Passion for God (Psalm 33)

Passion for God

Psalm 33:1-5, 13-22

Make melody with the harp of 10 strings. Sing to God a new song,” shouts the psalmist.

Adonai loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of God’s steadfast love…

Truly the eye of Adonai is on those who hope in this steadfast love,

to deliver their soul from death, to keep them alive in the famine.

Our soul waits for you! Let your steadfast love, O God, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

It has been impossible for me to put words to my experience on the medical mission trip to Venezuela. This psalm of fully expectant hope, of musical praise and fervent desire for justice

is the best description I might give of the people with whom I worked 2 weeks ago.

It’s as if this psalm is a prayer come directly from the tongue of the UEPV,

a denomination founded the same year as our United Church of Christ;

a small, grassroots denomination strongly committed to ecumenism and social justice,

as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

In 1965 the UEPV entered into partnership with the Disciples of Christ (the UCC’s closest sibling church in the U.S.), and for 13 years now the Rocky Mountain Conference of the UCC has shared in cultural and spiritual exchange with them—sometimes our church members traveling to Venezuela and other times their members coming here—all through our connection with Global Ministries.

But these are “just the facts.” I want to share some “truths” of my experience.

~~~

On Saturday, October 8^th our team of 11 Coloradans and 2 Venezuelan pastors of the UEPV

arrived at the site of our fist medical clinic: a school in the village of Los Cardones.

Having made a frustratingly late start the day before, our crew was eager to begin—

unpacking suitcases full of medical supplies, organizing the precious vaccines and anti-parasite medications, and setting up an intake station with blood pressure cuffs, stethoscope and scale.

But before our ant-like industriousness could create some coherent system amid the chaos,

we were called outside to a central stage area—like a school “auditorium.”

Here the Bishop of the UEPV—who was our constant travel companion and guide—

began to extemporize about the mission of health and wholeness that we brought.

And then he prayed.

And then he asked me to pray in English.

And then we thought it was about time to begin seeing patients…

but then he introduced a member of the Los Cardones community,

who spoke about the people and the school.

And then she introduced a traditional Venezuelan song and dance,

with women and girls in traditional Venezuelan dress,

and each bearing traditional Venezuelan symbols for us to learn about.

After this we again thought we’d begin the clinic. Wrong again!

With great smiles and encouragement we were asked to introduce ourselves—

each one individually before the crowd.

And then the visiting Venezuelan doctors and nurses were asked to introduce themselves.

And then we sang a song that our team had been warned to prepare.

And then, after about an hour or so of talking about community and tradition and health and wholeness and medical care and mission,

we finally began the work we had gone there to do.            

Or so we thought.

Because what I grew to learn over those 9 days of medical mission work—

when every clinic and encounter would begin with at least an hour of seeming delay—

is that our work actually began before we ever stepped off the van.

Rejoice in Adonai, O you righteous and justice-seekers. Praise Adonai with the harp of 10 strings.

For all God’s work is done in faithfulness, and God loves justice.

The community’s rejoicing and praise began long before we arrived.

Their passion and celebration peaked as we prayed and honored their heritage and hope.

The beginning of each of our medical clinics was worship—perhaps not in the classical sense;

but in every way these periods of music and dancing

and the thought-provoking connections between health and wholeness

were remembrances of the Good News.

Their passion for God could not be separated from the work of the clinics: healing and justice and Jesus Christ.

But we didn’t recognize this until after several times of asking ourselves, oblivious,

“Don’t they realize they’re wasting time that could be used for medical needs?”

In each “waste of time,” healing happened: in our gathering as community, in our building relationships.

And in the clinics. Our team may have brought the bandaids to them, but they brought God’s passionate Spirit to us.

~~~

Later in the week we had the opportunity to attend a nurse’s training that the UEPV leads in order to maintain their medical ministry throughout the year. At this training we explicitly learned what had been  implicit in each of our experiences—we heard the Gospel of health and healing as preached by the Bishop (interpretation):

We are not here to save people’s bodies only, he taught.

We are here to heal their minds and spirits from the

death of oppression, from the famine of poverty—

whoever they are and wherever they are on life’s journey, without exception! We’re not asking them to convert—we’re offering them the Good News of God’s love for them through our reaching out.

What good will a vaccination do for a child if she doesn’t know she is inherently loved;

and that, by her creation in God’s image, she deserves wholeness?

What good will vitamins serve a pregnant woman if

she doesn’t also bear in her a hope that her child might know fullness of life?

Health, declared the Bishop, makes no sense without consciousness.

We need to be awake to the way to live.

