ENS: Fleeing from genocide to South Sudan

By Robin Denney | October 8, 2012 |

EPISCOPAL NEWS SERVICE

 Yida, the largest refugee camp in South Sudan, stretches for miles. It is home to more than 64,000 of the 206,000 refugees from the Republic of Sudan who have fled the bombing and violent attacks against civilians by the Khartoum government since June 2011.Yida camp itself was bombed Nov. 10, 2011, killing 12 refugees.

Only 20 kilometers from the volatile border between Sudan and South Sudan, Yida camp sees a constant stream of nearly 200 new refugees a day, coming from the Nuba Mountains region (South Kordofan State) in Sudan. Rebel groups in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states have united against the Khartoum government’s army, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), whichindiscriminately attacks rebels and civilians in those areas.

“They kill everybody, Christians and Muslims. They burn houses, churches, and schools. They kill people. They drop bombs. Just two days ago soldiers came to my area [in the Nuba Mountains] and killed one person and burned houses,” said the Rev. Ameka Yousif, a pastor who has lived in Yida camp since February. “[In the Nuba Mountains] when people see the planes, they run and hide. Bombing is happening almost every day.”

Yida Refugee Camp from the air. Photo/Robin Denney

Children gather at an Episcopal Church of Sudan church in Yida Refugee Camp. Photo/Robin Denney

Yida camp continues to grow, as attacks on the Nuba Mountains by the SAF haveincreased in intensity during the past month. The U.N. expects as many as 90,000 people to occupy the camp by the end of the year.

In January 2011, a referendum was held in which citizens of what was then southern Sudan decided overwhelmingly to secede from the north and become an independent nation. Six months later on July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan was born. The referendum was specified in a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) — signed in 2005 between the north’s Khartoum-based Government of Sudan and the south’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement — that ended a decades-long civil war that killed more than 2 million people and displaced an estimated 7 million more.

Although conditions on the ground have improved in much of South Sudan since the referendum, fighting along the border, especially in disputed areas, has intensified.

From some villages in the Nuba Mountains, entire communities have moved to Yida, Yousif explained. “But some people refuse to leave, they say ‘this is my place, I will die here.’”

Four thousand members of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan’s Diocese of Kadugli now reside in Yida camp. They have four churches organized in different parts of the camp, and seven priests. The ECS churches are made up of many tribes worshiping together. They support one another in prayer, and help the most vulnerable among them, especially the widows and orphans.

“The church is growing, I baptized 40 new believers last month,” said the Rev. Ali Haroun, head pastor for ECS in Yida. When asked why people were flocking to the church in this desperate place, Haroun said, “They see how we care for one another.”

Conditions in the camp are desperate. In July, the daily mortality rate was three deaths per 10,000 children under five, and one death per 10,000 adults. In August, the rate reduced to one death per 10,000 children per day, still at the emergency threshold, according to U.N. data.

“The food ration, four tins of sorghum per person per month, it is not enough,” said Yousif. “People trade some of their sorghum for salt and soap, and then their ration finishes before the month. Grinding is also expensive, so many people are just chewing the grains.”

There are several medical stations in Yida where people can receive care, but the lines are long.

“Sometimes people can stand all day and be told to come back the next day. The next day can be too late for them,” said Kukuri Mathias, a nurse and ECS member.

The free health clinic run by the Episcopal Church of the Sudan at the Yida Refugee Camp. Photo/Robin Denney

There are seven certified nurses and six nurse assistants who are ECS members in Yida. In response to the desperate need for medical care, they run a free clinic. They set up a simple grass structure with two beds where they can admit people. With donations from the refugees, they sent someone traveling for three days by foot through flooded territory to reach Pariang, the nearest town to Yida, to buy medicine. These medicines have now finished.

The Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (SUDRA), with assistance from Episcopal Relief & Development and Hope International, is seeking to get more support to the refugees in Yida. Some medicines from SUDRA are currently in transit to Yida. Episcopal Relief & Development will soon send additional support for SUDRA’s work there. But more is needed.

Because Yida is classified as a transitory camp, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR does not provide assistance for agriculture or education. Desperate for more food, the refugees in Yida have planted around their homes seeds they brought with them from the Nuba Mountains, but the tools available to them are few and far between. Desperate for education, refugees have organized community schools, with volunteer teachers. Most of the teachers have not been trained, and supplies are so few that more than a hundred people cram around a small blackboard. These make-shift schools service only a small fraction of those who desire education.

