What do you think of when you think of Thanksgiving? Family? Food? Snow perhaps? Sure, those all sound about right. For me, something we always did before having our own family dinner was volunteering at the community Thanksgiving dinner at church. Potsdam is a town surrounded by a fair amount of elderly and rural poor, and our dinner was a place that anyone from the community could come for a free, friendly Thanksgiving meal. We went all out...we had the turkey, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and more sides and pies than you can count. So finding myself in Liverpool volunteering at food pantry on the afternoon of Thanksgiving my friends worked at seemed about right.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Thanksgiving is a day of plenty. We go so far as to wear our "eating pants" so we can be comfy while we stuff our bellies. Of course it's a time to give thanks for all that we have. But I want to challenge the idea that this is all there is to Thanksgiving. As we give thanks, surely we have to remember those who don't have the same opportunity to give thanks. Those without homes, without families, without food. And we can't just sit idly by. Our call as Christians is to care for others, no matter where they come from, no matter what they flee. To love, as Christ loved us.
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Admittedly, sometimes, when I get caught up in the rush of the morning commute, or meeting up with friends for coffee, I can forget that I am here in London for a year of ministry and mission. I've gotten so accustomed to life here, that I am thankful for the reminders, which come as often as I forget. This past week that reminder came in the form of the Partnership for World Mission conference, held in Derbyshire. The theme was Beyond our Borders: Churches Under Pressure. Speakers included Irfan Jamil from the Lahore Diocese of Pakistan, Bishop Rob Martin from the Marsabit Diocese in Kenya, and Bishop Mano Rumalshah, a former member of the Church in Pakistan and member of the Church of England. It was a wonderful time to meet like minded people from across the UK as well as the world. We worshipped together, talked together, prayed together. Over the last week, as I've been meditating on the experience, three main thoughts stood out...
1) Whenever we pray SOMETHING happens
This conference was, in many ways, like every mission conference I've attended since childhood. It told many of the same stories: religious persecution, treatment of women, poverty. Some of the women sitting at my table, who clearly had been involved with international mission for some time, began to commiserate. It seems like we've been praying for decades and nothing has changed! they said. Nothing has changed. Can you think of a more depressing thought? For all our prayers, for all our mission work, we still are fighting each other and killing each other needlessly. Women are still raped. Children still starve. Truly, what has changed?
And then I thought of something that a priest I knew once said about healing ministry: whenever we pray, something happens. It may not be exactly what we were praying for, but something always happens. In fact, the answers to our prayers generally don't manifest in the way we expect. Look at Jesus himself. The Jews expected the Messiah to be a conqueror and king, ready to deliver them from the hands of the Romans. Instead, Jesus was the Prince of Peace, who delivers all creation from the bonds of sin. God's answer to our prayer is always infinitely better than we can hope or perhaps even see in the present moment. And I took great comfort in that thought. True, we still live in a fallen world, ravaged by death, greed, war, corruption. But that doesn't mean that God isn't at work in it, and that he isn't changing things-even if in ways we cannot see yet. 2) Fear & the Other
I struggle during conferences like the one I attended last week, because nearly every story of persecution has to do with the struggle between Islam and Christianity. What's the issue, that's the story of the persecuted Church, isn't it? you may ask. Well, you aren't wrong. But I struggle because often we conclude that Islam must be stamped out if Christianity is to survive. My experience of Islam, however, has been nothing like this situation. Over the years, as I've gotten to know Muslim friends and professors, never once have a I felt that they wished to convert me much less wanted to turn the US into an Islamic state. Even in my studies of Islam and its influence in the West, though I recognise many of the problems that can exist, I could not conclude that either Islam or Christianity must supersede the other. I cannot deny the fact that most of the religious persecution in the world are Christian communities by Muslim ones. And yet, like every religious conflict in history--even those within the Christian tradition itself--it seems to me that this conflict is as much rooted in power as it is in religion, if not more.
I have no answers for this conflict. I have no easy solution for the persecuted church. Instead, I only have more questions. I wonder at the effectiveness of continuing to speak of Islam with fear and suspicion. Does fear and anger ever bring about peace? Is there a better way to support our brothers and sisters suffering persecution other than creating an even deeper divide between Islam and Christianity? 3) We're All In This Together
Like everyone's favourite pop culture school community, I too had a profound realisation of how connected and involved we all are to each other. This came not from the conference itself, but from an experience with a friend during the event. Chris is the assistant upstairs and the other under 30 year old dependably in the office each day, and between a shared interest in theology, politics, and laughter, we've become fast friends. Then, while we were at the conference, we heard the news about the political unrest in Zimbabwe. Like most people, my initial reaction was My goodness, how awful, but I didn't feel it on a great personal level. That is, not until I talked to Chris. Turns out Chris' wife is from Zimbabwe, and then, quite suddenly, through my friendship with Chris and hence my concern for his wife, I felt keenly for the nation of Zimbabwe. Suddenly, it wasn't some random country halfway around the world, a statistic, a point on a map. It was a real place, where real people with real lives and real hopes lived.
The following Sunday, at church, the vicar asked each of us to silently pray for one or two nations, and my first thought was of Chris and his wife and of all the people of Zimbabwe. This crisis now mattered to me personally. I can't help but think that if more of us had those personal connections beyond our borders, that the news would cease being water fountain chatter and become a real cause to cry out to the Lord, to lift up our brothers and sisters around the world. Maybe we could all learn, like the great Disney Channel Original Movie says, that We're All In This Together. |
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Me: Amelia BrownAvid runner & baker, following God's call to year of mission and service work in the Episcopal Church & Anglican Communion. Archives
August 2018
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