Imagine No Malaria 2012 Article: One Year Later

Writer's Note: This article was published last year by the United Methodist Church in commemoration of Imagine No Malaria.

What It Means To Imagine

            I gathered with other delegates and colleagues in ballroom B of the Tampa convention center. Imagine No Malaria is an organization I had heard of plenty of times before. But I like many of the parishioners of our churches had no idea of the depth, height and grace of God presence in this organization.

            Some fast facts for you, if you like me, had not experienced the power of Imagine No Malaria

·      Since it’s official launch, Imagine No Malaria has provided nearly 1 million mosquito nets, trained 5,000 community health workers and established 12 health boards to plan and oversee programs in 15 countries.

·      Gifts totaling $20,202,778 have been given to support this program, with gifts coming from 61 different United Methodist annual conferences.

·      Imagine No Malaria’s documentary, “A Killer in the Dark” aired as a TV special on NBC affiliates in 2011. It has earned numerous awards, including the Religion Communicators Council’s DeRose-Hinkhouse award for “Best of Class,” The Aurora Awards” “Platinum Best in Show” and a pair of “platinum” honors from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals.

When General Conference first heard of Imagine No Malaria, a child was dying every thirty seconds, now in 2012 we see that there is still death, but death is losing grounds on the fight in Malaria. The people of the United Methodist Church have taken up this cross, and are walking with the people who are hurting. When Christ bids us come to the table, he calls us to bear one another’s burdens. It can be quite comfortable for United Methodists in the United States to imagine a world without malaria, but when you give a face and a name to the plight of this disease, you see that Christ’s face is among them, God is present amidst the people fighting malaria.

            I highly encourage everyone to see Imagine No Malaria’s, “A Killer in the Dark” When we start to see our church as a connectional body, we see that our brothers and sisters are hurting. I am reminded of that old hymn, “Jesus calls us over the tumult
of our life’s wild, restless, sea;
day by day His sweet voice soundeth,
saying, “Christian, follow Me!” When we hear the voice of our Creator and Redeemer sounding over our comfortable lives, we see that God is working, and inviting us to work for the mission of a world with no malaria.

            When I think of imagining, as this organization challenges us to do, I often think of dreams. I think of the hopes and dreams of the one we call Christ. I wonder what Jesus dreamed for our world, I wonder what Jesus imagined for us. Simply and directly, Jesus didn’t imagine a world where Christians sit around while our world hurts. Jesus didn’t imagine that we sit in chairs and vote on resolutions to help, he challenged us to dirty, death-defying theology, a theology of servant ministry and practice. When we get down in the dirt where these mosquitos are, we are down there with the people of Africa, hoping, praying and working for God’s grace and love to become evident through practice.

            To quote the video, “Imagine No Malaria is about changing and saving lives” Isn’t that in itself the mission of the United Methodist Church and a commission handed down to us by our Savior. It is our challenge as the global community to respond to the needs of the people. The video states that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, churches provide 50 percent of the healthcare for that county. What if we imagined a world where the body of Christ lived out its mission in healthcare, poverty response and a message against preventable diseases?

          In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" It is the hope and prayer of bishops, clergypersons, and laity alike that one day when this time and place has been committed to history, we might say that to malaria. It is our job to make that day happen, it is our job to take an imagination and bring about a reality. On that day, we will all be able to say, “Thanks be to God.” Amen.

I am deeply indebted to Rob Naylor and Skyler Nimmons in the writing and publication of this piece.

All of our Years are Golden Years

Writer's Note: This is a special edition of my column for the Statesville Record and Landmark's Progress Edition. Airing April 28th, 2013

A few years back, my friend and I were interviewed side by side for a documentary done by the North Carolina Baptist Aging Ministries. We were young, happy, and talking about working with senior adults in our community. Years later I still think about that video. My friend isn’t here anymore on this side of Heaven. She didn’t have the opportunity to grow older and into her golden years like so many people will have the opportunity to do.

            I think for me that started to put things into perspective. We’ve all taken days, months and even years for granted. We grow older with each passing day but do we really realize the wonder and amazement that we have another morning of life? For me, I’ve developed three points to help me grow older. I hope that these might help you as we continue to journey on the road to life.

