"What Does God Require of Us?"
How we can respond to God's command by supporting Mission & Service.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Marion Best
Sunday, February 24, 2002
Text: Micah 6:1-8
Several years ago, in Tanzania in the month of February, I met a young boy who challenged my understanding of kindness and justice.
During a fuel stop, I got out of the vehicle to walk about and this child, about eight years of age, approached me. He had bare feet, no shirt and a pair of torn shorts. It was rainy season and the air was cool and damp. He made sounds rather than words and I soon realized he was one of the mentally challenged children we were encountering on this trip, their condition caused mainly by malnutrition.
Having packed lightly, I had only two T-shirts: the one I was wearing and one in my pack. I was deeply touched by the plight of this child and went to the vehicle to retrieve my extra shirt to give to him.
When I returned, there were three children in just as pitiful a state as the first one. I didn't have enough to clothe each of them and my African companions warned me to put my shirt away, because giving it to one child would only cause a struggle among the three of them. Choking back my tears, I returned to the vehicle feeling both angry and powerless.
This encounter occurred during a five-week study program titled Power and Powerlessness, sponsored by the World Council of Churches. It included one week of travel with a team of five in an agricultural region of Tanzania. This enabled us to gain some understanding of the political and socio-economic situation of the country, and to learn of the needs and hopes of the people, as well as to see first-hand how aid of various sorts was being applied.
We saw many deserted sisal plantations, as apparently there was no longer a market for sisal since nylon made cheaper, stronger rope. This had meant the loss of a significant economic base for the country.
However, as the result of a government directive, acres of coffee and tea were now being grown even in the most remote areas - but not for local use. They were for export in order to obtain foreign currency to help pay the interest on debts owed to countries of the North.
Since 1974, the price of gas and oil had increased five times and the price the farmers received for their coffee had been cut in half. Other crops that had been harvested and stored in sheds awaiting pick-up weren't even transported, due to very poor road conditions, the lack of dependable vehicles and the price of fuel. As a result, many people simply resisted growing these cash crops and instead did subsistence farming that consisted mainly of only growing corn for their own use.
This area had received aid over the years that hadn't always been the most appropriate for their situation. We saw tractors rusting in the fields as no rubber tire replacements were available. Fuel was in short supply and, if available at all, was priced beyond reach.
Questions of aid, development, debt and structural adjustment programs suddenly became very real to me; but it was the encounter with the child that provided the stimulus for deeper questioning, as I realized in my heart as well as in my head that charity was not enough; that unjust structures must be reformed; and hearts must be touched and transformed before that would ever happen.
In the text read from Micah this morning the question is posed to Israel: What does God require of you? And the answer is that God doesn't want burnt offerings, calves, rams or rivers of oil. God is asking the community to refocus its life.
To do justice involves the redistribution of power, a challenge to the widening gap between rich and poor. "To love kindness" may not be the best translation, for the Hebrew word is chesed, which means a community reordered into a life of enduring faithfulness. To walk humbly with God calls for an acknowledgement every day that all of life is derived from God.
What does God require of us? That question needs to be asked over and over because situations and contexts change. We must constantly reconsider what it means to be faithful to God's intentions.
Ever since the formation of the United Church in 1925, there have been changes made in how we carry out our global missions. I have a deep respect for the current partnership policies of the United Church of Canada.
You may not see us on TV when disasters occur in various parts of the world, whether it be floods, earthquakes, or people displaced by wars, but Yes, the United Church is there through partner churches and agencies who are there on the ground. Not only do we offer assistance in situations of emergency, but we also are there for the long term. In many instances, we were there before the most current disaster struck and we will be there afterwards.
It's a matter of building and maintaining respectful, long-term relationships with the local churches and the local people, and continuing those long after the media have gone home.
We work in partnership with churches located in 39 countries. Through the work of United Church staff and committees, consultation and shared decision-making with the partner churches in that part of the world result in support for projects that will be managed by the local people. We only provide Canadian personnel when the partner church specifically asks for expertise they cannot find locally. Currently, there are 31 United Church overseas personnel serving in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Global outreach is only one area of ministry supported through your mission and service contributions. This morning I want to share some stories of ministry and mission I have encountered, both here in Canada, and abroad.
In the village of Ntuma in Tanzania we spent the day with Mr. Bita. He's a Roman Catholic layman who has established a number of self-help projects in the area, some in conjunction with the United Church. In this village of 1,000 families, a number of women had approached him, saying their children were suffering from malnutrition and asking him if he could provide some sort of food supplement.
He said he would do so by providing seed for beans, groundnuts and melons and encouraged them to clear more land and expand their gardens to include nuts, beans and melons in addition to the usual diet of corn. Mr. Bita also helped the village establish cottage industries, raising livestock, making pottery stoves and training young people in carpentry.
