María Yi Reyna, Cuba Yearly Meeting, addressed the Triennial during worship on Saturday 18th August 2007 as follows:
‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffers long and is kind. Charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, does not think evil. Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth, but whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.’
1 Corinthians 13: 1 - 8
Let us sing the hymn ‘Alleluia’.
I have been singing for a long time, but not speaking! So I want to say good morning, Friends. I want to thank God, I want to thank the World Committee and I want to thank my Yearly Meeting, which I represent, that I am here. My passport had been sent, was sent back, and finally the word arrived that I could come. Now it is almost time to say good‑bye, but we continue seeking: ‘follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts especially the gift of prophecy.’ I invite you to pray.
Dear Lord, we come weighed down with our tiredness and our worries, but also with our joys today. Now we want to listen to Your voice and may Your word be life for our lives. Please show Yourself to us today. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
We are always looking for things in life - company, work, health, food. It is as if everything was going to run out all at once, and we do it for ourselves many times. In our churches, we don't keep good order and sometimes we don't even know what we are looking for. What's even worse, we don't know or sometimes are even indifferent to what others come seeking, thinking that our extraordinary actions imply holiness.
So the first point that we want to think about today is that Jesus knows when we are spiritually indifferent persons. I believe that there is no small number of people in our countries who think that not doing anything bad is enough to satisfy God. Jesus urges the church to abandon our tendency to spiritual omission. God knows when our offerings are motivated by selfish interests, when we sit in a particular bench or pew in the church in order to be noticed or when we raise our hands in a mechanical way, when we read the Bible just in order to fulfill our daily obligations or when we pray beautifully, but with no passion, when we look at the poor with disdain and at the rich with interest. God knows all things and wants to cure us of indifference! God affirms that He does not look indifferently on our spiritual coldness, and tells us that His heart is sad because we do not live in the wholeness that existed in the beginning of time. Often we feel proud of having obtained wealth through our own efforts. This is when Jesus also knows that we are people who are spiritually arrogant. A church that prospers materially outwardly can easily fall into the trap of thinking that outward prosperity is the measure of its spiritual prosperity. We humans build our identities based on models.
In John 14:12, the evangelist tells we are capable of performing the same work that Jesus did. Mark reveals that Jesus came from a humble background. Some passages in the Gospels tell us about the social level from which Jesus came. He began His ministry in Galilee, His fame spread throughout Galilee. He cast out demons and preached, He promised His disciples before his crucifixion that He would also appear there. In the process of warming up our spiritual lives, we pass through the life and example of our Master. If we don't rid ourselves of our obsession with material wealth, we will never have time to dedicate ourselves to building a healthy spirit. Dedication to our neighbour, especially to those afflicted, is absolutely necessary.
But there are signs that could help us avoid being deceived: what are those signs? They are the signs of love, of service, of sacrifice, of respect for the opinions of others in many cases, those of the truth. Christ is wherever we can see the signs - the marks of the nails. From Jesus we receive advice to be more merciful; however bad a community may be, there is still light in it, not through its own merits but because of Jesus' mercy. He is always ready to correct, to forgive and to welcome. The church is a project that was created in the heart of God. Jesus corrects us when we tread the path of a cold uncompromising spirituality.
Let's look at our third point - the lack of commitment of the churches of today.
People experience their spirituality at one extreme or the other. Some are interested in praying, fasting, living deeply mystical experiences with the spirit of God even though this may not result in loving service in solidarity with our neighbours. It is inconsistent to seek the power of the Holy Spirit unless this goes hand in hand with commitment to nature and to our fellow humans. We must complement it and guide it towards the help of the planet Earth. The problem is not one of seeking the gift of speaking in tongues, which is perhaps one of the most mystical experiences of Christianity; rather, it is in the separation of this search from commitment to the transformation in the society in which we live. On the other side are those who completely leave out such experiences and only concentrate on social action. The mystical life, without a loving commitment to nature and to the human race, is pure vanity. Social action without the warmth of the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts leads to nothing. Either the two experiences must intertwine in a way that they complement each other or we will never enjoy genuine spirituality in our churches. The healthy alternative is found in the word ‘wholeness’.
When we do things - either inside or outside of the church - based on love, it is because we have grown in the Spirit to the point that Jesus continues to be our first love. When we do things just to be doing them, to support the institution or the denomination, or when we are seduced by numerical growth in the church or fame or the status to be gained in the city, or for other reasons of this nature, our motives are impure or misguided. The church is born, grows and develops, and runs the risk of doing things for their own sake, day after day, Sunday after Sunday; worship becomes just more worship service; the preaching is merely one more sermon that may or may not please people. I think that this process is similar to what we experience when we first come to know the Light. We encounter Jesus, and we are filled with new perspectives that lead us to a life filled with passion for the Master. Over time, we can grow cold, lose our motivation and no longer do the things that we were doing at the beginning of our walk with the Lord. It may be that things are becoming routine because we have gone cold and our own actions are just routine. In part, this explains the disillusionment many people feel towards institutions and churches which are more concerned with maintaining what they have already gained rather than stretching themselves to gain something new. Repentance in this case means returning to the acts of love that were present when it all again. The Apostle Paul urges us to this repentance, through I Corinthians 13: 1-8 which we read earlier.
As Quakers, we are living in a time when this exhortation is very relevant for us. I don't mean to speak of any country in particular, but I can't forget about the things that are happening in my own country. Marketing, turning sermons into theatrical presentations, competition between churches, manipulation of the masses of people, turning faith into a spectacle - all these tends to undermine Christian love, motives and ethics. As a result, the means of success for these churches will turn into the reasons for their failure eventually since all these things one day will go out of style - they become obsolete, worn out, ‘but love abides’.
The first purpose of the church is to love God with all our hearts: ‘the church exists to worship God’. Jesus invites us into a relationship of intimacy. Even when the church is in a cold deplorable state, Jesus stands at the door at the heart of each individual seeking to enter into Him. The image of Jesus at the door of our hearts, of our lives, awaiting the moment when we leave our isolation and indifference to dine with Him clearly illustrates the type of relationship that God wants with His church, an intimate relationship. One of the ways of achieving that is, precisely, through worship and that demands exclusivity.
These days there are many idols; many are devoted to money, to excessive worry, to selfishness or to things that should only be secondary to the reality of the sacred, but which end up being recognised as gods.
We know that worship is not confined to one location. But there is only one path for worship. Jesus, who worshipped the Father in spirit and in truth, there is only one path for worship - the path that Jesus walked. It was difficult because his path involved the Cross and involved the defence of those who suffered. Worship is a style of life. The Spirit is accompanied by loyalty, by truth. The Son died and He gave Him to humanity for love, for loyalty to life. The Father is interested in those people who worship Him with the same faithfulness towards human life that He had and that the Son of God has. God is Spirit, He is dynamism, He is love, He is surrender. He wants worshippers who worship Him in this way.
Today many people call themselves worshippers of God. They are people who are capable of raising their hands to the heavens, but not to their neighbour as a gesture of love. The experience of love is an experience with God and it should produce in each one of us the ability to love generously in the same way that each of us is loved. We must learn to love as God loved! We must learn to make our lives away of worship and of surrender to human life. Let us not keep the Lamb of God waiting. Let us open the door of our hearts and hearts of our churches so that the Son of God can come into dine with us. Let us enjoy the most delicious experience on the face of the earth: intimacy with God! A church that keeps its purpose of living a spiritually fervent and committed life does not sicken its Lord and Saviour. It blesses the life of its members and is seen as a challenge to the visitor.
Our churches in Latin America are present in all the levels of society, in the depths of the mountains and the jungles, in the country and in the cities. Everywhere there are communities, people of God, the houses of the Holy Spirit, centres of affirmation and the gifts that God has distributed as a blessing to all and they are called to be places of comfort and reciprocal help. The fact that the church is present in all of these places is a great blessing, but it also is a great responsibility. It is a blessing that puts us in touch with all sectors of society and in particular with the most poor and with the neediest. That is why we are called together as places of welcome, of support, of comfort, of hope and of sustaining people.
How many solitary people there are in the big cities; how many millions of people have left their homes in search of a better life in these cities? But sometimes they only find disappointment and loneliness. That is why we are there as faith communities, as communities of love to offer help to the lonely one, to listen and to share the experience of the blessed love of God. That is in the same way our continent is full of violence, starting in the bosom of the family and we must be of comfort to the ones that suffer. We need to speak to the tragedies that affect the health of the community - AIDS, drug addiction, things that isolate and discriminate and separate us.
