August 20, 2006

Walking the Walk

By Carolyn Woodson

Rev. Carolyn Woodson recently retired as Pastor of the Kenwood Community Church (UCC) in Sonoma County wine country. She is a graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary.

The scholarship that I have read on The Letter to the Ephesians seems to agree in general that this is not just a letter to the congregation at Ephesus. Rather it is thought to be a letter meant for circulation among several churches, changing the name of the community with each successive recipient. The chapter containing our reading for today is called by biblical studies professor Ralph Martin "Christian Conduct Illustrated." Personally I would call it Do's and Don't for Dummies. I mean, there is really nothing revolutionary to my mind about saying don't waste time, don't get drunk, and thank God for what you have.

I think, in fact, that I would not have selected this scripture for a sermon text if it had not been for the fact that the first verse did call to mind for me something about Jesus' career in ministry. Jesus certainly had no time to waste.

From the moment that he called the fishers of fish to become fishers of people, he was on the go - teaching, healing, and straightening out misguided Pharisees. As we read his story in the gospels, we just lope along at his heels, trying to keep up with where he is now and what he is doing.

Death lurks around every corner, of course, because Jesus has a host of enemies. Nevertheless, he keeps on keeping on, healing whoever needs to be healed, teaching whoever needs to be taught, supporting the weak, helping the poor, and honoring the dignity of everyone who limps across his radar screen - turning no one away, despising no one, healing the broken body as well as the sinsick soul.

I sometimes wonder why Jesus approached his ministry the way that he did. Any one of us might well question why he did not organize things differently, to manage more efficiently his limited time on earth. Why, I must ask. didn't he start, for example, with a workshop in discipleship for his team of twelve instead of just thrusting them from the get-go into on-the-job training? Why didn't he put together some sort of primitive power point presentation outlining clearly and succinctly the basic steps in miracleworking. Then he could have split the disciples into small groups and let them role play until time to break for lunch.

They would have had so much more self-confidence that way when they were sent out on their own to face the real thing. And Jesus? Well, he could just supervise, critique their progress, and train management. But that wasn't Jesus. He started wherever he was, dealt with whatever was in his face at the time, and he let the recruits get whatever they could out what he was doing while he forged ahead to serve the next in line.

You know, it's a funny thing, but that may still be the best way to go about God's work in today's world, which - as you know - needs a lot of help. Because almost everywhere that we look, from our own doorstep to the other side of the world, we find the displaced, the disenfranchised, and the impoverished reaching out for the hem of someone's garment.

Another reason that the first verse of the Ephesians reading captured and held my interest is that it reminds me of a book that I have finished recently, a true story about a man who goes about things in much the same way that Jesus did. The book is called Three Cups of Tea, and the man about whom it is written is Greg Mortenson. Three cups of tea refers to a tribal custom among the people of northern Pakistan: One cup is offered to a stranger, a second cup to a guest, and a third cup to those who are considered family.

Greg Mortenson is a nurse by profession. He served as a medic in the U.S. Army in Germany, and later he studied neurophysiology in Indiana, driven by his interest in finding a cure for his little sister Christa who was struck by acute meningitis when she was three years-old. Greg was her self-appointed protector. But on her 23rd birthday she died of a massive seizure.

After Christa's death, Greg, who was a serious mountain climber, set out for Pakistan where he hoped to summit the infamous K2 in honor of Christa. He took with him her favorite necklace which he planned to leave at the top of K2 whose 28,000-ft. peak is considered the toughest climb on the face of the Earth. Greg did not make it to the top. He exhausted himself assisting with the emergency rescue of a fellow climber. And on his way back down, he lost track of his guide, which means that he was pretty well lost period, and was exceedingly lucky to have survived. In one sense Greg took a wrong turn on his way down the mountain, but in another that wrong turn changed the direction of his life in a more profound way than he could have imagined at the time.

After making his way alone down the Baltoro Glacier, he found himself at the village of Korphe, which is perched on a shelf eight hundred feet above the Braldu River in Northern Pakistan. He was taken in by Korphe's chief who restored him with some much needed food and rest. Greg walked around one day to see what life was like in a primitive little settlement so cut off from the modern world. He came upon their school which, to his shock and surprise was not a building. It was a flat piece of ground where about eighty children, mostly boys, shivering in the freezing air, knelt on the cold earth scratching out their lessons in the dirt.

