Why Go?

Below is a copy of the sermon I preach September 9th.  As some of you know, I read a book by Rob Bell called Sex God.  He had a chapter in the book titled God Wears Red Lipstick and it is one of the best explanations I have read about why we matter.  The whole summer I have been teaching and preaching that: PEOPLE ARE NOT OBJECTS!!!!!!!!!!!  Anyway the sermon below is why kids in Africa matter.

The Image of God

As many of you know, in about two weeks I will be leaving for Africa.  I have been asked to train aid workers in Uganda and Kenya to help severally traumatized children to begin to cope with the problems associated with violent trauma.  Many of the children we will encounter are labeled “war affected.”  Most of the children have been victims of war or participated in war as child soldiers.  Some of the children have been brutalized as a result of war and other have been perpetrators because of drugs and behavior modification.  Now that the wars are quiet (for the moment) the children are in camps or slums awaiting the next phase. 
Often the child soldiers were given a steady diet of drugs and violence.  They were told you must kill this village because these people are responsible for the deaths of your family members.  They were given copious amounts of cocaine and marijuana to keep them numb but hyped up.  They were kept numb so the memories of the violence they have seen and participated in would not affect them.  They were kept hyped up so that at a moment’s notice they could continue the rampage that has so ravaged their land. 
Once the drugs begin to wear off and the children are no longer a part of the “army,” memories come and they become despondent.  The children are victims all the way around; either because they were child soldiers or because they suffered at the hands of soldiers.  The memories they are left with are overwhelming because they can recount first hand what it is to be stripped of their humanity.  They know what the term anti-human means. 
Why should this matter to Trinity Church?
Because children should not be soldiers?
Because kids shouldn’t have to experience these things?
Because one of our youth group members fled Freetown, Sierra Leone for his life?
Yes to all of the above – IT IS ANTI-HUMAN.
Being anti-human is anti-God.  The Bible begins with the book of Genesis and one of the first things we are told is that God created humans in his image.  We are created in the image of God!! Wow!!  Everybody everywhere is a bearer of the Divine Image. 
Imagine for a moment: a group of adult soldiers invading a village.  Immediately people are categorized – useful or not.  They become objects.   The problem is they are not objects but people with names and families.
Jesus had much to say about what happens when a child, an image-bearer, a carrier of the divine spark, becomes an object.  In the book of Matthew, Jesus teaches that, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
That sounds unpleasant.  Taken literally much of the human race would be dead in a matter of minutes.  It seems that the truth of Christ’s statement went beyond a horrible wet death.  How should we take this scripture? 
To understand how Jesus makes this connection, we have to explore the first-century Jewish understanding of heaven.
In the book of Psalms, it’s written: “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.”  To the Jewish mind, heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world.  Heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be.  Heaven is where things are under the rule and reign of God.
If heaven is a realm where things are as God wants them to be, what would hell be?  It seems to me that hell would be where God is not.  We often hear statements like “for the hell of it” or “that was a living hell.”  We have heard people refer to war zones as being “like hell.”  Wars that use children as pawns are hells on earth. 
And that is Jesus’ point on the millstone death.  His point isn’t that one should drown themselves if they hurt a child.  His point is that something seriously anti-human takes place – something hellish happens when people are treated as objects.  He warns us that PEOPLE ARE NOT OBJECTS.
Christ talks about the Kingdom of Heaven being at hand and Paul goes further in talking about the already but the not yet.  There are some serious paradoxical theological implications for us because I believe it is possible for heaven to invade earth but it is also possible for hell to invade earth.  Disrespecting the Image of God in another doesn’t just make the other an object; it’s about our humanity as well.
It is my intention to go to Africa to remind aid workers and the children they work with that they are indeed in the image of God.  I intend to take the message of a loving God to people who have been treated as objects – a people who have been shown that diamonds and oil are more important than they are - in order to remind them they matter.  I intend to invade hell with heaven. 
In the beginning God created us in His image, before male and female, before race, creed or color, before the diversity – he made in His image.  All too often we start with the differences – Hutu or Tutsi; Mexican or Indian; Rebel or National; Black or White; Serbian or Croatian; Male or Female - rather than our similarities.  We are ALL created in the image of God.  God’s humanity is about seeing people as God sees them.
When I first went to the reservation, I went with the pious zeal of many new missionaries.  God and I were going to change the world.  God had sent me to the Native Americans.  One of my first encounters on the reservation was with Johnny.  He was 12 and an obvious lover of God.  He was proof that God was working – (sounds a lot like an object).  One wintry Friday night, Johnny was home alone.  His mother worked the night shift because that was the only job she could find.  He would dutifully lock himself in for the night.  On this Friday night, shortly after his mother left, a pick-up truck was coming up the road.  This is not usually a good thing if you are not expecting anyone.  Johnny’s uncle and several cousins were in the truck and they were very drunk.  They knocked on the door and Johnny did his best to keep them out but they eventually got in and dragged Johnny out.  They wanted him to drink but he refused.  He tried to reason with them and tell them of His love for God but this made them angry.  To make an unpleasant story short – the next morning his mother found him beaten and frozen in the barbed wire fence.  Johnny literally died for His love of Christ.
I, the missionary, learned about loving Christ more than anything from someone I was supposed to be discipling.  I learned in that moment there is no us and them – only we.  The moments when a minister becomes a parishioner, a teacher becomes a student, a statistic becomes a reality.  When they become we.  When those become us.  When he becomes me.  Moments when all of the ways that we divide ourselves and rank each other and convince ourselves of how different, better, and unalike we are disappear, and we are faced with the fact that first and foremost, we are humans, in this together.  And not much different from each other.
9.11 brought this message to America.  On the day the towers fell there was no democrat or republican, no politics, no taxes, no rich, no poor, no race, no religion – we were all Americans and we were all in this together.
Jew.  Gentile
War affected child.  Traumatized Adult.
Minister.  Parishioner.
We could be them.