As we reflect on the work of God in our daily lives, we must pay attention to what this reality means in our countries. Marked by constant news that warns us about ecological damage, it is evident that the deterioration of life is not only in the larger economic arenas, but also in the personal arena. Listening attentively to our daily lives means incorporating this reflection in the questions and the experiences and in the searches on these new subjects and scenarios. It means starting from the point of where people are, with real concerns and uncertainties in a world that is increasingly less meaningful for them. Our elders don't want to dream anymore or envision the future because it seems that the common denominator is productivity, and for agile leadership in the work of God they are not qualified anymore. For this desire for immediate results is what seems to be what counts. It is very troublesome to see in the congregations that they don't give an opportunity for ministry to children, to boys and girls, to youth, to people who are handicapped or different or to women or those who don’t have the theological preparation or to elderly men or women. In this way they are excluded just as they are excluded from the homes that they are fleeing from in search of the warm embrace of our congregations. But in the face of this reality, God presents himself with His love and this is a recurring theme in our sermons and in our daily devotions. The care that God has for His sons and daughters is manifest in them as a constant reason for praise and recognition. Our congregations are not sure of this reality of suffering and they ask themselves about the pain that accompanies their lives. Some needy souls look among the offerings in the religious marketplace for things that are convenient to them, such as salves, songs, liturgies, balms, sanctified earth, recorded sermons, all to help with the suffering and the pain.
What are Friends doing? We need to return to talk about mercy and love, not through inactive lives, but through our daily lives we need to witness to a daily life that is prophetic, that is revitalising. We must be prophets who denounce sin and announce love, but to do this requires great reflection on what that means. I give thanks that God has allowed this meeting the sufficient time to search for what is love and to frame our aspirations towards receiving spiritual gifts to announce the Good News of salvation. This Spirit of God urges us to be creative just as the flowers in some of our fields bloom after ten years of drought. That challenges us. A different view of reality can be seen in the daily things, in the path we walk, because, even with its difficulties, in our countries clear signs of the Kingdom of God are sprouting.
To conclude: our Meetings do not establish statutes and disciplines just to rule our internal lives, we also make statements appreciating human values and the community. They are readings that wish to be prophetic about social situations that challenge our Christian consciences. The images are varied - a people of God, a house of God, a body of Christ, the resting place of the Spirit - but they are all references to the presence of God and to the works of the Holy Spirit. In other words, any reference about being a church is necessarily a reference to its birth and life in God, to our identity and vocation in the Holy Spirit, in the permanent search for holiness, that gives testimony to the Holy God who sanctifies and who gives us the vocation of universality, that embraces all creation, and assumes responsibility for all human beings, carrying the message of the love of God in Jesus Christ. After this great event, let's not just keep this in our thoughts, but we need action, we need to commit and to be profoundly spiritual. Let him who has ears, let him hear.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Friday morning- Ken Comfort, Northwest Yearly Meeting
Ken Comfort, Northwest Yearly Meeting, addressed the Triennial during worship on Friday 17th August 2007 as follows:
Our first hymn is ‘Holy Spirit, Come With Power’.
I am reading from II Corinthians 12:4:
God's various gifts are handed out everywhere, but they all originate in God's spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere, but they all originate in God's spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere, but God Himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is. Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by this spirit and to all kinds of people the variety is wonderful: wise counsel, clear understanding, simple trust, healing the sick, miraculous acts, proclamation, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one, by the one spirit of God. God decides who gets what and when. You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts - limbs, organs, cells - but no matter how many parts you can name, you are still one body. It is exactly the same with Christ. By means of His one Spirit, we all said good‑bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We used to call our own shots independently, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which God has the final say in everything. This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptised. Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain, His Spirit, where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves - labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free, programmed or unprogrammed, liberal or evangelical - are no longer useful, we need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge, it is all the different, but similar, parts arranged and functioning together. If Friend foot said: ‘I am not elegant like Friend hand, embellished with rings, I guess I don't belong to the body’, would that make it so? If Friend ear said: ‘I am not beautiful like Friend eye, limpid and expressive, I don't deserve a place on the head’, would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all Friend eye, how could it hear, if all Friend ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where God wanted it, but I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self‑importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are - a part of an enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place.
No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Friend eye telling Friend hand: 'get lost, I don't need you', or Friend head telling Friend foot ‘you are fired, your job has been phased out’? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way - the lower part, the more basic it is, therefore the more necessary. You can live without an eye for instance, but not without a stomach. When it is a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honour just as it is without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher parts. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to a full body or head of hair?
A reading from I Corinthians chapter 12 beginning with verse 27:
Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first all the apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles and also those having gifts of healing. Those able to help others, those with gifts of communication and those speaking in different kinds of tongues are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all have gifts of healing, do all speak in tongues, do all interpret, but eagerly desire the greater gifts.
And I Corinthians 13, 1 - 8 and 14.1:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all ministries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I might boast, but do not have love I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Pursue and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy.
(The hymn ‘Diverse in Culture, Nation, Race’ was sung.)
We have just had an example of diversity in nation, culture and race with the reading of our scripture this morning. I need to give a big ditto and maybe this would make this talk a little shorter, a ditto to Marion, Bill, Lizz, Stephen and now also tomorrow María. I felt this week that we have been standing on holy ground, as we have been discussing the issue of our prophetic witness. Yesterday we heard the news of an earthquake in Peru and a landslide in Kenya - devastating. In those two countries, nothing will ever be the same, geologically, emotionally, structurally. I am hoping that in our hearts the same is true of a Triennial like this.
I am a Birthright Friend with a long family history that stretches down through time originating here in England and Ireland. My family emigrated to the colonies and across the expanse of the frontier known as the United States of America. My family has always been Quaker. I need to tell you that I am also a Convinced Friend. Whether born into or convinced, each of us comes to understand and believe in the truth as the Spirit writes it on our hearts. I am recorded in North West Yearly Meeting as a Minister of the Gospel, I have been released by the meeting known as Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, Oregon to minister among them. I want to be sensitive this morning to those who are questioning the place of people like myself, who are released to minister in pastoral Yearly Meetings. I truly believe that Christ is the True Shepherd, he is our True High Priest and the gifts He gifts are not meant to be lorded over anyone else. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 14:29: ‘ when one speaks, others need to weigh what is being said because prophets are subject to the gathered body and are not exalted over it.’ Hold these words in the Light and the weigh them according to what the Spirit is saying to us as a gathered body.
Isn't it great to be here representing so many Yearly Meetings and so many countries from around the world? I have dreamed of being a part of a gathered Meeting like this for many years. We are a great number here in Ireland, but we represent so many more people who make up the Society of Friends in places that we come from. George Fox's vision of a great people to be gathered continues to come true. It is meetings like this that help us focus on the task at hand of gathering more people into the light of Christ. Christ has given us a great light to be shown and we are called to be torchbearers of Christ's truth to all people and all nations. Christ's message is simple: He is sufficient to speak to our condition, to bring all people out of darkness and into glorious life-giving light. Our faith, the Friends' faith, is so simple yet so profound. Christ is our High Priest. He alone is our Shepherd. He is the Saviour of our souls. He alone brings us into relationship with our Creator. There is no other mediator or sacrament needed to merit or to maintain God's love or His redemption. Christ continues to welcome all into His holiness. He continues to teach and to empower people with spiritual gifts so that God's kingdom on earth will continue to grow - that people everywhere would be unified in the task of proclaiming God's message in whatever way possible so that others will come to believe and trust in our God who loves all humanity equally. Christ empowers us to love as God loves, to bring peace as God is peace, to care for humanity as God cares for humanity, to administrate the creation as God intended it to be and not to exploit it for our own greed. We are a body made up of many parts that is designed to minister in Christ's name and in His power to care for the needs of the world. So Paul wrote: ‘ it is love then that you should strive for, set your hearts on spiritual gifts, especially the gift of proclaiming God's message.’
Love proclaims God's message. I once lived among a people group who did not have the word for forgiveness or for reconciliation. I have asked them permission to share this. The ideas behind those two words - forgiveness and reconciliation - are as foreign to the Aymara people as if I was to talk to you in their language. Love was not an idea or an emotion that was expressed very well; even the word ‘friend’ meant traitor. A friend was someone who knew things about you and then could use those things against you so that they could gain an advantage. Imagine their understanding of John 15: 14 that gives us our name: ‘ you are our friend if you do what I command you to’. This people group believed that there was only so much good in the world and it was a scramble or a fight to get what you could for yourself. Sharing, giving, caring always had an ulterior motive of what one could get back for their own benefit. Unity was not something that people strove for because of love for each other. The idea of community was a means of survival in the harsh environment of the high Andes, the concept behind this word was control because of distrust of one another. Community rules brought everyone to the same level and provided little room for personal advancement.
