Oren enjoying a Highlights Magazine that we get in the mail monthly from the US.
I am going to blame Benadryl for this late posting. I had intended to put it up last night but
had an allergy attack about 4 pm and took a Benadryl to stop sneezing. Needless to say, I was very groggy by about 8
and fell asleep while I was putting David to bed.
So here it is Tuesday and I have much to recount from the
past week. As you might have guessed
from the title, it was a fairly social week.
This is the second straight week we have been in town and we did a lot
of catching up with friends. Especially
as the school year winds down this is a time of transition and many families
are not planning to be here next year.
The first part of the week started slowly enough with a
fairly regular routine, but between Thursday and today (Tuesday) we have been
guests or hosted a meal every single day.
On Thursday we invited the Millers, a new family who has
just arrived to Burundi in the last month.
They had come to our folk dance evening and we really enjoyed getting to
know them and have a sense that they will be here for quite a while. Joel and Janette are both physicians teaching
at Hope Africa University and their kids, Hannah, Sarah, Samuel, and Josiah
will be at the Ecole Belge this fall.
Samuel in Oren’s class.
It was good to get to know them a bit better and to talk
about the logisitics of finding a house, staff, etc. with them and find out a
bit more about their work and life. They
hail from Indiana and Michigan. I think
Oren will enjoy having Samuel as a friend and a fellow Anglophone in his class.
On Friday we were invited by our Danish friends Naja and
Thomas, to come have dinner on their porch.
That is a real treat because they have a very nice house that has a good
view of the lake and mountains from the porch.
The evening offered us an equisite sunset that was framed between 2
enormous cloud banks over the Congolese mountains.
Oren and David love to go over there as well and play well
with Elias and Aviajah, even when all are using their second language (French)
to play together. They also enjoyed
watching several episodes of a Tintin cartoon together while the parents
chatted on the porch. (I joined for a
bit of Tintin at the end of the evening.)
On Saturday, we went to the home of our friend Ann Glick,
another American Mennonite, who is married to one of the officials at the Dutch
embassy. She has children the ages of
our own, and they are one of the families that will be leaving town after the
school year. It will be sad to see them
go as they are delightful people. It
was another movie night as we all watched “Here Come the ABC’s” by They Might
Be Giants. (I know that will mean
something to some readers.)
Sunday was a bit of a change of pace as I was
preaching. It was Pentecost and also
part of a sermon series the church is doing on mission. I chose a passage from Acts 14 rather than
the text about the coming of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost because the passage
focused on St. Paul’s first missionary journey with Barnabus.
In the sermon, one of the main points I made was that one
reason Paul met so much opposition in his preaching was because he was preaching a ‘full Gospel’. For me that meant that he was not separating
the Gospel of personal salvation (reconciliation with God) from the social
consequences of entering into family relationship with other Christian brothers
and sisters (reconciliation with fellow believers). Because he was preaching to different ethnic
groups, (Jews and Gentiles) this message was not readily accepted as Jews and
Gentiles did not want to be reconciled to each other and certainly not members
of one family.
For me the point was that to some extent, Evangelical
missionaries in the past century may have tried to cleave the Gospel of
Salvation from its social consequences in sharing the Gospel in this
region. Consequently there was the
tragic consequence of seeing Christians massacre each other because they were
in different ethnic groups. (As one
priest put it: “The blood of tribalism
ran thicker than the waters of Baptism”.)
The second point was about cultural misunderstanding. But I will attach the sermon to this blog for
those interested in reading it. Although
it is written down, I did not really read from the text, but it follows my
preaching pretty well.
I felt the sermon was well received and we had a good
discussion about it afterward in our small group. Our small group has also been in concentrated
prayer about a Evangelical and Reconciliation Crusade being organized by our
South African missionary friends. They
have had some challenges along the way the least of which was the main speaker
pulling out at the 11th hours.
Things seem to be coming together well though as they prepare to go
upcountry this Sunday.
 |
| Rebecca's Sunday School Class |
Monday was a Holiday!
I was not really ready for it, but apparently, like many Catholic
countries, Pentecost Monday is a day off.
(I think it was Memorial day this weekend in the US). So we planned another social event. We had dinner with a group of our longterm
missionary friends which did include the Hoffman’s (Tanja and Stephan) from
Germany, Naja and Thomas, and we were joined by Joel and Janette as well. There were a huge group of kids who played
very well together. We made a big meal
the afternoon and sat and talked until about 4pm.
