True Freedom

Lectionary reflections for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (C)

by Timothy Nakayama

Readings for Epiphany 6, Year C, Feb. 15, 2004

• Jeremiah 17:5-10
• Psalm 1
• I Corinthians 15:12-20
• Luke 6:17-26

What is the Light of Christ revealing to us in this week’s readings? The Collect for this day bids us to please God in will and deed. The Old Testament lesson tells us that God tests the mind and searches the heart. The Psalm says those who trust in God are like a tree planted by the water whose leaves stay green when heat comes, and in due season bears fruit. The Epistle teaches us that Christ points the way to our resurrection by his own. In the Gospel, St. Luke sets the stage for his disciples and the crowds to hear what Jesus has to say — and Jesus presents them with a series of blessings and woeful warnings.

Until just recently I was not aware that 8,500 Eastern Europeans immigrants, the majority being Ukrainians, were incarcerated in 24 "camps" in remote areas scattered across the expanse of Canada from 1914 to 1920. Their property was confiscated and auctioned off and the money deposited in the Canadian Treasury. There were an additional 80,000 who were registered as "enemy aliens" and required to report monthly.

This occurred during and after World War I. It is reported that today there is only one known survivor who lived in those "camps". She entered one at the age of six. The Government of Canada has never acknowledged this as having happened.

Those "camps" were a precedent to what happened 28 years later. In 1942, in the Western Hemisphere, Japanese Canadians, Japanese Americans, the Aleuts of Alaska, Japanese Peruvians, and Japanese Brazilians, and others among the nations belonging to the Organization of American States, faced mass evacuations and social upheaval during and after World War II. They were classified and registered as "enemy aliens," their property was confiscated and auctioned off, and they were sent to successive resettlement.  Over 40 years later, in 1988, the Government of Canada issued an apology and reparations to the survivors of the "camps".

[Kano] had been teaching other immigrants animal husbandry and introducing them to the Christian Gospel. He was also telling his fellow immigrants, "This country does not allow you to become American citizens, but being here, we need to live our lives as if we were!" In spite of this kind of leadership he was incarcerated. 

In 1942, an American soldier went AWOL (Absent Without Leave) in Alaska and landed in a guardhouse somewhere in the northern plains of the U.S., where Hiram Hisanori Kano, a Japanese American Episcopal priest, was being held without due process. Kano was regarded as an "enemy alien" because he was of Japanese ancestry and a leader among the Japanese immigrants. He was an agricultural missionary in Nebraska — who had been teaching other immigrants animal husbandry and introducing them to the Christian Gospel. He was also telling his fellow immigrants, "This country does not allow you to become American citizens, but being here, we need to live our lives as if we were!" In spite of this kind of leadership he was incarcerated. 

His fellow inmates, burly AWOL soldiers, discovered this tiny Episcopal priest among them! One by one they were being called up to be court martialed. They were genuinely anxious. One of them, particularly worried, came seeking advice, confiding in the priest. Kano told the soldier: If you truly regret breaking the law and becoming AWOL, admit it fully, openly and sincerely. Fellow inmates waited in anticipation to discover the judgment of the court. He came back with a light sentence! All of them flocked to seek the counsel of the priest.

These soldiers finally prevailed upon the authorities to have Father Kano conduct a worship service for them in lieu of the regular chaplain. The guardhouse became their cathedral with high windows close to the ceiling and the rows of bunk beds as their pews. 

Father Kano began. He asked them, "What is the thing that all of you want most? You want to be free, don’t you?" In telling the story of this experience, Father Kano said, "At this point their spiritual ears were open." So he asked them, "If you were out in the yard, outside this Guard House, would you be free? If you were outside the barbed wire fence and out on the street, would you be free? No! Jesus said, ‘The truth will make you free’!"

This was their Epiphany moment!  The soldiers understood the power of God at work in their lives, and with tears running down their cheeks they sang, the children’s hymn that they all knew, "Jesus loves me, this I know." Then they all recited together the Lord’s Prayer.

By looking through faithful eyes (or listening with spiritually opened ears) at the physical and emotional suffering of our fellow humans in the past as well as the present, we are led to new depths and heights. Once again, we are shown how divine intervention emerges sacramentally: the physical points us to the spiritual, the temporal gives way to the eternal. Before the AWOL soldiers left prison they had already become free, as they accepted in their souls the eternal message of freedom and peace.

The Rev. Timothy Makoto Nakayama is an Episcopal priest who has served in pastoral work in urban and rural settings with different racial/ethnic communities in three countries. He was born and raised in Canada, ordained in the Diocese of Calgary, and then emigrated to Seattle. Tim’s ministry of over 40 years of social change includes regional community organizing, assisting in the formation of the national Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry, and welcoming refugees from around the world, especially Southeast Asians in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. He served as a missionary in Japan in the 1990s, and is now retired in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia (Seattle, Washington). Tim may be reached by email at frtim@yahoo.com