It was only through the transformation of God's love in the heart of the people that brought about change. God's light penetrated the darkness of the human soul and today in Bolivia and Peru there are over 40,000 Friends who walk in the Light. To be a Friend of Christ brings peace and liberty to share freely about the unending love of God that is available to all; it is not limited. It also witnesses to the change of attitude of those in Christ who live ‘not as the world lives’ in fear and greed, but in freedom and love for each other. People like Noe, who as a 16‑year‑old (he was my translator) felt compassion for the families of his classmates in high school; he would walk for two hours over the mountains to go and share the source of all things good in those remote villages. Juan was another who was ridiculed because he didn't have children and he had epilepsy. He would leave his community every Sunday after Meeting to go and share the good news with his rival communities. Juan brought the Light of Christ to so many people that he is no longer ridiculed, but he is seen as one who truly cares for all people. Ruth's spiritual gifts were recognised even though she was an unmarried woman. She pastored at a Friend's church in a male dominated society that looked down on unmarried people. The list is so extensive of people like this that it is impossible to tell you all of their stories. I do need to tell you about Manuela who is here with us today. She is the first woman Clerk of a South American Yearly Meeting. We need to hold her in the Light not just during these days together, but continuously. You can tell from what I have just said about their culture, she has a hard way to go. Friends gathered through the Andes are witnesses to the power of the Spirit, moving and breaking the social norms so that God's message is proclaimed. People are responding to the Light and living in unity through the Spirit because of what Christ has done and continues to do in them.
Paul of Tarsus, who wrote the letters to his friends in Corinth, considered unity through love and proclamation of God's message as the most important activity of the people of God. Yet the picture that Paul paints in the whole of I Corinthians is not of a people waiting on God or listening to the Spirit. This group of believers was divided over a long list of issues. See if these issues might ring true today. These people were arguing if Paul was really a true apostle since he wasn't part of the original group of disciples who ministered with Jesus. There were discussions about what constituted true or essential religious practices that would identify them as followers of Christ. People were not in agreement about the covenant of marriage and some were consenting to an interpersonal relationship that had unchurched people in the city wondering about its correctness. Members of the church were dragging others into court to prove their rights over one another. There were some who did not share their food at mealtimes forcing those who had no food to watch and go hungry while the weekly banquets ensued. To top off the list of divisions, people lorded their spiritual abilities over others in the body and considered themselves better or more important than anyone else. It is plain to see that the communion of the body of Christ was broken in the meeting at Corinth and that the testimony of love and unity had lost its power. All of this confusion had derailed the lived out proclamation of the message of Christ's power to transform as the premier activity of that body. Disunity of purpose between the members has dissolved the message of Christ's love for humanity.
For this reason, Paul describes the cooperation of the body in chapter 12, in the definition of love in chapter 13 of I Corinthians and makes proclamation through diversity the highest aim of everyone. Love for others seeks what is right and true. Love unites people and seeks the best for every individual. Love for Christ and for each other is the basis for maintaining unity within the body of believers, but love in action is the greatest witness to the power of God to bring about blessing for humanity. Unity of diverse people is the greatest testimony of the power and the love of God to change lives.
A few months ago I learned a South African word: Ubuntu. Desmond Tutu defined the concept behind the word:
a person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others and does not feel threatened that others are able and good for he or she has a proper self‑assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs to the greater whole.
Everyone needs each other and is dependent on each other no matter what their rank or their status. So Paul writes: ‘ it is love that we should strive for’. Love is not a natural response of the human heart; face it, the problems in this world are caused by a lack of love for each other. The gospel writers tell us that true love comes from God and we respond to that love. God's love transforms our natural self and makes us into a whole new person. Love for our neighbour and love for each other is a Spirit event. Because of the transformational love of God in work in us, we work for God's glory not our own. We work and speak for peace, for human rights, for equality of all people, for care of the earth and for care of each other. The central theme of all these issues is the love of God that flows through those who make their lives available to God's transforming power and his love. We have seen in Portland, Oregon among children - and I am sure you have seen it in the places you live - that prejudice is a learned response, children aren't born prejudiced. In their early years they learn the attitudes from older people. It takes Divine love to transform hate into the opposite emotion. War and violence are a natural response to settle disputes. The way of love transforms all natural humanistic reactions into supernatural responses of seeking peace, forgiveness and blessing. Love speaks of God's intentions for the world, love seeks what is best for all people, not just a select few. Speaking out about the values of God's kingdom brings about a change so that God's justice and mercy can prevail in society. Loving all people as God loves is the ultimate aim. God so loves the world that He sent his Son to show us that love, to bring us into relationship with Him so that He can all model this love to each other. Our unity is founded in the love of Christ that flows among us. Early Friends could not hold back from loving all people because of the transformation that comes through Christ. Love sent people across the ocean into unknown places to bring Christ's light and love into a world filled with darkness and hate. Our forbearers sold themselves into slavery to free slaves. They traded places with each other in prison to care for ailing members, they visited and witnessed to authorities of many nations with the goal of communicating God's will for those countries. The powerful witness of early Friends to the power of God humbly brought people to their knees. Lives changed and history changed because of the unity of purpose through Christ that compelled early Friends to love and care for all people.
Christ said that ‘He could do nothing outside the will of His Father’. Christ showed this love and unity with the will of God in all He did. We too can walk and live this way, we do not walk in the light for our own benefit, but to become disciples of Christ, to witness to the world about the true Kingdom of God. We have been brought into life with Christ in order to love in ways that contrast with the world's ways. We can live, work, exist and minister together because we love Christ. Just as all cells and organs work together to maintain life in a body, God made it possible through the life and death of Christ to transform us into cells and organs of His new body. We work together with all of our gifts and abilities to give witness to God's redeeming love. No‑one is any more important than anyone else but divine love moves us to build each other up and to persevere in a task that we have been given.
God did not bless us with spiritual gifts for our own benefit. The purpose of the Spirit's blessing was, and is, to empower individuals to work collectively as witnesses of the Kingdom. God wants us to care for all individuals and to bring people into faith in Him, to live in His ways, to be holy. This is the covenant that God intends to have with His creation. It is through the gifting of the Holy Spirit that the body of believers is enabled to minister in the power of God. Early Friends realised this from the beginning. We continue to realise today that the goal of love and proclaiming God's message was and is to transform the world. Jesus said: ‘see, I am making all things new’. God touches the world when the faithful speak truth. When they proclaim good news, when we identify with pain, when we build community, when we share resources, when we grant forgiveness, when we give mercy, when we care for the less fortunate just as Jesus would do. The goal is ministry in Jesus' name through the power of His love. The spiritual gifts are meant to be utilised for the building up of the body. Some of us have gifts that help people with spiritual needs, some have gifts to live bold lives meeting physical needs, others are better equipped to explain faith issues. Everyone must desire unity of purpose so that Christ's message will be expressed in all of its fullness to all people. Together we reach out to those around us in a spirit of love, actively letting our lives speak of the hope that is in us.
The gathering of the faithful is to be a continuation of Christ's blessing to the world. We are called to live a life that brings the creation back into God's intended order that a life that speaks truth without fear, a life that proclaims the work of Christ for salvation in an ongoing relationship with God and with all of humanity. We understand that the spirit of God is already present and at work in the culture where we live. We are called to partner and to bring witness to the Spirit’s moving. We are to be bold about what God wants to do to bring wholeness in people's lives. Christ did this for us when he became human in order to show us the love of God. The Spirit comes with power to mend the fallen creation and to make all things new. The Spirit is present so that the world might be touched by God's divine grace, the body of Christ made up of all of its parts is placed as the witness and conduit of God's blessing in the world. We can’t help but declare God's mighty deeds through words and actions as we live out the values of the Kingdom every day through the diversity of ways that the Spirit has gifted us.
Proclamation rises out of our encounter with God. Proclaiming God's message is the natural and spontaneous result of being blessed with God's spirit. God speaks with those who are listening to His truth. Jesus said: ‘it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Heavenly Father speaking through you’.(Matthew 10:20). God gives the word needed for any given moment. They are words that speak to the heart. Prophetic words are inspired words designed to build up, to encourage and to console those who hear. They can also be words that challenge, correct, and question motives. Our role is to corporately wait on God and listen to the Spirit. Once we have heard the Spirit speak, we cannot stay quiet any longer. What the Spirit says must become action. Rather than focus on our peculiarities or our differences, we are called as individuals and as a collective people to be a living witness of the love of God. We are called to be expectant of a new ordering of creation values that are not based on pride, ego, fear or greed but on unity within the kingdom of God. All people are to be seen in their true potential to live in harmony with their creator. This is the vision of Isaiah when he declared the lion and the lamb lay down together. The peaceable kingdom is possible because we live in harmony with God's unifying spirit and we don't react against it. We are called to be co‑labourers of Christ to minister in situations where healing brings wholeness and restoration where critical attitudes and destructive ways of living are left behind. We are called to speak God's love into unjust situations so that the power of Christ can make all things new. Our collective witness communicates the goal of equality of all through compassion and grace. This is the goal of love. People want to become participants of communities like this. The proclamation of Christ's gospel is to invite people to become a part of God's new community and to live in relationship with the Spirit, not against it.
