics to be encouraging, in reality and in honest truth, we are far from becoming that beloved community in Christ Jesus that we so desire and pray to be. We still need Christ to dwell in our hearts through faith.
What are some of the challenges facing CBC-NEI in becoming that household of God with Christ dwelling in your hearts? Are you willing to offer the best part of who you are and what you have to God and someone else?
God’s People
My last name is “Ng.” In some of the older English dictionaries, “Ng” is an abbreviation to mean “no good.” One time when I was a little child attending school probably in the third grade, my teacher gave out these little cards to put our names on them; last name first followed by the initial of your first name. So, I wrote down “Ng, D.” When it came time for the teacher to read out the names, he said, “Does “Ng, D” means “no good desk?” You can imagine how embarrassing that was for me! All the other children burst out laughing.
As people, we often grow up feeling unworthy and not belonging anywhere. We may feel that we are “no good” for anything worthwhile. There was an old film that I saw when I first started in my ministry about 40 years ago. It was called “Cipher in the Snow” which I have never forgotten. It left a lasting impact on me because this short movie was about a little boy who was not loved by his parents. They were always yelling at him. When he boarded the school bus, none of the children let him sit next to them. At school, the teacher acted like he didn’t exist. So, one day on his way home and it was snowing and terribly cold outside, he collapsed and died. After the autopsy, they found nothing physically wrong with the boy. The cause of death was that in the eyes of his family, his teacher, the other kids, he was a “cipher” meaning nothing. They didn’t see him and so he didn’t exist.
To become God’s household and members of God’s own family all descending from the same Father, we do exist and we are not nothing. We are not a “cipher in the snow.”
In 1 Peter, we read “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (2:9-10).
One Father
In our convention passage beginning with Ephesians 3:14-15, we read a very rare reference to the word, “patria.” In our Bibles, it’s translated as “family.” Normally, it means “tribe” or “lineage”, but here it has the sense of “extended family.” In the New Testament times, the father is the one who decides the names of all his children. Thus, God who names all peoples is the Father of all. And if the father is exercising primary leadership in the family, then it would mean that all benevolent authority that exists draws its origin and inspiration from the way God rules over the whole creation, both on earth as well as in heaven, that is, love.
The challenge for all of us in the world is to once again believe and practice that we are all related to one another because we have only one Father of us all. As Christian brothers and sisters, we may have our own nuclear families where we live; we have our particular conventions in which we do mission together; but more importantly, it is when we come together like this weekend, this is the time when we are so much closer to becoming the Body of Christ with God as our one Father.
I have been the pastor of First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco for the past 17 years. We have three worship services on Sunday morning: two in English and one in Cantonese Chinese. Each of the services has one pastor who primarily brings the message and our services reflect three different styles of worship. It would be so easy to become three separate and different churches. But it’s because of the truth that we believe in God, the Father of us all who unites us and instills in each of our hearts the love of Christ that we faithfully and sacrificially serve together in San Francisco Chinatown as one church.
Jesus shared the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 where we hear about the younger son who took his inheritance from his father prematurely and squandered it away. But when this younger son decided to return home, the father was filled with joy. But in this same story, there was also an older son who stayed at home and obeyed his father but when he saw the grace the father gave to his younger brother, he got mad and became jealous.
In many ways, we are like the two sons; often competing with each other, often seeking favors to get ahead, and maybe even despising each other. There is no family harmony when this happens. But the father is God in this story who welcomes all of us and forgives us when we sin against him. The father in the parable says to the older son, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found” (15:31-32).
We constantly pray to be strengthened in our inner being—from inside out—by the power of God’s Spirit. This is not a matter of becoming stronger ourselves but by having Christ dwell in our hearts. Will you as God’s children the Baptist churches of Northeast India invite Christ to dwell in your hearts so that you may become God’s own family?
All followers of Jesus Christ are part of God’s own family—there are no “us” and “them;” no insider or outsider. All are part of the family of God.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, we pray for your constant presence to be among us today and over the course of this convention. We pray that Jesus Christ, our Lord and King will be the Good News of saving grace for those who have yet to accept him as their Savior. May you bring peace and reconciliation to the Baptist conventions that make up the Council of Baptist Churches of Northeast India that the result of their witness of the Lord in both words and in deeds that they proclaim the oneness of the Christian family on earth as we know it is in heaven.
Thank you, O God for the courageous and faithful servants of Christ who sometimes need to stand up for their beliefs because they know that Christ is alive and the truth is in the Lord. We pray all of these things in the name of our Lord, Christ Jesus. Amen.