October 8, 2006 Sermon

Toward a Theology of Mission: The Jesus Who Knows No Boundaries

Last week I opened up my e-mail to find a rather startling communication from a friend in South Africa. She was writing to be sure I had heard about a conference to be held in Storrs, East Haddam and Old Lyme dealing with the life and history of an East Haddam resident, Venture Smith. This conference sought to explore the “bigger-than-life” story of a man who was first an African prince in Ghana, then a slave and finally a free man renowned for his independence and courage.

Given our church’s interest in racism, and given the fact that the conference would take place somewhere in Connecticut, she just wanted to be sure I didn’t miss the event. And she mentioned that the conference would conclude at a place called the Florence Griswold Museum with a reading by a Connecticut poet by the name of Marilyn Nelson.

The world has become a very small place, indeed. My friend had no way of knowing that Marilyn Nelson attends church right here with us – and in fact will participate in our upcoming Tree of Life Conference in December. Nor did she know that we are less than a mile from the Florence Griswold Museum.

Just his past Sunday, when Nurit Elhanin and Hanan Abu Gousch stood together in this pulpit to celebrate World Communion Sunday, I found myself thinking, again, about what a small place the world is. Here are two women who live, actually, a ten-mile distance from one another – a distance most of us could ride by bicycle. And yet, tragically, they are prevented by law from spending time together. Hanan, as a Palestinian Muslim does not have free egress in and out of the West Bank town of Ramallah. Nurit, an Israeli Jew, cannot legally travel into the West Bank, by Israeli law.

But they were able to enjoy a week here in Old Lyme, talking and laughing and going on walks together – living together through the generous hospitality of Joan and Jerry Silberberg. These two women, who care deeply for each other, were able to find a safe place where they could share their common humanity. No government can build an apartheid wall high enough to keep two people from being friends.

There is a great deal about this modern world that confuses me. Truthfully, I would have made a better 19^th century pioneer than 21^st century web-surfer or jet-setter. I waste precious time wondering just how someone in South Africa could stumble upon information about a conference in Connecticut. And I am fascinated by the fact that two women who are barred from connecting across a ten-mile divide can cement a deep and lasting friendship built upon the ashes of their mutual suffering and commitment to justice and truth.

Hear again the words of Isaiah, “Enlarge the place of your dwelling. Extend the curtains of your tent to the full…”

Isaiah, it turns out, was more than a prophet – he was a visionary. In Isaiah’s time, people could live in a small, contained habitat. But some 25 centuries later, that time no longer exists. Turn on the news and you are eye-witness to the suffering on the streets of Baghdad. Open Newsweek Magazine and you are right there in the midst of the scorched earth of Darfur. Turn on your computer and you will access information from half-way across the globe. Get on an airplane and someone on the far side of the ocean will become your friend and neighbor. And their plight will take up residence in your consciousness.

The world has become a very small place, indeed. And the question implicit in this sermon is this: How does the ever-shrinking modern world change our mandate about what it means to live as a Christian in the 21^st century? If Jesus were right here, right now, (and by the way, I believe He is) what would he have us do and say amidst the challenges of this modern world?

In two weeks time, seven members of our congregation will make the journey to our partner church in Johannesburg, South Africa. There we will spend time with the people who are our friends there. We will participate in their ministries and share in their worship. As a part of their “Paballo” ministry, we’ll help to carry soup and bread and medical supplies out into the streets, to the homeless. And we will spend time right there at Central Methodist with the ever-growing refugee population that is sheltered in their big, old rambling church building. At last count there were over 700 refugees living at Central Methodist – men and women and children who have fled from political persecution or economic hardship in the bordering countries of southern Africa.

The plight of refugees in the 21^st century is perhaps one of the most dynamic phenomena shaping the world at this time. On mission trips with this church we have walked through refugee camps in the occupied territories of the West Bank – camps established by the United Nations in 1948 – where, now, the great-great-grandchildren of the initial refugees are attempting to seek out an existence. Life in a refugee camp is hard. But the hardest part of all, I would think, is living the struggle with so little hope for the future.

We will surely have more to say about life within the refugee community when we return.

For some people within this church community, I suspect our church’s mission program is something of a curiosity. I know that people find it puzzling, because it is not unusual for me to be asked this kind of question: “What, exactly, will you accomplish in Johannesburg?”

The very practical New England Yankee who resides within my very DNA would like to be able to say, in response to that question: “We will successfully relocate and find employment for 123 refugees. And we’ll lay the groundwork for the successful resolution of the crisis. All in two-week’s time. And we will be home on schedule.”

In truth, what we will actually accomplish in Johannesburg is the work set before us by Isaiah. “We will enlarge the place of our dwelling and extend the curtains of the tent to the full.” We will try to “be not afraid” in the words of the angels who announced Jesus’ birth. We will try to “be not afraid” to see the pain of the world and to help carry, if only for a time, the burdens of our fellow-humankind.