The way of Jesus radically transforms our existence to be one wholly focused on sacrificially living for Him and for others. This is truly in the nature of being a friend of Jesus and a friend of humanity. We are to take up our own cross in the ministry of uniting people to God so that they can also live in the power of His resurrection. Jesus told us to go into all the world to be His ambassadors. The power of our worship is so that we can respond to the needs of the world in power and in truth. Our worship does not end at the rise of the Meeting. All week long, we are to be in service to the Lord. Have we let our proclamation go quiet? Are we known more for our silence, the silence of our Meetings than for the power of truth that we stand for? Are we more interested in protecting our identity as a Society than in going to communicate Christ's love for all humanity by meeting people's needs? Are we questioning why our collective witness can proclaim God's love to those around the world? We must remember that we have been given a mandate to love and to serve in order to transform the world.
Words alone are not sufficient. How the gospel is lived out in our neighborhood, in our city, in our countryside is as important as what we say. We live as models of peace, restoration, unity, and love. We are a connectional people on a mission together. Love for God and love for others seeks to put the well being of our neighbours over our own. We are witnesses of integrity, morality and good character, compassion and we seek ‘the least of these to lift them up’. We are a people where men, women and children gather to grow in authentic worship and transforming discipleship. So we ask the question: what is God wanting us to do and to say to continue the ministry of Christ within our present community and in our global context?
In a time when persecution could have erased the powerful message of Friends through the imprisonment and threats on the lives of the faithful, George Fox called Friends to unity for the Gospel’s sake. From a cold prison tower, soaked to the skin in the middle of winter, Fox wrote his own rendition of Jesus' words to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Cold and wet, he knew that his human life could easily come to an end, but he also knew that God's message was more powerful that could be contained in a prison cell. Fox wrote in 1656:
let all nations hear the Word, by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue or pen, but be obedient to the Lord God, be valiant for the truth upon the earth; be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you go; that your carriage and your life may preach among all sorts of people and to them, then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.
How is that for a last will and testament! It didn't turn out that way. Soon there were thousands who were speaking boldly about Christ's truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thousands were put in prison, but thousands more responded to the brave witness to the unity of the faith. The message prevailed and we are here because of it. George Fox called Friends to answer that of God in everyone. We believe that God's Light is available to all people and any person can respond to that Light. The Light shines inwardly to awaken the seed that is found in every person. In the Light the seed of the Word germinates, setting down its roots. It grows to maturity, producing identifiable fruit of the Spirit. Without the light of Christ shining into the life of an individual, the seed lays dormant.
Early Friends knew that they had been empowered through whatever gift the Spirit had given them to communicate the love of God for a world desperate and needing hope. These dedicated men and women spoke and lived in holy expectation of what God could do and how God would bless their events - people down through history (and you know the heroes that we have talked about so much): William Penn in his treatment of the native Americans, John Woolman and Anthony Benezet’s concern for slaves and their education, Mary Fisher's concern for the Turkish sultan, Steven Grellet's ministry to the Czar and even to the Pope, Elizabeth Fry's concern for the prisoners of Newgate Prison,. Literally millions of people have been impacted by the testimony of Friends. Governments have been called to account. People have been restored and lives have been changed because of the light of Christ that has penetrated the darkness.
Can we learn from the past? This is not a calling for a few, but for all. What is the Spirit saying to us today? Our present calling is a continuation of what our predecessors heard the Spirit say as they moved to transform their world. We also have to be in tune with what the Spirit continues to speak today. Ours is not a religion of the history book so much as a life of faith and love for God that is lived out in the world today. We do believe that the Spirit who spoke for the last few centuries continues to speak today. Healing of nations continues to happen, God's spirit continues to move. Do we love? Do we love one another in the things that are eternal? Do we love each other in the things that are temporal? Do we use our God‑given abilities or our spiritual gifts to work and act in unity? Are we a proclamational people? We do not exist as a Society for ourselves alone, but for the blessing of the world. Our task is to hear Christ, our present teacher. We are called to proclaim His truths as we work for His peace, for the restoration of all things. We are a consecrated people, spread throughout the world to scatter the seeds of the Gospel, and to water, to cultivate and to harvest as the Lord wills.
In his last prayer for his disciples, Jesus prayed that we here would be unified. He prayed that other people would come to know him and come into relationship with God because of what he gave to them. This is the proclamation that we have been given. For this we have been called to become prophets.
Our first hymn is ‘Holy Spirit, Come With Power’.
I am reading from II Corinthians 12:4:
God's various gifts are handed out everywhere, but they all originate in God's spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere, but they all originate in God's spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere, but God Himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is. Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by this spirit and to all kinds of people the variety is wonderful: wise counsel, clear understanding, simple trust, healing the sick, miraculous acts, proclamation, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one, by the one spirit of God. God decides who gets what and when. You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts - limbs, organs, cells - but no matter how many parts you can name, you are still one body. It is exactly the same with Christ. By means of His one Spirit, we all said good‑bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We used to call our own shots independently, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which God has the final say in everything. This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptised. Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain, His Spirit, where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves - labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free, programmed or unprogrammed, liberal or evangelical - are no longer useful, we need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge, it is all the different, but similar, parts arranged and functioning together. If Friend foot said: ‘I am not elegant like Friend hand, embellished with rings, I guess I don't belong to the body’, would that make it so? If Friend ear said: ‘I am not beautiful like Friend eye, limpid and expressive, I don't deserve a place on the head’, would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all Friend eye, how could it hear, if all Friend ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where God wanted it, but I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self‑importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are - a part of an enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place.
No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Friend eye telling Friend hand: 'get lost, I don't need you', or Friend head telling Friend foot ‘you are fired, your job has been phased out’? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way - the lower part, the more basic it is, therefore the more necessary. You can live without an eye for instance, but not without a stomach. When it is a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honour just as it is without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher parts. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to a full body or head of hair?
A reading from I Corinthians chapter 12 beginning with verse 27:
Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first all the apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles and also those having gifts of healing. Those able to help others, those with gifts of communication and those speaking in different kinds of tongues are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all have gifts of healing, do all speak in tongues, do all interpret, but eagerly desire the greater gifts.
And I Corinthians 13, 1 - 8 and 14.1:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all ministries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I might boast, but do not have love I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Pursue and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy.
(The hymn ‘Diverse in Culture, Nation, Race’ was sung.)
We have just had an example of diversity in nation, culture and race with the reading of our scripture this morning. I need to give a big ditto and maybe this would make this talk a little shorter, a ditto to Marion, Bill, Lizz, Stephen and now also tomorrow María. I felt this week that we have been standing on holy ground, as we have been discussing the issue of our prophetic witness. Yesterday we heard the news of an earthquake in Peru and a landslide in Kenya - devastating. In those two countries, nothing will ever be the same, geologically, emotionally, structurally. I am hoping that in our hearts the same is true of a Triennial like this.
I am a Birthright Friend with a long family history that stretches down through time originating here in England and Ireland. My family emigrated to the colonies and across the expanse of the frontier known as the United States of America. My family has always been Quaker. I need to tell you that I am also a Convinced Friend. Whether born into or convinced, each of us comes to understand and believe in the truth as the Spirit writes it on our hearts. I am recorded in North West Yearly Meeting as a Minister of the Gospel, I have been released by the meeting known as Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, Oregon to minister among them. I want to be sensitive this morning to those who are questioning the place of people like myself, who are released to minister in pastoral Yearly Meetings. I truly believe that Christ is the True Shepherd, he is our True High Priest and the gifts He gifts are not meant to be lorded over anyone else. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 14:29: ‘ when one speaks, others need to weigh what is being said because prophets are subject to the gathered body and are not exalted over it.’ Hold these words in the Light and the weigh them according to what the Spirit is saying to us as a gathered body.
