Moki's Sermon at the 10:00 Liturgy

Following is the text of the sermon delivered by the Rev. Moki Hino at the 10:00 liturgy on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Westwood for the occasion of my first celebration of the Eucharist.


Two thousand years ago a group of wise men – some say they were astrologers, some say they were magicians – took a leap of faith and set out on a journey across the Eastern desert and followed a star – a star of peace, a star of hope, and a star of love. And at the end of their journey, they found the Christ child, the Messiah, and they were overwhelmed with joy.

Four hundred years later, another group of people took a leap of faith and set out on a journey over a different kind of desert – a vast, deep, blue desert, the Pacific Ocean, sailing in double-hulled outrigger canoes from the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific and north toward a land – a land they had no certainty was there. It was a leap of faith. They had no idea what they would find at the end of their journey, if anything at all. The only thing they had to go on was the knowledge that a golden bird, the plover, that flew to the Marquesas from the north and never settled on water but only settled on land. And after watching this, they deduced that there must be land somewhere north in that vast region beyond the blue ocean. And so they set off, and as they sailed north, they looked at the night sky and watched constellations like the Southern Cross disappear behind them, but they also noticed groups of stars that they had never seen. And then one night they saw the star Arcturus, and below it they saw the silhouette of the Hawaiian Islands, the islands that became their new home. They were overwhelmed with joy and named this zenith star Hokule`a, the star of gladness.

This first group of Polynesian sailors charted a course from the Marquesas to Hawai`i and shared the knowledge with others who came in waves from the Marquesas, from Tahiti, and from other islands in French Polynesia. And on every subsequent voyage they would set out in their double-hulled canoes, sail north, and look for and follow Hokule`a, the star of gladness, to the islands of Hawai`i. And as they settled there they began to develop legends, lore, and tenets - legends, lore, and tenets based on lives connected to the land and lives connected to the sea. I ka olelo o ke ola, I ka olelo o ka make. In the word there is life, in the word there is death. Mohala i ka wai ka maka o ka pua. Unfolded by the water are the faces of the flowers. O na hoku no na kiu o ka lani. The stars are the spies of heaven.

But the one I like best is the old Hawaiian saying that at birth, God gives each of us a bowl of light that reflects God’s goodness, that reflects God’s purity, and that reflects God’s love. And we hold our bowls of light in front of us wherever we go and those around us take it in, embrace it, bask it in, delight in it. But sometimes there are rocks along the paths in our lives and we pick them up and place them in our bowls – when we do inappropriate deeds, when we say unfortunate things, when we hold unsuitable thoughts. And as we go along, sometimes our bowls become so full of rocks that very little light can come through – and we have trouble giving glory to ourselves, we have trouble giving glory to others, we have trouble giving glory to God. We each hold a bowl of light. And in it we each hold a bowl of rocks. This is part of human life.

Not long ago – maybe six or seven years back, Michael held a bowl of light and, like all human beings, in it he held some rocks. And one day he felt a stirring that said, “Something isn’t right. Something needs to change.” And with that stirring, that thought, he took a rock out of his bowl and some of his God-light came through. “I feel called to ordained ministry, to Holy Orders.” And with that thought, he took another rock out of his bowl and even more God-light came through. He talked to his parish priest and another rock came out, more God-light came through. Together they formed a discernment committee, another rock came out, more God-light came through. He undertook a ministry study year – another rock out, more light came through. He went before the Commission on Ministry and the Bishop – we’ll take out two rocks for that one! The light continued to grow stronger. He quit his very lucrative job, sold his house, and moved into a cramped studio apartment at seminary – not in warm and sunny California, but in cold and windy Chicago- and another rock came out more light came through. He spent a summer in a hospital with the sick, with the dying, with their loved ones – another rock came out, more light came through. He graduated from seminary and headed home to California. Another rock came out and more light came through. And then yesterday, he said, “I will,” in front of you, in front of me, and in front of seven bishops. Six times he said it, “I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will.” And the rocks flew out of his bowl like they were flying out of a popcorn machine. And Michael’s light came through and the bishop lay hands on his head and confirmed what God had already decided, making Michael a priest, and for that one special God-filled moment he holds a bowl of pure light, shining so strong that it’s as if it rises above him on the wings of that golden plover for all of us to see, that Hokule`a, that star for wise men from the East to follow, that star for the Polynesian voyagers to follow, that star for you to follow, that star for me to follow, that star for all of us to follow. That Hokule`a, that star of gladness, that star which is God.

