Walking Together with Integrity

[This text has been taken from a sermon with the same title. I had been invited to preach at my grandmother's church, First Presbyterian, in Monroe, LA, and this is what I had to say. Scripture: Psalm 26, Hebrews 2:5-12]

The last time I read these words in Psalm 26 was during a devotion in late February. I was staying in a classy hotel in Uganda, relaxing after a day in the field. After taking a quick swim in the pool and surfing channels via satellite, I suddenly stopped to remember the days events. I had led a group of American visitors to a traditional African village, complete with mud huts and bare-naked babies, showing them how their money as donors and fundraisers had gone to improve the lives of these communities. Yet sitting here in on my bed in the hotel room, I felt a world away.

Where was I? Today I had been in a place where the closest water source was miles away. This evening I was in a place with so much water I could dance in gallons of it. I had been in a place where children’s infectious stomachs bulged and hunger dulled curious minds. Tonight I was surrounded by kids laughing and throwing French fries at one another. The women THERE stooped under the weight of wood and water. The women HERE had porters to carry their bags. Where was I?

I knew that in this world there were dissimilarities. I knew that in this world people lived differently from one another, that there was disparity. I knew when I returned to the U.S. most people would have cars, be employed and send their kids to school. Not so for most here in Africa. Yet I wasn’t ready to see these two worlds within one country, let alone one day. Where was I?

If I were going to walk with integrity with these people, both African and American, I needed to be truthful to who I was as well as where I was. So where was I?

To start from the beginning, I was in Nairobi, Kenya, near the Horn of Africa on the Eastern side of the continent, serving for one year as a PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer. I came over to Kenya with six other volunteers, from a group of about 50 spread over ten countries. Hundreds of churches throughout the US, including First Presbyterian of Monroe, support and send out these volunteers each year.

I worked in cooperation with Church World Service, a faith-based, non-profit American organization working in community development throughout the world. My job was to visit various community projects using funds to build a dam, drill a borehole, teach HIV/AIDS awareness, improve agricultural techniques, ETC. There I would interview family members before returning to the office to write a story incorporating their wtory with the larger community project.

My life was full of COMBINING contrasts. In Sudan, I took notes on a computer while the participants of a peace seminar took notes with pens and paper… that we had provided. In Tanzania, I flew over islands of fisherman using wooden boats to eek out a living. In Kenya, I would lug a water bottle to a site only to meet a woman who had carried a 5 gallon jug 10 kilometers to cook for her family that day. In Uganda, I would take visitors into an African village only to relax in a hotel in the evening. At every turn and in every place, my integrity was put to the test.

In the Psalm we read today, David exhorts God, shouting, “Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.” David is determined for God to test his heart and thus prove the integrity of his faith. And so am I determined to match what I saw with my mind with movement in my heart. Oswald Chambers wrote, “I must reduce myself until I am a mere conscious man.” Notice he did not say a more conscious but a mere conscious person.

I wonder: Have we ever asked God to test our integrity? Do we match what’s on our hearts with what’s on our minds, and with what’s on our minds with what’s on our plates. In other words, having integrity means matching one’s faith with one’s actions.

God so loved us that he gave the world over to our care. So testifies the Psalmist as quoted by Paul in Hebrews:

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
Or mortals, that you care for them?”

Matthew Henry states that a Christian “walk in his [or her] integrity, yet trusting wholly in the grace of God.”

In Hebrews verse ten, we see God’s love “bringing many children to glory” under one parent, Abba. And For this reason Jesus is not ashamed, yet in fact delights, in calling US his brother and sisters, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name in the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.’ “

So who, and not what, are you praising today? Who are you proclaiming in front of everyone? Perhaps it’s your mother, father, son or daughter. Perhaps it’s someone living or someone no longer with us. Whoever this person is, however, is someone you know, with whom you have a relationship. Only by knowing someone can we truly walk with them in integrity.

So how was I doing? I’d written some stories on the good work being done by our partners with Church World Service. With the help of some friends back home, I had sponsored a few Kenyans in getting further education. I even donated some books to a local vocational school for AIDS Children in Uganda.

Yet now that I have returned from Africa, I don’t remember the places or things I did as much as I remember the people I met. I remember Oliver, a security guard at my apartment, who is also 24 years old. He had moved to the city after his parents died of AIDS, and now lives in the slums and commutes by walking 5 miles each day for a 12-hour shift to support his two younger brothers. I remember Sam, a colleague and close friend of mine who showed me how to turn the yearnings of my heart into thoughtful and worthwhile proposals to help the entire community. I remember Joyce, whose smile always brightened my day and whose warmth reminded me of god’s love here in Kenya even as I missed my family and friends back home.


And that’s the beauty of relationships: they don’t break down into an expense sheet or payroll. A name brings up memories of special moments, not simply a name to whom a check should be written. Relationships are more about what is unseen than what is seen. And after all, we live and walk by faith, not by sight.

When I was younger I read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The book is quite interesting in getting people to do what you want, but true friendships are always a blessing from God. We don’t have control over who specifically becomes our friend or our foe. However, we can choose with whom we spend our time.

How are you spending your time? And with WHOM are you spending time? Is it in personal connections or with personal computers? Are most of your friends like-minded on “the issues” or well-minded of others’ concerns? Are we giving of our time as well as our talents?

One thing I’ll never forget about Africa is the walking. Once we were in the community, we walked side-by-side with our partners and community members to see the good work they had strived to accomplish. I remember we were standing outside one household, listening to the project coordinator Grace, a Ugandan, explain how this family was benefiting from a goat-rearing program. Another woman hobbled over, an infection swelling her foot and causing her to stumble. Her husband had died of AIDS, but not before infecting her and leaving her two children. Now with this foot infection she was not able to go to the market to sell her vegetables, and she could not afford surgery. Her name was Mercy. Lord, have Mercy.

Where is the Mercy in your life? Where is the Grace?

Not all of us can go to Africa, but there is a Grace and a Mercy here today. Next week I’ll be walking 5 kilometers in a Crop Walk, helping to raise funds for precisely those people I walked with less than a year ago. In our culture, we’ve lost the art of walking. If I took a quick poll, I would guess 9 out of 10 of you drove in a car to get here, myself included. Yet it’s those who are unable to drive, the elderly and the youth, the poor and the downtrodden, that we should be reaching out to so “they” becomes “we.” So let us get out of cars, out of our fast-paced lives and perhaps errant errands, and find someone to walk with. And may we do so with integrity, getting to know the other person just as God already knows both of us.

Before Christ suffered for all of us, he had dinner with the least of us. He celebrated with the filthy, drank with the intolerable and healed the disease-ridden. And he called them by name: Lazarus, Matthew, Margaret, Zacchaeus, and many others.

This morning, God is calling your name. Won’t you have a relationship with him? Won’t you have a relationship with his children?


PRAYER:

Lord, help us to be grateful in the good times, and grace-FULL in the bad ones. We live by Your Mercy as well as Your Grace. May we share these gifts with others through the challenge of friendship, knowing we are able to love others because you first loved us.