A community-organized school provides education at Yida Refugee Camp. Photo/Robin Denney

“My first priority is education, and second is agriculture,” Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail, bishop of Kadugli diocese, which includes Nuba Mountains, reported after his recent visit to Yida camp. Most people from the Diocese of Kadugli have been displaced either into the camp or into the mountains.

The cathedral and diocesan buildings in the Kadugli diocese were burned by government forces more than a year ago. They also sought to kill the bishop, but he was traveling at the time for medical treatment in the U.S. While there, he testifiedbefore the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, saying, “If I were not here today to testify before you, I do not know whether I would be in a mass grave in Kadugli now.”

The civil war in Sudan reaches beyond the Nuba Mountains, including Darfur, and Blue Nile state as well. Approximately 655,000 Sudanese have been displaced from Blue Nile and South Kordofan States.

Former U.N. Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, said that the current conflict in South Kordofan is even worse than the famous Darfur genocide which began in 2003. Video evidencefound by the rebels and released by Al Jazeera shows government soldiers being instructed to leave no one alive. Evidence of mass graves has also been gathered by the Enough Project. Because U.N. and humanitarian organizations have been banned from the area by the Khartoum government, there are not solid numbers regarding casualties, many thousands have died. But it is clear that urgent action is needed from the international community to curtail the violence and ensure humanitarian assistance.

– Robin Denney from the Diocese of El Camino Real was an Episcopal Church missionary in Sudan from 2009-2011 and served as an agriculture consultant to the Episcopal Church of Sudan. She recently returned to South Sudan to visit some of the church’s agriculture projects and the Yida Refugee Camp.

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Jump off the ladder!

John 6:56-69

            On the 25th of May in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood in front of a joint session of Congress and announced that within that decade, the United States would go to the moon.

            He made this bold announcement, this bold proclamation, this challenge, to the people of America, and to the people of the world, at the height of the Cold War, in the age of Sputnik, when the United States and the Soviet Union were in direct competition with each other to rule the world.

            On the 20th of July in 1969, we achieved his promise.

            Neil Armstrong climbed out of the Lunar Landing Module, which was called the Eagle, and he paused on the steps of that ladder, and then he jumped off, and he landed on the moon.

And he said, “This is one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.”

When Neil Armstrong jumped off that ladder, he had no idea what was going to happen. It was this amazing leap of faith for him to do this, because nobody knew what the moon was really made of. Nobody knew how thick the dust was going to be. Nobody knew if he was going to sink up to his hips in dust. Even though the Landing Module was sitting firmly, it had special webbed feet – it had duck feet, believe it or not – so that it could spread its weight out. But he didn’t. He was in this giant, giant, white suit, with these magnificently huge boots, and he jumped off that ladder not knowing what was going to happen.

Millions of us around the world were glued to our televisions and our radios, waiting to hear. I remember sprawling on the floor in my parents’ bedroom, in front of our color TV, watching this scratchy, grainy, black-and-white image, and listening to this scratchy, fuzzy audio, and not knowing what was going to happen.

But he made that jump. He made that leap of faith, because he believed in what he was doing.

Yesterday, we received the sad news that he had died, three weeks after undergoing heart surgery. He died from complications from that surgery. And since the moment we got that news yesterday afternoon, we have been hearing stories about Neil Armstrong. We’ve been hearing about what he went through to get to the moon, and what happened to him afterwards. The United States never sent him back into space. The government wasn’t stupid. They weren’t going to take this hero and let him risk his life ever again. So two years after he walked on the moon, he resigned from NASA, and he went back to Ohio, where he was from, and he became an engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati. As they said in one story on NPR, “Can you imagine taking Engineering 101 from Neil Armstrong?” Can you imagine what that must have been like?

All of the remembrances of him talk about his courage, but they also talk about his humility. In a speech he gave years later, he said, “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer.”[1]

Those who are remembering him yesterday and today are speaking, really, of his great humility. They are speaking as well of his strong faith. His faith that what he was doing was possible. That it was possible for the United States to achieve the impossible.

