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CONTENTS
--Housing --People Christian Education --PYC
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Sermon Preached by Pen Peery, Associate Pastor for Youth and Mission August 27, 2006
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Ephesians 6:10-20
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
At the start, let me say that this sermon might not actually be a sermon at all, but rather a period of testimony; a testimony to the goodness of God that I experienced with 17 other members of this church during our mission trip to Malawi two weeks ago. Since my return, many of my friends and family have asked me, “how was Africa?” In reality, I do not have the words adequate to describe our experience in Malawi any more than I have the words to describe the joy of being in love or the mystery of God. What I have is testimony. Offering testimony is the way that Christians point to things that are so true they cannot be captured by our limited expressions of speech. And so I begin with a man named William. * * * William is the coordinator of the Mponela feeding center where our group spent the majority of our time. He is a kind man. Soft spoken and gentle with the 300 orphans he looks over through the Ministry of Hope. He is a man of incredible faith - faith that is evident in the way he carries himself and interacts with those around him. William has been the coordinator at Mponela for three years. He has not been to college - partly because he lacks the funds, but mainly because he has followed God’s call to active ministry that has taken a priority over everything else. He embodies the servant leader model of Jesus by devoting his life to being with those who are the poor, and orphaned. Not trying to fix them - but being with them in the way he shares the gospel. On our second day at the center, William invited me into his office (a small, well-kept room with a bookshelf and a desk). We talked about our joys and our challenges in ministry - and in that conversation I learned that in 1995 William followed God’s call to go from Malawi to Rwanda to witness to the power of the resurrection in the wake of the genocide of 1994. For one full year he lived among the people of Rwanda - people whose faith had been devastated - in order to assure them of the good news in Jesus Christ. For one full year, William listened to stories too terrible to mention. He sat with people in their pain and in their anger toward a God who could let such pain happen. He listened - not with an agenda, not on behalf of an organization - but so he could share the gospel with his very presence. After this year, William returned to Malawi where he eventually crossed paths with Fletcher Matindika who is the founder of the Ministry of Hope - and another person whose life was a testimony to our group. * * * Fletcher - who was our guide during our visit in Malawi - has been to Second before. He came at Ben’s request last summer to reconnect with the group who made the first trip three years ago. Perhaps you have heard the story of how the Ministry of Hope was founded on that visit - but for most of us who just returned, we were unaware of how Fletcher began his work. Seven years ago - Fletcher, then the 21 year-old son of a Presbyterian pastor in the village of Matapila, had a desire to put his faith into action in the face of the HIV-AIDS crisis that was ravaging his country. When I asked him how he got the idea of staring a feeding center for orphans, he told me that one night while in college he was praying for God’s guidance while reading scripture when he came across a passage in the servant songs of Isaiah when God assures his people, “...I have chosen you and not cast you off. Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”1 It was with this assurance that Fletcher began to register orphans in his home village of Matapila. When he gathered 200 names, he enlisted the help of his father’s congregation and assembled the group in his parent’s front yard. The feedings started sporadically at first. But God was on the move and the ministry began to take a more developed shape. Now there are seven feeding centers across Malawi, each with a coordinator, each that serve meals six days a week, each that incorporate Bible study and life skills in the ministry they provide. Today the Ministry of Hope has well over 1,500 orphans in their care - as well as nursery that tends to 20-30 infants who have been abandoned. Most of our time on the trip was spent being with about 300 of these orphans who ranged in age from 1 to 20 years-old at the Mponela site. These children - more than anyone else - bore testimony to the power of God for our group. * * * Perhaps when our son is born later this year, I will better understand it - but when meeting the children at the center for the first time and listening to their voices joined in song the joy I felt was such that it moved me to tears. I have sat where you are and heard Ben and the youth wax poetic about the magic of those voices - but now I know and I am in awe. It sounds cliche, but the smiles and the voices of these children who we were fortunate (and even blessed) to meet communicated not just a depth of faith that we had not seen, but the sheer joy of