Isn't it great to be here representing so many Yearly Meetings and so many countries from around the world? I have dreamed of being a part of a gathered Meeting like this for many years. We are a great number here in Ireland, but we represent so many more people who make up the Society of Friends in places that we come from. George Fox's vision of a great people to be gathered continues to come true. It is meetings like this that help us focus on the task at hand of gathering more people into the light of Christ. Christ has given us a great light to be shown and we are called to be torchbearers of Christ's truth to all people and all nations. Christ's message is simple: He is sufficient to speak to our condition, to bring all people out of darkness and into glorious life-giving light. Our faith, the Friends' faith, is so simple yet so profound. Christ is our High Priest. He alone is our Shepherd. He is the Saviour of our souls. He alone brings us into relationship with our Creator. There is no other mediator or sacrament needed to merit or to maintain God's love or His redemption. Christ continues to welcome all into His holiness. He continues to teach and to empower people with spiritual gifts so that God's kingdom on earth will continue to grow - that people everywhere would be unified in the task of proclaiming God's message in whatever way possible so that others will come to believe and trust in our God who loves all humanity equally. Christ empowers us to love as God loves, to bring peace as God is peace, to care for humanity as God cares for humanity, to administrate the creation as God intended it to be and not to exploit it for our own greed. We are a body made up of many parts that is designed to minister in Christ's name and in His power to care for the needs of the world. So Paul wrote: ‘ it is love then that you should strive for, set your hearts on spiritual gifts, especially the gift of proclaiming God's message.’
Love proclaims God's message. I once lived among a people group who did not have the word for forgiveness or for reconciliation. I have asked them permission to share this. The ideas behind those two words - forgiveness and reconciliation - are as foreign to the Aymara people as if I was to talk to you in their language. Love was not an idea or an emotion that was expressed very well; even the word ‘friend’ meant traitor. A friend was someone who knew things about you and then could use those things against you so that they could gain an advantage. Imagine their understanding of John 15: 14 that gives us our name: ‘ you are our friend if you do what I command you to’. This people group believed that there was only so much good in the world and it was a scramble or a fight to get what you could for yourself. Sharing, giving, caring always had an ulterior motive of what one could get back for their own benefit. Unity was not something that people strove for because of love for each other. The idea of community was a means of survival in the harsh environment of the high Andes, the concept behind this word was control because of distrust of one another. Community rules brought everyone to the same level and provided little room for personal advancement.
It was only through the transformation of God's love in the heart of the people that brought about change. God's light penetrated the darkness of the human soul and today in Bolivia and Peru there are over 40,000 Friends who walk in the Light. To be a Friend of Christ brings peace and liberty to share freely about the unending love of God that is available to all; it is not limited. It also witnesses to the change of attitude of those in Christ who live ‘not as the world lives’ in fear and greed, but in freedom and love for each other. People like Noe, who as a 16‑year‑old (he was my translator) felt compassion for the families of his classmates in high school; he would walk for two hours over the mountains to go and share the source of all things good in those remote villages. Juan was another who was ridiculed because he didn't have children and he had epilepsy. He would leave his community every Sunday after Meeting to go and share the good news with his rival communities. Juan brought the Light of Christ to so many people that he is no longer ridiculed, but he is seen as one who truly cares for all people. Ruth's spiritual gifts were recognised even though she was an unmarried woman. She pastored at a Friend's church in a male dominated society that looked down on unmarried people. The list is so extensive of people like this that it is impossible to tell you all of their stories. I do need to tell you about Manuela who is here with us today. She is the first woman Clerk of a South American Yearly Meeting. We need to hold her in the Light not just during these days together, but continuously. You can tell from what I have just said about their culture, she has a hard way to go. Friends gathered through the Andes are witnesses to the power of the Spirit, moving and breaking the social norms so that God's message is proclaimed. People are responding to the Light and living in unity through the Spirit because of what Christ has done and continues to do in them.
Paul of Tarsus, who wrote the letters to his friends in Corinth, considered unity through love and proclamation of God's message as the most important activity of the people of God. Yet the picture that Paul paints in the whole of I Corinthians is not of a people waiting on God or listening to the Spirit. This group of believers was divided over a long list of issues. See if these issues might ring true today. These people were arguing if Paul was really a true apostle since he wasn't part of the original group of disciples who ministered with Jesus. There were discussions about what constituted true or essential religious practices that would identify them as followers of Christ. People were not in agreement about the covenant of marriage and some were consenting to an interpersonal relationship that had unchurched people in the city wondering about its correctness. Members of the church were dragging others into court to prove their rights over one another. There were some who did not share their food at mealtimes forcing those who had no food to watch and go hungry while the weekly banquets ensued. To top off the list of divisions, people lorded their spiritual abilities over others in the body and considered themselves better or more important than anyone else. It is plain to see that the communion of the body of Christ was broken in the meeting at Corinth and that the testimony of love and unity had lost its power. All of this confusion had derailed the lived out proclamation of the message of Christ's power to transform as the premier activity of that body. Disunity of purpose between the members has dissolved the message of Christ's love for humanity.
For this reason, Paul describes the cooperation of the body in chapter 12, in the definition of love in chapter 13 of I Corinthians and makes proclamation through diversity the highest aim of everyone. Love for others seeks what is right and true. Love unites people and seeks the best for every individual. Love for Christ and for each other is the basis for maintaining unity within the body of believers, but love in action is the greatest witness to the power of God to bring about blessing for humanity. Unity of diverse people is the greatest testimony of the power and the love of God to change lives.
A few months ago I learned a South African word: Ubuntu. Desmond Tutu defined the concept behind the word:
a person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others and does not feel threatened that others are able and good for he or she has a proper self‑assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs to the greater whole.
Everyone needs each other and is dependent on each other no matter what their rank or their status. So Paul writes: ‘ it is love that we should strive for’. Love is not a natural response of the human heart; face it, the problems in this world are caused by a lack of love for each other. The gospel writers tell us that true love comes from God and we respond to that love. God's love transforms our natural self and makes us into a whole new person. Love for our neighbour and love for each other is a Spirit event. Because of the transformational love of God in work in us, we work for God's glory not our own. We work and speak for peace, for human rights, for equality of all people, for care of the earth and for care of each other. The central theme of all these issues is the love of God that flows through those who make their lives available to God's transforming power and his love. We have seen in Portland, Oregon among children - and I am sure you have seen it in the places you live - that prejudice is a learned response, children aren't born prejudiced. In their early years they learn the attitudes from older people. It takes Divine love to transform hate into the opposite emotion. War and violence are a natural response to settle disputes. The way of love transforms all natural humanistic reactions into supernatural responses of seeking peace, forgiveness and blessing. Love speaks of God's intentions for the world, love seeks what is best for all people, not just a select few. Speaking out about the values of God's kingdom brings about a change so that God's justice and mercy can prevail in society. Loving all people as God loves is the ultimate aim. God so loves the world that He sent his Son to show us that love, to bring us into relationship with Him so that He can all model this love to each other. Our unity is founded in the love of Christ that flows among us. Early Friends could not hold back from loving all people because of the transformation that comes through Christ. Love sent people across the ocean into unknown places to bring Christ's light and love into a world filled with darkness and hate. Our forbearers sold themselves into slavery to free slaves. They traded places with each other in prison to care for ailing members, they visited and witnessed to authorities of many nations with the goal of communicating God's will for those countries. The powerful witness of early Friends to the power of God humbly brought people to their knees. Lives changed and history changed because of the unity of purpose through Christ that compelled early Friends to love and care for all people.
Christ said that ‘He could do nothing outside the will of His Father’. Christ showed this love and unity with the will of God in all He did. We too can walk and live this way, we do not walk in the light for our own benefit, but to become disciples of Christ, to witness to the world about the true Kingdom of God. We have been brought into life with Christ in order to love in ways that contrast with the world's ways. We can live, work, exist and minister together because we love Christ. Just as all cells and organs work together to maintain life in a body, God made it possible through the life and death of Christ to transform us into cells and organs of His new body. We work together with all of our gifts and abilities to give witness to God's redeeming love. No‑one is any more important than anyone else but divine love moves us to build each other up and to persevere in a task that we have been given.
God did not bless us with spiritual gifts for our own benefit. The purpose of the Spirit's blessing was, and is, to empower individuals to work collectively as witnesses of the Kingdom. God wants us to care for all individuals and to bring people into faith in Him, to live in His ways, to be holy. This is the covenant that God intends to have with His creation. It is through the gifting of the Holy Spirit that the body of believers is enabled to minister in the power of God. Early Friends realised this from the beginning. We continue to realise today that the goal of love and proclaiming God's message was and is to transform the world. Jesus said: ‘see, I am making all things new’. God touches the world when the faithful speak truth. When they proclaim good news, when we identify with pain, when we build community, when we share resources, when we grant forgiveness, when we give mercy, when we care for the less fortunate just as Jesus would do. The goal is ministry in Jesus' name through the power of His love. The spiritual gifts are meant to be utilised for the building up of the body. Some of us have gifts that help people with spiritual needs, some have gifts to live bold lives meeting physical needs, others are better equipped to explain faith issues. Everyone must desire unity of purpose so that Christ's message will be expressed in all of its fullness to all people. Together we reach out to those around us in a spirit of love, actively letting our lives speak of the hope that is in us.
