"Living with Fear and Faith"

It is a privilege to be asked to speak this morning at a service honoring United Methodist Women.  During our missionary career Peggy & I came to appreciate the dedication of the United Methodist Women.  Nearly 1 million members seeking to know God’s will and to make life better for women, children, youth and marginalized people around the world.

 Since September 11, 2001 a sense of apprehension has settled over our nation.

I have noticed fear in the eyes of people I talk to and hear anxiety in their voices or emails as they struggle to make sense of this new reality in which we find ourselves.  I wanted to focus on Fear & Faith to help us look at how we might respond to the frightening conditions of an unstable world where there are situations of injustice.

Fear is not evil or bad, but it is a natural emotion calling us to react to conditions around us.  There are various stages or degrees of fear.   It can serve as a stimulus for positive action or paralyze us to a point where we are unable to think or move.  It can range from a daily feeling of apprehension as we are fed a constant flow of frightening news, to the drastic moments when we actually fear for our lives.

Let me tell you an experience in flight training where fear paralyzed me.  One morning in the preflight briefing, my instructor told me that he would have me do a hammerhead stall by pulling the nose of the airplane up above the horizon, reduce the power and hold the plane in that position.  So we went flying and after we reached a safe altitude he asked me to do the stall. I was very naive, not really knowing how this stall would proceed.  I pulled the nose up, reduced the power and kept pulling back on the stick as the airspeed dropped off.  We were fast running out of airspeed. With a shudder, the plane stalled, the nose collapsed through the horizon and I was looking at the earth rushing up. I completely panicked, threw both hands up grasping the panel over the instruments and froze there. As we plunged towards the earth, the air speed was rapidly increasing, and I had visions of the end times. Then a calm voice came floating over the intercom:  You can pull it out any time Mr. Heiner.  Embarrassed, I took my hands off the panel and started flying the airplane again.

Our instructors taught us to confront our fears by exposing us to different and uncertain situations.  Isn’t life like that today - family members or friends with cancer, our children having problems, frightening new weather conditions, rampant human violence?

My flight career helped me appreciate the basic elements of my Christian faith.  I have learned, along with many of you, that with the leading of the Holy Spirit, we can face the fear -- either imagined or real. We cannot live in the past. We need to nurture a faith to match our daily reality. 

Christ urges us not to be overcome or paralyzed by fear. A verse from Hebrews 13:6 offers us hope.

The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone (or anything) do to me? 

Faith:

In 1969, Peggy and I along with our four children responded to the call to enter missionary life.  After training we left to serve overseas.  We entered an unfamiliar world living in third world countries.  Filled with people from different races and cultures; speaking languages we found hard to understand; and social turmoil was a daily occurrence for the marginated poor.

In all of the countries where we served - Bolivia, Chile, Somalia, and Nicaragua - we were confronted by the violence taking place around us.  Fear was a fact of life and yet the Christian community had a dedication that sustained us.  We soon learned that our Christian sisters and brothers had much to offer us.

I want to share with you about the faith of two courageous women from Latin America.

Miriam Arena and her husband co-pastored the Methodist Church in Valdivia, Chile. They had two small children. Peggy helped Miriam with the prison ministry and I taught forestry at the University.  Chile’s September-11th occurred with the over-throw of their elected president.  General Pinochet moved quickly into power, spearheading a brutal military dictatorship under which hundreds of Chileans were thrown into prison and often tortured.

Many Methodist pastors and laypeople were arrested.  Our Church had a ministry of helping Chileans get released from jail and go into exile.  Miriam headed the program in Valdivia and assumed the duty of traveling with released prisoners to Santiago, which was an overnight bus trip.  She was a beacon of light in the dark days for people who were labeled "political prisoners."  She helped their families and completed the paper work to get their loved ones safely to the airport, into exile.  Even though this young mother and pastor was constantly watched by the secret police, she radiated Christ’s  love to people desperately in need.

Another courageous Methodist woman is Casimira Rodriguez Romero.  In 2003 she was presented with the World Methodist Peace Award and recently was appointed Bolivia’s Minister of Justice.