That was about the time I got hay fever and took a Benadryl.
This evening (Tuesday) we had another visitor, Brandon
Thiessen who used to work with us at MCC when we first moved here. He is now a coffee buyer and works in
Switzerland. He was here to sample some
Burundian coffee. It was good to catch
up with him as well.
Our life felt very rich this week as far as
friendships. We are also aware as we
near the end of the year how much things will change when we begin the school
year next September. Generally though it
has been remarkable to see how many people are arriving here. The ex-pat. Community seems to be growing
very rapidly. We were at Club du Lak
briefly Sunday afternoon and it was packed with Muzungus. I don’t even know where they are from or what
they are doing here, but I think the confidence that Burundi is more or less
stable is becoming more and more accepted.
I hope this will be a positive change.
It did seem a bit overwhelming on Sunday afternoon though.
The reports we here across the Lake in Eastern Congo have taken
a turn for the worse. Generally there
had been improvement to the point that people were taking tourist trips to see
gorillas around Bukavu and the top of the volcano in Goma. Now all of those areas have been recaptured
by rebels and new rebel groups made up of disgruntled deserters from the
Congolese army are becoming very powerful and disruptive in the region. The casualties are almost always civilians as
rebels seem to prefer to massacre them rather than engage other armed groups in
combat.
It is very sad for us to hear about this deterioration of
the situation in Eastern Congo.
That is all I have to report this evening, so for anyone
interested I am attaching the sermon. Enjoy:
 |
| Dinosaur Bone Archeological Dig by Oren and friends at Club du Lac T. this Sunday. |
Acts 14
sermon (Read Acts 14:1-23)
It is a
great pleasure to be able to share God’s word with you on this Pentecost
Sunday. It is also a relief to me to be
on the preaching side rather than the interpreters side. Having done that 2 weeks ago I must say that
(s)he has the more difficult task up here.
As I
said, this is Pentecost Sunday, the day we remember the decent of the Holy
Spirit upon the heads of the 120 followers of Jesus praying together in
Jerusalem.
Historically,
for the jewish people Pentecost was the festival to mark the first harvest
after the growing season, when the Hebrews would bring their first fruits to
the temple for a large festival. We as
Christians can see the poetic timing of the coming of the Holy Spirit on
Pentecost, equipping the harvesters with Spirtual gifts to bring in the first
harvest of those called by Christ into his body--the church.
We are
also continuing today in our sermon series on mission and will look today how
the Holy Spirit does equip us for mission even today. For the sake of this topic, I will not
actually be reading the Pentecost passage in Acts 2, but will be going further
into the book Acts to look at the work of the spirit through one of the most
powerfully transformed and transforming men in the Bible. I am of course talking about the Apostle
Paul.
Remember,
that Paul was certainly among the firstfrutis of those brought into the body of
Christ---the miracle of his conversion is a powerful testimony to the way we
are prepared as Christians for ministry.
He himself went overnight from being one of the Gospel’s worst enemies
to one of its most adamant defenders.
During
his lifetime he made 3 important missionary journeys to spread the Gospel to
the Gentiles according to the book of Acts, and we are going to look today at his
first journey as recounted in Acts Chapter 14.
Actually his anointing for this journey by the Holy Spirit when he and
Barnabus were set apart and prayed for by his community is recounted in Acts
13. In Acts 14 we pick him up enroute
in what is now the country of Turkey.
I am
very happy to offer a missionary’s perspective on this particular passage. and I
feel like it has some important things to teach those of us who feel called to
mission in Burundi, both ex pats and Burundians and the way the Spirit empowers
us to do so.
Read
Passage Act 14.
I am
going to divide the passage today into 3 parts and discuss them
separately. I have a topic heading for
each section so if you are taking notes you can begin by writing down these 3
headings. : They are, if you want to write them down:
1) The
Full Gospel
2) Cross
Cultural Challenges
3)
Perseverence
By way
of background this the first of 3 missionary journeys that Paul embarks upon in
the book of Acts beginning in Chapter 13.
He leaves from Antioch with Barnabus and travels west on the
Mediterranian than turns north and goes overland to a town called Pisidian
Antioch. a region that is now in the
country of Turkey. I will have more to
say about the geography at the end of the sermon.
In Acts
14 we are picking up on Paul and Barnabus’ journey in the town of Iconium. They have just been run out of the town of
Pisidian Antioch in Chapter 13 and are heading southeast.
