Sermon: "Partners in Hope"

Delivered August 5, 2007 by Rev. John Schmidt.

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Well, let's pray: Lord we thank you for your word. We thank you for this time to gather together to worship and to hear what's written in your word, to reflect upon it together. And so, Lord we commit this time to you and pray that you will work in our hearts. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

I would like to read to you from the Book of 1st Thessalonians, Chapter 1, Verses 2 through 10.

"We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia-your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead-Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath."

This is the word of God, thanks be to God.

Well I have just gotten back from Malawi about a week ago and if you are like me you are going to need a bit of a reminder about where Malawi is, okay? So we've got a map up here and we are going to let you know that Malawi is in that part of southeast Africa. It's a little bitty country, a long, thin country. It's in a beautiful part of the world. It's got a nice large lake next to it and it's a country that has about 13 million people in it. Now that part of Africa is filled with natural beauty and so now you are going to see a few pictures that were actually taken by members of our May team or our July team. They are not all from Malawi; they are from other surrounding countries. We actually got that close. It was so cool. We got a chance to go in to the nature preserves. It was like National Geographic for a little while. Some of the animals were not so happy to see us. I don't know who took that picture, but they were brave. And this is the final shot that we have gives you an idea that we did get close. Now when we got to Malawi one of the things that we noticed was that the standard of living was very different in Malawi. Fifty-five percent of the people in Malawi live below the poverty line and for people in Malawi that's about $40 per year, per adult. Now what that means is that the vast majority of people; there are many many families living there on less than $100 per year. And it's not just statistics; it's people.

Now some of these people are wonderful, happy folks who became our friends and we will share about some of them today. But some of them were sick, impoverished people, suffering in ways that we really can't understand. You see in Malawi an average of over 250 people a day are infected with HIV/AIDS and 140 people a day die from it. It means that the infection rate among adults is closing in on one million out of a population of a little over 13 million; 14% of the adult population. But Malawi is perhaps most about children. When you go to Malawi no matter where you go in the city, in the villages, children gather, lots of them everywhere and it's the children who are perhaps most greatly impacted by HIV/AIDS. In Malawi there are about a million orphans in that country and about 700,000 of them were orphans because of AIDS; 700,000. 30,000 children every year are infected with HIV through mother/child transmission. In the face of a need like this, not just in Malawi, but in all kinds of places in the world the church of Jesus Christ doesn't have to spend a whole lot of time thinking about whether to get involved. Getting involved is the nature of the church. Christianity has never been a matter of just words. There has always been the call to action, compassion and service in the face of suffering. So the question facing us as Christian people is not whether to get involved in a problem of this size, but merely where and with whom. God has a role for Central Presbyterian Church, a small one, but a real one in fighting this world-embracing epidemic of AIDS.

So I went out on the second of two teams that our church has sent out to investigate what the possibilities are for the future. We went together with members of other churches, other churches here in the Baltimore area like Grace, other churches from other parts of the country as well. We gathered together and went in these teams and went and looked at all of the people that we could who were working in these countries. Our task was to learn about what the needs were, to learn about what Christians were already doing there and seek partnerships for the future, relationships, because that is what the pattern is for our ministry; to build relationships with committed Christian people that together with them we might all make a greater impact on our world.

These relationships are vitally important and Paul understood how important those relationships were. When he writes these people in Thessalonica he goes right back to the kind of relationship he had with them. He begins by saying we give; we always thank God for all of you. What amazing words to begin a letter. From the heart Paul is saying, I have been with you. I was with you at the beginning when you were still serving idols, when you were still lost, when you still didn't know who God was. I was the person among those who preached the gospel to you and I watched God work among you. They turned from idols to serve the one true God. They proclaimed their faith. They were willing to face suffering because of their faith and then they served God with love. Paul gives thanks because he can look at their lives and see the changes that God has worked out in them. There are some important words that come up in Verse 3. It begins by saying we always thank God for all of you. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith. Now these people were saved by faith. They understood that salvation and forgiveness was a free gift from God, but that work of God in their life resulted in all kinds of changes inside of them. So that when Paul looked at them as a community he saw that they had righteous works, righteous activities and actions that grew out of their faith in God. Their faith was much more than just a matter of words. It was not simply words. It was changed lives.