When he went up into space, it was his second time. When he went up again, he said that there was a 90 percent chance, he felt, that he would come back alive. But when it came to jumping off of that ladder, to land on the moon?[2] He figured there was only a 50-50 chance of surviving. So he didn’t actually give very much thought to what he would say.[3]

         And yet he comes out with that magnificent quote, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

My friends, this morning’s Gospel – that’s what this is about. One small step for each of us in order to achieve a giant leap for mankind.

Jesus is preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. It’s is still the same story we’ve been hearing for the last five weeks. We’re still talking about Jesus being the bread of life. Over and over again, he keeps saying this.

When he started out, he was dealing with large crowds. Remember, he had just fed them – 5,000 of them. But when he started talking about bread of life, a bunch of those people said, “Um … no. This is too much.” And they left.

Then, when Jesus repeats again that “I am the bread of life,” now it’s the Pharisees who are objecting. So they leave.

Then Jesus goes into the synagogue at Capernaum, which was a fairly large synagogue, and it was filled with his disciples – not just the ones he called, but the ones who decided that, really, this is the man they’re going to follow. Once again he says, “You’re going to have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.” And they said, “No, we’re not.” And they left.

Now Jesus is down, in this morning’s Gospel, by the end of it, he’s down to the twelve. To the ones he had personally called. The ones to whom he had said, “Follow me.”

Even they are objecting to this idea of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Even they are saying, “This is really difficult.”

Jesus knew this was difficult. He knew how hard it was. To follow him and to eat his flesh and to drink his blood means to overturn all of the laws that had been laid down, that had set those people aside. If you go through Leviticus, you will find all the laws that control what the people who follow God, the chosen ones of God, can eat. They can only eat certain kinds of flesh. It has to be those with a cloven hoof, and those that chew their cud. We don’t have cloven hooves, we don’t chew our cud. And Leviticus is very, very, very clear, “You don’t ingest blood.” Steak tartare was not on the menu for the Jews. That rare steak that you order, where you say, “Make it good and bloody”? No! The Law is clear.[4]

So when Jesus says, “You follow me, you do this my way? You eat my flesh? You drink my blood?” he’s basically telling those who follow him, “You’re going to leave behind everything you know, and you are no longer going to belong to your community, to your family, to your faith.”

It’s an incredible challenge, a bold proclamation – to change the world.

Take this small step with me and for me, Jesus says, and you will be making a leap for all of God’s beloved children.

This is the question that we have to face – for ourselves. Right here. Right now. Before you come forward to have the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, you have to make a decision.

But before you make that decision, I’m going to warn you: This is a difficult thing to do. Because if you decide that you really want to eat the Body of Christ, that you really want to drink the Blood of Christ, that this really is real for you … if you are going to accept this challenge, let me tell you something: It means that you will no longer belong in society. It means that you will be outside of society. It means that some of you are going to have to turn your backs on your families.

Because it means that you’re going to have to live in a whole new way. You can’t just take the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and walk out that door and not be changed! It’s what I told you a couple of weeks ago, when we were talking about this. It changes you. It sets you apart. And if you accept this challenge, if you come forward and you eat the Body and you drink the Blood of Jesus Christ, then you already are changed, and you are going to go out into the world and you are going to change the world.

Because it means that you are going to have what’s called an agenda. You’re going to have the agenda that is always, always, seeking to feed the hungry, and to give water to the thirsty. Always, always, seeking to correct the injustices, never shrinking back, never clinging to that ladder of the Lunar Landing Module and saying, “Oh, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think I’m going to do this anymore.” No! If you’re going to stand up to the injustices of the world, you had better leap off that ladder. Because that is what Jesus is asking you to do.

Being a follower of Jesus is not just saying, “I’m a Christian.” It means you have to live a Christian life. You have to have an agenda that says, “You know what? I believe we can give sight to the blind. I know we can give hearing to the deaf, and voice to the mute. I know that we can proclaim freedom to the prisoners. I know that we can stand up against a society that says we have to be divided; a society that says, ‘I’ve got mine and I don’t care if you ever get yours.’” You have to seek a society that is together for the common weal its people.[5]

If you’re going to be a Christian, if you are going to take that leap off of that ladder, let me tell you, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to come gunning for you. There are a lot of people who are going to say to you, “You know you’re crazy? You can’t do that. That’s impossible. Why would you want to live your life this way? Who told you to make the decisions for me? I’ll do what I want!”

