Will you pray with me?

Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen. 

This is a story about a journey of faith, the story of a voyage over a wide ocean, of a landing in a wild and unfamiliar place, of encounters with reticent if not hostile natives, and of breaking bread and giving thanks.  It is a story about courage, faith, freedom, determination, and desperation.

But mostly, this is a story about Providence. 

It began on the 24^th day of October in the year 2006—or at least my part of it did.  That day, Nancy and I received an email from a pastor in Newton saying that a minister from Uganda had been to see him, and that he had referred this man, Pastor Frank, to us at Old South.

A few days later, Frank stopped by and dropped off some materials about his church and ministry in Africa.  Now, we at Old South get a lot of requests like these for partnerships and relationships, and since we have our hands very full with the ministries we currently have, we are rarely able to respond as fully as we’d like to any of them.  Somehow, however, Nancy, Maggie Mode, the chair of our Outreach committee, and I found ourselves having lunch with Frank a couple of days later.  There, he told us his story. 

Orphaned before the age of ten, he had been raised, with almost no formal education, by a Christian minister.  Ten years ago, he founded his own church.  Since then, that church has grown to over 650 members.  It runs an orphanage and a school for orphans.  It provides counseling to those living with HIV/AIDS and to women in crisis.  It holds a worship service every day of the week and three on Sundays.  And, like all churches, it has its challenges: the people worship outside under sunscreens with no roof to protect them from the rainy season they are now entering.  Its resources are overstretched, and it is becoming more and more of a challenge to care for and feed the orphans it supports.  And the government of Uganda is bearing down on it, putting significant pressure on it to partner with a foreign church or agency so that it can be more effective at serving the needs of the Ugandan people.

Feeling uncertain of the next steps to take to help the church grow through these challenges, Pastor Frank did what I hope any Christian would do: he began to pray, to ask what God would have him do.  In time, the answer became clear: go to America.  Seek a church with which to partner there.  Now, Frank knew no one in the United States, had never been here before, and had no money to get here.  He didn’t have the first idea of how he would find a partner church when he got here, and he knew that even if he found a church to talk to, he had nothing but his need to offer them to convince them to partner with him.  But he didn’t hesitate.  He told his congregation that God was calling him to go, and that he would go.  So, over the next months, the people took up a special offering at every worship service, seven days a week and three on Sunday, to send their pastor to the United States. 

Eventually, their day-by-day contributions added up to enough for a round-trip ticket.  When he got off the plane at JFK, he called the number of a friend of a friend, the only person he sort-of knew here, to ask if he could stay with him.  The friend said that that would be fine, but the problem was that he lived in California.  Frank asked whether he would mind coming to pick him up.  The friend explained, and then continued: he did have the number of a Ugandan woman who might be able to help, he said, and who lived much closer to New York: in Waltham, MA.

So Pastor Frank called the woman in Waltham and asked if he could stay with her.  And she, on the strength of the other guy’s recommendation and the fact that he was a Ugandan in need, told him that if he could get to her, he could stay there.  So Frank found his way from JFK to Manhattan.  He took an overnight bus to Boston and arrived at South Station early in the morning, only to discover that his contact wouldn’t have access to a car to pick him up until the next morning.  So there he waited all day and all through the night, with little food and almost no cash, until she could pick him up. 

Which she did, as they’d agreed, and took him into her home, where he would stay, relying on her kindness and hospitality for his well-being and even survival for the next six weeks.

As soon as he was settled, he began to look, to scour the Internet and write to the pastors of churches, hoping that one of them would respond.  One finally did, after a fashion, which is how Pastor Frank eventually ended up having lunch at Old South Church a few days ago.  Aside from finding people who would support and take care of him during his time here, the journey God had sent him on had not born any fruit, and he was beginning to worry that he might return to his hopeful congregation with nothing to present to them and say, “Our God provides!” 

This is a tale of faith is biblical in its proportions.  As I listened, I thought of Abraham, sent out by God on a journey whose end he could not foresee with a promise nearly too good to be true.  I thought of Moses wandering in the desert and always wondering whether his people would finally decide that the investment he had asked was too great and the return too little, and turn on him.  And of course I thought of the Pilgrims, heading out on their own journey, wondering what they would find and what they would tell the people back home, trusting in God and ready to rely on whomever or whatever they found at the other end of the journey.

So, moved and healed by Frank’s astonishing faith in a God that provides, Nancy and Maggie and I decided that the three of us would indeed begin a friendship with this man and his church.  It will be small at first, just among the four of us and consisting of a friendly letter of greeting and some small gifts, and where it goes from there will be up to our churches and to God, but it will be a beginning nonetheless.  His gratitude and relief as we shared these things with him was great.  And then, that night, Frank got home to find 40 blankets and 100 textbooks had been given by an anonymous donor.  The next morning, an offer of 50 computers with keyboards and monitors reached him.  And he praised God. 

The first Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in this place believed in the Calvinist doctrine of Divine Providence, that an all-powerful Creator both foresees and foreordains each and every thing that comes to pass in the universe.  So when they worshiped God, it was at least as much to ask God to not squash them as it was to ask God to provide for them.  Now, I don’t hold to that belief myself.  I believe in Pastor Frank’s kind of Providence, the kind that Jesus was talking about when he told his followers that God knows what we need, and that moreover, when we strive for God’s will and God’s reign, we live as a people who have sure hope that what we need will be provided.

We gather here in this place week after week, you and I, to undertake the curious task of proclaiming and worshiping and giving thanks to a God who provides.  It is curious because we gather in a world and a nation and a city at war both abroad and at home, on a planet at risk from warming and overpopulation, in the context of vast and growing disparities in wealth and power, in a building outside which people will sleep this night.  To worship a God who provides here, amidst so many who are clearly not being provided for, is to proclaim that the way it is is not the way it needs to be, that our God has provided and that it’s up to us to distribute it justly, and that we are up for the task.  It is to believe and proclaim as Pasthat we, that this, could be the start of the Creator’s reign, where all of the people are at least as well-fed as the birds and well-dressed as the flowers, where all of the people finally know the hope for God’ providence that is in us.

To believe that is, well, it’s kind of like believing that Pastor Frank’s trip had any chance of success at all.  It seems just a bit…fanciful…in the face of all the realities that surround us.  But here’s the thing: when Frank got on his plane last week, he had 40 blankets, 100 books, 50 computers, and a letter of friendship with him.  He left behind him a trail of people transformed by his faith and born into new hope of what happens with those who seek first the realm of God.  He had a story and fruits to share with his congregation, just as God had promised him he would.

So, to you, who dare believe the unlikely thing that God does provide, that there is enough if we bust trust in and follow God, and that what we do and say in this place is the beginning of it, let me just say again: 

This is a story about Providence.  This is a story about a journey of faith, the story of voyages, of landings, of encounters, and of breaking bread and giving thanks.  It is a story about courage, faith, freedom, determination, and desperation.

It’s the story of the people of God.  So may it ever be.  Amen.