Commitment for Life & Epiphany 4

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13, Jeremiah 1: 4-10

Commitment for Life offers us a definition of what it means to be a child of God and a follower of Jesus Christ.

Life-giving faith; Defiant hope; Generous love.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth brings the three things together – faith, hope, love. Paul says what we say, however eloquent; what we proclaim, however prophetic; the sacrifices we make, however total: none of these things compare with what we do.

It is our acts of faith, hope and love which show the “more excellent way” to live.

I talked earlier about praying ‘without seeing’, but I also wanted to share with you some of the acts of faith, hope and love we were blessed to see for ourselves in Zimbabwe when we visited.

We met the leaders of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches. The ZCC has a vision for a strong Christian fellowship working for a united, peaceful, just and prosperous nation. They want to empower and renew the member churches

so that they have a sustainable , transforming Christian presence in Zimbabwe. As Christian leaders they have often been under pressure to support President Mugabe (who was in power when we visited) and now President Mngagwa, but they have a life-giving faith that God’s power will help them to change Zimbabwe by holding all politicians to the values of unity, compassion, justice, integrity, boldness and truth.

We also met people of defiant hope when we visited the capital, Harare. We met a group of lawyers who specialize in land rights: the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association.

Christian Aid helps to fund them to help small villages to stand up to huge multinational mining companies. Zimbabwe is rich in minerals, and the large companies like to move in, thoroughly exploit an area and then move on to another area. Whilst the mining companies are there there are jobs for local people – but they are often dangerous jobs which affect people’s health –

and when the company moves out, the villages are left with environmental damage – polluted water and land, deforestation, tips of spoil and large holes in the ground. The lawyers hold the companies accountable for the damage they do & use the law to try to ensure a good clean-up.

I have one of their documents here critiquing the ‘Mines & Minerals Amendment Bill’… they also run a library to help keep track of legal precedents, and collect evidence from more remote places of what the mining companies are doing.

The four lawyers we met had all received threats because of their work; they admitted they could make far more money working in other areas of law; but they did what they did because they believed in life in all its fullness for all the people of Zimbabwe. They epitomized defiant hope.

My final example is of generous love. We visited a farm supported by the Institute for Rural Technologies (IRT). The farmers – Kenneth & Pauline Ndlovu – had seen taught how to cope better with the drought conditions which are common in that part of Zimbabwe.

They were encouraged to grow sorgum instead of maize, and had been shown how to dig potholes to trap rainwater when it did fall, so that it went to the roots of the crops instead of running off the land, and encouraged to sow along the contours of the land, to slow down the run=off of water,

The Ndlovus have had a four-fold increase in their harvest over the three years they have uased these new techniques.. When we visited, the farm was full of their neighbours, who had all come to give thanks to Christian Aid and IRT. Instead of seeing those neighbours as less successful competitors, each year the Ndlovus has invited them to come and see what they were doing – so now the whole area had benefitted from the training and everyone was enjoying better harvests. Generous love.

Life-giving faith, defiant hope, generous love.

We are called to live like this when we support Christian Aid through Commitment for Life – but I have no doubt that we find that faith, hope and love in the lives of those we seek to help.

The danger with learning about how much people can help on another is that we can reduce the good news to this. Commitment for Life does not mean that all we need to do is work harder to make the world a better place – though it’s not a bad start ! – because we need to remember that this life-giving faith, defiant hope and generous love does not originate in us, but comes from God.

We heard today from the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, where Jeremiah receives his call to be a prophet. It starts even before he is born -  ‘when I formed you in the womb I knew you’ says the Lord God. Then Jeremiah is told ‘to go to all to whom I send you and speak whatever I shall command you’. Jeremiah receives what might seem a terrifying call, appointed over nations and kingdoms to pluck up and pull down…

but he does none of this only by his own efforts. The sending is from God, the message is from God and God promises ‘I am with you to deliver you’.

When we are thinking of our response to the difficulties in Zimbabwe; or the terrible situations of others in our needy world; or our own trials and difficulties, the Good News is the same. God calls us to a life of life-giving faith, defiant hope and generous love. But he comes to live that life with us in Jesus Christ to show us what faith, hope and love really look like, and he promises us as he promises Jeremiah ‘I am with you to deliver you’.

-       with us in our prayers.

-       with us today in bread and wine.

Thanks be to God, Father Son & Holy Spirit.

Amen.