We find
that in Iconium as well the Apostles are not well received either. According to the text unbelieving jews begin
to stir up the Gentiles against them.
Despite their bold speaking and signs, they here of a conspiracy to
stone them and they leave the town and continue South to Lystra.
Lets
look a bit more closely at this conflict.
This is not the first time we find Paul in trouble with Jews and
Gentiles in his ministry. In fact he has
a similar problem in the previous chapter in the town of Pisidian Antioch.
I think
understanding this ‘jealousy of the jews’ and to conflict Paul frequently
creates between Jews and Gentiles is worth investigating. Just what about the Gospel of Salvation is so offensive
or controversial?
Certainly
his call to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles at all was a point of contention,
even among the Apostles. But why?
My
sense in reading these accounts along with his letters, is that Paul felt that
the Gospel of Salvation had important social consequences that were very
difficult to accept for both Jews and Gentiles.
You
see, Paul felt the gospel first and
foremost was a message of reconciliation
which began with our relationship with God, but then had direct
consequences on our relationship with other brothers and sisters in Christ—in
this case, in the relationship between jewish and gentile believers.
He even
describes this mission several times in his letters as the great mystery of the
gospel hidden from view for the ages:
This is from Ephesians 3
2Surely you have heard about the
administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3that is, the mystery made known to
me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. 4In reading this, then, you will be able
to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5which was not made known to men in other
generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles
and prophets. 6This mystery is
that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members
together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
In Galatians 3 he used the language of
being one people, not greek, jew, male, female, slave nor free but all one
people in Christ.
This is
not Separate but equal folks, we are talking about sharing barbeque, sitting at
the dining room table together, full family members!
This
Gospel of Unity, I believe is at the base of much of this conflict created by
Paul’s ministry and particularly on this missionary journey. If we
look back one chapter (Acts 13) this is especially poignant, because we see
that the jews receive the Gospel message
in Pisidian Antioch with interest one week, then go into a jealous rage and throw
Paul and Barnabus out of the city as soon as the Evangelists begin sharing it
with the Gentiles as well the following Sabbath.
But
Paul seemed adamant that the Gospel of reconciliation with God could not be
cleaved away from its social consequences, that is the Gospel of reconciliation
with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ.
He felt that one followed directly from the other. I honestly think he would have had an easier
time and less persecution if he would have stuck to the message of salvation and
left reconciliation between those who accepts Jesus for another time. But he never saw the Evangelical message and
the social message as separate. He was
beaten, stoned, austracized by his own people for it, but he never ceased to
preach it.
And to
some extent I think that has been one of the great failure of the evangelical
church in Africa in the last century. In
cleaving the salvation message away from the social message we end up with an
incomplete transformation, reconciliation to God without any reconciliation to
neighbor.
Evangelicals
of the last century have not been the only ones who have tried to construct a
theology which cleaves these two halves of the gospel apart. Peter, as we see in Galatians, after his
dream, tried to distance himself from Gentile Christians he had saved, even
refusing to eat with them.
Other
examples include the one I read recently about Catholic priests in DRC in the
18th century who during the height of the slave trade, sold off
their entire congregations to slavers, the only moral reservation they had was
not to sell to protestant slavers because they did not want their converts to
fall into the hands of heretics.
Apartheid
in South Africa was entirely based on a theology of salvation without
reconciliation and unity between brothers.
And of course the genocide and civil war that were witnessed here in
Rwanda and Burundi involved Christians killing Christians, even singing praise
songs as the swung the machete.
Certainly
it has been the experience of many of us in Burundi and elsewhere that while
the idea of salvation may be appealing, the cost of discipleship, that is--seeing
your enemies as your brothers (and by
enemies I mean people who murdered your parents and stole their land and still
live on it.) may be a price too
high to pay.
There is another partial Gospel that has appealed
to some when the social gospel, reconciliation to one’s brothers is highlighted
without seeing it as a consequence of reconciliation to God (Gospel of
Salvation). This social gospel can be
appealing to some because it sounds tolerant.
But reconciliation to one’s brothers, not rooted in a saving faith will
be superficial at best. As soon as the
road gets tough one is willing to abandon one’s love for one’s friends. Christ
says ‘Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his
friends.’ But that is a hard call.
In Buta here in Burundi, I do not believe a social
gospel of brotherly love would have led those students--when they were attacked
by a rebel group and asked to separate by ethnicity so that one group could be
slaughtered and the other spared--to refuse to so and were martyred
together.