At my house, I have a plastic tub full of amazing artwork created over the years by my nieces and nephews.  I have this one particular piece created by my niece Brittany.  It is a large piece of white finger painting paper with a bunch of little white buttons glued to it.  It could be a study on the shades of white.  It is important to me and I have carried it all over the world.  You know why I keep it?  Because how I treat the creation reflects how I feel about the creator.  And I love her very much.
When a human is mistreated, objectified, or neglected, when they are treated as less than human, when they are treated as objects, these actions are actions against God.  Because how you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the Creator.
This week marks my one year anniversary at Trinity.  In this year, I have tried to treat each member of our youth group as an image-bearer.  I have watched their hurt as others have treated them as objects.  I have prayed with them and loved them and reminded them that they are not objects but that they are in the very image of God.  I don’t say this to pat myself on the back – because I am human and I know my weaknesses as do our youth.  I say this because with all of my heart I believe the church exists to be a display of a new humanity.  A community of people who honor and respect the poor and rich and educated and uneducated and African and American and black and white and young and old and powerful and helpless as fully human, created in the image of God.
These bonds we have with each other are why, for many, there is so much power in the Eucharist.  We take the bread and wine to remind us of Jesus’ body and blood.  To reflect the truth that we’re all in this together, one body, and that his body being broken and blood being spilled are for our union.  It is about our relationship with God and each other. 
I am going to Africa because I am a Christian.  Jesus commands his followers to feed and clothe and visit and take care of those who need it.  I am going as a Franciscan whose vocation is to love Christ and the world.  I am going as an extension of Trinity Impact EYC because we are image-bearers and the Africans are image-bearers, they are just like us, and when we love them we are loving God.  I am going as a fellow image-bearer hoping to reflect the image of God and in the process allowing heaven to invade hell.  Amen

Comments

[Lori]

lucie & i are praying for you.
God bless you Tammy.