Egypt Bound 2010:1

I try to tell stories and not preach in my blog but I AM a pastor and some things just come naturally. I leave for Egypt Thursday evening (6/10/2010). To kick off my blog for 2010 I thought I'd share a sermon I preached this past Sunday that speaks some about how all of these experiences and my life as a pastor and proclaimer of the Word become integrated for me.

God-Changed Lives
1 Kings 17:17-24 and Luke 7:11-17 - June 6, 2010
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY
Pr. Amy Walter-Peterson

On Thursday I leave for my fourth year of teaching English as St. Leo’s Coptic Catholic Seminary in Cairo, Egypt. It’s always an adventure. One thing that I have come to count on is change in the seminarians from year to year. Some of the change comes as they simply grow and mature from one year to the next. Some of the change comes from their exposure to new ideas and new ways of thinking in their education. And some of the change comes from their encounters with others . . . others, like me.

George is one such student. I met him for the first time two summers ago. That summer he came across as an angry and sullen young man. In the one day that I spent with his class his first summer in the English program he asked questions that verged on inappropriate. George could not get his mind around the idea of a female priest - that is what I am to these students - a female priest. And if that weren’t hard enough to grasp, I was a MARRIED, female priest. George could not fathom how I could be a pastor AND take care of my responsibilities at home. When I explained that my husband and I shared responsibilities at home, he was dumbfounded. That day in class was the extent of our interaction that first summer.

George returned for his second summer course last year and was in my class 3 days a week. As he gained some confidence with his English, he began to speak a few words from time to time. I began to joke with him in class and he would break a smile or even join in laughing with the others.

About half-way through the course last year, George and I ended up sitting at the same table for lunch one day. George was desperate for some classmates to join us, but they would not come to his rescue. So George and I sat together for the entire meal. The conversation started slowly but I asked him questions about his family and his home. He eventually asked me again about being a pastor in America. He asked if my husband was a pastor and I explained that he was not and told him about the work he does. He asked again how our home gets taken care of when we are both working. I explained again, “Sometimes I make dinner, sometimes Hans makes dinner. Sometimes I clean the house, sometimes Hans cleans the house. Sometimes I go to the store, sometimes Hans goes to the store. We share these responsibilities.”

As I spoke, George listened and nodded. And then he said, “I think maybe this is better in America than in Egypt.” I tried not to fall off my chair or show my shock. Those were the last words I expected to hear from George.

Now I’m not sure that George really meant what he said. If push came to shove, I’m pretty sure that George would not really support the idea that sharing household responsibilities is good for Egyptian families and society. But in that conversation and in his comment, I saw the beginning glimpses of a change of heart. Just one year before, George has been so certain of his view of the world. But on that day, he sat next to me and admitted that maybe there were other ways to order the world that aren’t necessarily bad. The spirit was working change in George’s life. I saw it revealed right before my eyes. I can’t wait to see George when I return this week and see where God has been leading him.

Change abounds in our readings for today. There is the obvious change that God brings in raising to life the son of the widow of Zarapheth in 2 Kings and the son of the widow of Nain in the gospel. There is the change God brings in the form of saving help to these two widows whose newly raised sons will again provide them with life and security and protection.

It doesn’t end there. In the beginning of his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks of the changed life that he has received through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul describes his life-change in full detail, “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.” But then, he says, “God was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” Paul’s ministry began and the churches of Judea that were in Christ said of him, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” A changed life to be sure!

The Psalmist even gets in on the action today giving thanks to God for healing power that changes lives. “You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken my sackcloth and clothed me with joy . . .”

But the changes that strike me most are not these changes that I’ve just named. The changes that strike me in today’s readings are not so much life-changes as heart-changes. Or maybe they are better called heart openings. Let me explain.

The widow that Elijah is visiting is the very same widow of Zarapheth for whom Elijah had promised a never-ending abundance of meal and oil, if she would only share her last morsel with him. She shared and God provided. But now in our scene from today’s reading, the widow’s son has been spared starvation only to die of disease or illness. She is distraught - truly for her it would have been better for them to die together. She is irate - What have you against me, man of God?

