Reading: Psalm 138v1-8
1 I will praise you, O LORD,
with all my heart; before the "gods" I will sing your praise.
2 I will bow down toward
your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness,
for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.
3 When I called, you
answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted.
4 May all the kings of the
earth praise you, O LORD, when they hear the words of your mouth.
5 May they sing of the ways
of the LORD, for the glory of the LORD is great.
6 Though the LORD is on
high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar.
7 Though I walk in the midst
of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger
of my foes, with your right hand you save me.
8 The LORD will fulfil his
purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of
your hands.
Introduction:
This morning as we consider
mission I want to ask and answer the question.
Why should we care about mission?
What is it that encourages us, even compels us to support mission? Well I think in this Psalm we are given one
answer and it is that mission is an expression of love. Firstly God’s love for us and secondly our
love for Him, because mission is about people, in our case people affected by
leprosy, and God from the beginning of time has expressed His love for people
and asked us to do the same.
For example I may love
Linda, my wife with all my heart. But
since she can not see my heart, the depths of my emotions that in itself
doesn’t count for very much. What she
sees is how that love is expressed, my acts of love, be that through displays
of tenderness and comfort.
And for all of us, our
relationships, be it with God or each other are based on how we express our
love. Jesus tells us that when we love
one another then all men will know that we are his disciples. And since you can not see love he can only
be referring to when people see us expressing our love for one another through
our actions. The way we treat each
other and the way we care for each other.
David, the author of Psalm
138 shows us this as he expresses his love for God and says in verses 1-2:
I will praise you, O LORD,
with all my heart; before the "gods" I will sing your praise. I will
bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and
your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your
word.
He says Lord I will praise
you, show you my love with all of my heart and I will do it with expressions of
love as I bow down before you and show to all the world that I love you. And he expresses his love in words and
action as he says to God I will praise you for your love and faithfulness. In other words for your expressions of love
towards me.
This really gets to the
heart of mission and our care for people.
Our support of mission should be partly in response to the needs that
are shared with us, but partly also as an outward expression of our love and
relationship with God. We care because
God cares as David says in verses 6-7:
Though the LORD is on high,
he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar. Though I walk in the
midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the
anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me.
The beginning of these
verses is beautiful when David says Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon
the lowly. The Lord might be high up in
heaven but he stoops down to earth and reaches down his right hand to save us
and walk with us through the midst of trouble.
And that really is the heart
of our mission to express our love for God and His love for people affected by
leprosy by being the instrument of God to reach out to people whose lives have
been blighted by leprosy and take them by the hand and walk with them in midst
of trouble, and most importantly through our work and ministry to take their
hand and walk with through the midst of trouble and out the other side.
This year our focus within
East Anglia is on the very specific needs of teenagers affected by
leprosy. Leprosy is always much more
than simply an illness, it affects every aspect of life. When a young person catches leprosy they
know even if they are quickly cured before loss of feeling and disabilities
that it may still haunt them for the rest of their lives.
For example this is Kumari
and she is twenty one and comes from a very poor family in South India. She caught leprosy when she was ten and has
received medication and been cured. But
she knows that this means nothing for while her leprosy may have been cured it
has not gone away. For everyone in her
town knows she had this terrible and tragically shameful disease. It will mean that when she comes to marry,
in a country that still basically uses arranged marriage, that no one will want
to marry her. So she will spend the
rest of her life alone and living in great shame. Because in a country where everyone gets married, if you are not
you stand out and everyone knows there must be something terribly wrong with
you.
When she looks for a job and
she is up against young people who have not had leprosy there is no hope she
will ever get the job. She will end up
begging, even though she is an intelligent and gifted young lady. But that just won’t matter when she has
leprosy to contend with. For a young
person like Kumari it is bad enough to have leprosy, but far worse when you
know what it potentially means for the rest of your life.
But that is where Vocational
Training steps. It aims to take young
people like Kumari and all these young people have a similar story and give
them a better education and a better training than everyone else. So they are better, because only if they are
better to they actually have any chance of competing with everyone else. Because they have much larger hurdles to
overcome than everyone else.
