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Sunday, August 22, 2010
Risk Taking Mission and Service
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Mark 8:34 – 35 Good News Bible
34 Then Jesus called the crowd and his disciples to him. "If any of you want to come with me," he told them, "you must forget yourself, carry your cross, and follow me. 35 For if you want to save your own life, you will lose it; but if you lose your life for me and for the gospel, you will save it.
One of my very vivid memories of my first year in seminary at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology is of the professor who told us in class about one of the most important groups we would ever relate to in our congregations. This group is the United Methodist Women who have been around in our tradition, by one name or the other, since the late 1800’s.
He told us that UMW people were pioneers in Methodism for the past 140 years in mission work, in outreach to others, in being on the cutting edge in social issues and in social ethics! He also told us that the members of United Methodist Women are some of the most well read members of any congregation because of the excellent mission schools they sponsor each year, sometimes in very controversial areas of study. UMW has helped the rest of us live up to the call from God that we are to take risks for others in living our faith and in caring for others.
I thought of that emphasis on taking risks as we prepared to celebrate this annual Sunday when we honor and recognize our members and leaders of United Methodist Women of St. Andrew Church. We have said in our vision statement on your bulletin cover that we want to involve each other in service and mission work that involves us taking a risk, but I wonder how well each of us does in letting our relationship with God lead us into any kind of risk.
When was the last time your faith caused you to take a risk or has taken you out of your comfort zone? Let’s think about that for a moment. If you were one of the 165 youth or adults who were on one of our mission trips this summer to Ethiopia or Guatemala or Alamosa or Detroit or to the Pine Ridge Reservation, you might have had a quicker answer to that because those folks did some hard and important work in some difficult conditions to improve the lives of people who are vulnerable and poor.
One of the many benefits of the studies and book groups that our United Methodist Women have done is that they can introduce all of us to people who give us inspiring examples of “risk taking mission and service.”
In past UMW studies, one of the historical heroes lived in the middle of the 1800’s in our country’s most tragic struggles with slavery. Harriett Tubman was a runaway slave from Maryland who escaped to the north and was called “The Moses of her people” because she risked her life many times to help other slaves escape during the American Civil War through the Underground Railroad. These were the channels of churches and sympathetic homes that provided food and shelter for runaway slaves on their way to freedom in the north.
During the war she worked for the Union army as a nurse and also recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops. She was so hated by slave owners and by military leaders that at one time there was a $40,000 reward for Harriet Tubman!! Think about what that amount would be in today’s terms.
In her role as a nurse, she came upon a cure for dysentery that involved turning water lilies and geraniums into a brew that saved many, many lives. She died in 1913 at the age of 93 and her tombstone reads: “Servant of God, Well Done.”
Right around the time that Harriett Tubman died, the battle for the right of women to vote was going on. We celebrate the 90th anniversary of that amendment that gave voting rights to women this week. It was a long and bitter battle of many years, and the women who demonstrated for their rights were beaten and put in jail. That civil rights movement, like all other civil rights movements, did not happen easily or happen overnight. It took courage and “risk taking service” to make it happen. That struggle has been documented in some of the studies that United Methodist Women have done, and there were Methodist women who were involved in and leaders of that struggle!
Let me mention a couple of more current examples of women. Some of you know of or may even know one of these women.
The first story is somewhat controversial and some of you will disagree with the fact that I am even mentioning the church leader I am about to describe to you. But, even if you disagree with what she did a few months ago, I believe that you can still see that from her perspective, she involved herself in a ministry of risk taking service, and she has paid a price for taking that risk. She almost certainly saved the life of a 27 year old woman who would have died had this church leader not intervened.
Sister Margaret Mary McBride was an influential administrator at a hospital in Phoenix where a very painful, ethical decision had to be made. A 27 year old woman was in the hospital because of complications connected with being eleven weeks pregnant. There were medical opinions that indicated, if the baby were carried to term, both the mother and the baby would die because of pulmonary hypertension. In order to save the life of the 27 year old woman, Sister Margaret Mary McBride allowed the pregnancy to be terminated. Because of her action, as a member of the hospital ethics committee, on behalf of the very sick woman, the nun was removed from her position as the hospital’s vice president of mission integration and was excommunicated from her church.
The May 19, 2010 article about Sister Margaret Mary McBride, by reporter Michal Clancy, can be read on the website of The Arizona Republic newspaper.
You may agree or disagree with the ethics committee’s decision to save the pregnant woman’s life, but I believe that this nun’s advocacy on behalf of the pregnant woman was an act of risk taking service.
Let me give you one final example of service to others that has involved some sacrifice and some risk, and this story is about a young woman who grew up in this congregation.
Katie Dwyer graduated in May from the University of Oregon. Just this month Katie entered into a Master’s Degree program at the University in conflict management. Jeri Dwyer, Katie’s mother and Director of Outreach on the St. Andrew staff, told me this week about something Katie has been doing for the past two years and is continuing this fall as well.
Katie is a teacher and group leader at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Eugene. She meets with a group of inmates and community members once a week and they study literature. Half the group consists of inmates, including some who are in prison for murder, and half are college students. Katie has been involved with the program, Inside Out, since her freshman year and reports that it has changed the way she views those who are seen as “the other.”
In September Katie is leading, for the third time, a group from her United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon on a mission walking the migrant trails in Arizona as part of a ministry called No More Deaths. Katie’s Oregon group will meet up with people from our own congregation in that act of compassion and risk taking service.
When has your faith led you to participate in deeds of service that might mean some risk and some sacrifice and getting you out of what is just comfortable and familiar into some experience where you feel God is newly at work in your heart and your life?