Rebecca's Creed
Sermon
Living Vertically
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
A couple of summers ago my wife and I took a twenty-fifth anniversary trip to visit friends in New Mexico and Colorado and to see places we had never seen before. One of the very enjoyable "tourist-type" things we did was to ride the famous Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Originally built to haul heavy mining equipment and ore during the gold rush days, the old steam locomotives have been used in any number of western films. Today it is a scenic three-hour ride from Durango to Silverton where you spend a few hours having lunch and shopping or looking in windows (depending on whether you are male or female) and then reboard for the scenic ride back. It was a very nice day.
Unfortunately, within a couple of days the local paper had the story of a mishap of a six-year-old boy playing near the tracks of the train in Durango. He was struck as the slow-moving engine passed and was seen staggering off. Concerned, the railroad notified police and the local emergency room. Sure enough, a youngster showed up with injuries which he said were from a fall, but which the emergency room doctor said were much more compatible with a confrontation with heavy equipment. The part of the article that really caught my attention was when it continued to tell how the boy's parents were summoned to the hospital where, according to the paper, in an inebriated state, they denied that the boy was their son. "Our son is a good boy," they were quoted as saying, "he would not do something bad like this."
You hear stories about people abandoning their children, but this really struck home, maybe because we were on vacation and it really had time to sink in. It's no wonder that people are so cynical about the world. This sort of thing, of course, is the reason that many individuals feel that male imagery for God -- particularly referring to God as father -- is not always helpful. What about those people who have been abused, abandoned, and hurt by their fathers; what does this say to them about God?
But there is another side to this that often hits us square in the face on our international mission trips when we visit places in the world where people have more than ample reason to be cynical and embittered. In May, 1997, 22 of us from The University of Evansville spent three weeks in Africa, mostly in South Africa. Even though the apartheid system has now been officially abandoned, its legacy is clearly seen everywhere. In Cape Town you can visit District Six, an area of the city in which, for several generations, black, colored, and white, Christians and Muslims, lived together in harmony. But in the 1960s, when the machinery of apartheid moved into high gear, the area was bulldozed with the intention of creating a "White's Only" enclave. So determined was the government to eradicate any memory of peoples from different ethnic groups living together in harmony that the very streets were torn up and a new grid of streets laid down with new names. The very memory of the place was to be blotted out! The whites never moved in, and District Six still stands as a blight in the heart of beautiful Cape Town.
The truth is even without apartheid things are still bad. For the most part, colored and black citizens of South Africa do not have the economic wherewithal to move out of the townships and formerly segregated areas. It is not being cynical to point out that one of biggest changes in the last few years is that persons who were formerly destitute and homeless in the townships can now be destitute and homeless in formerly white-only areas.
And yet we found amongst the people not just an enormous pride in their beautiful homeland and the unexpectedly relatively non-violent transition it has made from white-only rule to multiracial government, but an amazingly buoyant sense of hope. Hope! Why is this? Is it simply national pride? Is it the charismatic and inspiring figure of Nelson Mandela? No doubt those are factors. But something else struck me on our very first night on the streets of Cape Town. We were introduced to a gnarled old street woman who had staked out her sleeping spot on the steps of the Central Methodist Mission. She embraced one of our students who shared her name -- Rebecca; she became emotional when she discovered another student shared the name of "her dead son." She introduced herself with these words: "My name is Rebecca. I believe in God. And that's why I believe in people."
"I believe in God. And that's why I believe in people." On the one hand, this disenfranchised woman, whose people had been subject to indignities and inhumanities we can barely comprehend, had every reason to be embittered and cynical. And yet she can say that she believes in people! The reason, of course, is the starting point: "I believe in God. And that's why I believe in people." Can it really be that simple? Or that profound?
It is no coincidence that all of the great historical creeds of the church begin, "I Believe in God." Only after considering the person and work of Christ and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit do they get around to the church and the communion of saints. It is no coincidence, because if we start out by looking at people and institutions -- even the church -- we are in big trouble. Only if we start with God are things put in their proper perspective.
This takes us back to the Fatherhood of God issue. If we define God in terms of human fatherhood, we may well end up with an image of God who is vindictive or arbitrary, abandoning, faithless, or worse. The point is that we do not define God; when we describe God as Father, we should be defining human parenthood. Genesis says that humans are created in the image of God, not the other way around.
Jesus calls us to have "eyes that seeing perceive and ears that hear and understand," and promises us that through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit we will come to see the world from God's point of view; all too often, we see God from the world's point of view.
