Hands

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christian Unity Prayer Service

January 18, 2018

Hands

          The book “The Poisonwood Bible” tells the story of the Price family, a Baptist family who, in 1959, left their home in Georgia to save the lost souls of the Congo.  Barbara Kingsolver’s story details the mostly frustrated attempts of the family patriarch, Nathan, to single handedly save the souls of the Congolese people by forcing both Christianity and western culture on them.  The disasters run from the failure of Price’s allegedly superior western plants to bear fruit in the Congo, to the death of the Price’s young daughter, to Price’s utter inability to convert the Congolese to Christianity.  When I first read “The Poisonwood Bible” some years ago, I was struck by the missionary zeal of Nathan Price and the extent to which the Bible was used to divide and control rather than to unite and liberate.

          I could not help but think about “The Poisonwood Bible” when I read the materials for today’s Christian Unity service.  The materials and worship service for today were developed by Christians in the Caribbean, which is a vast and diverse expanse of islands in the Caribbean Sea.  Sadly, one of the things that Caribbean countries and territories have in common is the connection to slavery and European colonization.  The Bible was often used to justify slavery and oppression in the Caribbean as the Bible was used to do the same in our own country.  And yet, the Bible was also a source of hope for the people of the Caribbean as it was for slaves in the United States. 

          The dramatic story of the Exodus has long been a source of inspiration, comfort, and hope, for people in bondage.  Time and again, Scripture refers to the story of the Hebrew people’s miraculous escape from Egypt as the Egyptian army follows in hot pursuit.  If God’s right hand could shatter the Egyptians, surely God’s right hand can destroy any bondage or enslavement in any time or in any place.  The Exodus story not only tells of God’s saving work in the past; the story tells us that God wants liberation for God’s people in all times and in all places. 

          As a 21^st century Christian who lives in comfort and security here in Hudson, I have to say that I have a fundamental discomfort with the story as told in our passage from Exodus this morning.  The story does give credit where credit is due, praising God for God’s mighty acts in delivering the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt.  Only God could send plagues of locusts, or frogs or hail, or part the Red Sea.  I am all for giving God credit.  And yet, while God could have liberated the Hebrew people all by Godself, God chose to use Moses, to partner with Moses if you will, to save God’s people from the Egyptians.  Back in the third chapter of Exodus, God called Moses from the burning bush and said, in paraphrase, “I have heard the cry of my people who are in Egypt, and I am sending you to get my people out of there.”  Moses is none too pleased with this arrangement and offers all kinds of reasons why this is a bad idea.  But God is insistent, and describes the partnership God and Moses will have, by which God will convince Pharaoh to let God’s people go, and Moses will lead them out.

          God’s liberating work has been about partnership ever since God and Moses delivered the Hebrew people out of Egypt.  I see the same sort of godly partnership in the founding documents of the Caribbean Conference of Churches.  That document says, and I quote, “We, as Christian people of the Caribbean, because of our common calling in Christ, covenant to join together ….. to overcome the challenges created by history, language, culture, class, and distance.  We are therefore deeply committed to promoting peace, the holistic development of our people, and affirming social justice and the dignity of all persons.”  Together with God, the Christian people of the Caribbean have partnered together to do Exodus work and to deliver people from the varieties of bondage in which they find themselves today.

          The right hand of God is indeed glorious in power, and the power of God is used to liberate God’s people from bondage, working in all the ways described in the hymn we will sing this morning- writing, pointing, striking, lifting, healing and planting.  But what about God’s left hand? 

We are God’s left hand.  Whether Moses, or those who helped Jews to safety during the Holocaust, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, or people who work with victims of addiction, violence, or human trafficking, or God’s own son sent to free us from sin and death, God works in partnership.  The partnership of the churches in the Caribbean in an incarnation of that partnership. 

Jesus’ prayer for his disciples on the night before he died was not that his disciples would always agree.  His prayer was that his disciples would be one.   On the one hand, by being united, the disciples would mirror God’s love for the world.  On the other hand, by being one, the disciples could actually get something done as they continued Jesus’ liberating work.  We gather today to show God’s love to the world through our unity and to bind together because we can do so much more together than we can do apart as we continue God’s liberating work.

          One of my favorite television shows is “Call the Midwife.”  At the end of one grueling day, Sister Monica Joan, an elderly quite eccentric Anglican nun, encourages a young midwife who has had a long, hard day with these words. “The hands of the Almighty are often found at the ends of our own arms.”  May we be those hand, together.

                                                                             Amen.