Weekly Sermons

"So Why Go to Kenya?"   Acts 2:21

Most of us when we hear that might be tempted to say, “Well isn’t that nice. Things sort of worked out for Cain and his family.” But something is not right here. Cain basically accepts the judgment that he will be driven away from the face of God. That never seems to really bother him in Genesis. And when he builds that city there are many indications that the city is Cain’s way of providing for himself all the things he once relied upon God to receive. The city becomes a substitute for God’s provision and God’s grace because Cain has concluded that he doesn’t need God. In fact, the name of the city which he gives to it after the name of his son Enoch, means something in Hebrew. It means more or less “new start” or “new order of things.” It is a world that a man has established that relies on man alone, not God. The sinful confidence of man says, “I don’t need God. I don’t want God. I’ll be my own God. And if that means I live life as a murderer or any other way I want to in order to satisfy my needs and desires and longings – that’s the way it’s going to be. Who needs God?”

You may say that I am reading a lot into Genesis here but look at what is going on in this other city that is built today called Babel and the tower that was at its center. I don’t know if you picked up on it but the people begin their building with the phrase “Come, let us...” That may be a play on words from when God Himself once said, “Come, let us make man in our image.” These people are making a city and a world in their own image apart from God. “Come, let us make bricks… Come, let us build ourselves a city…. Come, let us build ourselves a tower with its top in the heavens.” Now in the ancient world huge towers, whether they be Ziggurats or any other tower shaped building usually had one purpose – it was to somehow reach up to the heavens so that man could contact and reach the place where God or the gods lived. People used to sacrifice in pagan religions on mountaintops and on the “high places.” The ancient Greeks believed the gods lived on top of the highest mountain in Greece, Mt. Olympus. But something else is going on here. It’s found in the final words of the people: “.. and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

God judged the people of Babel by showing them exactly what does happen with a life apart from Him. It is not unity of purpose nor an enduring legacy for the ages. It is factions and separation and a recognition of differences in each other. It is because without God there is no counteracting force to sin. And Sin does not allow people to work together. Sin is always and incredibly self-serving. You can’t even understand your brother because his words fall on deaf ears. Some may hear your words because they are like you. But most people are not. And with this division come all the evils of racism and prejudice, and hatred of anyone who is different from you, and then the need to conquer and dominate those who are different from you and the inability to understand each other which has been the definition of the human race since the days of the Tower of Babel. Jesus in the Gospel reading today said: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.” But there is no God in Babel and there is no love of God in the hearts of the people. And the home they sought in the city they built is a shattered and as broken as the lives of people then and today – all because we thought we didn’t need God and told God so.

Let me show you where we are going. (Slides will follow at various points). This picture shows you life in the Kibera slum outside of Nairobi. Millions live in a very small area in poverty below anything you and I could imagine. And the people of Kenya deal with sickness and death. AIDS is rampant in this part of the world and there is no cure for it. An entire generation is born there infected with the HIV virus. The end result is death – and the only hope is in the mighty work of God.

In the midst of this slum is “Spring of Life” Lutheran Church. We’ll be there on our first Sunday in Kenya as a mission team. These saints of that church have the same message St. Peter gave long ago. Death does not have the final word nor sickness nor poverty. We know as do they the One Who though He was rich became poor for our sakes. We know the One who bore our infirmities and weaknesses. He is the one Who offers life and love to people drowning in the false promises Satan gives that life without God can be fine and good and meaningful. And because that Word of God goes out as it will we pray when our team is over there, these people who have nothing but Jesus actually have more than the world can know – and they can teach us a lesson about finding joy in the midst of nothing but death, poverty, and disease. They can teach us who have so much abundance and so many material things, but have broken families, meaningless existences and the reality that as Americans we are not really happy as a people.

It is all because Jesus came personally to us, as we will come personally to the Kenyan people we meet next July. God the Father could simply have sent His blessings and the Good Word to our world. But He chose to make a personal connection. He did it by crossing a great distance between him and our world. He did it at a great cost; the life of His beloved Son. He did it to be among us; and Jesus last words included the promise that He is still with us and always will be until the end of the age. We too will go a great distance this July, those of us who go and those of us who send, and both are part of the mission and of equal importance. We will go at a great cost. We will do it to be among the people who have said before to us that this alone is what speaks to their hearts the most and the greatest word of encouragement. In the words of Pastor Obare of Kenya, the fact that the people of St. Paul’s cared enough to come to us in a journey of over 12,000 miles, to a people most of us will never meet and have never known before – just because we are their brothers and sisters in Christ – That is what speaks to the hearts of the Kenyan peoples.