being claimed by God. Here were children - each day wearing the same clothes; playing in a dust courtyard with a homemade soccer ball built by compressing plastic bags that they collected in the gutters; waiting patiently in line to wash their hands before having their one meal of the day; who would go home to grandparents or other arranged guardians; about a quarter of whom also carried the same disease that left them orphans in the first place - here were children that taught us the meaning of joy. Surely the source of that joy - that touched us - can only have its origin in God. There is simply no other explanation. * * * There is also no other explanation for the conditions that we saw in Malawi than the way Paul describes what is at stake in Ephesians: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Too often when we are confronted with hard-to-see realities of poverty and despair, our defense mechanisms kick-in and we make the mistake of glorifying the situation. “They had so little, but they gave us so much...” “In spite of their situation, they seemed so happy...” It is deeper than that. It is darker than that. It is more despairing than that. The power of testimony in places as desperate as Malawi does not derive from pasting over the reality of the situation - but rather cuts to the heart by taking seriously the evil before us. Paul does not mince words. What we face as disciples of Jesus Christ is not overcome by a pure heart, or an effective committee, or even a healthy mission budget. Our struggle is with something much more insidious than anything with its origin in humanity. Our struggle is with cosmic forces of evil. I realize that to our enlightened minds, the concept of cosmic forces might sound odd. Even easy to dismiss. But let’s get serious. Surely what happened to pull William to do ministry in Rwanda is deeper than a few bad decisions in foreign policy. Surely the AIDS crisis that led to the genesis of the Ministry of Hope is darker than a disease with no cure. Surely the reality of the children that we saw in Mponela was impossibly more despairing than what we could imagine. Paul had it right. We are dealing with things bigger than ourselves or the by-products of our bad choices. We are also dealing with things that we cannot “fix” by ourselves. * * * The way that Paul chooses to equip the believer who faces such insidious forces is by way of a military metaphor. It is a cosmic battle, and we are the soldiers. When faced with the cosmic forces of this present darkness, we are to don the armor of God; with the helmet of salvation, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit – all to proclaim the gospel of peace. Did you catch that? In the face of such a force - our “weapons” are not designed to maim or kill - but are designed to represent what God intends for the world. Righteousness. Truth. Faith. Peace. What does that look like in real life? After spending time in Malawi, I can testify to you that it looks like this: It looks like William following the Spirit of God to a place as devastated as Rwanda after the genocide - a place where words are insufficient but the gospel still needed to be proclaimed. It looks like Fletcher following the call of God to do something in the face of the AIDS crisis with nothing more than the trust and hope that God would provide. It sounds like the voices of 300 children raising a song of praise to a God in the midst of loneliness and despair. “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power...” Paul begins. Truly what we saw was a witness to this text. * * * On the drive to the airport just before our departure, I was paired with Fletcher. I was thanking him for his guidance and his hospitality and fumbling around to try to express my gratitude for the fire that his ministry had lit in each of our souls. In my fumbling I said something like, “To be honest, it is you who should come over to the States and do mission work. We need it more than you know...” Fletcher just smiled. I know now why he smiled. He had heard folks from America say what I was trying to articulate before. Because, you see, I was right. In our context where our faith is in competition with countless other priorities - our jobs, our families, our climb to the top, our financial security - we lose sight of the battle that is before us. For us, the powers that we face are different than abject poverty and AIDS, but they are still insidious. We face the evil of greed, in our want to have more. Of lust, in our desire to look the part. Of pride, in the arrogant way we treat other nations. Even worse, because we are so distracted in the casual way we practice our faith, we don’t trust the armor of God. Stepping into the field with nothing more than a sense of Faith, a thirst for Righteousness, a desire for Truth, and especially a quest for Peace seems to us inadequate. All of those things sound good - but we don’t believe they fully provide for what we need. We don’t believe that Faith, Righteousness, Truth, and Peace are enough for our security. And that, my friends, is the most transformative testimony that we need to hear from our sisters and brothers in Malawi. Because they are enough. Indeed, they are all that really matter. Amen.
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