You jump off that ladder, you’re jumping into the unknown. Just like Neil Armstrong did. Just like Buzz Aldrin did a couple of minutes later.

But that’s what Jesus is challenging us to do.

And remember, he’s giving us an out. He makes it very, very simple: “Do you also wish to leave?” Even to his chosen 12, he gave them the option to go home.

Now can you imagine what that must have been like? You give up everything in your life. You walk away from your family, you walk away from your job, you walk away from your inheritance – do you think that Zebedee was really going to turn over his fishing fleet over to those two boys of his, James and John, after they walked off the job and left him high and dry? Uh, uh! – You walk away from all that they way they did … imagine what that must have been like.

And then Jesus comes along, and he keeps preaching this really hard stuff: No! You can’t go along to get along! No! You can’t accept injustice and say, “It’s not my problem.” No! You can’t walk by the person who’s starving! No! You cannot let the naked person stay naked; you have to take your clothes off and given them to him! No! You cannot let people beat each other up! No! You can’t stand by and watch people bully each other in school! No! You cannot, cannot allow the poor to stay poor while the rest of us have more than enough.

Imagine what it was like for Jesus and his disciples at that important, challenging moment, when he said to them, “Do you also wish to leave?”

Amazingly, none of them did.

They didn’t leave because Peter – God bless Peter, who never quite got it even when he got it! – Peter looked at him and said, “Lord, where else are we supposed to go? To whom else can we go? We have come to believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God.” There’s nothing else out there for us!

You don’t really think Neil Armstrong was going to crawl back up that ladder without jumping off, do you? With all of the time and money that we had put into this, do you think he was really going to cling to that ladder and call Houston and say, “Houston, I don’t feel like doing this”?! He had accepted the challenge. He clearly knew – because he told people about this – there was a 50-50 chance he was not coming back! And he still went ahead and did it … because he believed.

He believed that it was possible for us to explore the heavens.

Do we believe, with that much faith?

Do we have the faith of the disciples, who said, “Lord, to whom else would we go?”

Do we have enough faith to live the life that we proclaim that we are living when we’re here in church … outside the church?

This is what Jesus probably would understand is called a fish-or-cut-bait moment. That’s probably a term that would make sense to him, because he lived with a bunch of fishermen. You either keep on fishing, in the sure and certain knowledge that it’s going to work, or you cut bait and you move on.

So this is your fish-or-cut-bait moment. This is your chance to not only take a small step for yourselves, but to take a giant leap for mankind.

Let me tell you, if each and every one of us decide to get off that ladder and land on the unknown surface of the moon? We can change the world. We will change the world.

If each and every one of us makes the commitment that Jesus is indeed the Holy One of God and that he came here for us, and that he died for us, and that he rose for us … if we accept that and live that, I’m telling you, the world will be a different place!

           We will not have hungry people in the world. We will not have people without clean water. We will not have people who have no access to medicine. We will not have rampant injustice. If we take the time to live the Gospel, to live the promise that Jesus gives us, through his own body and blood – we’re not just eating wafers and sipping port wine here, folks – it’s a lot more than that.

When we come forward, we’re making a commitment to a way of life.

Not just for yourselves.

But for all of God’s beloved creation.

Are you willing to jump off that ladder?

Amen.

 

Sermon preached on the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16, Year B, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Blue Grass, Va., on 26 August 2012. 

 


[1] The Associated Press, To Hero-Astronaut Armstrong, Moonwalk ‘Just’ a Job,

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=160044021

 

[2]Allison Keyes, In just ‘one small step,’ Armstrong became an icon, NPR’s Weekend Edition, http://www.wbur.org/npr/160059467/in-just-one-small-step-armstrong-became-an-icon

 

[3] Ibid.

[4] Extrapolated and condensed from Rick Morley, “The bloody truth – a reflection on John 6:56-69,” http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1880, 13 August 2012.

 

[5] Paraphrase of Dave Comstock, member of The Christian Left: ‎”A ‘Christian’ agenda is one that seeks healing, feeds those who are hungry, confronts injustice, eschews wealth, welcomes the stranger, fixes what is broken, is present where people are experiencing ‘crucifixion’ in order to embody ‘resurrection.'” 24 August 2012 via Facebook.

 

 

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We are the link …

John 14:6-15

          When Bonnie asked me to come here to preach on the Feast of St. Augustine, I started looking for stories about your patron saint. Most of stories I found are ones you already know, but there is one story that dates back to his youth, when his mother, Monica, wanted him to embrace the Christian faith in which he was raised and become a priest.

