Saints Alive
November 04, 2007
November 4, 2007
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Luke 19:1-10
The Gospel story is one that is familiar to most folks who ever attended Sunday School – but we miss a lot if we stop at understanding it as just a story about a short man who climbed a tree to see Jesus. It’s the story about a man who had utterly accommodated to his culture – who as a tax collector was complicit with the exploitation systems of his time, but who was willing to make the effort to see things from a different perspective, and when he had stepped out of his cultural location, was able to recognize the invitation of Jesus to him, as well as to understand that accepting that invitation created challenges to him. He understood that following Jesus would cost him, but he found in accepting that cost that he was restored to a position not only in his contemporary community, but within a historical community as a child of Abraham – a community which, as Habbakuk reminds us, carries the vision of God for the world, an alternate vision, the prophetic vision that Jesus describes as the kingdom of God.
Last Thursday, the day I returned home from Africa, was All Saints Day. It is one of my favorite holidays in the church year, both because it reminds us that we are part of a living tradition that connects us to God’s people around the world and through the ages, and also because I was ordained on All Saints Day. This year marked 10 years of ordination for me. And not only as an ordained minister, but as a baptized believer, I exercise my participation in the alternative vision of God, lived out in the community of the church. When we say historical community, we are not saying historical as in past – we are saying historical as in connected to a living stream of people who have gathered throughout the ages.
Isaac Newton said, in explaining how the discoveries of contemporary scientists rely on the work of those who have come before, that we stand on the shoulders of giants. The New Testament Letter to the Hebrews says that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. We are part of a living tradition which worships and serves the living God. We are people of the Book, people whose tradition includes the Bible, and we recognize that story as our story, but we also understand our connection to people since Biblical times, across the ages, and around the world – people who have sought to understand and to follow God.
I went to Africa for just over two weeks. Our middle son, Tyler, is studying in Tanzania through a program developed by a consortium of Lutheran colleges, and so my mother and I went to visit him, but our trip included much more than a family visit. I worked with ecumenical partners to develop a study trip, and we had an amazing journey. While there, I learned about the Tanzanian art tradition of the Tree of Life – the tree is formed by interlaced members of the community – underscoring the community dimension of life. It reminds me very much of the concept of the communion of saints – that we are connected to one another in essential ways and it is in relationship with God and each other where we find a full life. It’s a hard concept for Americans, because our culture values independence more than connection. Life in intimate community, where we care deeply for one another and recognize our essential connections to one another, is part of the prophetic vision of God – God’s kingdom is always a shared vision. And we, as a community of faith, cannot be connected to God without being connected to other communities of faith throughout the world.
There is a lot of talk these days about the growth of Christianity in Africa – I’ve been reading about it, and now have experienced just a little of it. We worshipped with Lutherans in a rural church of over 500 in attendance, where many members walk over 10 miles each way to attend church every Sunday. At that church we heard the joyous music of 6 to 8 children’s choirs. After church, we watched the auction of the offering items brought by the members who don’t have cash – an auction including eggs, tomatoes, sugar cane. Other members bought these items, and the cash went to the church budget. This rural church is building a health center to serve its community, a center including an outpatient clinic, hospital wards, and a women’s health center. This church also is connected to a young evangelist, Martin Tango, who because of the hardships he experienced as an orphan at 13, is involved in ministries with children as young as 3 to help educate them, and raise them to be people of hope and faith. This church seeks our prayers, and asks if we can help them with another project they are undertaking: building a school for girls. Many people we met were concerned with the education of girls, and we know that educating girls has a direct impact on population growth, because educated women bear fewer children. This church also presented us with gifts, Masai cloths for each of us, and a handmade cooking pot for my mother, who is a potter. Mom gave that to me, and it is now Tyler’s. They invited me to preach, and so I shared a short message of greeting, which was translated both into Swahili and into the language of the Iraqw tribe, whose community this is. Tyler has learned enough Kiswahili that when he and my mom were each invited to greet the church, he addressed the church in Swahili.
We met with people from the ecumenical relief program, World Vision, and went to visit one of the children I sponsor through that organization. It turns out that she is a member of the Masai tribe, so we visited with her family in a home about the size of my office. Despite how little they have, they honored us by slaughtering a goat in our honor and serving it to us. Masai people live almost entirely on meat. Most of you know that I am vegetarian and have been for a number of years. It would have been a violation of many of the reasons I am vegetarian for me to have refused their hospitality, so we shared the gift of that meal together. Amazingly, by the way, the child I sponsor who is called Elizabeth actually has the full name of Susana Elizabeth. My name is Susan Elizabeth also, so I was especially touched by the bracelet and cross they had made for me with the name that we share, Susana, on them. We saw the schools that World Vision is helping to support, and learned about their ministry in the area – ministry which serves the whole community in health and education, and not only the families with sponsored children. Sponsoring is for the donors – to help us develop a sense of awareness and connection.