In the gospel of Luke, a lawyer approached Jesus and asked “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded this way: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And the lawyer asks, “But, who is my neighbor?” (There’s the Biblical mandate to be wary of lawyers.)

Jesus then tells the lawyer the well-known story of the “Good Samaritan.” Anyone you meet along the road, who needs your help – that is your neighbor. Carry that answer with you into the 21^st century!

Just this week, as I wrestled with this sermon, I discovered a wonderful gem of truth in the story of the “Good Samaritan.” – a truth which has up until now had remained hidden from me. Jesus said we should stop and help anyone who needs help along life’s road. He did not say that he expected us to succeed in fixing everything that caused the man to fall.

Now please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying Jesus would want us to walk away from the hard work of kingdom building on this earth – the hard work of seeking equity and justice for all God’s people. We are called to help those who struggle. It’s so easy to turn away when problems are too big for us to solve – and what Jesus is saying is that turning away is completely unacceptable.

There is a wonderful concept in African culture about which I have spoken to you before. UBUNTU. Ubuntu is an awareness, deeply felt in African culture, that we are all connected, one to another. And that that connectedness is at the very essence of what it means to be a human being. So that anything that diminishes my fellow human-being, ultimately, diminishes me.

I think, on some level, each and every one of us knows that to be true. That’s why we find it painful to look at pictures of Darfur. That’s why we sometimes resist watching the nightly news. That’s why we avert our eyes from someone else’s suffering. Because we know, somewhere deep within our bones, that their suffering diminishes us.

The mission work of this church seeks, intentionally, to live out what theologians call “the theology of accompaniment.” Meaning that there is a redemptive value in accompanying someone else in their pain and suffering: redemptive not just for “the other,” but for you and me, as well.

Whether or not our mission work affects change out there in the world, well, that should be the subject of the last sermon I ever preach. But this I do know – our work out there, in the world, changes me. And if you were to ask any of the several hundred parishioners who have made a journey with us to Green Grass, South Dakota, or Harlem, New York, or Johannesburg, South Africa, or the occupied territory of Palestine or, for that matter, to the soup kitchen on Montauk Avenue in New London or here in Old Lyme, I think they would give you the same answer. I think they would say, “I’m not sure just how much I helped the people I visited, but I came home a far richer human being. I lived inside the “Good Samaritan” story if only for a brief time. I enlarged the place of my dwelling. I now live in a bigger tent.”

I don’t expect that the seven people who make the journey to South Africa will change the painful reality of the refugees living in Central Methodist Mission. But in the spirit of UBUNTU, we will walk with them for a time. Their faces and their stories will take up residence in our consciousness. And hopefully the brief time we spend with them will enable them to know that there are people on the other side of the ocean who think about them every day – and care.

At the beginning of the church year, I’d like to take this chance to say to the young parents of our Spirit Quest children, “I hope you’ll make this “theology of accompaniment” a part of the life of your own family. I hope you’ll come with us someday on a mission journey –whether as close by as New London or as far away as South Africa. If you do, I feel sure that you and your children will reap rich rewards.

I’d like to close this sermon with one last story. And the story is about a wonderful, spritely, older woman who lives in Beit Sahour, in the occupied territory of Palestine. She always invites us into her home when we visit the community. And she radiates hospitality and warmth. There’s always a smile on her face, and she always says “thank-you for coming.”

Her life – at least when compared to mine – is severely challenging. There’s never enough food or water. There’s never any assurance that she could get through the check-point to a hospital if she needed one. Political instability and the strangled economy have severely jeopardized the future for her children and grand-children. But she radiates courage in the face of adversity.

Mrs. Qumsiyeh raises song birds – hundreds of them. These delicate little birds live in cages that are spread out all the way from the basement to the second story of her tidy little house. And clearly, she loves them. You may know that Palestine, located on the curve of the eastern side of the Mediterranean, is in the flight pattern of migrating song birds that travel to and from winter and summer homes from northern Africa to Europe. The hills of Palestine, prior to the military turmoil that now affects every aspect of life there, were alive with song birds.

Mrs. Qumsiyeh cultivates and nurtures living symbols of freedom. The occupation may define every reality of her daily life, but it will not imprison her mind. One day, when the occupation ends, I like to think that Mrs. Qumsiyeh will carry her little birds back out into the hills of Palestine. And when she releases them back into the wild, there will be a big smile on her face. And on that day, she and her birds will once again be free.

The Jesus of the 21^st century, calls us to the work of keeping alive the songbirds of freedom in lands torn asunder by war and injustice and persecution. The Jesus of the 21^st century calls us to the work of connecting human beings across all kinds of walls and divisions so that no one, no thing, no circumstance of hardship, can imprison their minds. The Jesus of the 21^st century calls to us to “Be not afraid” of the pain and suffering in this world, but to go forth and enlarge our hearts and places of dwelling. The Jesus of the 21^st century calls us to live the spirit of UBUNTU every day, and on every highway. Amen.