Through the Mission and Service Fund, you helped provide the seed money for these projects.
In Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, our partner, the Methodist Church of Haiti, provides schooling for thousands of children, regardless of their denomination.
I will always remember the school we visited, filled to overflowing with eager-to-learn, primary-aged children. The school was made of cinder blocks, no windows, no electricity, built by the local people, and contained the barest of furniture and supplies. In a hut at the back of the schoolyard, the women prepared lunch. For many of those students, it would be their only meal of the day. At noon, the older boys carried the large vats of rice and beans to the stations where the children lined up with their tin plates and cups waiting to be served, and took it back to eat at their desks.
You helped support United Church ministers Betty-Ann and Alan Derby from Nova Scotia, who served in Haiti for many years. They wrote curriculum in creole for the Methodist churches. They trained lay preachers and other lay leaders in a church that had only eight ordained clergy to serve 140 widely scattered churches.
The Derbys gave amazing service in a country beset by political upheavals, with potholed roads that meant it took Betty 90 minutes to go 23 kilometres to reach the charge where she ministered part-time, in addition to her other jobs. She worked in a setting where computers or any powered machinery were virtually useless, because electricity was only available one hour a day and one was never sure which hour of the day, even in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
Our overseas personnel commit to a minimum of two years' service; they may stay longer, and many do. They learn the local language and become respected, beloved members of the communities in which they serve. Their projects help to empower people, to encourage independent communities and to enhance lives physically, mentally and spiritually.
Through my participation in the World Council of Churches, I have met many people who embody discipleship and commitment to Christ under the most difficult of circumstances. The United Church of Canada was a founding member of the World Council of Churches in 1948, and much of the emergency relief and development work that is supported by your M & S contributions is carried out under the auspices of the World Council of Churches.
Although it is only one instrument of the ecumenical movement, the Council represents some 400 million Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox Christians in every region of the world. It has been significant in calling the so-called main-line churches to integrate the unity and renewal of the Church with the healing of all God's creation.
Being on the governing body of the World Council the past 11 years has been both a privilege and, sometimes, plain hard work, requiring huge amounts of patience, humility and imagination.
I echo the sentiments of John Bluck of New Zealand who, in his introduction to the book, Finding the Voice, says: "What being in the global ecumenical movement amounts to is a commitment constantly to stand outside your comfort zone: in between the inherited certainties of creed and culture, to listen carefully to, and sometimes absorb, the cries of the angry and dispossessed; to learn to live with the contradiction of seeing people who have nothing compared to you in material terms and yet are often richer and wiser about life and much clearer about God."
There are changes in the global context that have had a profound effect on the life of the people and the churches in every part of the world:
- the widening gap between rich and poor nations and between rich and poor inside nations, resulting in unpaid, escalating Third-World debt
- structural adjustment programs that punish the poorest
- some of the ill effects of globalization
- new threats to the earth's ecology related to the effects of global warming
- the emergence of oppressive economic and political situations - one has only to look at Zimbabwe currently - especially in Africa and Asia, that have resulted in increased misery and deprivation among the majority of the population
- the precarious situation of religious minorities in many places, as forms of religious fundamentalism take hold and religious intolerance prevails
- increasing numbers of inter-religious conflicts, resulting in deaths of both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, Indonesia and India
- a sharp rise in racism and xenophobia that is the fear of the stranger, especially in Europe and North America
- an increase in the number of refugees as well as the displacement of people within their own countries
- violence against women and children, which has been identified as the greatest issue they are dealing with world-wide
- the devastating effects of wars on civilian populations - 90 per cent of casualties in wars now are civilians - including terrorism, the use of child soldiers, land-mines and the proliferation of small arms
- The alarming spread of HIV / AIDS, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia, which has left millions of children orphaned.
These issues have led the World Council to launch a program emphasis, The Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Peace and Reconciliation. Violence is defined as physical, emotional, intellectual and structural. Socio-economic issues - sexism, racism and violence against God's creation - are being addressed.
The focus is on the response to and prevention of forms of violence found between nations and within nations; between different faith groups; within political structures; in local communities; inside the church; and within homes and families.
You are part of these programs both by way of your M & S contributions and through United Church volunteers who assist the World Council in developing and carrying out these initiatives.
Recently in an international Bible-study group we were asked to reflect on the question: For what do you and the people of your community yearn and cry out to God?
I listened as people from small, impoverished places with populations much larger than ours told of people's struggles for food, shelter, basic healthcare, education and democratic principles. I am sure they regarded those of us from the North as living in societies where such basic needs would be more than met. After all, Canada is seen by others as a democratic country richly blessed with natural resources, abundant farmland and an abundance of clean water, free of war and generally regarded as prosperous - a vast land with a population of barely 30 million people with a birth-rate so low that we need people to immigrate here.