I worshiped in one of the daily services of Azania Front Lutheran Church next door to the hostel where we stayed in Dar es Salaam. I never heard of a Lutheran Church with daily services but this one has them every morning at 6:30 so that people who work in the city can worship before work. This was no minimalist service either – there were probably 300 people there who sang for 30 minutes with the contemporary band, or the organ, and then listened to a full service which was staffed by 3 clergy the day I attended.
We visited a project sponsored by Church World Service outside of Dar es Salaam. This project is not overtly faith-based, but it is some very important work being supported by people of faith in the over 35 denominations who are part of Church World Service. This project, called Trufood, is helping in the area of food security, teaching small farmers agricultural principles, financial principles, marketing strategies, and organizational structures which are transforming their lives. They have learned about budgeting, microfinance, and banking. They are formed into sweet potato farming cooperatives in 5 small villages. Each cooperative works together to cultivate the sweet potato vines that are later distributed to the individual farmers. These cooperatives are comprised of both men and women who farm. They have formed a savings and loan cooperative also, through which members can obtain small loans. These people told us again and again how their lives had been utterly changed by this project. As some men rode by on bicycles carrying huge bundles of sweet potatoes, one man said, “I used to be one of them, but now I can earn money to pay my child’s school fees. I have learn…..” They also thanked us for coming to meet with them, instead of staying in the city and tourist destinations. They are trying to raise funds to buy a slicer and a mill, because they have learned that they can slice the sweet potatoes, sun-dry them, and then mill them into flour which can be used alongside wheat flour to add nutrition to foods, and the milling extends the shelf life of the potatoes.
We visited a Catholic Museum in Bagamoyo, a town whose name means “lay down your heart” and is so-named because of the heartbreak created by the slave trade that flourished there. We also visited an Anglican Church on Zanzibar, the island off Bagomoyo which was also important in the slave trade. And we saw many remembrances of the Christian saints who took on the slave trade – people like the missionary David Livingstone, like the Catholic priests in Bagamoyo who bought the freedom of many slaves, but baptized few of them because their primary mission wasn’t conversion, it was freedom. At the Anglican Church in Zanzibar, which has a peace pole like ours, we also saw that the communion table has a mosaic circle in front of it marking the spot where the whipping pole had stood in the slave market that had been in that very spot. So the suffering and anguish of the men, women and children who had been sold into slavery there is remembered each week in worship, and plaques in the church also honor the Christian leaders who worked to end slavery, and other plaques honor Biblical prophets, so the folks in that church understand that the prophetic vision of God is not merely a old story from the Bible, but part of the living tradition that ended slavery 130 years ago, and that lives in community with the mosque next door today.
We worshipped last Sunday with a church of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, and what a thrill – they were ordaining elders! When they asked all the visitors to stand and introduce ourselves, and learned that I am a Presbyterian minister, they invited me to say the benediction for the service. It was especially exciting to be there, because we heard a women’s choir from a new church that is helping women get out of dangerous mining work and learn to create batik fabrics. We also heard a sermon from a guest preacher who is on the General Assembly staff of that denomination, and whose position used to be communicating with other partner churches around the world, so he even knows our executive presbyter, Lucy Rupe.
We also saw the beauty of the Indian Ocean and its beaches, the grandeur of a national park and its wildlife – we saw over 20 varieties of wild animals, many with their babies as it is spring in Africa, and we saw the most beautiful birds I’ve ever seen. We learn about the soapberry tree, which has berries that can be held under running water to suds up and use for washing hands, hair or laundry. We saw mango trees and learned how cashews grow. We visited craft markets, the textile markets, a craft fair by an arts college, and met with a potter who, as he described it, “opens the earth to mine his clay.”