The gathering of the faithful is to be a continuation of Christ's blessing to the world. We are called to live a life that brings the creation back into God's intended order that a life that speaks truth without fear, a life that proclaims the work of Christ for salvation in an ongoing relationship with God and with all of humanity. We understand that the spirit of God is already present and at work in the culture where we live. We are called to partner and to bring witness to the Spirit’s moving. We are to be bold about what God wants to do to bring wholeness in people's lives. Christ did this for us when he became human in order to show us the love of God. The Spirit comes with power to mend the fallen creation and to make all things new. The Spirit is present so that the world might be touched by God's divine grace, the body of Christ made up of all of its parts is placed as the witness and conduit of God's blessing in the world. We can’t help but declare God's mighty deeds through words and actions as we live out the values of the Kingdom every day through the diversity of ways that the Spirit has gifted us.
Proclamation rises out of our encounter with God. Proclaiming God's message is the natural and spontaneous result of being blessed with God's spirit. God speaks with those who are listening to His truth. Jesus said: ‘it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Heavenly Father speaking through you’.(Matthew 10:20). God gives the word needed for any given moment. They are words that speak to the heart. Prophetic words are inspired words designed to build up, to encourage and to console those who hear. They can also be words that challenge, correct, and question motives. Our role is to corporately wait on God and listen to the Spirit. Once we have heard the Spirit speak, we cannot stay quiet any longer. What the Spirit says must become action. Rather than focus on our peculiarities or our differences, we are called as individuals and as a collective people to be a living witness of the love of God. We are called to be expectant of a new ordering of creation values that are not based on pride, ego, fear or greed but on unity within the kingdom of God. All people are to be seen in their true potential to live in harmony with their creator. This is the vision of Isaiah when he declared the lion and the lamb lay down together. The peaceable kingdom is possible because we live in harmony with God's unifying spirit and we don't react against it. We are called to be co‑labourers of Christ to minister in situations where healing brings wholeness and restoration where critical attitudes and destructive ways of living are left behind. We are called to speak God's love into unjust situations so that the power of Christ can make all things new. Our collective witness communicates the goal of equality of all through compassion and grace. This is the goal of love. People want to become participants of communities like this. The proclamation of Christ's gospel is to invite people to become a part of God's new community and to live in relationship with the Spirit, not against it.
The way of Jesus radically transforms our existence to be one wholly focused on sacrificially living for Him and for others. This is truly in the nature of being a friend of Jesus and a friend of humanity. We are to take up our own cross in the ministry of uniting people to God so that they can also live in the power of His resurrection. Jesus told us to go into all the world to be His ambassadors. The power of our worship is so that we can respond to the needs of the world in power and in truth. Our worship does not end at the rise of the Meeting. All week long, we are to be in service to the Lord. Have we let our proclamation go quiet? Are we known more for our silence, the silence of our Meetings than for the power of truth that we stand for? Are we more interested in protecting our identity as a Society than in going to communicate Christ's love for all humanity by meeting people's needs? Are we questioning why our collective witness can proclaim God's love to those around the world? We must remember that we have been given a mandate to love and to serve in order to transform the world.
Words alone are not sufficient. How the gospel is lived out in our neighborhood, in our city, in our countryside is as important as what we say. We live as models of peace, restoration, unity, and love. We are a connectional people on a mission together. Love for God and love for others seeks to put the well being of our neighbours over our own. We are witnesses of integrity, morality and good character, compassion and we seek ‘the least of these to lift them up’. We are a people where men, women and children gather to grow in authentic worship and transforming discipleship. So we ask the question: what is God wanting us to do and to say to continue the ministry of Christ within our present community and in our global context?
In a time when persecution could have erased the powerful message of Friends through the imprisonment and threats on the lives of the faithful, George Fox called Friends to unity for the Gospel’s sake. From a cold prison tower, soaked to the skin in the middle of winter, Fox wrote his own rendition of Jesus' words to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Cold and wet, he knew that his human life could easily come to an end, but he also knew that God's message was more powerful that could be contained in a prison cell. Fox wrote in 1656:
let all nations hear the Word, by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue or pen, but be obedient to the Lord God, be valiant for the truth upon the earth; be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you go; that your carriage and your life may preach among all sorts of people and to them, then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.
How is that for a last will and testament! It didn't turn out that way. Soon there were thousands who were speaking boldly about Christ's truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thousands were put in prison, but thousands more responded to the brave witness to the unity of the faith. The message prevailed and we are here because of it. George Fox called Friends to answer that of God in everyone. We believe that God's Light is available to all people and any person can respond to that Light. The Light shines inwardly to awaken the seed that is found in every person. In the Light the seed of the Word germinates, setting down its roots. It grows to maturity, producing identifiable fruit of the Spirit. Without the light of Christ shining into the life of an individual, the seed lays dormant.
Early Friends knew that they had been empowered through whatever gift the Spirit had given them to communicate the love of God for a world desperate and needing hope. These dedicated men and women spoke and lived in holy expectation of what God could do and how God would bless their events - people down through history (and you know the heroes that we have talked about so much): William Penn in his treatment of the native Americans, John Woolman and Anthony Benezet’s concern for slaves and their education, Mary Fisher's concern for the Turkish sultan, Steven Grellet's ministry to the Czar and even to the Pope, Elizabeth Fry's concern for the prisoners of Newgate Prison,. Literally millions of people have been impacted by the testimony of Friends. Governments have been called to account. People have been restored and lives have been changed because of the light of Christ that has penetrated the darkness.
Can we learn from the past? This is not a calling for a few, but for all. What is the Spirit saying to us today? Our present calling is a continuation of what our predecessors heard the Spirit say as they moved to transform their world. We also have to be in tune with what the Spirit continues to speak today. Ours is not a religion of the history book so much as a life of faith and love for God that is lived out in the world today. We do believe that the Spirit who spoke for the last few centuries continues to speak today. Healing of nations continues to happen, God's spirit continues to move. Do we love? Do we love one another in the things that are eternal? Do we love each other in the things that are temporal? Do we use our God‑given abilities or our spiritual gifts to work and act in unity? Are we a proclamational people? We do not exist as a Society for ourselves alone, but for the blessing of the world. Our task is to hear Christ, our present teacher. We are called to proclaim His truths as we work for His peace, for the restoration of all things. We are a consecrated people, spread throughout the world to scatter the seeds of the Gospel, and to water, to cultivate and to harvest as the Lord wills.
In his last prayer for his disciples, Jesus prayed that we here would be unified. He prayed that other people would come to know him and come into relationship with God because of what he gave to them. This is the proclamation that we have been given. For this we have been called to become prophets.
Thursday morning- Stephen Wamboka, Uganda Yearly Meeting
Stephen Wamboka, Uganda Yearly Meeting, addressed the Triennial during worship on Thursday 16th August as follows:
I will read from I Corinthians 14:1:
Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gifts of prophecy.
Good morning, Friends. Praise God. This morning I feel so delighted to stand before you to share with you the word of God. Before anything else takes off, I would like to invite all of you, and most especially African Friends, in joining me in singing the Kingala chorus (that is our native language mixed with English). So I invite all of you to stand up as we sing this song. The song says ‘sing praises to God’.
Thank you for joining me in singing this wonderful chorus. When I sing such a chorus it reminds me of the greatness of God. When I see people waving before God the way we have been doing, I feel the presence of God is around. Before I say anything, I would like to bring greetings from Uganda Yearly Meeting. When we were coming here, they say: ‘when you reach there in Dublin, convey our lovely greetings to them.’. How do you say about their greetings? In the evangelical church in which I pastor, Mutoto Church, they say: ‘when you reach there, call our greetings to them’. How do you say about it?
I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to FWCC World Office to see that I am here, and more especially for us Africans who did not think of coming here because of visa problems. I would like to express my thanks again to our Africa Section, the leaders who also made sure that the communication is appropriate to each and every person who has managed to come here. I would like to express my thanks again to the Irish Friends who have made us to be the way we are here; we are happy because they are really expressing their love to us, we have not found any problem with them! Again, I would like to express my thanks to the international Friends who actually managed to pull out something from their pockets to enable Africans to attend this conference and may God bless you.