With his dying breath, one of the young martyrs
with a beautific face told the rector,
“Today we have won. They told us
to separate and we all refused and stayed together.”
Paul is
bringing a full gospel message in his missionary journeys, complete with signs
and wonders but it is not easily received, and he faces death many times for
it, but he is uncompromising. To many it
is an offensive message and if it does not offend you here and now, even
slightly, perhaps you are not considering the full consequences of this radical
gospel of vertical and horizontal reconciliation.
Are you
ready to embrace a gospel that takes puts your cultural identity behind your
identity in Christ. Am I ready to have
my son marry a Burundian Christian as opposed to an American. Are tutsis and Hutus ready to give their
daughters in marriage to followers of Jesus among the Batwa? Because those are just some of the
implications of being one new family. I
think we should all squirm a little about what the Full transformative gospel
message means for us who call ourselves followers of Jesus.
But
that is not the only problem Paul faces as a missionary on this trip. When they do flee from Iconium they go to
Lystra, where they begin their outreach
with a powerful sign, a healing. (man could not walk from birth is healed) But something does not go as planned. The miracle is badly misunderstood, and Paul
and Barnabus are perceived to be the Messiahs and not Jesus Christ. And it
sounds like it is all Paul can do to convince the citizens there that they are
ordinary men.
It is
interesting that, as a missionary we find one of the great pitfalls of cross-cultural
work in this small episode, especially where one does not know the local
language. Let me call your attention to a detail in verse 11. Luke,
the author, notes that the people shouted in their Lycaniom language that
Barnabus is Zeus and Paul is Hermes, the prophet of Zeus and since they have a
temple for these deities they want to go and make sacrifices there.
(Look
at scene)
I am
presuming that probably Paul and Barnabus did not know exactly what all the
cheering was about and did not understand until later how badly the miracle had
been misunderstood. So instead of moving
forward with their message, they have to start from scratch again, putting out
fires of confusion and misunderstanding.
NO we are not Gods, we are men like you.
It was not us who did the miracle it was done through the God we serve,
the living God, etc. etc.
The
paragraph ends by saying that even all of these efforts barely persuaded the
Lycanians from offering sacrifices to them.
A tough, but not atypical day for a missionary in a cross-cultural
situation.
How often do I see this in our context in
Burundi? I need to explain a bit about
traditional African family and community structures. We often called them Patrimonial. That basically means that people live in
patron-client relationships of borrowing and owing. At the top, the chief lender and richest
person in the community is the big-man a position with considerable status and
wealth. It is he who bestows wealth on
the community through ‘loans’ which secure loyalty, among other things. In the post-colonial world, the big-man may
get his wealth from the national treasury if he is a political leader,
corruption if he is a civil servant, the offering and the international mission
if he is a pastor.
Yes, it
is very easy, even as a Christian, especially an African Christian to get pulled
into this traditional system. Even me,
when I go at a field visit to see one of our projects, am always treated with
great honor and respect. I go into a
very poor village, see a goat raising project, than am invited in for a meal of
goat meat, rice, beans, and coca-cola. I
am served first, often before the eyes of hundreds of onlooking hungry children
who will not even be permitted to eat until I am done, and then will only get
whatever leftovers the big men leave behind.
I know
it is important in terms of encouraging our partners to go out and see their
work, and while they do not actually acclaim me as Zeus (these are Christian
partners) the treatment I receive as a donor is uncomfortably close to
deification. And while we may not be seen as God’s we are just as good from the
perspective of most Burundians. We have
power, we do amazing things with our medicine, and computers, and money. So we receive ‘divine’ treatment from our
local hosts and receive innumerable petitions for help in healing diseases,
providing education, food, jobs, and money.
We are seen as saviors.
And I
can tell you, poor rural African Christians are in awe of seeing us and other
missionaries roll up, in 4X4s with lots of money to spend (for good
causes—provided by faithful givers in North America), driving around the
country, jetting in and out of the region. And African pastors say, “Hey, I’d
like a piece of that. I’d like to drive
around the country in 4X4 preaching the Gospel, I would like nice church
building and a church band with electronic musical instruments and a
soundsystem, and I would like a computer to write my sermons and do word
searches on the internet. And as a
witness to the Gospel I need it and deserve it.
You
see, our good actions, our charity, even as Christians is so easily
misunderstood and can take the focus away from the gospel and bring the focus
on the donor and the benefits. Paul and
Barnabus struggled to do damage control in this situation, and today we see
many historic mission churches having to do the same damage control around the
world today to break unhealthy dependency on foreign mission aid to support the
local churches..
