Children & MDG Sermon for Souper Bowl Sunday

Children's Sermon

"If you believe and I believe and we together pray, the Holy Spirit must come down and set God's people free." A song from Zimbabwe (A song of hope, freedom, of God helping us)

Next door to Zimbabwe is Mozambique. In a tiny, isolated village, Megumeto, three moms wanted their kids to have a nursery school for children from birth to 5 years old. There are now 167 students attending that school. The local Anglican parish has decided to build a permanent school building. Once built, the roof of the school will become a water collection system to fill huge plastic water tanks. Currently people in the village must walk 3 ½ miles for water. This project will bless the children of Megumeto. And it will take resources from beyond this village to bring it to conclusion. The needs are well beyond the scope of the local community… and we can help!

(I can hear them singing this song…)

MDG Sermon
Why get involved with a building a school some 8,000 miles from us?

As Bishop Jim Curry has said, “One woman told me: "We want our children to be good...to be clean...how can they do it without water (or school)? If I were Mozambican, I might begin to think that God let the sand collapse under my feet as I watched them pour the concrete for the cornerstone of the school because I needed to pay attention to what God was up to right in front of me. Perhaps they are right.”

Bishop Curry told that story in a sermon here last summer and some said we need to take this on! As a community, we would help them build a nursery school, just like so many of our kids have enjoyed here in Monroe (Peter Pan or Little Ivy)! This would allow us to take on some of those MDGs, helping provide education and clean water for a village looking to provide for their children.

I think of the words from some U2 songs: that “we are called to carry each other.” & “Where you are born shouldn’t dictate whether you live or die.” Just last fall, Bono said "I think we're all called to serve each other in that way, by God; by a sense of common decency."

We have heard about the need, and we see how we can help with buying bricks for them to build a school and a water collection system. We will be engaged in mission…

As our own Bishop Ian Douglas has said, “Being faithful to the call to God’s mission, participating with God in effecting God’s peace & reconciliation (shalom), is what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus. The MDG’s thus serve as an invitation to get on with what God wants us to be about; to join with sisters in brothers in Christ, with people of other faiths, with wider global civil society to be about the repair of the world.”

So why do we do it?

Because we want to help repair the world, to make sure that that village, another community can share in the bounty that we have so readily here. Jesus offered Good News and healing took place and people began to live new lives. What we can offer is our love, our prayers and our support to help heal this world, provide supplies that will help those families build a permanent school.

Again in Bono’s words…

“The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God, my friends, is with the poor. And God is with us, if we are with them. This is not a burden. This is an adventure. Don’t let anyone tell you it cannot be done. We can be the generation that ends extreme poverty.”

Join us on Wednesday night for a potluck and to hear more about the plans for this Nursery School in Megumeto, Mozambique. This is not just some quick program that is done today and forgotten tomorrow. “No it’s about building a movement, a movement of God’s people in response to the mission of God.” (Bp. Douglas) It all began with our response to the orphanage in Russia and will continue with our mission to the Nursery School in Megumeto, Mozambique. As we do it in God’s name. Amen.