1.     Joy is holy: We sing about joy in church, with such standards as ‘Joy to the World’ and ‘Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.’ But do we know what joy is? Joy is that feeling on Easter or Christmas morning when we realize that this is life at its best. Joy is that ability to stand at the ocean or in the mountains and see the majesty of the creation of God. Joy is that inescapable feeling that things are right in our world.

2.     Be Vulnerable: We as a culture have gotten in a mentality that we have to do everything for ourselves. Any lack of independence is a sign of defeat. But ultimately we need to be vulnerable. Some of the most important experiences we have as human beings are to find the wounds of another person and touch the heart of that wound. We stand in moments of time and find ourselves growing older, and in our vulnerability we can express our fears and our joys about the aging process. People need to shift their realities from independence to interdependence. God weaves God’s presence through each and every one of us. God is present in our aging joys and aging sorrows. Ultimately, if we are vulnerable enough, we find God in ourselves and in the people around us.

3.     Love Like There’s No Tomorrow: None of us are guaranteed tomorrow, nothing is certain in this life and nothing will be able to prevent the inevitable to happen. That may sound bleak, but it gives us the opportunity to love like there’s no tomorrow. We can love friends, spouses, children, grandchildren, churches, communities, in ways that point to the beautiful love God has for each of us. It will never be as perfect as God’s love, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Love in reality is what gets us through those long days and cold nights. Love is what allows us to age with grace and dignity. So to love like there’s no tomorrow enables us to age as people of grace, hope and faith.

           

            Growing older shouldn’t scare us, growing bitter, or hateful should scare us. For in our older years we see the fruition of God’s work in our lives. God showed the fruition of God’s promise to Abraham in the last years of his life. In the end God sees all of our years as golden years. Years that allow us to be God’s presence here on earth.

            Even though my friend isn’t here anymore, I am reminded of that documentary. I know I am 20 years old; I am by no means in my older years. But I hope in God’s grace that I will be able to experience all the joys that are ahead. The beauty of marriage, the pitter-patter of children and grandchildren, I’ve always wanted to go to the English Countryside. I take with me the memory of my friend as a reminder that getting old is a luxury some people will never have. There’s an old hymn that became iconic in the 1960’s, it goes like this, “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray.” Let us give thanks for everything we have, our weary years and our silent tears, but also let us give thanks that we are given the opportunity to laugh and find joy, to be vulnerable, and to love like there’s no tomorrow. 

Statesville is Under Construction and We are too

     When people ask me to describe where I’m from, I often say that when you get to where Interstate 40 and 77 meet there’s Statesville. I’m sure you’ve all seen the construction going on there, the re-mapping of the roads we have known for decades. We’ve also heard a lot of coverage over the proposed Love’s Truck Stop. A professor the other day here at Appalachian mentioned to me that he heard Statesville was having what we in the South call a ‘heated discussion’ over the pros and cons of building that truck stop. I’ll spare you the details of how I feel about all this construction and let you know how I see it from a faith perspective.

            We’re all a little like Statesville. We all are caught between growth and what we know to be our identity. I think for all of our lives we have little (and sometimes not so little) construction projects going on about the landscape of our reality. On the converse side of that we often have demolition projects going on. We aren’t the same people we were five years ago; our existence is a little different than what it will be ten years from now. This may cause alarm to some, but in the beauty of faith, it is a good thing.

            I’m pretty sure God is the best construction manager I’ve ever encountered. Since the dawn of our existence as the human race and our own personal lives, God has been weaving God’s way throughout time and space to make known God’s love for us. This may come in construction projects, as you finally get help for the addiction, the marriage or the friendship. It may come in demolition projects as you learn to let go of your tattered past and celebrate God’s future, it may come as you realize that your friends weren’t the healthiest for you. All these beautiful reminders of love articulate God’s abounding hope spread throughout everything we hold dear.

            So this week, be thankful that there are construction projects going on in our community and in our lives. Because for us to be stagnant, or never changing is to forget the life God calls us to. That isn’t to say that you should never be still and hear the still small voice in the silence. It is to point to that we all go at different speeds at different times in our lives, and that is a beautiful reminder of our commonality that is tied to our Creator.

