I want to begin this morning giving thanks to God for a safe journey, for carrying me half-way around the world to meet sisters and brothers in Christ in Mozambique and then bringing me safely home to share the story with you. And I thank our United Methodist Women for inviting me to preach this morning as part of UMW Sunday. My trip was sponsored by the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church, that is the umbrella organization of United Methodist Women. Our women supported me in going and sent 100 angel pendants they made along with me to give to the women of the Women’s Society of the Methodist Church of Mozambique.
As we worship this morning, I can see in my mind’s eye the Mozambiquan Methodist women who are worshiping in their congregations this morning, wearing those angels as a reminder of your love for them and of the faith we share in a God who, in all circumstances, sends angels to keep watch over us and proclaim the Good News of Christ Jesus.
The purpose statement of United Methodist Women calls us to expand concepts of mission through participation in the global ministries of the church. The group I went with is part of a program of the Women’s Division called “Ubuntu eXplorers.” It is a program supported by UMW mission giving, to help us expand concepts of mission. Ubuntu is a word that means “we need one another to be fully human, to be fully alive.” It means that as sisters and brothers in Christ, we share the same experiences of life, though our circumstances might be very different. It means that we are all God’s children and in our unity, we know the universal love of God for all God’s creation. Ubuntu means that alone, we are not complete, that we need one another to be completely human and fully alive.
Today’s Scripture readings reflect this spirit. We see Jesus and a Canaanite woman reaching across divisions of culture and language and gender and religion to create a bond of healing and hope. We hear the Psalmist proclaim: “how very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”
I carry the people of Mozambique in my heart, though we live half-way around the world. Indeed, the journey home was long: 8 hours in a van riding over pot-hole filled roads to get from the north back to the capital of Maputo. An hour-long flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. An 8-hour plus flight diagonally crossing the continent of Africa from J’burg in the southeast to Dakar, Senegal in the northwest. Another 8-hour plus flight across the Atlantic to New York. And then a five-hour plus flight to Los Angeles.
So, I also give special thanks to Jim Smith and our choir for choosing “Don’t be weary, traveler” as this morning’s anthem. You have a weird sense of humor!! But its words are true: “don’t be weary, traveler, come along home to Jesus….I look at the world and the world looks new, come along home to Jesus.”
Indeed, the world looks new after such a long, amazing journey. That newness comes as a gift to me and to us through the eyes of our Mozambiquan sisters and brothers in Christ, faithful disciples who put all their trust in God and sing God’s praises at every turn. I’ll be doing a presentation in SH a week from Tuesday night with music and photos and time to share many more stories and impressions. For today, I want to share what worship is like in a Methodist Church in Mozambique. It is a experience of joy and gratitude and deep faith that can renew us and help make our world look new.
Our first Sunday there was Thanksgiving Sunday—remember, it’s winter right now south of the equator. This is something of a harvest festival, like our Thanksgiving Day. The church was one big room, thatched sides and tin roof, hard-packed dirt for a floor, benches for the people to sit on, mats across the front for the children, chairs only for us, the guests that had come from so far. There was so much to be thankful for, the service lasted 4 ½ hours. The people carried in a very big basket full of cabbage to show the fertility of the land and the food God provides. They carried in a big bag of sugar to symbolize God’s gift of provisions.
The various small groups of the congregation came forward, singing, bringing the offering they had gathered to give thanks to God for another year of life. Each group sang and sang and danced as they brought their offering forward to the head steward. And when they had finished, he retired to a side table with what must have been the Finance Committee to tally up the offerings and report the totals back to the congregation. His report sparked further singing and dancing and the offerings started all over again, this time a special offering going to build their permanent sanctuary. Again, singing and dancing accompanied each offering, all in praise for God’s bountiful blessings.
Then visitors were introduced, starting with people from the area who were new to church, then church members who had been away for a time because of sickness and were now well and back in the worshipping congregation. All this was met with more singing and dancing, giving thanks to God for health, for safe journeys, for new people coming to find the love and grace of Jesus Christ. And then we were introduced, the extra special guests in worship that day. We told our names and where we were from, bringing greetings from our home congregations and women’s groups, and gave our offering—and of course this was greeted with applause, singing and dancing.