            Augustine, we all know, had other ideas.

            The official biographies, which I think you well know, tell the story of how he left home to teach rhetoric.

The unofficial biography apparently says – or so the story goes – that he told his mother he was leaving to get a loaf of bread … and went to Egypt instead.

But as Augustine learned – and as we know – no matter where you go, God is there.

No matter how far you run, God is there.

Because there is no place you can go, no place you can run where God is not.

Augustine learned that … he ran. But, as the saying goes, he couldn’t hide.

The same is true for us.

We may try to run, but we can never hide.

Because God is always there. And God is always there because God loves us.

There is no more powerful lesson on earth than that, is there? The lesson that God loves us?

There may be days when we doubt this is true, when we think that we are too much like Augustine was in his youth (which as you know was not a pretty picture).

But in spite of what we may think of ourselves, the good news is, God loves us – God still loves us – whether we are good or bad, whether we are high and mighty and lowly and poor … because none of that matters.

All that matters is that God … loves … us … that we are God’s beloved children.

And we know this because the Bible tells us so.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth … meaning, God was before we were, and God will be after we are.

Which means, quite simply, that we are not necessary to God.

God is necessary to us, yes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here today.

But we are not necessary to God.

Which in turn means, quite simply, that God wanted us, that God desired us, that God loved us into being.

This is what God meant when God said, way back in the beginning, “Let us create humankind in our image, according to our likeness …” God’s image, God’s likeness, has nothing to do with the color of God’s skin (does God even have skin?) or God’s gender, or God’s height or weight (does God have any of those attributes?). God’s image, God’s likeness, is center in one thing only:

Love.

But God’s love, my friends, does not exist in a vacuum.

Yes, God loves me.

And yes, God loves you.

But because God loves me and because God loves you, God intends for us to love each other.

Since we each are beloved of God and since we each are created in love, God intends us to live in love.

With each other.

That’s called community.

And our mission in life, the very reason for which God created us, is to love the community.

Augustine, despite fighting God and fleeing God, learned this in his own life.

“What,” he asked, “does love look like? It has the hand to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That,” he said, “is what love looks like.”[1]

So in the words of one of the greatest theologians of our faith, in the words of your own patron saint, our very reason for existing is to take care of each other, to love one another.

That is our mission in life – loving those whom God loves … every moment of our lives.

It’s not an easy task, this mission that God gives us.

But we know we can do it.

We know we can do it because Jesus – the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for us – because Jesus said so.

Throughout his entire ministry … through his preaching and teaching, his feeding of the hungry and giving of water to the thirsty, his healing of the lame and returning of sight to the blind and hearing to deaf and speech to the mute, through every meal he ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, his every touch of the lepers, his every willingness to include the excluded, to love the unloved, to give hope to the hopeless … Jesus taught us what to do. He taught us how to live our lives on a mission from God.

And then, facing his own end, he bequeathed to us his great command:

Love one another as I have loved you.

With that love, he told us, we will do great things.

In fact, he said, our mere faith, in him will make us do the work that he did, and indeed, he said, we will do greater works than these!

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine what it would be like to do greater work than Jesus himself did?

New Testament professor Jaime Clark-Soles heard those words and wrote, in great astonishment,

Those who are “left behind” when Jesus goes to the Father have [an] advantage beyond all telling of it. Because Jesus goes, they will get power they wouldn’t get otherwise. Instead of wannabes, they’ll be the real deal – they’ll be the Jesus in the world.[2]

 

You want to know what it means to be on a mission from God in the world?

Being on a mission from God means we get to be Jesus!

Well, OK. We don’t get to actually be Jesus. But we get to do that which Jesus did, only in a bigger way. Perhaps even in a better way.

So long as we understand: Everything we do is to come from God’s love for us, and God’s love for everyone else.

In 1969, Neil Diamond debuted a song called Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show. It’s a great song – it has a great beat (even though you can’t really dance to it) – not just because of the story of the traveling salvation show, but because of its theology.

Do you know this song? You don’t?

            (Sing) Brother Love,

            I said, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.

            Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies

            And everyone goes

            Cuz everyone knows

            ‘Bout Brother Love’s show …

            Hallelujah …

What’s amazing about this song, though, isn’t that chorus. It is that in the middle of the song, there’s a sermon. Now, if you look up the words online, you won’t find the words to the sermon. You’ll just see the word “sermon” printed in the middle of the lyrics.

But it’s the sermon that provides the power … the message … that we all need to hear, every single day:

This is what Brother Love preaches:

            Brothers! I said, Brothers!

Now you got yourself two good hands.

And when your brother is troubled

            You’ve got to reach out your one hand for him …

            Cuz that’s what it’s there for.

            And when your heart is troubled

            You got to reach out your other hand …

            Reach it out to the man up there …

            Cuz that’s what he’s there for.

 

            (Sing) Take my hand in yours

Walk with me this day

In my heart I know

I will never stray.[3]

Halle. Halle. Halle! Halle …!

 

We each have two good hands. And with those hands, we are called, as people on a mission from God, to always … always … reach those hands out to those who are troubled, who are in need, who need to be reminded of God’s love for them.

This is what it means to be a missionary, my friends. To reach out to others, while at the same time, holding on to God.

We are the link … everywhere we go, with everyone we meet.

Because wherever we go, God is there. And everyone we meet is a beloved child of God.

You want to be a missionary?

Reach your hands out …

That’s all there is to it.

Now, I’m a missionary. I spent four years as a missionary in Sudan, and one year serving in Haiti. And I know … I know … that many people are surprised to discover that The Episcopal Church even has missionaries. Even though we are The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America – that’s our official name, you know … quite impressive, isn’t it? – even though that is our formal name, people are surprised when they find out that I am, indeed, a missionary, and that I’ve been one for years.

Well, let me tell you something:

You are missionaries as well. And not just because you are Episcopalians.

No, you’re a missionary because God said so.

And your mission – if you choose to accept it – is to live in love and in community … to reach your hands out to those who are troubled … every moment of your lives.

Just last week, NPR interviewed Stephane Hessel, a former World War II French resistance fighter who narrowly escaped execution by the Nazis in two concentration camps. Hessel’s book, Time for Outrage, was published in the United States this week; in it, he argues that indifference is the worst possible attitude we can adopt.

 

If you want to be a real human being – a real woman, a real man [he says] – you cannot tolerate things which put you to indignation, to outrage. You must stand up. I always say to people, “Look around; look at what makes you unhappy, what makes you furious, and then engage yourself in some action.[4]

 

This is what Jesus was talking about – look at what makes you unhappy (the suffering of others, the needs of others, the desires of others to be loved) – and do something about it.

Our mission – which we accept every time we reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant – is to do something – something greater than the work Jesus himself did!

Just because it seems hard, just because the world tells us it can’t be done (we can’t possibly feed all the hungry in the world, despite the fact that we throw away more than enough food every day to feed every single starving person out there; we can’t possibly provide health care for all – even though that’s what Jesus did; we can’t possibly … we can’t possibly … we can’t … we can’t … we can’t …), doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference.

We start by reaching out our hands … one to the person in need … the other to God … and being the link between the two.

And when we doubt (which we will)?

We go back again to your own patron saint, to Augustine of Hippo, who once told his mother (or so the story goes) that he was going out for bread and never came back. He once wrote:

Hope has two beautiful daughters.

Their names are anger and courage;

anger at the way things are, and

courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.[5]

We never give up hope, and we pray to have the courage to live our lives on a mission from God, to be missionaries, living every moment of our lives in love and in community.

It’s why we were created.

(Sing) Take my hand in yours

Walk with me this day

In my heart I know

I will never stray.

Amen.

A sermon preached on the Feast of St. Augustine (translated), at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Kinston, N.C., 25 September 2011.




[1] As quoted in Quote, Unquote, by Lloyd Cory, p. 197.

[2] Jaime Clark-Soles, Associate Professor of New Testament, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Teas, commentary for 20 April 2008, emphasis added, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/20/2008&tab=4

 

[3] Neil Diamond, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, on the eponymous album, UNI Records, 1969.

[4] Stephane Hessel, author of Time for Outrage, in NPR interview, http://www.npr.org/2011/09/22/140252484/wwii-survivor-stirs-literary-world-with-outrage

[5] As quoted in by Robert McAfee Brown in Spirituality and Liberation: Overcoming the Great Fallacy (Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 136.

 

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