            I’m not the person I was a year ago, and though that is a normal part of the life cycle that could easily cause pain, bitterness and resentment, I praise God in the knowledge that God isn’t done with me or us yet. There’s still work to be done, there’s still more to be built.

God's Perfect Mix-Tape

       During the later years of the 20^th century, there was a part of popular culture that still resounds well into the 21^st century. The concept of a mix tape was that you could take songs from your favorite artists and put them all in one place on a tape cassette. Often you would give someone the mix tape, as a gesture of romantic love or friendship that you just knew would stand the test of time. Anyone who thought they were someone growing up in the 1980’s and 90’s made mix tapes. With the dawn of CD’s mix tapes disappeared, soon it became burning a CD for someone, I’m pretty sure we’re to making playlists for people now to put on their iPod.

            Now I’ve been known to make a CD for a friend, putting the songs on there that remind me of them or thoughts that the song invokes that allows me to smile and reminisce over our shared memories. For me anyway, the song choice is important, the order that the songs are on the CD has to be perfect, the way the CD looks is important. The quest for the perfect mix tape is a quest that many people throughout the past half-century have journeyed, and it got me thinking about the road of faith. 

            We all want perfection; we want the perfect mix tape, the perfect marriage, the perfect friendship, the perfect job. We are so dead-set on perfection that we sometimes try to act more perfect than Jesus himself, the example of perfection we humans have. We forget how beautiful it is to be human.

            Beautiful humanity, those two words uttered together are becoming less common as time marches forward. We don’t equate beauty with imperfection; we need not look any further than our beauty or cosmetic advertisements that set a societal norm for perfection. However God, in a truly magnificent way, loves us with our beautiful imperfections.

            God came to this mess of a world to show us that even in our imperfection, God still wanted to join in the divine dance of the ages with us. It’s a reminder that we are beautiful in our flaws, our mishaps, and our chaos. I couldn’t think of a better way to go into these spring months as people who acknowledge our imperfections and strive to give voices to those who may be insecure with their humanity.

            Jason Mraz has a song that has lyrics such as these, “And through timeless words and priceless pictures, we’ll fly like birds not of this earth, and tides they turn and hearts disfigure. But that’s no concern when we’re wounded together, and we tore our dresses and stained our shirts. But it's nice today, oh, the wait was so worth it. And what a beautiful mess, yes it is, it’s like picking up trash in dresses.” Friends the God we serve is a God who gets down in the dirt with us and gives sight to those who are blind, may we rejoice that God accepts us for who we are.

Is this More than Just Heartburn?

The Second Sunday of Easter

Luke 24:13-35        

    “They said to each other, ‘were our hearts not burning within us while he talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’” Will you pray with me?

            God of our roads and broken bread,

            May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.

           

             This past week, a friend of mine was passing through Statesville. When people come to Statesville, I take them to my favorite restaurant, Carolina Barbeque; they have the best chicken I’ve ever had. We were eating, and marveling at the weather. It was one of those rare, perfect spring days when the temperature was just right. I decided that my friend and I needed to go see an icon of my childhood, something that made Statesville unique. We drove a little ways and turned onto Oakwood Drive. Pretty soon, we were at this monumental tree. This tree had been around since before Statesville had been incorporated back in the late 18^th century.           

            This tree, better known to the residents of Statesville as Moses is a tree that towers over the landscape. The limbs of the tree could themselves be planted and tower over the other trees. It is by far the best climbing tree that I have ever seen. But for some reason, my friend wouldn’t get out of the car. I wanted to play, I wanted to climb the tree and relive my childhood, but she thought I was certifiably crazy. You see I’m leaving out a minor detail. This tree, that my grandparents played in when they were little, sits in the middle of Oakwood cemetery, the largest cemetery in Statesville. Just a few hundred feet from this gigantic tree, is the Lee plot, where my uncle and great grandparents are buried. But we’ll get back to that.

            The duo on the road to Emmaus had built their hopes and dreams, everything on Jesus of Nazareth. Their leader had shaped them; he was supposed to redeem Israel. They were very much trying to determine what’s next, where they would go from there. I think for Cleopas and his companion their best bet was to continue with their dinner reservations for the Passover was over. Jesus was dead and gone and for them, life had to go on.

