Genesis 24: Abraham had a son. He wanted Isaac to marry in the family (1). He sent an unnamed servant (2) to search for a suitable mate for Isaac. The servant, still unnamed, took ten camels and went to the family home, stopping at a well and told God his test of worthiness (3). “If she offers me water and then says she’ll draw water for all ten camels, that’s the one.” Rebekah comes and fulfills his conditions and he then asks who she is (4). Finally he puts a ring through her nose. Then she repeats the whole thing to her family and then the nameless servant does the same. That last bit repeating everything again and again is not unusual but the numbers above indicate things strange and, not to be too blunt about it, foreign to us.

(1)Most societies demand that you mate with somebody as unrelated to you as possible. Dire things happen when people intermarry. (2)For somebody to be the subject of a whole chapter of the Bible, a male and unnamed is strange to put it mildly. (3)The servant sets his own standards and God accepts them just like that. How’s that for unusual? (4)He plays it out and only afterward checks to see if he found the woman from the right family.

Just when we thought we were making sense of the Bible it throws us a whammy, in fact four of them. The ring right through the nose just emphasizes how you feel as a witness to this story.  And what does this say about Isaac? Who, if any, can you identify with among the participants: Servant, Beckie, Abe, thirsty camel? One theme for Lent 2011 is leaving our comfort zones to do what God calls us to do? We can leave comfort behind with even some familiar passages from the Bible if we examine what they actually say, can’t we? Where is God leading? Are we following? This passage may just surprise us. Others may shake us to the core. For example, how are you doing with loving your neighbor as yourself today?

-Dick Sales

Genesis 12:1-4 tells of God appearing to Abram and saying, “Pack up, leave your family and go until I say stop.”

Now that is asking a lot of anybody. Abram might at least have asked if he’d need rubber boots.

Abram, later to become Abraham, sets out and the story begins of two religions, Judaism and Islam (three, if you count that offshoot of the Jews, Christians). Without Abraham’s willingness to ‘set out’ the world would be a very different place today. St. Paul would make a major theme of Abraham’s obedience about 1500 years a Genesis 12:1-4 tells of God appearing to Abram and saying, “Pack up, leave your family and go until I say stop.”fter the event. But for me what strikes is the whole notion of setting out and knowing nothing about what you’re going to.

Jane, my first wife and Nancy’s big sister, had studied missions in Africa and wanted to be a missionary. I hadn’t studied about Africa unless you count the matinee double headers with Tarzan films as one of them. And I knew more about what Africa was than Abraham knew about Canaan, enough to know Tarzan wasn’t likely to be found. I also knew that my other alternative after seminary, work in the inner city of Chicago, would entail learning a language (Latinos were arriving in the melting pot every day). So Jane made it sound simple. “If you’re going to learn a language anyway…” The upshot was of course that I married her and we went to South Africa.

I say I knew Africa wasn’t men in pith helmets and damsels in jungle distress. In twenty eight years I was never once in a jungle like the ones in Tarzan movies and I learned two African languages, worked in three countries at eight very different jobs, and over a distance of about 2000 miles found beautiful grasslands, cities and towns and wonderful people wherever I went. But the only jungle I saw was when, within sight of the great Victoria Falls I walked in the rain forest the spray created.

One of the themes for Lent this year is a call to listen for God’s call. Another is to venture out of our personal comfort zones at God’s call. I was astonished when I arrived in South Africa in 1957 to find a city just like the one I’d left behind, as I thought, forever. The first shock was discovering far away places aren’t all that different! But the next surprise came when I began to see the different ways of solving humanity’s problems of those among whom I was working.

So don’t be fearful of going where you haven’t been if you get the call. You’ll probably be surprised that the new place is so much like where you’ve always been. And don’t be too shocked when you dig beneath the surface and discover creative and different ways of life that enrich your understanding and challenge you to growth.

-Dick Sales

Matt. 4:8-11. Then the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world… “All this I will give you … if you kneel down and worship me.”

