“Kim offers a fitting text for our pluralistic times and presses essential questions for preachers and worship leaders. More than a foundation for preaching in diverse contexts and a set of strategies, this book is a call to participate in the sweeping and surprising work of the Holy Spirit.” — Donyelle McCray Assistant Professor of Homiletics Yale Divinity School “Eunjoo Mary Kim believes that an imaginative, eschatological vision of wondrous diversity can transform the ways that we worship and preach. This vision is seen and felt in every sentence of this hopeful and practical book. The reader not only feels invited into Kim’s kaleidoscopic vision but also is given perspectives and tools for practicing preaching and worship in ways that rehearse this vision each week, across all traditions and cultures.” — John S. McClure Charles G. Finney Professor of Preaching and Worship Vanderbilt Divinity School “At last, someone has provided a detailed guide for how to make multicultural preaching and worship a reality. In her book, Eunjoo Kim challenges mainline Protestants to rethink their exclusive theologies and use non-Christian sacred texts and stories to broaden and illumine theological implications. In addition to providing sound theoretical foundations and samples of sermons and worship services, she also walks her readers, step-by-step, through the processes of multicultural biblical interpretation, liturgy formation, and sermon preparation. This is a must- have text for those who are committed to worship that truly reflects for reign of God.” — Debra J. Mumford Frank H. Caldwell Professor of Homiletics Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary “Eunjoo Kim offers solid theological grounding and much practical wisdom for transforming worship in contemporary multicultural contexts. She skillfully weaves together theological and liturgical studies from a wide range of Christian traditions. Her book should be studied— and used—by all who seek to develop ways of worship suitable in a time of incredible cultural diversity.” — Ruth Meyers Dean of Academic Affairs and Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics Church Divinity School of the Pacific Christian Preaching and Worship in Multicultural Contexts A Practical Theological Approach Eunjoo Mary Kim Foreword by Mark R. Francis, CSV A PUEBLO BOOK Liturgical Press Collegeville, Minnesota www.litpress.org A Pueblo Book published by Liturgical Press Cover design by Ann Blattner. Photo © Thinkstock by Getty. © 2017 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, micro- fiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America. 123456789 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kim, Eunjoo Mary, author. Title: Christian preaching and worship in multicultural contexts : a practical theological approach / Eunjoo Mary Kim ; foreword by Mark R. Francis, CSV. Description: Collegeville, Minnesota : Liturgical Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017009669 (print) | LCCN 2017030065 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814663455 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814663202 Subjects: LCSH: Preaching. | Cultural pluralism—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Cultural fusion. | Public worship. | Christianity and culture. Classification: LCC BV4211.3 (ebook) | LCC BV4211.3 .K54 2017 (print) | DDC 251—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009669 Contents Acknowledgments vii Foreword by Mark R. Francis, CSV ix Introduction xiii Part 1: Seeking Theological Foundations Chapter 1: A Theology of Diversity 3 Chapter 2: Preaching, Worship, and Culture 20 Part 2: Exploring Multicultural Hermeneutics Chapter 3: The Bible and Multicultural Hermeneutics 43 Chapter 4: A Practice of Multicultural Hermeneutics: Luke 7:11-17 64 Part 3: Searching for New Liturgical Models Chapter 5: The Renewal of Christian Preaching and Worship 85 Chapter 6: Models of Multicultural Worship 111 Part 4: Practice in Multicultural Contexts Chapter 7: Preaching and Worship as Reflective Practical Theology 131 Sample Sermons and Liturgies Appendix 1: Sermon: “Can We Love Our Enemies?” (Luke 6:27-36) 151 Appendix 2: Liturgy: Worship at the Iliff Chapel 163 v Appendix 3: Sermon: “The Weeds and the Wheat” (Matt 13:24-30) 168 Appendix 4: Sermon: “Women on the Way” (John 4:4-42) 182 Appendix 5: Sermon: “Leading Toward Diversity” (Matt 15:21-28; Isa 56:1-8) 191 Appendix 6: Liturgy: Worship at the Denver Presbytery Assembly Meeting 203 Bibliography 209 Subject Index 221 Scripture Index 226 vi Acknowledgments Researching and writing a book in a professional field is often the journey of a lone star. It was, however, not the case with this book project. I had numerous companions who walked with me along the journey from start to finish. In 2009, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion granted me funding for re- search