The chief explained that the village had no school really. The government did not provide a teacher for them. They shared a teacher, whose salary was one dollar a day, with the neighboring village. When Greg Mortenson said his goodbyes to the chief he placed both hands on Haji All's small shoulders and said, "I will be back. I am going to build you a school, for your children, especially the girls, to honor the memory of my sister."

Greg returned home, which was Berkeley, CA, where he rented a storage unit for all of his worldly possessions, slept in his aging Buick at night, and worked the night shift at UCSF Medical Center emergency room. But between sleep and work, he typed 581 letters to celebrities on a rented IBM typewriter. The letters were requests for funds for the school in Korphe. A school there can be built, using local labor and local materials, for $12,000. Two full time teachers can be hired for $8,000 per year. He received not one reply to his 581 letters.

It took a while, but thanks to one large donation, he finally got the money together, returned to Pakistan, bought the materials he needed and arrived at Korphe eager to start building. But the village chief explained to him that the people of Korphe needed a bridge and that the bridge should be built before the school. So Greg built a bridge for Korphe. Then he returned to the U.S. to make another Herculean effort to raise enough money for the school.

Eventually Greg Mortenson not only built the Korphe school. He has erected fifty-five schools to date, serving many of the poorest communities in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sidetracks occur often, but Greg always listens carefully to the priorities of the villagers. They know what they need first. More than once the prior need has been the development of a clean and readily available water supply.

Greg's schools are distinctive in an important way. They are secular schools, absolutely no religious proselytizing allowed. The fundamentalists would quickly put him out of business if they thought that Christianity in particular, as opposed to Islam, were being taught. Important to be careful about the religious education issue because most of the schools there are supported by militant religious extremists, bankrolled by the Taliban and AI-Quaeda. Interestingly, however, even the Supreme Council of clerics in Northern Pakistan supports and deeply appreciates what Greg is doing for their country. Their publicly expressed support has trumped the price that has been put on Greg's head a couple of times by extremists.

Madrassas, as the militant schools are called, do not provide a balanced curriculum with math, science, literature, etc. as do Mortenson's schools. In fact the madrassas students are largely illiterate when they graduate, but they have learned to fight and to believe that jihad is the purpose for which they now live. The madrassas are, of course, a training ground for future terrorists.Greg Mortenson's schools are the antidote. And true to his word, Greg insists upon the education of girls, so there is a high female percentage in each of his schools. It is paying off. Many of

the young women who started out in one of the schools that Greg built are going on for more education and then returning to their village to teach or to provide up-to-date health care. The women themselves in these villages are insisting upon such things as women's centers where they may support one another, share their their news, and simply have fun together.

You can just imagine what kind of toll this endeavor has taken on Greg Mortenson's family life. He is away from his own home in Montana for several months each year, building schools or raising funds for the Central Asia Foundation of which he is now the director. In his own words, Greg writes, "What motivates me to do this? The answer is simple: When I look into the eyes of the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I see my own children's eyes full of wonder - and I hope that we will each do our part to leave them a legacy of peace instead of the perpetual cycle of violence, war, terrorism, racism, and bigotry that we adults have yet to conquer."

Greg never stops trying to improve the educational opportunities for children who would otherwise grow up in ignorance, because he believes, as I myself believe, that all hope for world peace lies not in who has the most destructive weaponry but in an educated populace - each generation of whom will have their turn at the wheel. Peaceful solutions can only germinate in the minds of adults who learn as children to understand, to respect, and not to fear social, cultural, political, and religious differences. Children whose early life experience leads them to believe that there is too much goodness in this world to live for to blow themselves and others apart with bombs.

Greg Mortenson is not anti-religious, but he does not seem to subscribe to one particular belief system. He grew up in Africa, the son of Lutheran missionaries, where he came to know and appreciate all faith traditions. When he is in Pakistan, he goes to prayer with the Muslims and honors the sanctity of their mosques. That is a big part of the reason that he is not only accepted but loved all over northern Pakistan. Standing six-foot-four with a shoe size of 14, Greg is known as the gentle giant - an infidel, to be sure, but a good man who does what he says that he will do to help the people. He earned his third cup of tea early on with the people of northern Pakistan.

When I think about this man going from one poor and remote village to another, rarely stopping long enough to rest, compromising his own comfort and convenience in order to maximize his service in a part of the world that is at best a difficult place for an American to be these days, I would call that discipleship. I would say that that is making the best of one's time on earth, contributing to the building of a new and better world. Amen