THE KIRK OF KILDAIRE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

CARY, NC

www.kirkofkildaire.org

A sermon preached by Joseph Welker, Jr. and Endy Kidanewold

God's Immigrant Church

Isaiah 49:1-6
Acts 8:26-39

July 15, 2007

Note: The Sermon today is given on the occasion of celebrating our relationship with our brothers and sisters from the Ethiopian fellowship who worship at the Kirk.

JODY WELKER -

In preparing for this service with our Ethiopian brothers and sisters, and as our nation has recently been through an immigration policy debate my mind has occasionally been led to think about my family of immigrants. Late in the 19th century the first Joseph Welker migrated from Darmstadt Germany with his parents to settle with many other German settlers in the hills of Pennsylvania. He attended Gettysburg College and then Gettysburg seminary. He preached to other German Lutheran immigrants. He preached in English and in German. I can only imagine that he preached with a heavy accent. Recently I learned that he moved his family in one church over the mountains in a covered wagon. The church 30 members when he came and had a time paying his salary. Three years later there were 70 members and a new building.

On my mother's side, I come from a line of English and Scots. Sharon's family who immigrated here came from Ireland and Scotland.

When the first immigrants came here, they mostly stuck together. German Lutherans… Scottish Presbyterians…Back then it was easy to choose a church. You went where your language was spoken and your family raised you. That has changed of course-as we continued to migrate from North to South and South to North… East to West… West to East….

Today the average Presbyterian congregation has immigrants from the Baptist faith… Methodist… Catholic tradition… Menonite… Episcopalian… We are all mixed up aren't we. Come to think about it, almost all of the churches I have served have been immigrant congregations. Have you ever thought of that. Except for Red Springs where we joined with a Lumbee Indian chapel- I've never served a church with Native Americans!

So when I came to the Kirk a few years ago, I shouldn't have been so surprised to see that we were a congregation with great diversity. Recent immigrants from Scotland, South Africa, the Netherlands, Bosnia, Thailand, and Ethiopia. I met people and heard different accents. Some had come with jobs at IBM and other corporations. Others came as refugees.

Today we celebrate God leading our Ethiopian brothers and sisters to us thanks to the leadership of Wendy Segreti and a whole host of other Kirk members who gave the gift of hospitality to our new friends. My friend Endy was one of the first ones to join the Kirk many years ago. Now, there is an Ethiopian fellowship that worships regularly at the Kirk on Sunday afternoons. They have given me the gift of hospitality. When I first came, Endy and Meseret welcomed Sharon and I into their home and family-sharing with us our first Ethiopian meal. I had my first taste of enjura bread. In the past year I was invited to a wedding. Pastor Girma and others have been nothing but kind and gracious to me and for that I thank God.

That God might bring us all together should come as no surprise really. I imagine that this is exactly as God intends it to be. Our own faith finds it roots in a God who called a particular tribal people-the Hebrews into a covenant relationship. But God did not call them into being so he could be their personal God and he would take up their personal causes against the rest of the world. Isaiah reminds them and us-that "it would be too small a thing" if God were only to care about what happens to Israel… for God had called them… "to be a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the end of the earth."

As the story continues we see God reaching out to the earth in Jesus Christ. Of course Christ starts by calling a group of Jewish students-disciples who will learn from him. Then after his resurrection and ascension… the Holy Spirit takes a hold of them and leads them to break out of their tribe to reach into the nations… Today's story is just one story of God breaking out of the tribe to be a blessing. Reaching all the way to Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian minister of finance to Queen Candace-perhaps a Jew himself-is on the way home after having traveled a long way to worship at the Vatican of the Jewish faith-the temple of Jerusalem. On the way home, he is doing some Bible study and is confused over the passage in Isaiah-describing the servant of God. This is an opportune moment and a teachable moment-both for the Ethiopian and for Philip. The Ethiopian will learn that Jesus fulfills the job description of God's ideal servant and is led to Baptism. Philip will see once again that God is not only the God of the Jewish nation-but of all nations. Once again… as Philip is open to be led by the Spirit of God-Philip will be blessed to see the light dawn on the nations-even as far away as Ethiopia. Think about it, there were Ethiopian Christians before there were American Christians or Scottish Presbyterian Christians. Of course today we celebrate that it is in Christ that we find our unity… that the walls of separation have been broken down.

Today we celebrate that that light still shines brightly in Ethiopia. There are over four million Presbyterians in Ethiopia. The Christian faith is exploding there. The work of people like Pastor Girma, Endy and other leaders is a blessing there and a blessing here.
Today, I have invited them to share some of their story with you… consider it yet another chapter in God's story of God's immigrant people- who were blessed when God used Israel and the church to be a blessing to the nations.

MESSAGE FROM ENDY KIDANEWOLD

I picked a verse from Hebrew 13: 8.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. From time to time we are reminded of an old question: "Is God still with us"? Is God alive today? Are Miracles and Angels true today? Can we trust the Bible? In preparing for this service I was asked,
How do our Ethiopian brothers and sisters worship God in their suffering; at least the stories for so long is that of famine, strife and instability, and persecutions specially of protestant Christians? What does Christianity look like over there amidst all this? How do they perceive the Bible stories?