At the age of 13, Casimira left her Quechua Indian village to work in Cochabamba, a large town in central Bolivia.  She dreamed of earning money to help her family.  What happened was practically her enslavement, as Casimira cleaned, cooked and washed for a family of fifteen without having a day off.  When her mother came to visit, she rescued Casimira and got her into another home where she had Sundays off.  Casimira found a Methodist Church whose members welcomed her into a loving community.  She attended sewing classes where she and other women dared to consider forming an association of “home workers” which grew into a national movement with groups meeting in  Methodist churches.  This idea was so radical in Bolivia, they faced death threats, tear gas and abuse until the Bolivian congress passed a landmark law protecting the legal rights of home workers.

When Casimira was chosen as Bolivia’s Minister of Justice, in her acceptance remarks she said, “When I came to know the Word of the Lord, my life filled with hope and faith because God was on the side of the poor, denouncing injustice and healing the sick.”

Circles of Love

In 1980, our church assignment took us to the Ali Matan refugee camp in Somalia.  I was asked to be Camp Director and Peggy in charge of the Medical Program.  The United Nations provided food and medicines while we implemented a stable program of management and health care education.

The refugees were excellent students as they learned about primary health care as well as maternal care in which sixty midwives participated.  It was an exciting program as the health needs were being met and the number of children dying of hunger had decreased dramatically.

It was so good that the Somalian Army decided to come to the refugee camps and kidnap all the medical workers for their needs.   Overnight we and the other surrounding camps lost all of our Somali medical workers. 

Since we expatriates functioned in Somalia under the rule of the UN, we appealed to them for help.  After hard negotiations with the threat of shutting down the entire UN feeding program we got our medical workers back.

One morning around 5 a.m. I got up to find our compound filled with medical workers and other refugees.  I got Ali, my interpreter, and started asking questions.  I found out the Army was again rounding up our medical workers.  The people around our quarters wanted our help to avoid being kidnapped and in scripted into the army.

Peggy and I decided to walk down to the center of the refugee camp and engage the Officer in charge.  The Camp center was a field and an army truck sat parked in the middle.  Behind the truck was a ring of soldiers with their rifles pointed at a group of our medical workers sitting in the center. 

As we approached I said to Peggy,  - "Let's just go sit in the circle with our friends" - which we did.  An Officer immediately came over and demanded to know what we were doing.  Ali, my interpreter was a 16-year-old high school student from Kenya.   He was scared!  I told Ali to tell the officer that if he took our workers he was going to have to take us.  My reply shocked him and he started to shout at us.  It probably was good that Peggy and I didn’t know what he was saying and Ali was too scared to translate.  Finally he somewhat gained his composure and directed a question to Ali.   He wanted to know if we were going to leave?  I told him yes, if he allowed our friends to go with us.  This is not what he wanted to hear and again went into a rage. 

It never occurred to us to leave.  Faith in God's calling had brought us half way around the world to help poor people in need.  The God we worship has grace sufficient for all of humankind regardless of race or religious belief.  They had accepted us into their midst and became our friends.  It was our privilege to join in this circle during a time of trouble.  We just sat there calmly and peacefully, attempting to change a circle of violence into a circle of love.

After a half hour of tension, the officer suddenly turned around, started barking orders at his soldiers. They got into the truck and drove off.

We are challenged these days, from a toxic climate of fear, to nurture a faith which will change circles of violence into circles of love.

For all of us, a vital element is prayer, which allows the Holy Spirit to touch our lives.  Secondly, we need a faith community with whom we can share and work.  I find that dedicated and loving community here in this Church.  Finally, we can trust that God’s grace will not let fear, both real and imaginary, cripple our response to Christ's calling.

God has a calling for each one of us - for you and me.  In faith you can reach out and join in a circle of love - it may be within your family, our church or our community.  Through UMW our circle is expanded beyond Ashland to our nation and internationally.  Through faith we are nurtured in our circles of love that draws us into fellowship with people of different faith, life styles and callings.  

A faith rooted in Christ leads us to circles of love.