And in our clinics we need to educate all about  justice and wholeness for the whole world—

for the Kingdom come on earth…

…because they know what’s happening in the world—in the U.S. healthcare system and the Greek economic crisis. They know they are connected to this world’s great need for hope and healing.

And that is what the medical clinics preach

through every song,

every prayer,

every blood pressure taken with

every individual who enters those spaces—

with me, as a visitor to that place and a

bringer of one kind of care, I received care in a different but mutual way.

As the Bishop kept reminding us, Healing is only achieved through liberation:

of mind, of body, and of spirit.

And this trip helped me to experience that.

This is a passion. This is the UEPV’s passion for wholeness for the entire community and all the earth.

The passion for justice and care was manifest

in every worship service and

in every lovingly-prepared meal of blackbeans, rice & fried platanos.

It was manifest in these poor, poor people reclaiming earth for sustainable agriculture,

composting and recycling.

But the passion flowed,

not just from visible human needs and

not only because it was the right thing to do—

but from and through God: it was a passion for God’s love on earth.

~~~

So where does your passion lie? And what is Plymouth’s passion?

What is it that stirs us to truly be a part of this community,

to wholeheartedly hold hands with the semi-strangers beside us and march together seeking God’s reign?

What inspires us for God?

I know it’s rare to hear me quote a megachurch pastor, but hear these words from best-selling Evangelical Rick Warren:

“Nothing great is ever accomplished in life without passion. Nothing great is ever sustained in life without passion. Passion is what energizes life. Passion makes the impossible possible.…Without passion life becomes boring. It becomes monotonous. It becomes routine. It becomes dull. God created you with the emotions to have passion in your life and He [sic] wants you to live a passionate life.”[i]

Has our mission and ministry together lost its passion and become boring, monotonous, routine, dull?

Has your own relationship with the Holy become boring, monotonous, routine or dull?

Where is your passion for God? your passion for helping make manifest

God’s Kin-dom on earth? a reign of justice and equality and sharing and love?

Whether or not we agree with it, the Occupy movement has passion fueling its expansion!

Whether or not we agree with them, many Evangelical churches have passion fueling their outreach.

But it doesn’t only have to be Evangelical-types like Rick Warren who promote passion.

Michael Piazza, the former pastor of (the now UCC) Cathedral of Hope in Dallas and current president of Hope for Peace & Justice, had this to say last Tuesday in his daily devotional, The Liberating Word:

`“passion and spiritual devotion seem to have become synonymous with the fundamentalist or, at the very least, the more evangelical members of our faith....[But] Jesus called us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Most [progressive] churches worship as though love is purely an exercise of the mind and as if there is no heart nor soul, let alone strength, involved or needed….We seek to understand our faith, but do we seek as ardently to experience? When was the last time you simply were caught up in your love for God? ...Hopefully there are people in your life who mean so much to you that your heart aches with love for them. Is God one of those persons?”[ii]

~~~

I know that sometimes I can lose track of that sense of passion for God.

The UEPV’s ministry re-invigorated it in me!

Even though at first I was bored and frustrated by the long introductions to each new place,

I finally realized that I must be present to them, be open to what each of the speakers and dancers and singers were bringing to the moment—

for the pure love of God!

And the same is true here—what openness do we bring to each moment,

to wait for the Spirit to be revealed in each worshipful space?

We can be frustrated by the waste of time

or we can let ourselves be caught up by another’s passion

which can, in turn, re-ignite our own.

                        What makes you passionate?!!

                                                A deep conversation? A play-filled work-day?

                                                Marching for peace or interviewing HPI clients?

                                                Lovingly preparing a meal or praising through a musical gift?

I do believe, if we are to share the Good News of Jesus Christ’s call

for justice,

for healing,

for wholeness

and equality,

as shown in every one of the Gospels,

then we need to find that spark of passion within ourselves. And within this church!

And to play that passion on the harp of ten strings; to sing it out loud where people can hear it—

at clinics and over dinners and in everything we do, to be in worship!

Passion for Divine love of justice and life in community is what keeps this church from dying like so many others—passion for God’s Shalom is what’s going to keep Plymouth spreading hope to many, many more people—not just here in Fort Collins, Colorado but also in places like Los Cardones Venezuela!

Just as their hope and faith has reached back here to us

through my time with them.

A renewed passion for God is what I bring back to Plymouth from Venezuela.

I pray we all can feel those fires anew. Amen.

---

[i] Rick Warren, Reigniting Your Passion for God, July 2003. Sermon. http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/reigniting-your-passion-for-god-rick-warren-sermon-on-attitude-general-127082.asp

[ii] Michael Piazza, Liberating Word, Tuesday, October 11, 2011. E-newletter. http://www.h4pj.org/liberatingword/2011/october/101811.php