Friends, I am standing here to talk about prophecy: 'finding the prophetic voice for our time'. The scripture has been read: ‘follow the way of love and preach your gifts, especially the gift of prophecy’. There is something that God put in my mind. I would like to tell you that when I received an invitation to come and speak here, it was not a mistake. I received an invitation to come and be the speaker in this Triennial in August from our Friend, Lee Taylor. I was very happy. This made me to think about how God communicates. Some time back in early 1988 when I was working in Kenya as one of the pastors in a church I happened to be in my house; I was praying and I began to meditate and all of a sudden I began sleeping. God communicated to me, he showed me people - that I am standing before people, an international community, each one of them bearing the flag of their own countries. And here as I stand, I say that when I received that letter, I recalled that dream. So I would like to say that maybe I am here on a prophetic mission. The theme says: ‘find the prophetic voice of God’, so when I received the invitation, I said: ‘maybe this is what God talked to me back in 1988’. Friends, I thought of this and how am I going to develop from this scripture that I have been given: I Corinthians, 14:1 – ‘follow the way of love, spread your gifts’? I looked at this and I saw that we were living in a world where there are many thing going on. We are aware, we are all aware, that the world we are living in has been impacted in so many ways. We have been impacted by the killer disease known as AIDS, by economies of the world, by communism, we have been impacted by religion and by politics and as a result of all this our lives will never be the same again. We are aware that things are different now, things have changed, but not in terms of God's will and His ways. Things have changed, but not in terms of God's commands or His desires. Things have changed, but not in terms of God's requirements and His regulations.
Now, looking at the biblical prophecy, this is a ministry that conveys the mind of God to the Church, sometimes through preaching which usually foretells God's plan. Its purpose is to edify, comfort and exhort God's people. Today God is bringing prophetic ministry to the attention of His people so that prophets and prophecy may be restored to their rightful place in the life of the Church. The prophetic movement is gaining momentum as thousands of Christians seek answers to their questions about how God speaks to us through prophetic ministry and how we should respond to the prophetic word.
The gift of prophecy is like a river flowing, down which may come floating words of knowledge, wisdom and understanding of the present and the future things of God. All New Testament ministers need to become able ministers in the Holy Spirit to prove that they truly manifest the kind of ministry God intends for them. In the light of this application of Paul's words, all Christian ministers should be prophetic ministers and all saints should manifest prophetic ministry. This is one reason Paul demanded the Christians to preach gifts; according to our scriptures (I Corinthians 14:1) a prophet is one who brings God's word to his people in a given circumstance. Such a person acts as a mouthpiece for God, bringing direction to his people. He only speaks what God has spoken to him. However, all that a prophet speaks must be checked with the written Word of God and must be in agreement with it. A prophet is one of the five-fold ministries in the Church according to Ephesians 4:11, and like the other four ministries, he is to equip the saints for the work of ministry and edify the whole body of Christ through his ministry. True prophets are not self‑serving. The first sign of a true prophet is that he will not use the gift selfishly, that is for personal gain. He will use this gift only on the direction of the Holy Spirit and the intention should be to serve others and not himself. He pours out into the lives of others that which God has endowed him with, according to Matthew 27:42. The prophet lives a sacrificial life. If you are a prophet you must be ready to live a sacrificial life. A true prophet is one who Paul, the Apostle, had in mind when he said:‘therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecution, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, I am strong’, according to Second Corinthians, 12:10.
Friends, when I talk of prophetic words and action, this is what I mean now. This is a decade of words and action for the nations of the world and the Church of Christ to walk into the destiny they have chosen to come into. Those who have chosen to live out Kingdom values will come into the fulfilment of God's end time purposes. All that God has prepared for them will fall into place and they will see the salvation of God's redemptive work on them. The Day of the Lord will be upon them. Those who have chosen to reject Kingdom values will come into the greatest trials, crisis and turmoil that men have ever seen. The onslaught of satanic forces will ruin their lives, families, ministries, businesses, health, relationships, and belongings. The days of evil will be upon them. Those who have chosen to do these things will be in that kind of life.
Those who act and choose to hear God's voice and walk in the present truth will move to the next level, they will shine in the dark places and have power to discern deception. They will not be caught in confusion. That was the oath of the founder of this church. His truth and his light shone all over the world and it brought some good impact on this earth. These are the times to hear from Him who speaks from above and not hear him who speaks in deception and lies through those who are not connected to God. That is what God is telling us: that we are not after division - but we are after peace and we are after love that comes from our hearts. These are times for us to act to tune our ears to hear the true shepherds and not listen to the voice of strangers. John, 10: 5-10 talks about Satan. The work of the thief is to steal, to kill and destroy. So when Satan comes in the church, when the mind of Satan enters somebody, that person comes to divide the church and to do evil things. Satan will come to instigate your life and your mind to do something which is contrary to what God wants from us. There are already many strangers within the institution of the church, expressing ‘successful ministry’ and gifting, but without God’s presence and favour.
Friends, when I talk about this, I mean that there are some people who may come with a good notion (especially in Africa, I don't know about other countries). They may come and say, let us join this group. Now, let us talk of terrorists in the world. If somebody comes with such a notion in a Church to bring a vision to begin to teach the young people that if they join such a group, they shall destroy the whole world, that is not the right notion for God - that is from the enemy. The work of the devil is to steal, kill and destroy. The work of the devil is to come into the Friends’ church to begin to divide the people so they should not be united and the Church will eventually die off. That is his notion and this is his principle and this is one of his objectives - to destroy the Church, to divide and rule. These are times to act and compare truth with Truth and compare truth with lives. How do you compare truth with the Truth? I am a Christian. How does your Christianity reflect in the world according to the Bible? Let me give you one example: one time in Uganda some time back we had a man who was a so-called prophet, he had a congregation and he told them that God has communicated to him that the world is going to end and he told them to go and gather their belongings, eat whatever they want, bring some in the church and share together, and then they confined themselves in one house. The man brought petrol oil, he put it on the house and he lit the fire. All the people died. That was intentional. Those are the people I am talking about. Compare the truth and understanding if this is the right spirit from God. If you tell me of the end of the world, is this the right spirit from God? Have you read the Bible - what does the Bible say? These are times for us to act and receive fresh words in the Truth. Does the Church believe in deceptions such as these? We believe Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but if we say I don't believe in the Bible, what does it mean? If I say I believe I am a Quaker and I don't believe in the Bible, what does it mean? Ask yourself.
These are the things that God wants to be addressed in our 21st century. Whom do you believe, whom do you believe? We will come and be manipulated by satanic activities, and be tossed about if we don't believe in Truth. You must believe in Truth, but if you don't believe in Truth, a sorcerer will come around and tell you when you practice (sorcery) you shall get money, and you will follow him. Somebody who is a thief will tell you if you become an intentional thief you are going to be rich, and you go with them. What is that? Believe the Bible, you will find the Truth.
These are times for us to act and receive fresh insight in Truth. The Bible tells us very well and very clearly to go in the whole world and preach the whole Truth; it tells us to go in the world to preach in the name of the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Friends, first be realistic - if we shall continue to keep quiet and not go out and preach the word, do you think Quakers will continue to exist in this world? That is the question. If we continue to keep quiet, the Quaker Church will not be in existence. If you continue to be in that kind of life, we don't see a Church ahead. This was happening in East Africa and the elders of the Church sat down and thought of how this Church should be revived, because they saw all the young men had left the Church and they said: ‘what do we do?’ They sat because they have good buildings, but you find there are only two people. The Church has some good objectives for people, so what did they say? ‘Let us give freedom of worship, let us give freedom to the youth to express their gifts to the Church, to praise God.’ That's what they are doing right now as we speak; the Church has reached out. As I speak, in Uganda, we have the church in Northern Uganda. As I speak, in many parts of Kenya now where the Quaker Church had not penetrated, it is there. If they sit and said that ‘we are content with being quiet in the Church’, then the Quaker Church in Uganda would have gone away some years back, but now we see it is expanding rapidly because they are worshipping in the open air. They are following the trend of the old Quakers, praise be to God.
We, the current Quakers, with Christ's mission must rise up as a prophetic voice from God to rescue those who are perishing and have lost hope in the world. This was the vision and the mission of George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement in which we are all represented here today. That was his vision - to reach the unreached and to preach the Word. Other Quakers died because of the Truth; they spoke the Truth, people understood them and those who did not like the Truth killed them, but if they had kept quiet, nobody would have bothered with them. Do you hear what I am saying?