Two thousand years ago, wise men in the desert found hope. Four hundred years later, Polynesian voyagers from the Marquesas Islands found hope. Yesterday, a new priest found hope. They followed a star. But the Epiphany story isn’t just the wise men’s story. The Epiphany story isn’t just the Polynesian voyagers’ story. The Epiphany story isn’t just Michael’s story. The Epiphany story is your story. The Epiphany story is my story. The Epiphany story is a story that belongs to all humankind. Each one of us holds a bowl of God-given light. And as life goes on, we each put rocks in our bowls. It’s an inevitable part of the human experience – jealousy, resentment, self-doubt, anger, fear, self-righteousness, complacency. And yet in spite of all of it, the Christ child at the end of the star redeems us. The Christ child at the end of the star redeems us at Christmas, The Christ child redeems us at Epiphany, The Christ child redeems us at Easter. The Christ child at the end of the star redeems us at baptism and every time we renew our Baptismal Covenant saying, “I will, with God’s help.” We’re redeemed when we come to this table, this table over which, in a moment, your new priest will preside. This table of spiritual nourishment, this table of spiritual renewal. This table where we say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” When we set our hearts on that, it’s one moment in our lives where we, too, hold a bowl of pure light in front of us, in front of our neighbors, in front of Christ.

What will you do with your bowl of light? In a moment we will recite the Baptismal Covenant and we will make some very serious promises. My prayer for you, for me, for all of us this morning is that we will continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. That we will continue to persevere in resisting evil, and that when we fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord. That we will continue to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. That we will continue to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. That we will continue to strive for justice and peace among all people, and that we will continue to respect the dignity of every human being.

We’re called to follow the star. We’re called to follow the star and go beyond the four walls of this church building and into the world with our bowls of light, beacons of God’s goodness and stars of gladness, serving those who have yet to come through our doors, whether it’s our students across the street at UCLA, our hungry people who need a meal this morning, our sisters and brothers living with chronic diseases like HIV/AIDS, or those in our midst, who like us, need the help of others, need the help of others to take the rocks out of their bowls so that their light can shine forth – shine forth as stars of peace, stars of hope, stars of love, stars of gladness.

The wise men in the desert followed a star. The Polynesian voyagers followed a star. Michael followed a star. You can follow the star. I can follow the star. We can all follow the star, the Hokule`a, the star of gladness – and so can our sisters and brothers out there – with your help, with my help, and with God’s help. And may the Hokule`a, the star of gladness, lead you to the Christ child, the Messiah. May the star of gladness lead you to peace, to hope, and most of all, to love.

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Moki's Sermon at the 8:00 Liturgy

Following is the text of the sermon delivered by the Rev. Moki Hino at the 8:00 liturgy on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Westwood for the occasion of my first celebration of the Eucharist.


I lost my father quite suddenly in a boating accident thirteen years ago, December the 28th, right between Christmas and New Year’s. It was a sad time. And about ten days later, around the time of what would have been the Feast of the Epiphany, I got a sympathy card from a cousin that I tucked it away and saved, for it had some of the most beautiful words I have ever read, words by Sarah Williams:

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

And I have love the stars fondly - the stars that represent hope, the stars that represent dreams, and the stars that represent possibilities that are larger, that are grander, that are more vast than our world, that are larger, that are grander, that are more vast than ourselves, that are larger, that are grander, that are more vast than our fears.

The world of Joseph and Mary two thousand years ago is a time of darkness to many – it is a time of political tyranny, oppression, fear. And in the midst of this world, a child is born, a star rises in the night, and wise men feel compelled to follow the star across the desert and to the child, and when they find him, they are filled with joy. And after offering their gifts, the frankincense, gold, and myrrh that are the tools of their trade, they leave for their own country by another road, hopefully filled hope, dreams, and a sense that things that seem unattainable are now attainable. Christ is in their midst.

In the 1890s my great-grandparents in Hiroshima and Yamaguchi, Japan lived in a time of darkness – it was a time of political tyranny, oppression, and fear – all in the wake of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, where Admiral Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay and forced the Emperor to open Japan’s doors. Japan, a country that had been closed off and isolated for over three hundred years became open, and dreams and hopes of places beyond its shores became possible – places like the Hawaiian Islands. My great-grandparents followed a star to the sugar plantations of Hawai`i.

