Good morning. Thank you for having me this morning. It is wonderful to be back here at St. Margaret’s. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Anne Figge and I was missionary for the Episcopal Church in the Eastern Cape of South Africa for the last 21 months. I have just recently returned from my term of service and so I am here to thank you and to share a bit about what the last nine months were like. I promise at the end of my sermon, I will not ask you for any more money. Because through your contributions and ongoing prayer support, you have already given me the gift of being with and learning from some wonderful people in a very different part of the world. But I will ask you for your patience and understanding. Having just left South Africa two weeks ago, I am in the process of working through what I saw and heard and what I learned. Frankly, it all feels a bit like unfinished business. So, all the things I feel like I am supposed to say about Christian service and witness are still big question marks for me. I am struggling with asking the questions and with finding the answers. I am trying to figure out how what I did there will change what I do here both now and in the future.

So, what did I do there? Essentially, I worked in a community project serving a shantytown on the outskirts of Umtata. Umtata is a smallish city in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It was once the capitol of the homeland for the Xhosa people under the Apartheid system. And, not so much has changed since then. It is still about 95% black South Africans, almost exclusively Xhosa, and markedly underserved in comparison to other parts of the country. Like so many things in South Africa, it is a funny mix of the old and the new. You find cows crossing the street at rush hour, and traditional African healers standing in line behind you at the supermarket.

I spent my time in Umtata working for a community project in the iTipini Shantytown. In Xhosa, eTipini means ‘at the tip’ or the dump. So-named because the approximately 3,000 community members have made their homes on top of the former municipal landfill. All of the social ills that typically accompany extreme urban poverty afflict this community: poor sanitation, disease, violence, crime, widespread substance abuse, teenage pregnancy. Shockingly, approximately 40% of the community members are living with HIV/AIDS. This is the stuff of everyday life there and yet, these unimaginable living conditions fall far short of capturing the spirit of the place. Because while the community members are living in extreme poverty, their shared existence is a remarkable example of the resiliency of the human spirit. There is just as much laughter, singing and joy in that place as there is suffering. The community lives in perpetual tension between life and death in their most extreme forms. And so while I was there, I never knew whether to feel hopeful or hopeless.

My work never seemed to fall into any prescribed categories. When people hear me say that I worked in a clinic, they always ask if I am a nurse or a doctor. Well, not exactly. And while I wanted to spend most of my time with the women in the community, that didn’t really happen as I envisioned either. Finally, towards the end of my time there, I let go of trying to define what is was that I was doing and focused instead on my intention to make God present and to serve God in others. My favorite Christian writer speaks to this intention in one of his books, “To be a Christian is to work for the new humanity. Jesus commands his followers to feed and clothe and visit and take care of those who need it. They are fellow image bearers like us, and when we love them, we are loving God. When we respect the image of God in others, we protect the image of God in myself.

That is essentially what the iTipini Community Project, in its many forms, is all about. It is a clinic, a preschool, a youth development program, a feeding program, and a craft guild. But more importantly, it is a place where people who have been told that they don’t count are treated with dignity and respect. It offers people the opportunity to lift themselves and their families up. It is then their choice to decide what to do. Sadly, too many of them decide that they do not want these opportunities. They have been robbed of the hope that a better life is possible. Some friends of mine call it the violence of broken promises that victimizes too many people in the new South Africa. No one is immune to it and it takes many forms. It is obscene poverty and obscene wealth standing shoulder to shoulder. It is the AIDS epidemic that surges forward in defiance of billions of dollars in international aid, and the existence of life saving drugs. It is the denial of the most basic human rights to too much of the population.

So. What does all of this mean here? How does what I did there inform the way I will live my life here? I don’t know. I can guess. And I know what I am supposed to say, but I haven’t worked it out for myself yet.

Recently, I was running in a neighborhood park, and I saw a little old lady struggling to get up off a park bench. So, I ran over to her, and I practically knocked her over in my eagerness to help. She kept shooing me away and tell me not to trouble myself. Meanwhile, I felt like saying, “Lady, THIS is why I am troubled. Because I see you struggling and I can choose to keep running instead of stopping to help.” I am troubled because I left behind people that I love to wrestle with problems that are too big for individuals to tackle on their own. I know God has given us these problems to share with each other and with God. To draw us closer to on another and with God. And yet, I am here. And they are there.

If I know that these problems are too big to tackle on my own, why does it feels so hard to engage with God’s mission, and frankly, to engage with God. Why is it, that I can heed God’s call in a shantytown but somehow it seems a lot harder to do in Starbucks. The kicker is, I know that God is the same. My world is different but God is unchanging. Having the same expectations of me and offering me the same tools. Most notably, most importantly, other people.

I was lucky enough to meet the presiding Bishop when I was just in New York. In our meeting. one of my colleagues asked her how she keeps her sanity in her job. She said, “I try to remain vulnerable.” What a remarkable statement coming from such a contested figure. She went on to say that if we put up walls around ourselves, we can’t hear other people’s need. Only when we give people access to us, can we see all the opportunities God is offering us to be in service to him and in relationship with others.

It echoes something that I heard over and over again in Umtata. There was a French Canadian Priest, and I would go to his services at a local Catholic church. I used to love listening to him because he would, in his very dignified French accent, use colorful four letter words for emphasis in his sermons. At which the whole congregation would giggle. His sermons were always on the same subject, our responsibilities as the Body of Christ. He would say, “Here we are amidst disease, poverty, violence. What are we going to do about it?” While this is an obvious question to ask in Umtata, it somehow feels less obvious here. Nonetheless, I think what Father Guy was saying was that as people of the light, our job is to challenge darkness. He would actually point at members of the congregation and tell us THIS IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. And truth be told, it was nice to feel needed. To be told that my contribution mattered. To be reminded that I am God’s partner here on earth, and I am precious in His sight. Not just as His child but also as an agent of change. If stop seeing the significance of my actions. I will see myself as one tiny person, instead of one capable person. I will forget that how I choose to live matters.

Rob Bell says in one of his books, “With every decision, conversation, gesture, comment, action, and attitude, we’re inviting heaven or hell down to earth. We are creating something the question is what…”

This is our question to ask of ourselves, and it is God’s question to answer. Katherine Jefferts Schori also said, “there are no easy answers. I don’t think God is calling us to easy answers. I think we are called to faithful action.” I think asking questions and trusting that God has just answers is part of faithful action. So is patience. So is prayer. And so I thank you for listening to all of my questions. Most of all, I thank for the privledge of serving on your behalf in South Africa. As I said earlier, it is a wonderful gift that I hope I have been able to share in part with you this morning. Amen.