What an extra special day this it—it’s both Pentecost and Mother’s Day. And to help us celebrate, I want to put our love and respect for our mothers and grandmothers in a global perspective by lifting up some of the work of the General Conference of our United Methodist Church. For it is abundantly clear that we are indeed one in Christ Jesus, one in the Lord. On this Mother’s Day, I want to lift up that sense of being one worldwide family that lifts up mothers and children all across this globe and seeks for them all the fullness of life and health and faith.
How blessed we are to have within the beautiful family of this congregation speakers of some of the many languages of God. Just think how wonderful heaven is going to sound, when we are all speaking the language of our birth and our hearts, yet still understanding one another, finding communion with one another and praising God in a mighty chorus.
This is part of the gift of Pentecost, the day in which God sends the Holy Spirit to be with us and live in us. God sends the Holy Spirit to give birth to the church, a church of many peoples, lands and languages. A church of many cultures and ethnicities and hues. A global church embracing the whole of God’s world, yet united in love and praise and service.
Now, we know from hearing the Pentecost scripture read in many languages this morning from within our very own church family, we know the beauty and the wonder of God’s amazing wide world. On that first Pentecost day, God’s peoples had gathered from all parts of the Mediterranean world. Left to their own devices, they would not have been able to converse with one another. They all spoke different languages. But the Holy Spirit acted like the great Heavenly Translator that day to open up to them a reality deeper than any limitation of human language and reveal to them their common humanity, their relationship with one another as children of God, together the Body of Christ.
The General Conference of our worldwide United Methodist Church gathers delegates from all over the world. And for us to be able to work together, translators were provided to work from nine spoken languages and American Sign language. We worshipped and deliberated and prayed in all those languages—French, English, Portuguese, German, Russian, Swahili, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Korean--and somehow it works. From the formal plenary sessions to the informal conversation in hallways and elevators, we experience the beauty and wonder of our common humanity through the translating grace of the Holy Spirit. We are one in Christ Jesus, one in the Lord.
And that means, of course, just as in every family, that we share one another’s joys and we share one another’s sorrows. We rejoice when one part of the body is lifted up and we respond with conviction when any part of the body is hurting or in need. We speak one another’s language—the language of the heart, the language of service, the language of love.
Of course, here at FUMC, we’ve experienced this wide love of God’s global family through all our mission outreach, responding to the needs of God’s people in so many places. We’ve experienced it directly in our fledgling relationship with the church in Vietnam. We’ve experienced it in our partner relationship with the Iware District in Nigeria and I was delighted to be able to meet with some of our partners who were at General Conference as delegates and to get news of our common work there.
Let me give you just two examples today from General Conference to bring home some of that experience to you. In one of the most exciting initiatives of our UMC, we are partnering with UN Development Fund and the Gates Foundation in the Nothing But Nets campaign to wipe out malaria in Africa. You may remember that Nothing But Nets was one of our Alternative Christmas projects last year.
Mr. Bill Gates, Sr., co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, addressed the General Conference. The father of Bill Gates, Jr., (that’s how it works!), a very successful business man now retired, Gates told us that it wasn’t until late in his life, over the last decade, through his work with the Gates Foundation, that he has come to a new worldview as he realizes just how small the world really is. He confessed this somewhat apologetically, because he said that we Methodists have understood this for nearly 300 years, since the time of John Wesley. He invited us to say together the words of John Wesley: “I look on all the world as my parish.” (Let’s do that together now.)
Said Gates: “Almost 300 years ago, your founder, John Wesley, explained the moral implications of what is now fashionably called ‘globalization.’ [Wesley] was describing “the bonds of mutual responsibility that bind us all together. This is the key ingredient for a peaceful world in which all people are treated as equally precious. When each of us arrives at the conclusion that parish lines and national boundaries cannot wipe away our common humanity, then we do what is necessary to end needless suffering.” [You Methodists], he said, “are 12 million people armed with the conviction that this world is our parish, which makes us the most powerful weapon against disease.”
We are one in Christ Jesus. We are one in the Lord. And through the translating grace of the Holy Spirit we live and serve together to transform the world in mutual bonds familial love.
Let me tell you about another leader who addressed the General Conference, Her Excellency, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of the Republic of Liberia. This remarkable woman, the first woman president anywhere in Africa, is a faithful UM laywoman, a daughter of the UMC, educated by the UMC, graduate of the Methodist high school in West Africa established by a woman missionary in 1839. Pres. Sirleaf went on to graduate from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and into an impressive career in international banking and finance. As Minister of Finance in Liberia, she spearheaded a move to curb the mismanagement of government funds, was later placed under house arrest and sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking out against the abuses of the government. She escaped, fled to the U.S. where she became an Assistant General Secretary of the U.N., before returning to her country to stand for election in 2005. On January 16, 2006, she was inaugurated as President.
What a woman to honor on this Mother’s Day as we celebrate the worldwide church. She is the mother of four sons and the grandmother of seven. And she said: “I feel at home, very, very well at home, with you, members of my United Methodist family.” This mother, this United Methodist laywoman, is leading her country back from the devastation of decades of civil war, grinding poverty and crushing debt. She said: “I am proud to say that we have moved Liberia from a failed state, from that awful flicker on your television screen of a nation in chaos, death and destruction, to a potential post-conflict success story.”
She told us that: “the greatest challenges we face as a post-conflict nation fall in three critical areas: the challenges of reducing income poverty through skills training and jobs, the challenge of helping our youth reclaim their future through education, the challenge of nurturing and strengthening democracy through the exercise of participation and choice.” “We need the church now as never before…because the task of national renewal, the task to deal with the financial, human and technical neglect is huge—well beyond our national capacity…as we plan and pursue programs to address poverty, improve education and health services, and give our people dignity.”
I know that to most of us here this morning, Liberia seems very, very far away. We’d be hard-pressed to find in on a map of Africa. Its needs and challenges seem so distant, in light of the strains and stresses we each feel in living life day to day. Left to own devices, without the worldwide church, we might not come to the realization that those struggling to rebuild Liberia are our brothers and sisters.
But thanks be to God, we have, through our worldwide United Methodist connection, ways to live into the future of this world with purpose and resolve and hope. We need not be done in by the world’s needs, but rather be challenged to respond. We need not be overwhelmed by things out of our immediate control, but rather empowered to take our part in bringing life and health and happiness to all God’s children.
We know, through the Nothing But Nets campaign, that we can be part of bringing health to the world’s children. As Mr. Gates said, we Methodists know that all the suffering people in this world have mothers who love them and children who need them and friends who cherish them and we ought to help them.
And we know, through the example of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, that we can support the education and empowerment of mothers and youth for the betterment of all. We know that through the commitment of our United Methodist Church to education and health care and salvation in Christ Jesus, all God’s children can live lives that are healthy and whole.
And we know, through the translating grace of the Holy Spirit, that on this great Pentecost Day, God still sends power to the church to be a sentinel in this world, to be a beacon of light and a bearer of hope. We love our mothers and grandmothers here in our pews this morning and wherever they may be this day. And that love extends beyond, to the whole family of God. We look on all the world as our parish.
Thanks be to God this day for mothers and grandmothers in every place. Thanks be to God that through the church, we get to be part of this great big global family. Thanks be to God for the translating grace of the Holy Spirit that binds us together in love and sends us forth to serve.
Amen.
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
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"Our Global Family"