In the darkness of their night – their poverty and their desperation – in the darkness of their night an Epiphany star, a glimmer of hope shone in the hearts, minds, and aspirations of my great-grandparents and, like the wise men, they set out on a journey across a vast, deep, and blue ocean desert in search of a dream. They followed a star. And yes, there was hardship. Seasickness, harsh work in the hot sun of the Hawaiian sugar fields, fear of the overseer’s leather whip as he rode by on his horse. But my romantic side wants to think of my great-grandparents under the Hawaiian skies, with no ambient light, looking at the stars and shooting meteors the way I do in my home in Hawai`i today, the way I do when I need that God-shot telling me that there is hope and that what may seem unattainable might actually be attainable. After all, my great-grandparents – plantation workers from Japan - lived to see their children and grandchildren become educated enough to work as teachers, accountants, Army Majors, Air Force Colonels, attorneys, insurance executives, judges, diplomats, biologists, engineers, systems analysts, bank managers, pilots, and the list goes on to include great-grandchildren who became architects, actresses, and even priests. My great-grandparents left their country by another road and they, too, loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

It is said that the wise men not only offered gifts, but also sacrificed and shed the tools of their trade as astrologers and magicians when they followed the star and presented the Christ child with their frankincense, their gold, and their myrrh. Not long ago, your new priest did much the same, shedding a healthy pay check, a comfortable home, an honorable job, presenting the Christ child with the frankincense, gold, and myrrh of his trade so that he could follow a star, saying yes to God’s call, busting through the fear of the night that swirled around him saying, “You’re not ready, you don’t have what it takes, this must be some kind of mistake,” and setting off on a journey – a journey to seminary – not in warm and sunny California, but in cold and windy Chicago, and then coming back to his own country by another road – a road that was paved by worship in the Seabury chapel, academic formation in classrooms, a summer in a hospital ministering to the sick, to the dying, and to their loved ones, developing relationships with people who have become lifelong friends, and then finally, yesterday, saying, “I will,” so that your bishop could lay hands on his head, confirming what God had already decided, and making Michael a priest. Michael followed a star and came back to his country by another road. He, too, loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Two thousand years ago, wise men in the desert followed a star. A hundred and twenty years ago, my great-grandparents followed a star. A few years ago Michael followed a star, a journey that culminated yesterday in his ordination to the priesthood. They followed a star.

But the Epiphany story isn’t just the wise men’s story. It isn’t just my great-grandparents’ story. It isn’t just Michael’s story. It’s your story. It’s my story. It’s a story that belongs to all humankind.

The darkness of the night is an inevitable part of the human experience – where we experience fear - fear in the form of jealousy, resentment, self-doubt, anger, self-righteousness, complacency. And yet in spite of all of it, the Christ child at the end of the star redeems us. He redeems us at Christmas, he redeems us at Epiphany, he redeems us at Easter. The Christ child at the end of the star redeems us at our baptism and every time we renew our Baptismal Covenant saying, “I will, with God’s help.” He redeems us when we come to this table, this table at which, in a moment, your new priest will preside for the first time. This table of spiritual nourishment, this table of spiritual renewal. This table where we say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” It’s one moment in our lives where we, too, can say, “I love the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

And we know that there’s more to the story. In our Baptismal Covenant we made some very serious promises. My prayer for you, for me, for all of us this morning is that we will continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. That we will continue to persevere in resisting evil, and that when we fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord. That we will continue to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. That we will continue to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. That we will continue to strive for justice and peace among all people, and that we will continue to respect the dignity of every human being.

We’re called to follow the star. We’re called to follow the star and go beyond the four walls of this church building and into the world with love, serving those who have yet to come through our doors, whether it’s our students across the street at UCLA, our hungry people who need a meal this morning, our sisters and brothers living with chronic diseases like HIV/AIDS, or those in our midst, who like us, need the help of others, the help of others to see the star – the star of peace, the star of hope, the star of love.

The wise men in the desert followed a star. My great-grandparents followed a star. Michael followed a star. You can follow the star. I can follow the star. We can all follow the star – and so can our sisters and brothers out there – with your help, with my help, and with God’s help.

And may the words of Sarah Williams hold true for all of us today:

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

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Ordination Sermon

[Following is the text of the sermon preached at my ordination to the priesthood on Saturday, January 6, 2007 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Los Angeles.]

Epiphany Ordinations 2007 – Diocese of Los Angeles
Sermon by Bishop Michael Ingham (Diocese of New Westminster)

What an awesome day to become a priest! Epiphany: the manifestation of Christ to the world. This is the day Jesus became known beyond his immediate family and people: the day you become his servants and apostles to continue that work.

And priesthood is an awesome calling. Despite all the negative publicity of the last few years, priests today still enjoy an extraordinary level of public respect. Priests have access to people's lives, to their homes, to their stories and confidences, in a way no one else in our society does. You will meet and get to know people at every level of your communities, from the poor to the rich, from the marginalized to the powerful, people of every language, race and nation. We are the profession that still makes house calls. We are welcome at births and deaths, marriages and times of sickness. We help people through deep moments of sorrow and high moments of joy.