We met with a doctor who is developing hospice programs primarily because of the AIDS pandemic. We learned that in Africa, just counting those who have already died of AIDS or are HIV-infected, there are over 29 million infected with AIDS – over six times as many people as died in Hitler’s extermination of Jews, gays and dissidents. We heard about the AIDS crisis, and we also heard from Tyler and his classmates about some of the challenges in education – overcrowded classrooms (40-60 in Dar es Salaam but sometimes over 100 in rural areas) and schools without textbooks and with significant teacher absenteeism. We heard about the misinformation about the U.S. being taught in one of Tyler’s large lecture classes. We heard that it was news to another large class that feminists believe a woman has a right over her own body. We saw poverty, and inadequate infrastructures. We didn’t romanticize our experience. But I already miss the relationality that characterizes African culture, where ‘welcome’ and ‘thank you’, ‘how are you’ and ‘good’, ‘what’s up’ and ‘cool’ are woven into most encounters – karibu, asante sana, hujambo, nzuri, mambo, poa – I miss these greetings and the hospitality of the culture already. But I am so glad to be back where a shower routinely includes both hot water and water pressure, where people don’t have to fear malaria, and perhaps most important, where I am not a guest.
The church is very alive in Africa, and it is alive because the people know they are worshipping a living God. There is a lot of talk in the press about the African church being more conservative, and I’m sure there are elements of it that are. But the people we met were inclusive, not exclusive. They talked about transformation, not salvation. They were excited to be part of the Christian church in places where Christian churches are often living peacefully next door to Muslim mosques. The people we met are excited to be part of a global community, and they understand the gospel to be a holistic faith that encompasses the way people live as well as the way people believe. They see working for justice as being integral to living in faith. The prophet Habakkuk reminded his people, and us, that God still has a vision. The vision is alive, God is alive, and we are called and challenged to be part of that living tradition of the communion of saints that embodies the kingdom of God. And being part of this vision will cost us – we are called to give so that we notice the giving – as the Masai family gave to us. We are called to be saints – to be people who are shaped, enlivened, challenged, and nourished by the Spirit of the Living God. We are called to be people whose faith makes a difference – in us and in the world. We are called to be people who are willing, like Zaccheus, to get outside of our usual space, go out on a limb, and look at the world from a different perspective, to hear the invitation of Jesus, and to be changed by responding to our faith.
Saints aren’t dead people who were extra-good – saints are real people who are extra-alive, who are part of a living tradition that works for justice, gives generously, lives creatively and is utterly engaged with the earth, and all the people in it. Let us be saints, people who are wholly committed to the challenges and joys, the work and relationships that come in living out God’s vision for the world. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Luke 19:1-10
The Gospel story is one that is familiar to most folks who ever attended Sunday School – but we miss a lot if we stop at understanding it as just a story about a short man who climbed a tree to see Jesus. It’s the story about a man who had utterly accommodated to his culture – who as a tax collector was complicit with the exploitation systems of his time, but who was willing to make the effort to see things from a different perspective, and when he had stepped out of his cultural location, was able to recognize the invitation of Jesus to him, as well as to understand that accepting that invitation created challenges to him. He understood that following Jesus would cost him, but he found in accepting that cost that he was restored to a position not only in his contemporary community, but within a historical community as a child of Abraham – a community which, as Habbakuk reminds us, carries the vision of God for the world, an alternate vision, the prophetic vision that Jesus describes as the kingdom of God.
Last Thursday, the day I returned home from Africa, was All Saints Day. It is one of my favorite holidays in the church year, both because it reminds us that we are part of a living tradition that connects us to God’s people around the world and through the ages, and also because I was ordained on All Saints Day. This year marked 10 years of ordination for me. And not only as an ordained minister, but as a baptized believer, I exercise my participation in the alternative vision of God, lived out in the community of the church. When we say historical community, we are not saying historical as in past – we are saying historical as in connected to a living stream of people who have gathered throughout the ages.
Isaac Newton said, in explaining how the discoveries of contemporary scientists rely on the work of those who have come before, that we stand on the shoulders of giants. The New Testament Letter to the Hebrews says that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. We are part of a living tradition which worships and serves the living God. We are people of the Book, people whose tradition includes the Bible, and we recognize that story as our story, but we also understand our connection to people since Biblical times, across the ages, and around the world – people who have sought to understand and to follow God.
I went to Africa for just over two weeks. Our middle son, Tyler, is studying in Tanzania through a program developed by a consortium of Lutheran colleges, and so my mother and I went to visit him, but our trip included much more than a family visit. I worked with ecumenical partners to develop a study trip, and we had an amazing journey. While there, I learned about the Tanzanian art tradition of the Tree of Life – the tree is formed by interlaced members of the community – underscoring the community dimension of life. It reminds me very much of the concept of the communion of saints – that we are connected to one another in essential ways and it is in relationship with God and each other where we find a full life. It’s a hard concept for Americans, because our culture values independence more than connection. Life in intimate community, where we care deeply for one another and recognize our essential connections to one another, is part of the prophetic vision of God – God’s kingdom is always a shared vision. And we, as a community of faith, cannot be connected to God without being connected to other communities of faith throughout the world.