            Then something happened that would change their lives forever. A man, a stranger started walking along side them. The man asked, “Why the long faces?” I’m sure the companions replied, “Seriously? Have you been under a rock or dead to the world for the past three days? Jesus the one we knew to be the Messiah for our people is dead. Our hope, gone, our faith, destroyed. But then we heard from some women who went early this morning to pay their respects that Jesus wasn’t there, and frankly we’re a bit lost.” I’m sure the stranger looked at them with holy frustration and love.

            The stranger didn’t turn out to be a stranger after all. This man, who walked along with them on the hard seven-mile journey was Jesus, the one they knew as Christ. Were our hearts not burning? In that moment, that snapshot of grace did we not feel God surrounding and enveloping us?

            Now for many of us, it would be easy to explain away the resurrection. It would be easy to say that Cleopas and his companion had a case of heartburn after such a bountiful Passover feast in Jerusalem. That would make things easy, wouldn’t it? The resurrection would fit back into our nice little boxes. We could roll the stone back in front of the tomb and say that Jesus fought the good fight, but in the end the candle was extinguished. Hope had died. Those women were just crazy.

            We’re all guilty of that. We came last Sunday and lilies flanked our altar, we sang the magnificent hymns of Easter, and then we all went home feeling good because Christ is risen. Then comes the Sunday after Easter. Things are back to normal, the lilies are gone, and the crowds have dissipated. For us, Easter is already gone. We’re putting the Easter baskets back in the attic, and frankly it’s good because we have other things to attend to. We all have dinner reservations in Emmaus.

            Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that the resurrection comes in the quiet moments when we’re putting our Easter baskets away. Whether it was early on the first day of the week while it was still dark, or even in the blindness of our own darkness as we head to wherever Emmaus is for us. We are the people precisely in need of the resurrection. We are those companions blinded; we are the women at the tomb astounded. For Easter changes everything, Easter changes us.

            My little brother some years back found a resurrection scene that is basically a nativity set of the tomb. You have the cross that stands on the hill with Jesus there, the women looking sad, and the soldiers carrying on about their business. On Good Friday you can close the tomb and then come Easter Sunday you put out the angel that holds a banner that says, ‘He is risen.’ That’s all good and well but then Scott in a moment of theological clarity asked something that the adults didn’t have an answer for. He asked very directly, “Where is the walking-around Jesus?” You see Scott saw the Jesus of the cross and the empty tomb, but where was this Jesus who conquered death? We spent some time searching for a walking around Jesus, and we finally found one. So every year, on Easter we place the walking around Jesus in front of the tomb. You see, the empty tomb is not the miraculous part of the story.

            The awe-inspiring, life-changing part of this story is that Jesus walked around. Jesus walked around not in vengeance or in a get-even spirit. Jesus walked around and changed the course of time. Jesus walked down the road to Emmaus and we are still talking about it today. I find that amazing, don’t you? This man, this Jewish Rabbi changed the course of history. This resurrection is serious business.

            One note of geographical clarification for you, as hard as we’ve tried, we can’t find the road to Emmaus that Luke talks about in the 24th chapter of his Gospel. We don’t know where in the world these men were headed, or if they even made it to Emmaus or just stopped somewhere along the way. I often wonder if that was intentional, if by chance, in God’s holy wisdom and humor, the road to Emmaus is for us. That road, that way, that path we are walking down is very much the same road that Cleopas walked down.

            And if that is the case, what snapshots, what moments in your life did you feel your heart burning within you? Where were those tiny crumbs that helped you come to a better understanding of the resurrection? Where were those divine moments when creation intertwined with Creator and you were for but a moment, transformed?

            John Wesley, the Anglican priest who eventually started the revolution that brought forth the Methodist denomination talked about his Aldersgate experience. He was in London one night and went to a church on Aldersgate Street, and felt his heart strangely warmed. He knew in that moment, he was surrounded by grace.

            What was it for you? Was it that friend who called you or visited you when you needed them? Was it that parent, whose only presence here on earth is the memories you still have? Is it that nurse at the hospital who smiled in a way that let you know you were safe? What moments were your heart burning? What moments changed the course of your history?