This access to people's lives is not given because of us. It is given because of Christ. A priest is the servant of Christ, and when people invite us into their homes and lives it is Christ they are expecting to receive. Along with the office of a priest comes an authority we have not earned. It's an authority given to us by the people themselves because Christ has entrusted us with his ministry. An ordained person is therefore to be an icon of Christ, and this is a very sacred trust indeed, a trust being given to you today by the Church, a trust you must honour and preserve with dilligence. For when we fail in our office, as some of us do, it is Christ himself who suffers as well as those who have placed their trust in us in his name.

A priest is given authority upon ordination, but earns respect through being part of a local community. As you work among people, as you become involved in their lives, as you become the holders and keepers of their sacred stories, you will see the power of God come alive in new and astonishing ways in your community. The greatest reward you will ever receive as a priest is when someone says "you were there for me when I needed you. You helped me when I had nowhere to turn. You will never know how important you were in my life."

The rewards of priesthood are not material. They are certainly not financial. The deep satisfaction is to know that at a given moment, in the life of a particular person or community, you were the incarnation of Christ to them. You were the love of God made real. You changed their darkness into light through the grace of God working in you. There will be no rewards greater than these, at least not in this world.

This is an extraordinary privilege you are being given today. But it's a privilege given in uncertain times, in tumultuous times. We live in a polarized world, and a polarized Church. We are deeply divided over important matters – war and peace, poverty and wealth, justice and power, moral values, the sustainability of the planet on which we live. You are being ordained today into all the chaos and tumult of these divisions. And your job in this situation, as in every situation, is to be an icon of Christ in the midst of it all. In these deep discontents, you are to be the love of God. What does this actually mean?

When I became a bishop someone told me that the job of a bishop is to sit on the fence while keeping both ears to the ground. I tried this for a while, and found it rather painful. I asked myself, is this what it means to be an apostle of Christ in contentious times? Did Jesus look for any fence to sit on? Did Jesus make the mistake many of us do, which is to become managers instead of leaders, program directors instead of teachers, mediators instead of pastors, or even worse, avoiders of conflict for the sake of a spurious peace?

There are two temptations facing leaders in a time of crisis. One is to find where the nearest fence is and get on it as fast as possible. The other is to become one of the protagonists in the conflict, one of the poles in the polarity, pulling as hard as you can against the other side.

I remember one time I started a new job in a parish and one of the church wardens said to me, "In our church everyone is encouraged to join a group. There are two main groups, Group A and Group B. The purpose of Group A is to undermine Group B, and the purpose of Group B is to sabotage Group A." This was the parish in which I found myself back then, and I've seen many of them since as a diocesan bishop, and I am sad to say this is the Communion in which we find ourselves today.

What does God require of us in such a time, in such a Church. Fence sitting? Divisiveness? Are these the only options? It's important to ask, what does God require of us? It's not the same thing as asking what the Church might need, or even our local communities. Despite what some might think, you are not being ordained today to save the Church. That is God's responsibility. You are being ordained to be an icon of Christ and to further the Reign of God in people's lives and in this world.

What God needs, and has always needed, from us is faithfulness to the witness of Jesus Christ; the Jesus who came to serve and not to be served, the Jesus who said 'put away your sword: those who live by the sword will die by the sword', Jesus who had compassion upon the lepers and the widows and even unbelievers, Jesus who refused to condemn the sexual sins of his day but roundly condemned the spiritual ones, Jesus who created new kinds of community among people the world rejected, Jesus who loved at the cost of his own life, and died that we might live.

This is what God requires of us. But there is even more. Priests are not merely local. You will be priests of the whole Church, the whole family of God stretching throughout time and space. You will be priests of the Church visible and the Church invisible. We live in a time in which the pressures in our world are driving people apart and into separate camps, where it takes great courage to stand in the centre. We live in a time of extremism and rising fundamentalism. And there are different kinds of fundamentalisms we have to deal with, not just one. There are religious kinds, and secular kinds.

You know that religious fundamentalism is growing in every major faith tradition, including our own. Religious fundamentalism is based on fear – fear of change, fear of loss, fear of the future and what it means to personal or tribal identity. When people see all their anchors being pulled up, and the world they know set adrift upon uncertain seas, they re-assert old dogmas, old traditions, and insist that God demands all this to stem the tide of change.

In itself this is understandable. It is a natural human reaction. But it is a human reaction and should not be confused with God's action. And one of the jobs of a priest is to know the difference between God's action and human reaction, and to help people avoid the mistake of confusing one for the other.

