After an ecumenical solidarity visit to Cuba, the Rev. Jihyun Oh used the prophetic call from Isaiah 50:4–9a as the scriptural basis for the homily she delivered online during a recent Chapel Service.
Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Executive Director of Presbyterian Life & Witness, described the call on Isaiah’s life, “a call to sustain the weary, the weary who have been living in exile, the ones who have been separated from their homes,” including “the soil they know and the familiar sounds, perhaps the wind blowing through familiar trees and valleys” and “the foods that provide comfort.”
Isaiah “is called to sustain the weary who are living in profound separation — physical, emotional and spiritual separation — even if they are with family and others they know,” Oh said. “What God gives the prophet for this call is a trained tongue so that the prophet knows how to sustain the weary.”
The word for “training” used here can refer to teaching about one’s tradition, Oh said. “The prophet is given language and knowledge and skills, so the prophet knows how to sustain the weary with a grounding in tradition,” she said, “a grounding in their sense of self and to their connection to the broader people of God.”
We are told that the prophet listens every morning — “listens to the teachings, listens to the reminders, listens to the grounding that the prophet needs to be able to sustain the weary,” she said. That assurance has been welcome news for Oh as she journeyed to Cuba and back and thought about her own family’s history and the history of Korea, including its occupation by Japan and imperialism by China, as well as its history of immigration.
“That has made me wonder about exile in a different way,” she said, “wondering about who is exiled or living in a sort of exile today.”
That can include Indigenous communities “who have long been exiled from the land of their ancestors and are living separated from many of their traditions,” Oh said. It can also include enslaved persons and diaspora communities descended from enslaved persons “who are also living in that sense of having been separated from home in a different sort of way.”
People living under occupation “have been forced into a sort of exile, even if they have been allowed to be in their homes,” she said. The group of exiles can also include people in the LGBTQIA+ community and especially transgender people, “for whom forces are continuing to seek to separate them from their own selves in a sort of exile from self,” Oh said.
Those in exile certainly includes “communities and nations living in conditions of isolation and separation from the modern broader human community, like those in Cuba, through forces that they have zero control over, who are having to seek connection and relationship but are continually being pushed away from those connections,” she said.
During her time in Cuba, Oh was moved that members of the ecumenical community “remembered the legacy of the PC(USA) from the days of apartheid in South Africa.”
“They lifted up the story of how those within the denomination refused to believe the stories that were coming out and being told to them,” she said. “They said, ‘we will go see for ourselves,’ and went to be with those who were weary and were living in the state of being separated within their communities or their own homes.”
Upon their return to the United States, they “faced so much pushback, so much spitting and insults — so many things from communities who did not want to believe or hear the words of the denomination that stood with those in South Africa,” Oh said. “It reminded me of all those traditions — not just the ones written in the Bible, but all of them — the work of the saints that has been continuing ever since.” That includes the work of “the saints of today, who are telling us something new about how God is working in the world.”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Ann DeVilbiss, Production Associate, Publishing & Editorial, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Louis DiBiase, AVP, Trust Officer, Trust Services, The Presbyterian Foundation
Let us pray:
Gathering God, remind us of your abundance. Move us to be people willing to share what you have given us, for your gifts never run out. In the name of our Lord Jesus, the abundant one. Amen.
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