Then those who had celebrated birthdays and anniversaries that week were invited forward to be greeted. Each introduced themselves, gave thanks to God for another year of life completed and then gave an offering to God in praise and thanksgiving. More singing and dancing. Sometimes we recognized the hymns, though the people were singing in Shitswa, the language of the region, and Portuguese—“Bringing in the Sheaves,” “Come, Christians, Join to Sing,” the Doxology. We shared in the sacrament of Holy Communion in great reverence, the ultimate expression of our unity in Christ Jesus.
The 4 1/2 hours passed quickly, though to be completely truthful, I’ll tell you that very few people had watches because they can’t afford them. But there was a clock right up in front. No one seemed to pay it any mind. God was being praised and the God who gives life deserves to be praised for as long as it takes. I think it was the most thoroughly joyful worship I have ever experienced.
Let me say a few more things to put this all in context. Mozambique is a place where life is precarious. The average person lives only to be about 40 years old. Malaria is endemic, food is scarce and expensive, water is rarely pure, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic is decimating entire villages and leaving hundreds of thousands of children orphaned, millions across sub-Saharan Africa. Children who go to school at all go for about 2 hours a day. That’s because the facilities are so limited, classes are done in shifts to accommodate all the children in the course of a day. The women in the rural areas where we were spend hours each day walking to fetch water and bundles of firewood for cooking. Men, women and children work in the fields and in their gardens growing vegetables, cassava, pineapple, raising chickens and goats to feed their families.
Life is very hard. But were the people I met filled with fear, foreboding, resignation? NO! They are filled with the love of God and a deep and abiding sense of gratitude for every gift of life. This gratitude is expressed not only in church on Thanksgiving Sunday, but many times throughout the day—we’d pray before breakfast to thank God for sleep and a safe night. We’d pray in the van before starting out on a visit to a school, orphanage or clinic, for a safe journey. Upon arrival, we’d pray before getting off the van, giving thanks for the journey safely completed. We’d pray before every meal and at night before going to bed. Prayers of thanksgiving, long heartfelt prayers, were the thread that wove every day together and kept our hearts focused on God’s love and care. Indeed, as I come home, I can sing with our choir: “I look at the world and the world looks new, come along home to Jesus.”
Ours was a trip of mutual mission. Of knowing that we have as much to receive as we have to give. In the spirit of Ubuntu, this means that our mission trip was not only about taking gifts, which we did—monetary gifts, school supplies and children’s clothes for the orphanage, prayer shawls knitted by the women of the Virginia Conference, the angel pendants our UMW made for me to take, medicine, and insecticide-treated nets as part of the Nothing But Nets! Campaign.
But we received gifts as well. The gifts we received from the Mozambiquan women are primarily spiritual—gifts of self-sacrificing hospitality, in which we were given the best seats at church and in the van, a bounty of food at every meal. Gifts of the witness of deep, deep faith--the remembrance that everything comes from God, that to God all praise is due. Gifts of experiencing the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the crushing burdens of life. Gifts of sharing together in the power of prayer to root and ground us in God’s love and grace. Gifts of singing and dancing—the experience of boundless joy and laughter and praise in the midst of it all.
These are gifts that come back to richly bless our congregation and our journey of faith. God is blessing our congregation with these spiritual gifts as many go out in service and mission. In Todd Erlandson’s mission trip to Vietnam which you may hear more about following worship today. In our Gulf Coast work teams, as our youth return home later today. In the prison ministries of Leslie and Anson Nordby. In the rich experience of the children in Vacation Bible School. In the myriad ministries so many of you engage in, week in and week out, with people in need in our own communities.
God is blessing us with transformation and renewal as we receive back the very gifts our sometimes lackadaisical and self-centered faith needs. God is waking us up, helping us look at the world in ways that make it new, that make us new. We are being transformed as disciples of Christ for the transformation of the world. God is bringing us home, to faith that is deep and wide, generous and full of joy!
What will we give? What will we risk? How will we hold God’s people in our heart so that God might transform us? What do the people of our community need of us, the church? Why has God put us here in this place and time? Who is God calling us to be—in and for this world?
Thanks be to God for making us part of Christ’s church, this big global family that holds one another fast in love and prayer, that keeps us ever mindful and prayerful of people we may not ever personally meet, that makes our lives richer and bigger and fuller, that makes the whole world a home, where God reigns and where kindred live together in unity.
Amen.
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"God's Hands Hold the Whole World"