There is a lot of talk these days about the growth of Christianity in Africa – I’ve been reading about it, and now have experienced just a little of it. We worshipped with Lutherans in a rural church of over 500 in attendance, where many members walk over 10 miles each way to attend church every Sunday. At that church we heard the joyous music of 6 to 8 children’s choirs. After church, we watched the auction of the offering items brought by the members who don’t have cash – an auction including eggs, tomatoes, sugar cane. Other members bought these items, and the cash went to the church budget. This rural church is building a health center to serve its community, a center including an outpatient clinic, hospital wards, and a women’s health center. This church also is connected to a young evangelist, Martin Tango, who because of the hardships he experienced as an orphan at 13, is involved in ministries with children as young as 3 to help educate them, and raise them to be people of hope and faith. This church seeks our prayers, and asks if we can help them with another project they are undertaking: building a school for girls. Many people we met were concerned with the education of girls, and we know that educating girls has a direct impact on population growth, because educated women bear fewer children. This church also presented us with gifts, Masai cloths for each of us, and a handmade cooking pot for my mother, who is a potter. Mom gave that to me, and it is now Tyler’s. They invited me to preach, and so I shared a short message of greeting, which was translated both into Swahili and into the language of the Iraqw tribe, whose community this is. Tyler has learned enough Kiswahili that when he and my mom were each invited to greet the church, he addressed the church in Swahili.
We met with people from the ecumenical relief program, World Vision, and went to visit one of the children I sponsor through that organization. It turns out that she is a member of the Masai tribe, so we visited with her family in a home about the size of my office. Despite how little they have, they honored us by slaughtering a goat in our honor and serving it to us. Masai people live almost entirely on meat. Most of you know that I am vegetarian and have been for a number of years. It would have been a violation of many of the reasons I am vegetarian for me to have refused their hospitality, so we shared the gift of that meal together. Amazingly, by the way, the child I sponsor who is called Elizabeth actually has the full name of Susana Elizabeth. My name is Susan Elizabeth also, so I was especially touched by the bracelet and cross they had made for me with the name that we share, Susana, on them. We saw the schools that World Vision is helping to support, and learned about their ministry in the area – ministry which serves the whole community in health and education, and not only the families with sponsored children. Sponsoring is for the donors – to help us develop a sense of awareness and connection.
I worshiped in one of the daily services of Azania Front Lutheran Church next door to the hostel where we stayed in Dar es Salaam. I never heard of a Lutheran Church with daily services but this one has them every morning at 6:30 so that people who work in the city can worship before work. This was no minimalist service either – there were probably 300 people there who sang for 30 minutes with the contemporary band, or the organ, and then listened to a full service which was staffed by 3 clergy the day I attended.
We visited a project sponsored by Church World Service outside of Dar es Salaam. This project is not overtly faith-based, but it is some very important work being supported by people of faith in the over 35 denominations who are part of Church World Service. This project, called Trufood, is helping in the area of food security, teaching small farmers agricultural principles, financial principles, marketing strategies, and organizational structures which are transforming their lives. They have learned about budgeting, microfinance, and banking. They are formed into sweet potato farming cooperatives in 5 small villages. Each cooperative works together to cultivate the sweet potato vines that are later distributed to the individual farmers. These cooperatives are comprised of both men and women who farm. They have formed a savings and loan cooperative also, through which members can obtain small loans. These people told us again and again how their lives had been utterly changed by this project. As some men rode by on bicycles carrying huge bundles of sweet potatoes, one man said, “I used to be one of them, but now I can earn money to pay my child’s school fees. I have learn…..” They also thanked us for coming to meet with them, instead of staying in the city and tourist destinations. They are trying to raise funds to buy a slicer and a mill, because they have learned that they can slice the sweet potatoes, sun-dry them, and then mill them into flour which can be used alongside wheat flour to add nutrition to foods, and the milling extends the shelf life of the potatoes.