But I thought about people I have met in Canada who do have reason to cry out to God: The nearly five million people, mostly women and children, who live in poverty in this land of plenty cry out.
When I visited a Mission and Service-supported mission in Halifax that was responding to the needs of single parents and their children who live well under the poverty line, a young mother of two pre-schoolers handed me a note that said: If I didn't have this place to come to, I don't know what I would do. The people here have been like angels to me.
In the lounge a dozen single parents, two men and 10 women, were gathered for a parenting program called Nobody's Perfect, while their children were in an adjacent playroom with two pre-school teachers. The parents were given the opportunity to take turns in the playroom working alongside these teachers in order to learn more about child development and to enhance their parenting skills. High school completion and computer courses were being offered in the same church under government sponsorship.
The parents told me about the courage it took to come through those church doors for the first time. Many of them spoke of low self-esteem, feelings of isolation and inadequacy. Most were new to the city and did not have friends or extended family to turn to, and in every case they spoke of the huge difference it had made to their lives, being able to meet other adults in safe surroundings where they were respected and understood. We all know the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child" and this caring community in Halifax was being a village to 18 children.
In the past several years we have heard the cries of survivors of church-run, residential schools for First Nations' people. What began with the best of intentions has left deep wounds.
The churches were quick to become partners with the federal government's initiative over a hundred years ago, because they believed education should be available to all children, regardless of gender, class, religion, or how far removed they were from populated areas. The residential schools were seen as a way of equipping the younger generation of native people to survive in a world where the old ways had either been destroyed or were considered by the government of the day to be unworkable, unworthy, or both.
However, the legacy of the residential schools is proving to be costly indeed, in terms of abuses, loss of identity, language, culture, family life and native spirituality.
In 1986, the United Church offered an apology to our native congregations, which stated in part:
We confused Western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the Gospel of Christ. We imposed our civilization as a condition for accepting the Gospel. We tried to make you like us and, in so doing, we helped destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you and we are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we were meant by the Creator to be.
We now know that both native and non-native peoples alike need to be healed. Healing and reconciliation can only come after the truth has been told and heard, when we can move beyond our denial or our guilt to a compassionate response. If we do so, repentance will follow; whereupon we turn to God because the healing we need is beyond our own making.
Will we be able to build relationships with First Nations communities? It will require more than confession and apologies. We need to engage in concrete actions.
The Healing Fund is devoted to projects related to recovery of language and culture, for facilitating healing circles and workshops for training elders, counselors and parents. The fund is separate from and is in addition to those monies raised by Mission and Service. Over $1.5 million has been contributed by individuals, congregations and designated bequests, and most of these funds have now been made available for healing initiatives in native communities.
Advocacy undertaken by the Church includes getting a course on aboriginal history into the high school curriculum, urging the federal government to convene a truth and reconciliation commission on residential schools and continuing to support the just settlement of lands, rights, and claims of aboriginal peoples.
The United Church has not used, nor for the immediate future does it plan to use, any Mission and Service funds to cover the costs of litigation and out-of-court settlements in cases of proven claims of abuse in residential schools administered by the United Church. Draws on reserve funds and some specifically designated contributions have been used to fund litigation and settlement costs.
We continue to work with the federal government and native peoples to find an alternate dispute-resolution mechanism that will provide a better path toward justice and reconciliation for all concerned.
I want to thank this congregation on behalf of the wider church and our global partners for your faithful commitment to the Mission and Service fund. Over $200,000 was contributed from Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in 2001.
Through your efforts and those of 3,700 congregations all across Canada, the fund exceeded its goal of $30 million by $200,000 and in faith, next year's goal has been increased to a level of $30,500,000.
In addition to helping support small, isolated congregations, hospital, prison and university chaplaincies, outreach ministries and global partnerships, these funds are used to maintain the national and regional offices, help produce curriculum, worship, print and audio-visual resources and help provide theological education and leadership development for lay and order-of-ministry men and women.
There are no taxes or assessments on congregations to make these forms of ministry possible. It only happens because people like you give to Mission and Service beyond what you give to support your local congregation. While there has been an increase across the country in the number of people who designate part of their offering for use beyond the local church, it's still barely one half of United Church contributors who do so. Imagine what a difference it would make if every contributing household were to include some amount toward Mission and Service.
Over the past 15 years we have not been able to keep up with inflation and increased costs, and it has been necessary to decrease staff, programs and grants every year. As one who has been involved in helping to make those decisions, I can tell you it has been extremely difficult and painful.
What does God require of us? To discern what it means to be faithful as we seek justice, act with compassion, courage and love and remember with gratitude that God is the source of all life and is the object of our worship.
To discern what is faithful requires study, prayer and commitment, and I thank God that so many people of faith have been, and continue to be engaged in this task.
Let us pray:
God of power, may your spirit transform us, may the gifts of your spirit equip us to
serve you. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.