In his book A Simple, Decent Place to Live, Millard Fuller talks about his early business career in the 1960s.
From the very beginning of our business partnership, my partner and I shared one overriding purpose: To make a pile of money. We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich. During the eight years we were partners, we never wavered from that resolve ... So when the company treasurer marched into my office one day in 1964 to announce that I was worth a million dollars, I wasn't surprised.
"What's your next goal?" she asked.
"Why, ten million," I answered, "Why not?"
His was the ultimate American success story. But Fuller goes on to describe the price that this singular focus began to exact, first on his personal integrity, then on his health, and finally on his marriage. Only when his wife, Linda, left him, informing him that the Lincoln, a large house plus a cottage on the lake, two speed boats and a maid didn't make up for his absence from her life and that of his children, did he realize what he had sacrificed for money.
Fuller goes on to describe the transformation that occurred in his life through his association with Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms, a multi-racial Christian community in Georgia. "Millard," Jordan said to Fuller one day, "I don't have anything up my sleeve, but perhaps God has something up his sleeve for both of us." As long as he just "looked around" for role models and lifestyles, all that he could focus on was accumulating more stuff. But as Fuller began to focus more on God and God's desire for all humankind and less on human patterns of success and wealth, he developed what is surely one of the major transforming forces around the world today, Habitat for Humanity. "I believe in God -- and that's why I believe in people."
Now, all of this may seem to go without saying, but I am saying it because of the great danger in always beginning by looking around, by seeing how others are doing, by looking for love in all the wrong places, even as people of God. Not long ago I read some tips for successful churches, and one of things that jumped out at me was that, according to this expert anyway, one characteristic of a successful church is that it will "place more emphasis on increasing the number of members instead of trying to increase the commitment of existing members." Without a doubt, this is the way of marketing; but is it the way of Christ? To whom do we look for models?
Dag Hammarskjold was born in 1905, the son of the Prime Minister of Sweden. He studied law and economics, and taught economics at the University of Stockholm. He became president of the board of the Bank of Sweden, then Minister of State, then head of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations, and finally Secretary General of the United Nations.
In 1960 the Belgian Congo (now the Republic of Congo) became independent, and civil war promptly broke out. Hammarskjold went in to negotiate a cease-fire, and was killed in a plane crash in Zambia on September 18, 1961. It was only after his death that it was discovered that for years he had kept a private journal, writing down his thoughts on the Lordship of Christ and its meaning for his life. Eventually the journal was published under the title Markings. In one place he wrote:
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
I can think of two other ways to make the same point:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
"I believe in God; and that's why I believe in people."
Unfortunately, within a couple of days the local paper had the story of a mishap of a six-year-old boy playing near the tracks of the train in Durango. He was struck as the slow-moving engine passed and was seen staggering off. Concerned, the railroad notified police and the local emergency room. Sure enough, a youngster showed up with injuries which he said were from a fall, but which the emergency room doctor said were much more compatible with a confrontation with heavy equipment. The part of the article that really caught my attention was when it continued to tell how the boy's parents were summoned to the hospital where, according to the paper, in an inebriated state, they denied that the boy was their son. "Our son is a good boy," they were quoted as saying, "he would not do something bad like this."
You hear stories about people abandoning their children, but this really struck home, maybe because we were on vacation and it really had time to sink in. It's no wonder that people are so cynical about the world. This sort of thing, of course, is the reason that many individuals feel that male imagery for God -- particularly referring to God as father -- is not always helpful. What about those people who have been abused, abandoned, and hurt by their fathers; what does this say to them about God?
But there is another side to this that often hits us square in the face on our international mission trips when we visit places in the world where people have more than ample reason to be cynical and embittered. In May, 1997, 22 of us from The University of Evansville spent three weeks in Africa, mostly in South Africa. Even though the apartheid system has now been officially abandoned, its legacy is clearly seen everywhere. In Cape Town you can visit District Six, an area of the city in which, for several generations, black, colored, and white, Christians and Muslims, lived together in harmony. But in the 1960s, when the machinery of apartheid moved into high gear, the area was bulldozed with the intention of creating a "White's Only" enclave. So determined was the government to eradicate any memory of peoples from different ethnic groups living together in harmony that the very streets were torn up and a new grid of streets laid down with new names. The very memory of the place was to be blotted out! The whites never moved in, and District Six still stands as a blight in the heart of beautiful Cape Town.
The truth is even without apartheid things are still bad. For the most part, colored and black citizens of South Africa do not have the economic wherewithal to move out of the townships and formerly segregated areas. It is not being cynical to point out that one of biggest changes in the last few years is that persons who were formerly destitute and homeless in the townships can now be destitute and homeless in formerly white-only areas.