He goes on to say in that verse, "your labor prompted by love." This word labor is a strong term. What Paul is saying here is that out of love they have labored to the point of weariness. You see they experience the agape love of God and he uses that special word agape. Greeks would have normally used the word eros for love and what eros means is that we think highly of someone, because of their virtues and their beauty and so we are attracted to them and then we desire to possess them and keep them close. That is what eros love is all about. It is what we would call romantic love. The Christians did not use that term. They took a term that wasn't that often used and instead gave it new and deep meaning. Agape love is love despite the fact that the loved one is unworthy. Agape love does not have any thought of personal advantage. It's compassionate. It's serving. It's forgiving love. And so, the Thessalonians experienced that love first. God had that love for them. They experienced that love and then in experiencing it, God planted that very same love in their hearts and now motivated by that love they sacrificed and labored to the point of weariness. Paul looks at that and he says, Thank you, God. You are at work.

Then he points out their endurance inspired by hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Endurance does not mean passive resignation; the way that something bad happens and we just plod through out. It's an active, strong constancy. It's a reliability. It's a loyalty and it's motivated by a blazing hope and expectation, because that is what hope means here, confident expectation. Its meaning is not that something very unlikely might happen and we hope it does. For example, it is not like this; "I hope the Orioles will win a pennant this year, okay?" That's very unlikely. That is not what hope means. Hope is expectation of a solid certainty rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is an event in history that roots our faith and it's as we look to that reality and anticipate it; it's in the future, it doesn't fully belong to us yet, but it is certain and our hope is rooted in that and that gives us endurance. So Paul looks at these people with great thanksgiving in his heart, because they have been impacted by Jesus Christ with great power. As he says in Verse 5, it wasn't simply words, but power. And so that is why he is thankful. The message he preached had power and now in their lives what they are doing is not simply words, but has power. Their Christianity wasn't simply words and so Paul looks at their lives and gives thanks.

I always thank God for all of you here at Central Presbyterian Church. It's good for me to be away for a few weeks here and there, because I appreciate you so much when I am gone; not just the worship, but the people, because God has worked in our lives here. I am thankful for the ways that God has worked mightily among us. Christianity is not just words for us either. It talks in this passage about works produced by faith. Here we are a congregation that gives nearly a half a million dollars a year to mission, 25% of our budget. When we decided to build a building we said in the past and this time too that we have to tithe from that, to be giving to God's work and so there is another half million dollars that we have already laid aside through that. We support some 70 plus missionaries and institutions on the mission field. Many of you give substantial amounts that never come through the church budget. You just mail it in and we serve directly as a church; about 80 people or more have served in summer missions outside of Baltimore in the last two years. We send out a constant stream of long-term workers; the Gakings are right now being sent out, but this happens repeatedly in the life of this congregation. There is all kinds of children involved in mission and service related things. M and M kids, Second Sunday for mission and just a few weeks ago the children feeding the workers who worked here at church. I hope you saw that in News and Views. The children fed about 40 of the workers here and we got all kinds of response about how much they appreciated that. This congregation has endurance; endurance inspired by hope. We have had this outward focus as a church for 60 years. It's part of our DNA. There have been economic ups and downs. There has been internal problems and all. We have never given that up though and we are open to the new ministry that God is calling us to.

Last year our mission conference focused on HIV/AIDS; a worldwide crisis that didn't even exist when we made our earlier commitments to mission and it was our desire in planning that that we get beyond just understanding more, but we get to the point where we were making new commitments to service, because our faith is not simply words. After our mission conference all kinds of people started to get involved in serving with ministries that are addressing HIV and AIDS. All kinds of people started to get involved and then some leaders over at Grace Fellowship saw what we were doing and then they asked whether they could partner with us since we were already taking steps there and they were thinking that this might be a direction; can they just ducktail with us and walk with us wherever God is calling us to make commitment they would partner with us. Between our two churches over the last year about 100 people have responded in some way to give and to serve and I give thanks for that.

There is enough going on that we actually had to begin to build a new organization to direct this partnership of churches. And so, Hope Springs came in to existence. That is the name of the new HIV/AIDS ministry partnership. That is a partnership of churches and who reach out and try to partner with AIDS directed projects here in Baltimore and beyond. So our Director of Missions, Phyllis DeSmit is involved with that. Cricket Barrazotto from Grace is involved, as well as other people and then our own Amy Lang has been hired as their first director. What's exciting for me on top of all of this and what's totally in line with our history is that this partnership is not only a partnership here in Baltimore, but also with our Christian brothers and sisters in Malawi and I thank God for them too. I have gotten a chance to meet some of them. God allowed us to meet an amazing group of Christians while we were there, a whole host of Christians whose faith is not simply words, who have experienced the same transforming power that we have experienced and we get to partner together with them.

