SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT – 4 MARCH 2007
ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
“Heirs of the Promise”
The woman was a stranger to me. She and her husband, a man known to my husband, were waiting for the doors to open at Popejoy on Friday night. So while we waited we chatted. Rather, she chatted, and I listened. I listened as the woman spoke of her granddaughter, working at the Carter Center, a young woman who has lived in many places in the world in her young life – who is fluent in Vietnamese having lived in Viet Nam during high school, who has also been to Singapore and most recently Darfur “although they wouldn’t tell me where she was until she returned – they didn’t want me to worry.” The grandmother confessed to being concerned – and saying as much to her granddaughter. The young woman’s reply: “But you always told me how your mother said to you every day when you left the house, ‘Do something to make the world a better place today.’ That’s what I’m doing, grandmother, that’s all I’m trying to do – in some small way to make the world a better place.”
Abram was called by God to follow the road of challenge and danger, for God’s sake to become the father of many nations. By their witness of faithfulness Abram and Sarai would make the world a better place by making God known. Not without doubt – what shall I use? How can I model your faithfulness God when I have no heirs? “I will provide – trust me.” Abram trusted, God honored the covenant, and the rest is history – God’s history, God’s story, now ours. Abram and partner Sarai, renamed by God Abraham and Sarah in honor of their faithfulness on the eve of becoming parents to Isaac and to the generations that would follow, persisted as servant leaders. And their descendants abound.
I’ve often wondered what it is that possesses people to give up what they know, to give up their creature comforts and follow the path of danger. It’s a question that accompanied me for the past two weeks in my sojourn to West Africa. In the early 70’s Tom and Mary Holman had good jobs, a wonderful old brick bungalow in Racine WI, friends and family nearby, good health, and dreams of one day having a family of their own. No one ever told Tom “do something to make the world a better place.” Most of the messages he got growing up were more like “you don’t measure up, you aren’t good enough.” I know – I am as he said when introducing me to his Ghanaian friends and coworkers, his “direct sister – immediately after me, same mother same father.” But somewhere along the line – maybe at the Lutheran college he attended, or in the fellowship of the church they belonged to in Racine, somewhere along the line the strong word of God’s promise took a hold on their lives. And within a couple years they turned from comfortable corporate lives in Middle America to wanderers in a country far from their roots among a people far different from their own. Their support would come now not from their own work but from the fruits of their witness, God leading scores of people over the years to sign up to offer prayer support and financial support so that they could pursue the cause that had become their hearts’ desire – to make the Word of God available to the people of Anufo-land.
The cost has been high by our standards – malaria and other acute and chronic diseases common to that area of Ghana have taken away the ability to bear children; relationships with family and friends have been redefined around furloughs that initially were every four years and now are every two years due to the reality of aging parents; while they have been planning for retirement it is one that looks more like a modest life in a missionary apartment in Minnesota than one of comfort and cruises in Florida.
The cost has been high, and the blessings overwhelming. I cannot describe to you how amazing it was to be present on the day of dedication, when nearly 1000 people came from villages and cities near and far, from the neighboring country of Togo and from far distant countries like England and the USA, to celebrate the revealing of the Anufo New Testament. The theme: “God’s Word is our Inheritance.” People sat in the hot sun for four hours, buffeted by occasional strong winds, listening to speakers and preachers, singing songs and watching cultural dances, as the carefully planned ceremony unfolded. The crowd was audibly pleased when one special guest came to the microphone – a well known radio personality from Togo, an Anufo speaker himself, came to the ceremony to lend his words of affirmation and support, and to record some of the songs specially written for the day to share over the airwaves. But the real delight erupted when the cultural dancers entered with the beautifully wrapped “first copy” balanced in a calabash bowl and presented it to the Roman Catholic Archbishop. Father Victor read the blessing as all the other pastors present lifted other copies of the Bible high in the air in a show of thanksgiving to God for the gift of God’s word in the Anufo mother tongue. Almost 600 copies were sold that day, and enough money received in offerings to purchase the rest of the 1000 copies the Bible Society of Ghana had delivered from Accra for the weekend’s event.
What a joy it was the next day, during the four hour ecumenical service of worship, when folks followed along in their new Bibles as the lectors read the lessons and the preacher referred to various passages in his message. “The word of truth…the gospel of your salvation … is the pledge of our inheritance,” the writer of Ephesians penned centuries ago. “And today,” Pastor Timothy Bower affirmed with strong words brimming with joy, “today all Anufo-land rejoices at long last – after 280 years as a people in this region of Africa – at long last we rejoice to be true heirs of the promise. We have the Word of truth, the gospel of our salvation in our own tongue – God has blessed us with the true inheritance.” Each year now there will be an ecumenical service on Transfiguration Sunday – a service of Thanksgiving for the Word of which they are now fully heirs.
Abram trusted God enough to challenge: “O Lord God, you tell me not to be afraid, but what will you give me?” His faith was strong enough to allow room for doubt. And now even the Christians and Muslims of the North Region of Ghana call Abraham father. That is our heritage as well, beloved heirs of the promise. Baptized into Christ, in tehr the covenant God has made with the world in Christ, our journey following Jesus is rarely without danger, conflict, challenge or doubt. Yet it is always with God. Stand firm. Walk faithfully forward. The God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of all the Toms and Marys and Timothys, the God of Jesus is your shield as well, your wings, your healing, and your hope.
Amen