That was an easy one, I’d say. First question, who ever said it was part of the devil’s portfolio to ‘own’ all those kingdoms. Second question: Devil, how do you ‘give’ a kingdom? Jesus called his bluff. Yes, the kingdoms were riddled with greed and corruption, self-serving civil servants, big people whose only purpose was to get more money, influence, power. I wonder sometimes what it would have looked like if the devil did have that portfolio. People would probably believe the only way to change their existence was by force of arms. They would seek to overthrow their rulers. But the outfit that took power would turn out to be half again as corrupt as the guys they threw out.

On second thought, maybe the devil did/does have charge over all the nations. I hate to think so but just maybe what we see as normal in our world, what we call ‘the way things are,’ is a world Jesus should have taken over back there in that desert temptation. But this is just the problem, isn’t it?

If God had willed us to live perfect lives of love and selflessness, probably it could have been. Ant colonies are full of workers who never even think of being disobedient (I suppose). But God didn’t it. God made Adam and Eve and first thing you know they were off and running counter clockwise. God expects us to struggle in the world, I guess. Maybe the whole question of our lives is how do we react when things are unfair, life is a bummer, when our hopes are dashed to bits, our dreams denied.  Maybe the world we live in is meant to test us, to press us to become strong minded. Maybe the whole point of living is to discover we need to turn to God and wait on her. Maybe the whole business of living is to turn our hearts to God and hear what God is willing for us.

God, we are so willful so much of the time, thinking what we make of the world is Your will. Teach us to listen, to trust you and to do your will. Amen.

-Dick Sales

Psalm 31 says in part: “… I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God. My times are in your hand.'”

It reminds me of my first year in seminary. I had gone not because I was on fire for God, but because in college I had lost my faith and I determined to spend a year testing whether a God existed and if so whether I needed to do something about it. Come spring semester and I hadn’t seen any sign of God at all. I decided I would go to every church service of every sort around the University of Chicago campus and it was marvelous how many there were. By mid April I felt exhausted emotionally without having solved anything. I realized I truly wanted God to exist, desperately so.

The Methodist Campus group was putting on a vesper service on the Lord’s Prayer and I went, reluctantly. I’d stopped expecting anything after weeks of worship. I sat with a Quaker friend and discovered the service consisted of black robed damsels writhing while somebody intoned the Lord’s Prayer and somebody else played the organ. I was defeated. I simply folded and wanted to cry. All I had seen was flesh when I thought I’d come for spirit. My Quaker buddy noted my anguish and thought me ill. I shook my head. I wasn’t ill that way. Well, would I go with him to Sunday supper at Quaker House. It only cost a quarter. I had a quarter, just exactly, and he took me.

You guessed it. In the midst of silent prayer I heard the words of Psalm 100:3: “Know that the Lord is God, He made you and you are His.”

I knew then and know now this moment represented wish fulfillment and was very psychologically explainable. I had a long way to go over more than fifty five years on two continents. But from that day, while I’ve anguished over a lot of other stuff, I haven’t doubted that ‘my times were in God’s hand.’

 -Dick Sales

Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you  pass through deep waters I will be with you; your troubles will not overwhelm you.”

It’s funny how many vivid impressions come with early encounters in new situations. Some First Church people will remember I spoke about this occasion some years back. Deep water indeed. We talk about floods but there were times in South Africa during my first ears there when bridges were washed out to the north and the south and we were to all intents and purposes on an island. It was during one such three day rain that I was scheduled to lead a service in an outstation of the Dweshula Church on the top of an escarpment. 

Alan Paton once said Natal Province was like fingers reaching for the sea. Well,this church lay atop a swollen knuckle. I was proud of the fact that I kept my appointments so early in the rain that Sunday I drove south on the coastal road until I came to the road leading to the church. The rain, now in its second day, was heavy as I reached the foot of the escarpment and began to drive up on a graveled road toward the top. I neither met nor expected to meet another vehicle and while my car slipped and spun a bit it managed the mountainside road to the top. I don’t mind admitting that I was deeply relieved to have made it to the top and the outstation. Sure enough people came though the downpour continued unabated. Inside the sheet iron roof and I had to shout to be heard. The rain, if anything, got heavier and as the service ended I was glad I would be going down from the escarpment, not up it.