I have
personal examples. About a month before
I came I was asked by an acquaintance from our church for help with
tuition. Because of the relationship I
had with him I did give it to him (about $100) but honestly did not feel good
about it. I know that now he will see me
as a benefactor and will ask me for many more things in the future including
all his future tuition needs. When I
gave it to him he was effusively thankful and told me he had prayed the entire
night that I would say yes to his request.
He even called me his father and his God sometimes. I imagine he will eventually be disappointed
when God ceases to answer his prayers that I will support him. I confess that
it is hard for me not to become the big-man when it is so easy to do these
small miracles in the lives of people we know.
But I don’t think what I did was serving God’s purposes in any way I
understand.
My
point is that cross-cultural ministry is difficult and even the good we do can
become the biggest barrier to our success in making the gospel real and
personal to those we are sharing it with.
So
there are the first 2 points: The Full
Gospel, Cross Cultural Challenges,
I’ve
probably brought you all down to this point, and I’m sorry. But I want to try to get you to imagine the
struggle that Paul and Barnabus were going through on this ‘Holy Spirit
Annointed’ mission trip. It was not all
glory, they were struggling to succeed and risking their lives. But its about to get much better here at the
end.
What we
are left with in Chapter 14 is cause for hope.
I call it the Victory of Perseverence.
We do
see that after these problems in Pysia Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, and this
is pretty bad, not just are they misunderstood but they are run out of town, stoned,
and even have their lives threatened because of the work they are doing.
But
look at what happens once they get to Derbe:
It is amazing if you look at it on a map---
they
backtrack, through the exact places where this happened, it says they
strengthen the disciples and encourage them
to remain true to the faith.
“We must go through many hardships to enter
the kingdom of God,” they told the disciples in those places.. 23
Paul and Barnabas appointed eldersa for them in each church and, with
prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their
trust.
A bit about Geography:
They are heading toward the mission station in Antioch, one would
suppose completely exhausted. Imagine you
are leading this trip and this has been your experience to this point. Where do you want to go next?
Well in my opinion, Paul does a stunning about face. Look
at the map…
Traveling down the hypotenuse of triangle back toward
Antioch, Then in Derbe, they turn back
around.
WHAT A
TESTIMONY to the Gospel. ---men and women that are willing to go back, again
and again, to see the work through to the end and leaving those who are
commited to stay for the long term and training locals to continue to do the
work of reconciliation to God and man.
I can
imagine what an encouragement it must have been to believers in these places to
see Paul and Barnabus, after being so badly mistreated in these cities,
returning to them again to encourage and inspire them, and assuring them that
even the suffering and hardships are part of the road toward the Kingdom of
Heaven. And it says that they did appoint
local elders, a good strategy to effectively work in a cross cultural setting—empowering
locals to carry out the work.
As far
as Burundi, Rebecca and I have mercifully been spared any beatings or being run
out of town. But we have seen many of our friends who have suffered these
things as well as imprisonment and other types of persecution because of their
faith. As an organization we work
through local partnerships with just such individuals, their stories are a
testimony to their willingness to suffer even to death, and yet persevere in
the face of failure and defeat to bring the Gospel of Peace and Reconcilliation
to their people.
I think
of people like Onesphore who stood up with fellow tutsi and hutu christians, in
a time of ethnic crisis in his school, and stood between two fighting groups
and proclaimed. “We are a new ethnic
group, not Tutsi nor Hutu, but Christian, if you are going to kill anyone,
start with us. The crisis was averted
and no one was died that day.
I see
the courage of people here like Emmanuel Ndikumana and his wife Asele, Asher,
Oscar, Dieudonne, Innocent and countless others committed to a lifetime of
bringing God’s message of salvation and reconciliation to people here in
Burundi.
And
expats, like, Libby, Helga and Christiane, the Johnson family, Aly Blaire,
Mary, Rosemary, Simon, and others who have made this place and their home and
have suffered greatly for many years to bring the Gospel of Salvation and Peace
to this country.
Psalm
16:3 says Blessed are the Saints that are in this Land, they are the Holy Ones
in whom is all my delight.
We are
blessed to have in our company, people who give witness to the way that the
Holy Spirit empowers us for mission. But
don’t be misled by looking only for quick miracles. Look at those who have given their lives to
bring the Full Gospel to fruition in Burundi, despite much suffering and
misfortune. They are the Holy Ones in
Whom is all my delight!!
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