My wife, Debbie, is now going to share about one of these people.

Debbie speaking: Isaac here is the kind of person John has been talking about, a person whose faith is expressed in actions. He was the team leader of the team that I was a part of in Malawi that dealt with the nutrition project. Isaac is a devoted Christian who goes faithfully to a church there in Malawi, but his faith is expressed most directly in the ministry he is involved through Partners of Hope that addresses the nutritional needs of patients there. Nutrition is really a critical concern for people who are HIV infected or who are struggling with AIDS, because if their bodies are weak then the disease progresses more quickly and if they are not getting proper nutrition then the medications they are taking can't work as effectively to combat the disease. Isaac built a sample garden right on the grounds of the clinic where he trains people who are patients there to be able to provide for themselves, to be able to grow well-balanced fruits and vegetables to add to their diet and he began working on this project long before our team even got there.

The first thing that he needed to do was to find a family that would benefit from the garden that our team was going there ready to produce at a home and he found a grandmother whose young grandson Peter, who is about 8-years-old is HIV positive, both of Peter's parents have died of AIDS and so his grandmother is his sole caregiver. We went out there to the house together with Isaac and dug a garden and built a fence around it, but Isaac is the one who prepared and got all the straw together and got all the materials that we needed, rounded up the tools and made sure that everything went smoothly and we could see the passion that he had about this ministry, as he talked about the importance of nutrition, as he taught us how to build a garden that was going to be sustainable, that was going to use very little water and was going to be able to be used by this family, and as he worked side by side with us to build the garden there. Our team had a great time and we did something that really was sustainable, that really had an impact for this family, but it was because of Isaac's faithfulness to the family, because of the groundbreaking work that he did to prepare for us. We are all back in the United States now and there is not much more that we can do for Peter or his grandmother, but the work that we did will last and will be sustained because Isaac is there to be faithful to this family.

I want to read to you another few words from one of these verses. It says here:

"For you know, we know brothers loved by God that God has chosen you because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep convictions" and then these words, "you know how we lived among you for your sake."

(Rev. John) The principle here is the principle of incarnation. The most effective kind of mission work is incarnational; in other words people in the flesh living among people, dwelling among people that you serve. That is what Jesus did in becoming human. He became one of us. He lived among us. He taught us and died for us. Our vision as a church is incarnation; moving people towards Christ, where we live, work and play. We move people towards Christ where we dwell. But on the mission field most of us cannot dwell among them. Our teams are not going to go to Malawi or any other place in the world and totally change the country. It's not going to happen. But we have partners who do live and serve among the neediest people in the world. Some of them we have sent out as missionaries. Others are nationals that we now know and have relationships with. But we are partners together with people who do live there, who can followup, who can live day-by-day presenting the gospel in their own culture. In Malawi we have a relationship with Partners in Hope Clinic, the group that Debbie and I and other people here at the church served together with and there is World Relief, Somebody Cares, Opportunity International, the Crisis Nursery of the Peace USA and many many others. And as I think about the ones that I had a chance to meet, I thank God for all of them.

We are called to partner together with them in God's ministry, but it's not ultimately about organization-to-organization, that is not what it is all about. It's about people. It's about the people there that have been transformed by the gospel and now are laboring to the point of weariness in a difficult situation and its about us here transformed by the gospel, called to support and encourage them because they are the folks that are doing the front line work. It's people here and that includes you. How might God be calling you to be involved? Now there is all kinds of ministry that God could be calling you to be involved with. I just want to focus on the ones that focus on Malawi right now and on AIDS here in Baltimore. Perhaps you can be called to serve here in Baltimore through Hope Springs; maybe you can volunteer. Maybe what God is calling you to do is to learn more about Malawi; maybe you are being called to pray and maybe you are being called to be on a future team that is going to go to Malawi. I am excited about what God has led us to, to be in partnership with some wonderful Christians and in partnership with them we have some exciting years ahead. So let's pray about that right now.

God, as we worship today we remember the incredible privilege that it is to know you, to respond to you and then to offer our lives to you in service together with Christians in other parts of the world. And so, now work in us as a congregation, give us wisdom and work in us individually, that we might live lives that bring honor to you. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org