Sermon

Ten lepers were healed, but only one returned to give thanks — and he was a despised Samaritan. Again and again, Jesus de-stigmatises the people others reject. Our dignity rests not on what we do, but on this: we are made in the image of God.

“To be or not to be.” Jason Ho hands Hamlet’s question back to BMCC: are you here? Is the Lord here? From Abraham’s wilderness, through John 14’s “walking with,” to a sharp critique of phone-age distraction, he reminds us that where our hearts are matters as much as where our bodies stand.

Solomon had everything, yet felt empty. Pastor Hong draws on clown theatre training to explore what freedom really means: not accumulating more, but setting down the mask, embracing failure, and being fully present. Our souls are most alive — and most beautiful — in the moment we stop performing.

In “Welcoming Strangers Is Meeting Christ at the Door,” Ken Ken shows that biblical hospitality is love for someone you don’t know. From Abraham welcoming three strangers to Jesus’ “as you did it to the least, you did it to me” — BMCC’s calling isn’t to wait at the door, but to go out and find those the church once hurt.

“What is good and beautiful is to find enjoyment in one’s toil.” From health to justice, the speaker asks: can workers truly enjoy the fruits of their labour? The gap between minimum and living wage, the employment barriers facing neurodivergent and LGBTQ people — the calling of a faith community is to speak for those denied their opportunity.

Ascension Day meets IDAHOBIT. As long as we stare at the sky waiting for a from-heaven answer, we miss the heart of faith. Jesus removed his bodily presence so we would rise and bear the mission — not through fresher evidence but through the Spirit’s power and love. The Ascension is not a farewell; it is a commissioning.

Pastor Hong reflects on a brother in the community who lives with blindness, and who read Job through blindness, conversion therapy, and a lifetime of losses. Out of the whirlwind, God answers not with explanations but with presence.

“No one can know themselves alone.” Dr. Dino Wong drew from Acts 2 and 4, Karl Barth’s relational theology, and the clinical concept of re-parenting — weaving a vision of identity not as something we possess, but something that emerges in the gaze we share.

A brother’s livestream testimony at BMCC’s 2020 World AIDS Day Sunday service. At 45, twenty-five years after his HIV diagnosis at twenty, he reflects on finding belonging at BMCC — the only church in Hong Kong where he felt safe across a dual identity (LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive). A 1997 question from a brother — ‘If you died tomorrow, would you have any regret?’ — led him to fly for the first time, to Tongkwang Church and the Taiwan Lourdes Association, and to a calling.