            The beauty of the Gospel story is that it happens to us! The good news of the road to Emmaus is that the road we walk may bear a different name, but a stranger who seems vaguely familiar comes and allows our hearts to burn. The good news of Jesus is that resurrection is real, and happens to us.

            The other night I watched a wonderful movie. The 2012 film, Perks of Being a Wallflower chronicles the story of Charlie, the high school freshman dealing with mental illness who is taken in by some incredible seniors. There’s a beautiful line in that movie as Charlie is realizing what this road of life is really about. He proclaims, “I know we'll all become somebody-we'll all become old photographs and we'll all become somebody's mom and dad. Right now these moments are not stories, this is happening. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite.”

            When I was a junior in high school my road to Emmaus took a drastic turn. I can remember the week like it was yesterday, I was participating in Leadership Statesville 2009, which was a youth program for up and coming community leaders. Throughout the course of that program we visited different parts of Statesville, once a month, on a Wednesday we’d see everything from the airport to the jail to city hall to get an idea of how things worked in our community. But that particular Wednesday we went to all the art galleries in downtown Statesville. Now my friend and I were bored out of our minds. We were honored to be considered part of Statesville’s leaders, but I think we felt like Charlie in that movie, knowing we’d be somebody someday; we just weren’t there yet. In all honesty we didn’t want to listen to some man talk about the meaning of his painting of a bridge. So my friend and I did the unthinkable, we skipped one of the art gallery exhibits and bought two bottle cokes from one of the stores. There we sat outside the art gallery in the stairwell, talking, laughing, and smiling. Now to discourage younger ears that are hearing this and to make the educators here happy, we got caught skipping. But even amidst a lady yelling at us for how delinquent we were, we did everything to keep ourselves from laughing at how great of a day it was.  Later that evening I received a text from my friend thanking me for a beautiful time, and how she was looking forward to hearing me preach that Sunday.

            No matter the trouble I got in that day from skipping, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. For that moment of grace was a moment that I look back and realize that my heart was burning within me. I’m starting to realize that these snapshots I’ve been talking about, these photographs caught in time when we feel like all is right with the world, these are not fleeting moments best left in our memories, they are encounters with a stranger on the road. These moments that we look back and see the memories that shaped our faith, we see there in the background, a stranger, a friend, a family member who made Jesus come alive for us.

You see that memory is one where I can’t help but see Jesus in, there’s reasons behind that, I received a phone call just two days later, that my friend Abbey who spent that time with me smiling and drinking a coke, was killed in a car accident.
            I tell you this story not to leave you with death and despair, that’s not my job during the Easter season. You see ever so often I’ll get down my yearbook from the year before Abbey died and read the message Abbey wrote in it, “Roberto, let me just tell you I have no idea what I would have done without you this year! I mean who would I have to pick on, and who would pick on me? I’m so glad we’ve gotten to know each other, these next few years will be great, but it’s only the beginning of something crazy, I love you, Abbey.”

            Friends we all have encountered Jesus on our roads, Jesus who comes to us, and reminds us that this is only the beginning. We see those old snapshots, and we yearn for explanations, for reasoning, for clean-cut ideas that make giving up acceptable. But then, somehow, some way a stranger comes, and reminds us of the burning within us, reminds us that there was this crazy thing that happened two millennia ago and still begins in our lives today.

            Years from now, if I’m lucky enough to have a family and kids, I think on a Spring day I’ll take them over to Oakwood Drive in Statesville. We’ll go visit some of the people who are there, we’ll see my uncle, and I’ll tell them what a wonderful person he was, and how proud he would be of them. I think we’d head over to  a church member’s plot, and tell the story of the first funeral I ever preached at. I might even point out First Baptist over the hill there, where my friend Abbey’s funeral was. But then, we’d veer off, and go play on that tree Moses. It sounds crazy, right? But the beauty of the resurrection is that there are times on our roads to Emmaus that we can park on the side of the road and play in the cemeteries, because our hearts will be burning. You see people of faith are silly enough to play in cemeteries, because death has been swallowed up in victory. Love could not be kept silent by the grave. Suddenly in that snapshot encounter with Jesus, playing in the cemetery isn’t that crazy after all.

All glory, honor and power be to the one who was, who is, and who is to come.

            Amen.