Unlike their first encounter, Elijah has no words of comfort for her. No “fear not” comes from his mouth today. Instead he asks for her dead son’s body and takes him to an upper room. And there we see Elijah’s heart laid bare. He is moved by the pleas of this widow who has provided him with food and hospitality. His heart opens to her grief and her pain and he pleads with God on her behalf. “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son? . . . O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And we’re told, “the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again and he revived.”

A similar encounter happens in Luke. Jesus, his disciples and a crowd of followers travel to Nain. At the city gate they encounter the burial procession of a man who has died. Luke tells us he wasn’t just any man, “he was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow.” He wasn’t just her only kin, he was her only source of security and protection, her only means of food and shelter.

Our words fail to convey the enormity of the impact that this scene had on Jesus. Our translation says, “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her . . .” But it was deeper than that. Eugene Peterson says, “When Jesus saw her, his heart broke . . .” That’s closer. But it’s even more - upon seeing this widow weeping over the death of her only son, Jesus felt the way we feel when we see the remains of a crash by the side of the road and we get that ache in our gut and that sinking feeling inside of us.

Jesus’ heart was opened to the grief, the pain, the complete loss of a strange widow, in a strange village, who experienced the death of her only son. Jesus was so moved by this experience that he “came forward and touched the bier and said, “young man I say to you, rise!” And rise, he did!

What strikes me most in these two encounters is that God’s life-changing power is ushered into the world by two men - Jesus and Elijah - who are first changed by the grief and loss of the widows they encounter. God uses the heart-rending change that Elijah and Jesus experience with these two widows as an opportunity to bring change to world.

Elijah’s heart-changed soul cries to God on behalf of the widow of Zarapheth and in her joy she proclaims, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”

Jesus’ heart-changed soul works on behalf of the widow of Nain, and in their fear and awe the people of the village proclaim, “God has looked favorably on his people!”

The same was true for Paul. The same was true for the Psalmist. And the same is true for us. God uses our heart-changed lives to change the world! In fact, God changes our lives - through changing our hearts - so that we may bring God’s life-changing power to the world!

In the Upstate New York Synod we say that we are resurrection people, who pray first, walk together and change lives. The truth is that we don’t change lives. But when we lay bare our lives to the power of the Holy Spirit, when we allow our hearts to be changed by the grief of widows, or the cries of anguish of Gulf Coast fishermen, or the pleas for dignity and hope by refugees around the world, when we allow our lives to be open and changed by the cries of the world around us, God uses our changed hearts to change the world . . . one person at a time.

When I return to Egypt this week, I will also have the privilege of visiting and leading worship at St. Andrew’s Church in central Cairo which houses St. Andrew’s Refugee Ministry. Emigrés from Sudan, Somalia and other parts of Africa are served by that ministry. St. Andrew’s is a ministry supported through ELCA’s global mission and served by ELCA missionaries, which means it is a ministry that is supported by the offering you give on behalf of the wider church.

St. Andrew’s Refugee ministry provides literacy courses that teach people to read and write in Arabic. The ministry also helps prepare students to take an education test that will qualify them for further study. A few years ago the ministry started offering sewing classes, only the girls signed up. But then the directors mentioned the some of the most successful clothing designers are men. So Eid, a refugee from Somalia, signed up. Then came Atem, from Southern Sudan. Now the class is mostly boys.

I don’t know the entire story of St. Andrew’s Refugee ministry. But I’d be willing to guess that someone had a heart-changing experience that opened them to the plight of African refugees who have been forced out their homes by war, violence and poverty and are now living in Cairo where they are disdained by their Egyptian neighbors (including my students). Through sewing, literacy and other classes, Eid, Atem and the lives of so many other lives are being changed as they wait to be resettled in cities across the globe. Cities like Buffalo where they have settled on the south side and are served by the ministries of churches like Resurrection Lutheran. Through these ministries, God is using heart-changed lives to change the world . . . one person at time!

May it be so for us as well!