Sermon for 2012

DS Mulongo and Biking Bob meeting with church leaders

I’m lucky enough to only have to write a couple sermons a season, one for here in Congo and one for folks back home, communicating what is going on here in Congo. I can’t really prepare the here-in-Congo sermon until I get here and sit for a while in this very familiar, but always changing world.

If I were a preacher preparing a weekly sermon for a congregation in Indiana, I would begin with the scripture text, usually from that week’s lectionary. Here, however, I begin with taking in all the changes and energies and letting them settle into a biblical story. I don’t have the scripture text yet, but the issue is clear. (I really don’t mind if you jump in and offer suggestions. That’s what we do here.)

The torque of the sermon is taking form. It has to do with the paradox of living totally reliant upon God’s grace for all that we need and the hard work that this moment in history requires of us.

Here’s the central pitch: (Opening with a bit of Christology) Just as the Church has historically affirmed that the nature of Christ is fully divine and fully human, our lives are both fully God-dependent and fully self-actuated. The old saying: “Pray like everything depends on God, and work like everything depends on you.”

As I sit in churches and market places, walk about fields and mines, and listen to the preaching, singing, and political arguing, it is clear that the living in a state of dependence upon God’s grace is fully received and practiced. We should have this kind of spiritual appreciation in America. It is a beautiful thing and worship takes you to spiritual places you can’t imagine. However, these times call for action.

Taylor and I were visiting churches in the Tenke District a couple years ago and came across a community where the pastor had called the church to a week of prayer and fasting, insisting that everyone come every day to the church for an all-day prayer service. One very smart (and smart-mouthed) farmer responded with: “The pastor should call us to one day of prayer, and send us to the fields for six days.”

In Kabalo last year, during a lunch after my sermon, a pastor (not a Methodist) commented that we should pray and wait for God to act to save us. The District Administrator, a government official, laid into that preacher like nobody’s business. “That’s what’s wrong with you preachers! Waiting, waiting, waiting. Now is the time for action!”

Back in 1998, a group of us pastors in the Lubumbashi area were meeting for a Bible study. It was shortly after the fall of the Mubutu government. We were working on the text (maybe this is the text for this year’s sermon) from Revelations 6:9: The saints under the altar are crying out, “How long, O Lord, how long?” Two years before, this same group had gathered, reading this same passage, and all we could do was pray for God’s intervention. It was a terrifying time, and all we could do was cry to the Lord, “How long?” Then, in an instant, the world changed. In this 1998 session, we spent an hour listing all our problems, then one pastor said, “The answer is prayer.” No one responded for several minutes, then another pastor said, “Yes, but when God answers our prayers, we must act.” The rest of the session was a period of confession about how many times God had answered our prayers, but we did not act. God had answered our prayers for deliverance, and now it is time for us to act.

I’m thinking the sermon might be something along this line. What do you think?

Bob

Lubumbashi