Secular fundamentalism is quite different, but no less real. This is the distorted view that we are sufficient unto ourselves, that all we need is an effective marketplace where all our human problems can be resolved to everyone's mutual profit. It is the view that everything important in human life can be measured, that everything significant can be quantified - by economic indicators, for example, or the expanse of our lawns - that the purpose of human life is to maximize individual well-being, and that people are to be valued by their success in the market place as the principal indicators of their human worth.

I would say this is the dominant religion of the West today. It's the culture we live in, the air we breathe. So we have these two fundamentalisms – one religious, one secular; one based on fear, the other on pride: one that has tried to co-opt and capture God, and one that has tried to banish God – and in the midst of this our priests and leaders have to be not just pastors but also prophets, not just comforters but also sounders of the alarm. We need from our priests, and indeed from all the baptized and faithful members of our Church, the leadership and vision to set us free from captivity both to false religion and to false ideologies alike.

Fear and pride are the very opposite of biblical values. They are not what God wants nor what God offers us through Jesus Christ. Our Scriptures bear witness to a Son of God whose very incarnation sets us free from idolatry, free from false attachment to bad religion and to unsustainable economic systems. Genuine biblical spirituality opens us to truth from any source so long as it incarnates the compassionate grace and mercy of God who has created all people as inter-connected, members one of another; as St. Paul says, to be one with each other and with the earth that supports us.

Kenneth Leech, a great Anglican writer, says genuine Christian orthodoxy is subversive, not conformist, it overturns human convention in the name of divine wisdom, it is not dogmatic but transformative, it doesn't fit into patterns of domination and exclusion but stands against them for a radical inclusion. Christian orthodoxy is not a tribal theology, a God-on-my-side sectarianism. It's a global vision of a world united in its very plurality, a world at one in its respect for difference and its deep commitment to justice. This is not the narrow orthodoxy of fundamentalists and demagogues, nor even may we say of some archbishops and primates. It's the radical orthodoxy of Jesus, grounded in his incarnation as the Son of God, who also lived in dangerous and polarized times and who refused all its temptations of avoidance and power.

We celebrate today the visit of strangers from a far country to the manger in Bethlehem. They were not Jews, and certainly not Christians. They are called in Greek "Magi." This is wrongly translated as 'wise men' and even more wrongly translated as 'kings.' They may well have been wise, but they were not kings. We do not even know if there were three of them because we are not told that.

In the ancient world a magos was an astrologer, an observer of astral phenomena, and also a priest. So the strangers who came to visit Jesus were priests from a far country, priests from another religion, scientists of their day who had observed something quite unusual in the stars and decided to pursue it. They were scientists open to the religious meaning of the universe. There was space in their understanding for God. They did not function with a closed, mechanistic view of reality. They made no separation between the spiritual and material dimensions of existence. They were seekers of knowledge, both divine and earthly, and they were willing to pursue it wherever it might lead. That's what we need from you, the priests of our Church.

And they trusted their dreams. They were guided by their dreams. St. Matthew tells us their dreams were reliable guideposts that led them safely home. These were remarkable scientists, were they not? Attentive to the mysteries of the universe, alive to their own inner voices, to the whisperings of God in the non-rational world.

This is what God needs of our priests today: people who have a deep trust of God, people who have a deep hope despite all the evidence of tragedy, people whose spirituality has set them free not shut them down, people who are acquainted intimately with the mysteries of the inner life and can show others the way to the very heart of God, people of prayer, people of courage.

[Sari, Joseph, Gabriel, Michael, Martha, William, Sarah, and Colleen, please stand up.]

You are about to be given one of the greatest gifts of your lives. It's a gift that will test you to the very limits of your humanity. It's privilege few others in our society can understand. It's a sacred responsibility that – if you are truly called to it - will not burden you, but set you free in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

Take this gift and be an icon of Christ to us all. Be the love of God that people long to have in their lives. Be pastors and prophets not only to your local community, but to the world and all the people that still long for fulfilment, justice and peace.

Push the tradition forward if you must, but always stand within it. Remember it is not your authority you carry but that of Christ himself. Do no harm in his name. And above all else have courage: courage to build up, courage to draw the circle wide, courage to resist your own fears, courage to let the grace of God flow freely in you. My prayer is that your ministries may set you and all of us free, and that your dreams always lead you safely home.


Source: Ingham, Michael. “Epiphany Ordinations 2007,” The Episcopal News, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, 17 January 2007, http://episcopalnews.com/ViewDailyArticle.php?key=3363 (17 January 2007).

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