June 21 Sunday English Sermon Manuscript

Grace Has Already Been Prepared

Scripture: Jeremiah 20:7–13

The Unity Retreat Story

1. The Unity Retreat has come and gone again this year. Every year as we prepare for it, there has not been a single year when the preparation felt easy. Because this is a joint retreat, a director is appointed from among the associate pastors and youth to lead the planning. The young adults who serve as directors are, in fact, the very ones who grew up receiving grace through this retreat.

2. Even after graduating from college and entering the workforce, they take precious vacation days to prepare for and participate in the retreat. This year we began preparations earlier than in previous years — yet as always, the process was anything but simple.

3. My role in preparing for the retreat is to provide support so that those involved don't have to worry about money. As President of the Caucus and as the liaison for the Unity Retreat, my responsibility is to build the kind of leadership that ensures the retreat can continue on solid footing externally.

4. Along the way, if anyone grows weary or disheartened, my job is to come alongside them — to encourage them, take them out for a meal, pray with them, and do whatever it takes to make sure they don't lose heart and can carry the preparation through to the end.

5. Standing alongside them and watching, do you know what seems to be the hardest moment for those preparing this retreat? Not when things are difficult in themselves — but when everyone should be pulling together as a team, and you get the sense that someone who should be carrying their share is slipping to the back. That, it seems, is when it becomes hardest.

6. The Unity Retreat has a history of more than forty years. There was a time when every Korean United Methodist Church sent their youth to this retreat. Today, only two churches within the Caucus are sending students, and the rest are not in a position to do so. In the face of that reality, I found myself asking: should the Caucus continue to provide support and keep this retreat going?

7. This year, for the first time, we invited youth from other churches — including a Tongan congregation — to join us. It was a first attempt. But on the final day, watching the video we had taken together, I found myself in tears.

8. There were no distinctions of race. No barriers of culture. What unfolded before my eyes was a single community, confessing their faith together in one Lord, Jesus Christ. And in that moment it hit me — this is why we go through all of this.

9. On the last day of the retreat, as we were settling the bill with the retreat center, the coordinator asked us to wait a moment. She would send the final invoice by email, she said. The reason, she explained, was that our original commitment had been for 100 people — but since we hadn't reached that number, she wanted to recalculate and reduce the cost accordingly. We hadn't asked. She came to us first.

10. The retreat center we used is an 80-year-old Christian camp. But when we arrived on the first day, we found that an Islamic group was also holding a retreat there. In order to keep the facility running, they had to open their doors to all groups as a matter of business. It would be a different story if churches were still filling these camps the way they once did — but that is no longer the reality. And since they receive county funding to operate, they are not able to restrict bookings to Christian groups alone.

11. It was in that place that our students spent three days worshiping and praying. Hearing that, the coordinator came forward on her own — without us asking — and said she wanted to find a way to help us.

12. She was likely carrying real burdens of her own: the constant pressure of keeping the facility financially sustainable, the hard tradeoffs that come with that. And somehow, our Unity Retreat had found its way into the middle of all of that. And out of it, she reached out with a generous heart.

13. On the drive back, I was reminded once again: grace is already prepared, waiting on the other side of the hardest and most exhausting moments. God does not call us to prepare for ministry in comfort. And as we build the church, he does not always let things come together neatly or perfectly.

14. But in the very moment when we choose not to give up, not to complain — when we take hold of what has been given to us and give it everything we have — that is precisely when grace we never expected is always waiting for us. I was reminded of that again.

Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet

15. Let us turn now to the text, and take a closer look at this prophet named Jeremiah. Jeremiah is known by the name "the weeping prophet." When you survey the prophets who appear in Scripture, it is hard to find one who was dismissed and made to suffer quite the way Jeremiah was. His ministry was never peaceful.

16. He was called to be a prophet at a very young age. He tried to decline, saying he didn't know how to speak. God told him he would be with him, and Jeremiah began his ministry — a man with every apparent disadvantage. God called him and used him, and yet Jeremiah never once knew a moment of ease.

17. During the years of Jeremiah's ministry, a brief and shimmering season of peace and prosperity came to the southern kingdom of Judah. With Assyria collapsing and Babylon and Egypt locked in competition with each other, a window of quiet had opened for Judah. People were flocking to the temple. It looked, on the surface, as though faith was being renewed.