on multicultural worship, with which I could invite Drs. Paul Huh and Susan Smith to my worship class for some profound conver- sation with them. Since then, I have had countless discussions about Christian preaching and worship from the multicultural perspective with numerous scholars in various areas of theological study. In par- ticular, my colleagues at Iliff were my most critical and constructive dialogue partners. Some of them had their own writing projects on race, ethnicity, and culture and challenged me to think in depth about cultural diversity and the future of the human community. Most of my chapter drafts were discussed either at Iliff faculty summer retreats or at professional guilds such as the Academy of Homiletics, the North American Academy of Liturgics, Societas Hom- iletica, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Without their encourage- ment and support, as well as insightful feedback from the members, this book project might not have been accomplished as it is. More- over, the Iliff students who took my course, Worship in Multicultural Contexts, read some portions of the rough draft of the manuscript as required texts and affirmed its value for teaching and learning preaching and worship in multicultural contexts. My gratitude extends to the many churches and theological insti- tutions that invited me to preach and lead worship services for their special events, through which I was able to test the theories that I have proposed in the book. Their invitations contributed to improving the vii quality of the book, making it more practical and effective for the actual ministry of preaching and worship. The generous grant of a year-long sabbatical from the school en- abled me to complete the writing project in a timely manner for the publisher. Kathy Frey and Beverly Leach, who diligently proofread the entire manuscript, made my writing much clearer for the readers. Through the interest and support of Peter Dwyer and Hans Christof- fersen at Liturgical Press, this book became an ecumenical resource for Christian preaching and worship. Blessings to all of them from my deepest heart! viii Foreword It would not be an exaggeration to say that the most serious task of the Christian churches in the twenty-first century is the challenge of nurturing disciples of Jesus in a world that has become culturally and religiously diverse. The churches that trace their origins from Christianity in Western Europe are confronted everywhere with men and women who seek to live out their faith in a manner that reflects their own cultural background and that respects the context of their daily life where they rub elbows with friends and relations of many faiths—or of none at all. Today, for the first time in centuries, Western Europe is experiencing unprecedented levels of immigration from around the world that parallels the historic movement of peoples to the Americas and Australia that continues from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This has led Christian leaders and theologians to explore the largely unprecedented question of bringing women and men of diverse cultural backgrounds together in the same assembly/ congregation to worship “in spirit and in truth.” While there have been some antecedents of culturally diverse assemblies in Christian history—fourth-century Jerusalem as de- scribed by the pilgrim Egeria, for example—there have been very few intentionally multicultural historical examples of worship. In Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant history, culture, race, and language have more often than not divided Christians, especially when they gather to pray. On the one hand, this is understandable especially for those groups who sought to maintain their cultural identity in a very complex and sometimes hostile culture. This was the principal cause for the growth of “national parishes” of Irish, Germans, Italians, and others in nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism, of Lutheran congre- gations founded by synods that trace their origin to Germany and the ix Scandinavian countries, and of Dutch Calvinists. On the other hand, at least in the United States, this has reflected social, ethnic, and racial divisions even among cultural groups of the same denomination. In a lecture given at Western Michigan University in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King’s words are tragically still true today. “We must face the fact that in America,” he said, “the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic.” Whether we care to admit it or not, today in our globalized world, we all live amid cultural diversity—even the most isolated regions in the United States are receiving people from Latin America, Asia, and other areas of the world. It is not unusual in the course of our day to run into a wide variety of people of different national and ethnic backgrounds.