We visited a Catholic Museum in Bagamoyo, a town whose name means “lay down your heart” and is so-named because of the heartbreak created by the slave trade that flourished there. We also visited an Anglican Church on Zanzibar, the island off Bagomoyo which was also important in the slave trade. And we saw many remembrances of the Christian saints who took on the slave trade – people like the missionary David Livingstone, like the Catholic priests in Bagamoyo who bought the freedom of many slaves, but baptized few of them because their primary mission wasn’t conversion, it was freedom. At the Anglican Church in Zanzibar, which has a peace pole like ours, we also saw that the communion table has a mosaic circle in front of it marking the spot where the whipping pole had stood in the slave market that had been in that very spot. So the suffering and anguish of the men, women and children who had been sold into slavery there is remembered each week in worship, and plaques in the church also honor the Christian leaders who worked to end slavery, and other plaques honor Biblical prophets, so the folks in that church understand that the prophetic vision of God is not merely a old story from the Bible, but part of the living tradition that ended slavery 130 years ago, and that lives in community with the mosque next door today.
We worshipped last Sunday with a church of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, and what a thrill – they were ordaining elders! When they asked all the visitors to stand and introduce ourselves, and learned that I am a Presbyterian minister, they invited me to say the benediction for the service. It was especially exciting to be there, because we heard a women’s choir from a new church that is helping women get out of dangerous mining work and learn to create batik fabrics. We also heard a sermon from a guest preacher who is on the General Assembly staff of that denomination, and whose position used to be communicating with other partner churches around the world, so he even knows our executive presbyter, Lucy Rupe.
We also saw the beauty of the Indian Ocean and its beaches, the grandeur of a national park and its wildlife – we saw over 20 varieties of wild animals, many with their babies as it is spring in Africa, and we saw the most beautiful birds I’ve ever seen. We learn about the soapberry tree, which has berries that can be held under running water to suds up and use for washing hands, hair or laundry. We saw mango trees and learned how cashews grow. We visited craft markets, the textile markets, a craft fair by an arts college, and met with a potter who, as he described it, “opens the earth to mine his clay.”
We met with a doctor who is developing hospice programs primarily because of the AIDS pandemic. We learned that in Africa, just counting those who have already died of AIDS or are HIV-infected, there are over 29 million infected with AIDS – over six times as many people as died in Hitler’s extermination of Jews, gays and dissidents. We heard about the AIDS crisis, and we also heard from Tyler and his classmates about some of the challenges in education – overcrowded classrooms (40-60 in Dar es Salaam but sometimes over 100 in rural areas) and schools without textbooks and with significant teacher absenteeism. We heard about the misinformation about the U.S. being taught in one of Tyler’s large lecture classes. We heard that it was news to another large class that feminists believe a woman has a right over her own body. We saw poverty, and inadequate infrastructures. We didn’t romanticize our experience. But I already miss the relationality that characterizes African culture, where ‘welcome’ and ‘thank you’, ‘how are you’ and ‘good’, ‘what’s up’ and ‘cool’ are woven into most encounters – karibu, asante sana, hujambo, nzuri, mambo, poa – I miss these greetings and the hospitality of the culture already. But I am so glad to be back where a shower routinely includes both hot water and water pressure, where people don’t have to fear malaria, and perhaps most important, where I am not a guest.
The church is very alive in Africa, and it is alive because the people know they are worshipping a living God. There is a lot of talk in the press about the African church being more conservative, and I’m sure there are elements of it that are. But the people we met were inclusive, not exclusive. They talked about transformation, not salvation. They were excited to be part of the Christian church in places where Christian churches are often living peacefully next door to Muslim mosques. The people we met are excited to be part of a global community, and they understand the gospel to be a holistic faith that encompasses the way people live as well as the way people believe. They see working for justice as being integral to living in faith. The prophet Habakkuk reminded his people, and us, that God still has a vision. The vision is alive, God is alive, and we are called and challenged to be part of that living tradition of the communion of saints that embodies the kingdom of God. And being part of this vision will cost us – we are called to give so that we notice the giving – as the Masai family gave to us. We are called to be saints – to be people who are shaped, enlivened, challenged, and nourished by the Spirit of the Living God. We are called to be people whose faith makes a difference – in us and in the world. We are called to be people who are willing, like Zaccheus, to get outside of our usual space, go out on a limb, and look at the world from a different perspective, to hear the invitation of Jesus, and to be changed by responding to our faith.
Saints aren’t dead people who were extra-good – saints are real people who are extra-alive, who are part of a living tradition that works for justice, gives generously, lives creatively and is utterly engaged with the earth, and all the people in it. Let us be saints, people who are wholly committed to the challenges and joys, the work and relationships that come in living out God’s vision for the world. Amen.