To help Kumari we enrolled
her on the printing course. It lasts
for one year and at the end she have a good qualification to take on to the
next stage of her care, a Leprosy Mission sponsored apprenticeship. After that we will help her find work, which
may still be hard but will no longer be impossible. And we won’t stop trying until she has a job and a future.
And with such a dramatic
turn around she should also find a husband and have a real chance of rebuilding
her life after leprosy.
The same is true of boys
like Pani who is twenty and on the welding course. He comes from a very poor family and in his case it was his
father who caught leprosy. It has left
him very severely disabled and only able to do the most unskilled and poorly
paid work. As a result Pani has no
chance of ever escaping from poverty and the grip of leprosy. For even though he has never had it, it will
still destroy his life. For even when
he wants to get married or find a job everyone will look at his father and say
no we don’t want you. You can imagine
what his father feels like knowing his leprosy has destroyed his son’s
life.
But Pani has been accepted
at Vizianagaram and his life is being turned around. In this photo we were looking at candle sticks the group made as
part of their practice and to sell in town for a little pocket money. When they heard us looking at them they
rushed around to point out with tremendous enthusiasm the ones they had made
and Pani was rioght at the front of the group. The enthusiasm welling over in
all directions.
And like all the students
where doing the fun practical stuff or the bring theory, Pani does it without
complaining for he knows it will change his life. At the end of his course he
too will be sent on an apprenticeship and them given help to find work or even
set up his own business.
There are a 180 teenagers
like Kumari and Pani at Vizianagaram all with similar stories and all striving
as hard as they can to be better then everyone else just so they have a real
chance in life.
And it is our role to be
there as Jesus was first there for people affected by leprosy and as the
Psalmist says as an expression of our love hold their hand and walk them
through the troubles of life.
That means life changing
training, but also life changing spiritual care as all students enjoy times of
prayer, worship and teaching as well, as we seek as a mission to share with the
students that we hold their hands amidst the troubles of their life as
expression of our love to God and His desire to hold their hands through us.
Which brings us back to our
passage and verse 8 where David says:
The LORD will fulfil his
purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of
your hands.
What is his purpose? First and foremost to express His love for
us and have us express His love to others.
Expressions that first reflect God’s love for us or as the Psalmist puts
it, ‘Your love O Lord endures for ever.
The ultimate example of this
is Jesus for Paul tells us in Romans 5v8:
God demonstrates his own
love for us in this, whilst we were still sinners Christ died for us.
The cross is not just the
means of our salvation, it is a message, the most powerful message of all time,
a demonstration from God of his love.
The ultimate expression of love as 1 John 4v19:
We love Him because He first
loved us.
And because David knows that
to be true and can look back to many times in his life when God has taken his
hand and led him through terrible troubles he can pray with absolute certainty
on verse 8:
Do not abandon the works of
your hands.
And as we consider mission
support today let us grasp that ultimately it is an expression of love, from
God to us and from us to others. That
first and foremost it is God’s love for us displayed through the cross and our
salvation, but also displayed daily as he takes our hand and walks with us
through both the joys and troubles of life.
These are his expressions of love towards us.
But secondly for love to be
meaningful it has to be reciprocated, as we express our love towards him. And just one way is to share His passion and
compassion for other people like Kumari and Pani and thousands of others all
over the world who every day hear that they have leprosy, these youngsters are
in Mozambique, the boy at the back holding up the blue book has just been
diagnosed with leprosy and given this picture book to explain his
treatment. And they all reach out their
hand and ask us to take it and walk them in the midst of their troubles of
life.
It is a privilege for us to
take their hands and be with them whatever it takers, be in medical cure,
schooling, vocational training, start up loans, provision of a home or whatever
we can do in Jesus’ name and show that his love for them endures forever.
And we would be thrilled if
you wanted to express your love for the Lord and your compassion for people
affected by leprosy by supporting us and reaching out your hand to them.
In closing we are not all called to express our love
for God in the same way, this is our way, but we will all show it differently
in our daily lives and worship and in our support for missions in this country
and overseas. The key really is to be
sure we are showing it and that our love for God is evident in each of us.