And yet we found amongst the people not just an enormous pride in their beautiful homeland and the unexpectedly relatively non-violent transition it has made from white-only rule to multiracial government, but an amazingly buoyant sense of hope. Hope! Why is this? Is it simply national pride? Is it the charismatic and inspiring figure of Nelson Mandela? No doubt those are factors. But something else struck me on our very first night on the streets of Cape Town. We were introduced to a gnarled old street woman who had staked out her sleeping spot on the steps of the Central Methodist Mission. She embraced one of our students who shared her name -- Rebecca; she became emotional when she discovered another student shared the name of "her dead son." She introduced herself with these words: "My name is Rebecca. I believe in God. And that's why I believe in people."
"I believe in God. And that's why I believe in people." On the one hand, this disenfranchised woman, whose people had been subject to indignities and inhumanities we can barely comprehend, had every reason to be embittered and cynical. And yet she can say that she believes in people! The reason, of course, is the starting point: "I believe in God. And that's why I believe in people." Can it really be that simple? Or that profound?
It is no coincidence that all of the great historical creeds of the church begin, "I Believe in God." Only after considering the person and work of Christ and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit do they get around to the church and the communion of saints. It is no coincidence, because if we start out by looking at people and institutions -- even the church -- we are in big trouble. Only if we start with God are things put in their proper perspective.
This takes us back to the Fatherhood of God issue. If we define God in terms of human fatherhood, we may well end up with an image of God who is vindictive or arbitrary, abandoning, faithless, or worse. The point is that we do not define God; when we describe God as Father, we should be defining human parenthood. Genesis says that humans are created in the image of God, not the other way around.
Jesus calls us to have "eyes that seeing perceive and ears that hear and understand," and promises us that through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit we will come to see the world from God's point of view; all too often, we see God from the world's point of view.
In his book A Simple, Decent Place to Live, Millard Fuller talks about his early business career in the 1960s.
From the very beginning of our business partnership, my partner and I shared one overriding purpose: To make a pile of money. We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich. During the eight years we were partners, we never wavered from that resolve ... So when the company treasurer marched into my office one day in 1964 to announce that I was worth a million dollars, I wasn't surprised.
"What's your next goal?" she asked.
"Why, ten million," I answered, "Why not?"
His was the ultimate American success story. But Fuller goes on to describe the price that this singular focus began to exact, first on his personal integrity, then on his health, and finally on his marriage. Only when his wife, Linda, left him, informing him that the Lincoln, a large house plus a cottage on the lake, two speed boats and a maid didn't make up for his absence from her life and that of his children, did he realize what he had sacrificed for money.
Fuller goes on to describe the transformation that occurred in his life through his association with Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms, a multi-racial Christian community in Georgia. "Millard," Jordan said to Fuller one day, "I don't have anything up my sleeve, but perhaps God has something up his sleeve for both of us." As long as he just "looked around" for role models and lifestyles, all that he could focus on was accumulating more stuff. But as Fuller began to focus more on God and God's desire for all humankind and less on human patterns of success and wealth, he developed what is surely one of the major transforming forces around the world today, Habitat for Humanity. "I believe in God -- and that's why I believe in people."
Now, all of this may seem to go without saying, but I am saying it because of the great danger in always beginning by looking around, by seeing how others are doing, by looking for love in all the wrong places, even as people of God. Not long ago I read some tips for successful churches, and one of things that jumped out at me was that, according to this expert anyway, one characteristic of a successful church is that it will "place more emphasis on increasing the number of members instead of trying to increase the commitment of existing members." Without a doubt, this is the way of marketing; but is it the way of Christ? To whom do we look for models?
Dag Hammarskjold was born in 1905, the son of the Prime Minister of Sweden. He studied law and economics, and taught economics at the University of Stockholm. He became president of the board of the Bank of Sweden, then Minister of State, then head of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations, and finally Secretary General of the United Nations.
In 1960 the Belgian Congo (now the Republic of Congo) became independent, and civil war promptly broke out. Hammarskjold went in to negotiate a cease-fire, and was killed in a plane crash in Zambia on September 18, 1961. It was only after his death that it was discovered that for years he had kept a private journal, writing down his thoughts on the Lordship of Christ and its meaning for his life. Eventually the journal was published under the title Markings. In one place he wrote:
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
I can think of two other ways to make the same point:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
"I believe in God; and that's why I believe in people."
