By Joy Wong

This month, our writers were asked to reflect on the relevancy of worship. For the first half of the month, our reflections revolved around the challenges of personal and corporate worship in the midst of the pandemic, with churches shut down and community limited. However, upon the mass shootings on three spas and massage parlors in Atlanta on March 16th that killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, our reflections took a different turn, in grappling with how to worship amidst the collective trauma of the Asian and Asian American community — and in particular, we as Asian American women.

In the recent blog titled “Aching hope, Mourning violence against Asian American women” on The Presbyterian Outlook, Dr. Charlene Jin Lee writes:

The profits of white supremacy and misogyny tally eight more lives this week. Six victims of the deadly shootings in Atlanta were Asian. Four among them were Korean women. While each of us will experience varying degrees of pain and anguish from this most recent rampage against people of Asian descent, the eight lives so wantonly murdered belong to all of us — all of us who believe our shared imago Dei demand our outrage and lament.

For Korean American Presbyterian Clergy Women (KAPCW), our collective grief is palpable and complex. We gathered to find safety in each other’s presence, to witness one another’s anger and tears, to name the imposed and internalized shame of our sexually objectified identities. We reject the misguided narrative that eight lives were snuffed by one sex addict’s impulse. We know far too well that sexual violence, sexism and racism are miry intersections for Asian American and Pacific Islander women.

We claim as our own the women who died. We claim the dignity of their lives. We claim also the shame branded on them as women working in an industry stigmatized by misperceptions and by the reality of human trafficking operations that could have had a part in timely and accurate identification of all victims. As a body of ministers, we claim each woman as our sister, as our mother, as ourself — and we shall honor her with dignified remembrance.

I am struck by Dr. Lee’s prophetic voice, not only in claiming the lives of those killed as part of our collective identity, but also in naming the misguided narratives and perceptions, and naming the value and dignity of the lives that were taken. As I reflect on how to worship during these times, it seems to me that the way to worship “in spirit and in truth,” perhaps, begins precisely here — in truth. In naming the truth.

To worship God is to praise and adore God. To do so, as an individual, is to praise God for all who God is, but also in light of the truth of who I am, as a person created by God. To worship God corporately is also to praise and adore God but in light of the truth of who we are, as Asian American women. This makes truth-telling an integral part of worship: the acknowledgment of who we are — and the plight we are in — in light of the sovereignty and holiness of God.

Therefore, to worship “in spirit and in truth” makes truth-telling a part of worship. It’s how we can worship no matter our plight, no matter the injustice, no matter our pain and what we lament. We are who we are, in the world that we are, as it is — and whether because of it or in spite of it, we reach out, acknowledge, and cry out to our God — our Maker, our Advocate, our Shield.

May we be bold worshipers, grounding ourselves in the truth no matter how ugly, reaching out with faith — beginning with this simple task: telling the truth — about ourselves, about our world, and about our pain.

Joy Wong has an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, a BA in English from Princeton University, as well as four years’ experience in industrial distribution management.  She is a contributing author to Mirrored Reflections: Reframing Biblical Characters, published in September 2010.