I learned early to drive in snow and mud so it shifted into second gear and made sure I didn’t do anything sudden as I descended. Then it happened! As I rounded a bend in a very precipitous place there was a car that had ended up against the mountainside. But worse there were half a dozen people on the sheer side waving at me to stop and help them. I trod on the brake before I thought of what I was doing because although I doubted i could stop the distance between the vehicle and the people was little more than the width of my car. Immediately the car lost traction and turned sideways. I turned the wheel the other way and it swung about almost sideways the other way and those people were getting close. I didn’t touch the brake but turned into the skid and my car straightened out just as it reached the people. It slid between them and their vehicle and continued to slide down the hill until, some yards beyond it once more gained traction and took me to the foot of the escarpment. Then I sat and shook for some minutes. Then I had the wit to give thanks.

Psalm 32:8 says “The Lord says, ‘I will teach you the way you should go…'”

Finding your feet in a strange land and with people like Mr. Cabe (that is ‘tsk-abby’ a Zulu name) can be unnerving. I was to visit his little church and take communion because it was not on any bus line and no Zulu pastor could get to it. When I arrived at the ramshackle mud and stick building that Sunday I knew nobody there spoke English and I clutched my Zulu service book and sermon and prepared to spend two or more hours wrestling with words unfamiliar and taxing. I do mean taxing. Any unfamiliar language is exhausting to use for a long time and the Zulu service book decreed two complete services, one for preaching and the other for communion. My labors would be nothing compared to my listeners trying to figure out what I was trying to say!

Then Mr. Cabe, the deacon, told me his grandson’s baby had died.Would I conduct the graveside service? Two and a half hours later, croaking because my vocal cords were all but paralyzed, I arrived at the site of the service. The baby was in an orange crate.The location of the grave was shale and the hole probably five feet deep by four feet wide in layered shale. Did I mention that I had never even attended, never mind conducted a funeral? I’d been in South Africa less than a year. Faltering, I began the service. I have no idea what I was saying or what they heard me say.  But the service book sustained us all because they knew it, probably only too well. Then came the moment to drop dirt on the makeshift casket. 

Nobody told me that you can drop a handful of damp soil down next to the coffin. In any case there was no moist soil. There was no soil at all. So I picked up a handful of shale and dropped it on the little box. It sounded like a small explosion in  my ears and I broke down and wept on Mr. Cabe’s shoulder. In retrospect I believe the family appreciated that show of emotion on the part of the pale youth who hardly made sense. But let me tell you by the next funeral I conducted, I had attended several and studied and learned more Zulu and been guided about customs and procedures. But I believe God lent me the grief I shared with those people that day. How does it go?

“Lead me, guide me, on the way…”    

-Dick Sales

Luke 13:29 “Then people will come from the East and West, and from the North and South, and will eat in the Kingdom of God.”

People used to think Luke was the beloved physician who accompanied Paul. These days all scholars will say is that he was an expositor of Paul’s theology. But there is no doubt that he approved of what could be called the ‘missionary enterprise’ that Paul launched into the world at large. For many years the enthusiasm for world mission was lacking but as the European conquests in Africa and Asia progressed so did the idea of world mission and in 1806 the first US mission was organized among the Congregational Churches and within a decade couples were sent overseas from America to India and Africa and the modern missionary movement was under way.

Missionaries have been blamed for exporting western values and there is some truth to the popular charge that “When they came they had the Bible and we had the land but now we have the Bible and they have the land”. But most of those early missionaries tried to give people what they thought was a world gospel and simply had no idea what ‘cultures’ were.To their credit by 1900 some of them had pioneered anthropology and many had called into question Christianity embedded in western ideals. Nancy and I worked in lands where the churches were strong and flourish also today.

In today’s world mission has changed dramatically. The nations have come and are eating at the table. Even in a country like Haiti we can trust the churches to deal with funds for healing the nation. In Africa, Asia and Latin America great lovers of Christ have become leaders after those early fits and starts. Desmond Tutu is one of a host of strong leaders. We can thank God for the beloved community that can be found the world around welcoming Christians of every size and shape to eat at table in God’s Kingdom .

Dick Sales