Here is a story I heard from one of my seminary professors a long time ago. A father that was an atheist once wanted to train his kid to be like him. Grow without God in his life. He thought religion was the cause of all our suffering and that God does not exist and people should not have the faith. In the process of indoctrination one day he wanted to keep him busy and gave him an assignment to work on a project; write that, "God in no where" and to write it 1000 times until he came back from work. The kid did his assignment and gave his dad his homework at the end of the day. Dad I did it. I have done my homework. Upon seeing what his son wrote, the dad was astounded to see something strange. His son had been writing something else all day. He had written the statement and gave it a whole different meaning than what the dad intended to. The kid wrote 1000 times that: "God is now Here." The story goes on to say that the father made sense out of this and could not treat it as mere accident and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and became a Bible believing Christian from that day on. He grabbed the moment. He did not want to miss God. God is now here.

The Ethiopian Eunuch did the same thing when he experienced the Holy God in the presence of the Word and the exposition by the servant of God. His heart was touched and seized the moment and accepted Christ and took Christianity home to Ethiopia with him. Faith is something that God does in our lives. But we have to respond to God at the moment He calls us. We never know if we can hear him again. That is why the Bible says, "The moment of salvation is now"!

Going back to Ethiopia, suffering and persecutions don't take people away from God. In a strange way they bring people closer to God. It is true that the Ethiopians bore lots of suffering. The recurring famines since the early 70s and the disaster during the 80s where at least two million people starved to death. But all that did not dampen their spirit or their faith. The persecutions during the dictatorship of the communist regime and the forced indoctrination in Marxism and Leninism and atheism or the imprisonments, tortures and in some cases the killings of Christians could not take away the love of God and their savior Jesus Christ from their heart. The church came out victorious and more than doubled when the regime fell to a rebel group that took power. During those days we thought God was near. There were fervent prayers, we believed the God of Moses, Abraham, Isaak and Jacob is still alive and well. The God who parted the waters and delivered Israel could deliver us from the hands of the brutal dictators and we saw that He did. The Ethiopian Christians love to tell stories of God's interventions in their lives. They testify that they were healed of their infirmities after prayers in the name of Jesus Christ.

I and Rev. Girma here are witnesses to a man that came to our congregation in Ethiopia in 1975 begging for a last meal before he died of lung disease/tuberclosis. He was discharged from the health center and was told to go home and die. He was a hopeless case and had only a few days to live. He was skeletal and yet smoking also. He told us he smoked for 39 years and hopelessly addicted to it and had no where to go. Rev. Girma shared the gospel with him and some of us also stood around him, laid hands on him and prayed for God to heal him. We believed God could do it. Yes, God can! He does the impossible. We believed the word of Isaiah that Jesus Christ bore our sicknesses and that "by His stripes we were healed." The man was delivered from his sickness. He got strength and swore not to touch cigarette from that day on, his addiction to cigarettes went away; and in a few days he started to show progress. Rather than die he started to blossom. Interestingly enough, the man after two years or so married a Christian lady and lived many more years before he went home. He was a living testimony to the God of the Bible.

Folks, tests and trials don't destroy your faith; they somehow draw you nearer to God. They are attention getters when we refuse to answer His call or just can't hear him because we are too busy occupied with the things of the here and now. Don't miss God in your daily lives. God is with us. We are in His merciful hands even when we don't acknowledge that. And here in the United States of America, God is near.

I heard stories of nine eleven; how God delivered some people from that inferno at World Trade Center. Heard one of the stories on BBN radio as a man shared a story of a stranger helping him walk down several floors. He helped him find his way down by tapping and guiding him from the other side of the wall through that treacherous and impossible situation. Who was that other stranger? He didn't know him and doesn't know to this day. Could he be an angel of the Lord may be? The story teller believes so.
God has a purpose for each of our lives. Maybe this person has unfinished business here on earth that God wanted him to live a while more.

An Italian friend who grew up in New York once told me of a story of those who perished in the attack that some of them called home to their loved ones and related to them that they were being comforted by the sighting of angels in the middle of that tragedy. The loving God was with them there even though the tragedy and such magnitude of atrocities are hard to comprehend or explain. In many cases the why question is the one thing we will never be able to answer. That is where trust in God becomes our defining faith. God knows that. We are to just trust the Lord.

Nonetheless, we experience God's presence in the midst of troubles and trials. The story becomes not one of hardship or trials which often times are simply unexplainable, but God who parts the waters, makes us walk over the stormy storms, or comes to us in our desperate moment and lifts our spirits and takes away our worst fears even if it be walking through the shadow of death. I shall not fear for thou art with me!" Hallelujah! Don't miss God! In your worst moments He is close by.

I believe that many New Yorkers became church goers as a result of 911. I heard and read that the churches were crowded and I hope and I think I hear that many stayed that way to this day. People start to think of the most important things in life. Nobody wants to exit without God when the day comes.

I close with another story. It was Brian Williams of MSNBC and the day was the anniversary of 911, September 11 year 2002. During his evening news don't remember the exact time maybe 8:00 p.m., he reported something like this: "Today the Lottery numbers have said something that defy explanation. On such solemn day when the nation is mourning the loss of three thousand people last year this same day the pick three lottery number for today is 911. And finished his story with a punctuation; What can we say"? Brian Williams did not treat this as a coincidence or mere accident when he reported it. Maybe he didn't want to miss God for himself and for us all. Is God saying something to us? Humm.

In Job it is written (Job 33:14- 19, 26-30)

Friends God is here! The God of the Bible is here. Have faith in God. Jesus Christ is the same Yesterday, and Today and Forever! Amen.