18. And yet the priests and leaders of the day were more optimistic than the situation warranted. They stayed silent on the things that mattered most — genuine repentance, and a sincere return to God. The people longed for a return to the glory days of David and Solomon, even as anxiety about the future quietly took root alongside that longing.

19. Jeremiah preached straight into that anxiety. He proclaimed what no one wanted to hear. From the outside, the temple was full and everything seemed fine — but Jeremiah kept pressing: this is not the time to relax your guard; you must stay awake. The word of God he carried demanded it. And the result was that Jeremiah became, in effect, an outcast.

20. Verse 10 gives us a glimpse of just how isolated he was: "All my close friends are waiting for me to slip." Even those nearest to him had turned against him.

Three Verbs

21. Let us read Jeremiah 20:7 again. "Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me."

22. Jeremiah describes how God has dealt with him using three verbs: deceived, overpowered, prevailed.

23. The word translated "deceived" — or "enticed" — actually carries the meaning of being led down the wrong path. This is Jeremiah pouring out his confusion before God: Lord, why are you doing this? I cannot understand. It is a lament born of bewilderment.

24. But the lament does not end there. That is what we must not miss. As time passes, Jeremiah arrives at a confession: God overpowered me. God prevailed. The very doubts he expressed now give way to a different kind of admission — that in the face of what God was doing, he had no capacity to resist. He ends up on his knees before a God he couldn't argue with.

Crossing the Time We Cannot Understand

25. Our lives don't run smoothly either. There is difficulty lying in wait. There is the sense of being stuck with no way forward. And sometimes the thought creeps in: why does this keep happening to me? That season of wrestling is real. Other people seem to be doing fine. And when you're going through it, that makes the weight feel heavier still. But the truth is, everyone is living their own life — and no one lives a life entirely free of struggle and pain.

26. If someone were to ask me what the Christian faith is, I think I would say something like this: it is the capacity to confess, even in the middle of the kind of darkness and suffering that feels inescapable, that God has ordained even this season for us — and that on the other side of it, an inexplicable grace and joy is waiting. That, I believe, is what faith is.

27. God walks with us in every moment. In the moments of our deepest pain, he is right there. And just beyond those moments, he causes us to discover the grace he has already prepared.

28. The Unity Retreat reminded me of this once more. There was not a single year when the preparation felt easy. This year was no different — the process was hard. But on the final day, I was in tears. Watching those students stand before Jesus together — across every racial and cultural line. And through a retreat center coordinator who came to us first, without us asking, to offer help. In all of it, I found the grace God had prepared.

29. That is how grace comes. In the middle of the hardest and most exhausting moments, it has already been prepared and is already waiting.

A Repeating Pattern

30. This is the pattern our lives follow, again and again. Jeremiah's lament sounds like our own prayers. Lord, why is this happening? I don't understand. That honest, unpolished cry becomes prayer. And beyond that prayer, God has already prepared grace.

31. We will face difficulty again. That much is certain. But when we arrive at the grace that has been prepared, everything we went through will melt away like snow. We have already experienced this. And we will experience it again. Through this repeated experience, there is a confession we must hold onto: the Lord always walks with us.

Walking with Jesus — Will You Walk Together?

32. This is exactly why I keep pressing you to join in the Walking with Jesus practice. It is a confession we already know: The Lord is with me. This is not a new truth. It is something we knew from the very first moment we encountered Jesus. And yet we lose hold of it in the dailiness of life. When difficulty arrives, when something happens that we cannot understand, that truth begins to shake.

33. Walking with Jesus is the discipline of holding onto that confession every single day. Not holding on alone — but holding on together. Building faith together. Building the church together.

34. Like the students in that video on the last day of the Unity Retreat — a community confessing its faith together in one Lord, Jesus Christ, with no distinction of race or culture. That is the road Yeolin Church is walking. Jeremiah's lament ends in verse 13 with praise: "Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked."

35. It is a song only those who have crossed the time they couldn't understand can sing. Lament becomes praise. Hardship becomes grace. Despair becomes gratitude. That is the shape of our lives too. And along that journey, the Lord walks with us. He walks with us today.