Now, this is a challenge to us, the current Quakers, to do the same - that we should hail the vision of the founder of this Church. We have concentrated on one thing - Friends are very good at contributing for the poor, contributing for the needy, where violence is at the forefront, but we have forgotten a very important thing - to bring many people into the family of Friends. George Fox spoke of what he received of Christ and acted by setting up the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men and women by preaching the word of Truth. In his testimony and ministry, he endeavoured to open Truth to the people's understanding and to base them upon Christ Jesus the Light of the World. He didn't keep silent and converted many to Quakerism - he spoke the Word. He preached, he went in many places, he preached and the people understood him and he changed the world because he was speaking, he was not silent.
As followers of Christ in this movement, we need to keep the legacy of our founder. We all need to examine our hearts by asking ourselves one simple question: are we still in the business of promoting the vision George Fox received from the Lord or have we deviated from the foundation? The Apostle Paul says:
for we are God’s fellow workers; you are God's field. You are God's building. According to the grace of God, which was given to me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ’. (I Corinthians 3:9-11)
This question still stands: how are we building on this foundation that George Fox laid by the grace of God? If George Fox was to turn around and come back to life, would he have congratulated us as true representatives of what he initiated or not? That is a question - it's a very challenging question, Friends, that each one of us should have to contemplate on. Let me repeat it - the question still stands: how are we building on this foundation that George Fox laid by the grace of God? If George Fox was to turn around and come back to life, would he have congratulated us, the representatives of what he initiated, or not?
As believers and followers of the Christian faith, we need a total transformation in our lives so that we can go to another level of faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. We, the Quakers of today, like our founder George Fox need to continue proclaiming the message of the Cross of Christ which lead to repentance of sin before God the Father. Just look at one of George Fox's letters that he sent to William Penn and analyse it. To the King, he said:
the principle of the Quakers is the Spirit of Christ who died for us and is risen for our justification and by the spirit of Christ we are led out of unrighteousness and ungodliness. It brings us to deny all plotting and contriving against the King or any man. And the Spirit of Christ brings us to deny all manner of ungodliness, as lying, theft, murder, adultery, fornication, and all uncleanliness, debauchery, malice, hatred, deceit, cozening, cheating, brings us to seek the peace and good of all men and to live peacefully; and it leads us from such evil works and actions as the Magistrate’s sword takes hold upon. Our desire and labour is that all who profess themselves Christians may walk in the Spirit of Christ, that they, through the Spirit may mortify the deeds of the flesh, and by the power of the Spirit cut down sin and evil in themselves.
(extracts from George Fox's letter to William Penn Journal of George Fox, ed. J. Nickells, p699)
George Fox spent much of his time in prayer and fasting and lived a solitary kind of life. I wonder whether the Quakers of today do the same. It is hard to find a Quaker sitting somewhere actually fasting without eating, just going somewhere in the forest or in the mountain and sitting there trying to meditate God's word - it is hard, we are used to eating! It is harder to pray - sometimes when we are in silent worship, some of us begin to snore! Sometimes when we are in the church, when somebody is preaching, some people are reading newspapers, some people are just thinking how they are going to check things on the internet, thinking of how they are going to look at the television set, thinking of what they are going to do, thinking of how they are going to create something. Now, what I am saying is this: he condemned the people who could speak of experience of Christ and God, but lived not in the life of Christ, people who could not lead the world after them. People who got the form of godliness, but denied the power of God, who inwardly ravened from the spirit, who persecuted those that operated in the power of God. He condemned these people. He regarded these people ‘to be the wells without water, the clouds without rain and the trees without fruit.’ Jude, 1:12. He saw that if you are a Christian and you are not preaching to another person to bring them to Christ, then that person is a cloud without water or a tree without fruits so you are not producing, instead you are just there. That is the way he described to them. After his message, some people examined themselves and some of those who found the character George Fox found in their lives repented and accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. When you accept to follow Jesus and approach him as your Saviour, you become His temple where He dwells. You should prove yourself to be the pillar and ground of Truth, part of a spiritual household of which Christ is the Head. Because He (Christ) is not the Head of a mixed multitude.
Friends, because of time, I would like to say that this is what God put on my heart to share with you; there are a lot of things that I would share with you if I had the opportunity, but because of time, let me say that is the message today and may God bless you.
I will read from I Corinthians 14:1:
Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gifts of prophecy.
Good morning, Friends. Praise God. This morning I feel so delighted to stand before you to share with you the word of God. Before anything else takes off, I would like to invite all of you, and most especially African Friends, in joining me in singing the Kingala chorus (that is our native language mixed with English). So I invite all of you to stand up as we sing this song. The song says ‘sing praises to God’.
Thank you for joining me in singing this wonderful chorus. When I sing such a chorus it reminds me of the greatness of God. When I see people waving before God the way we have been doing, I feel the presence of God is around. Before I say anything, I would like to bring greetings from Uganda Yearly Meeting. When we were coming here, they say: ‘when you reach there in Dublin, convey our lovely greetings to them.’. How do you say about their greetings? In the evangelical church in which I pastor, Mutoto Church, they say: ‘when you reach there, call our greetings to them’. How do you say about it?
I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to FWCC World Office to see that I am here, and more especially for us Africans who did not think of coming here because of visa problems. I would like to express my thanks again to our Africa Section, the leaders who also made sure that the communication is appropriate to each and every person who has managed to come here. I would like to express my thanks again to the Irish Friends who have made us to be the way we are here; we are happy because they are really expressing their love to us, we have not found any problem with them! Again, I would like to express my thanks to the international Friends who actually managed to pull out something from their pockets to enable Africans to attend this conference and may God bless you.
Friends, I am standing here to talk about prophecy: 'finding the prophetic voice for our time'. The scripture has been read: ‘follow the way of love and preach your gifts, especially the gift of prophecy’. There is something that God put in my mind. I would like to tell you that when I received an invitation to come and speak here, it was not a mistake. I received an invitation to come and be the speaker in this Triennial in August from our Friend, Lee Taylor. I was very happy. This made me to think about how God communicates. Some time back in early 1988 when I was working in Kenya as one of the pastors in a church I happened to be in my house; I was praying and I began to meditate and all of a sudden I began sleeping. God communicated to me, he showed me people - that I am standing before people, an international community, each one of them bearing the flag of their own countries. And here as I stand, I say that when I received that letter, I recalled that dream. So I would like to say that maybe I am here on a prophetic mission. The theme says: ‘find the prophetic voice of God’, so when I received the invitation, I said: ‘maybe this is what God talked to me back in 1988’. Friends, I thought of this and how am I going to develop from this scripture that I have been given: I Corinthians, 14:1 – ‘follow the way of love, spread your gifts’? I looked at this and I saw that we were living in a world where there are many thing going on. We are aware, we are all aware, that the world we are living in has been impacted in so many ways. We have been impacted by the killer disease known as AIDS, by economies of the world, by communism, we have been impacted by religion and by politics and as a result of all this our lives will never be the same again. We are aware that things are different now, things have changed, but not in terms of God's will and His ways. Things have changed, but not in terms of God's commands or His desires. Things have changed, but not in terms of God's requirements and His regulations.
Now, looking at the biblical prophecy, this is a ministry that conveys the mind of God to the Church, sometimes through preaching which usually foretells God's plan. Its purpose is to edify, comfort and exhort God's people. Today God is bringing prophetic ministry to the attention of His people so that prophets and prophecy may be restored to their rightful place in the life of the Church. The prophetic movement is gaining momentum as thousands of Christians seek answers to their questions about how God speaks to us through prophetic ministry and how we should respond to the prophetic word.
The gift of prophecy is like a river flowing, down which may come floating words of knowledge, wisdom and understanding of the present and the future things of God. All New Testament ministers need to become able ministers in the Holy Spirit to prove that they truly manifest the kind of ministry God intends for them. In the light of this application of Paul's words, all Christian ministers should be prophetic ministers and all saints should manifest prophetic ministry. This is one reason Paul demanded the Christians to preach gifts; according to our scriptures (I Corinthians 14:1) a prophet is one who brings God's word to his people in a given circumstance. Such a person acts as a mouthpiece for God, bringing direction to his people. He only speaks what God has spoken to him. However, all that a prophet speaks must be checked with the written Word of God and must be in agreement with it. A prophet is one of the five-fold ministries in the Church according to Ephesians 4:11, and like the other four ministries, he is to equip the saints for the work of ministry and edify the whole body of Christ through his ministry. True prophets are not self‑serving. The first sign of a true prophet is that he will not use the gift selfishly, that is for personal gain. He will use this gift only on the direction of the Holy Spirit and the intention should be to serve others and not himself. He pours out into the lives of others that which God has endowed him with, according to Matthew 27:42. The prophet lives a sacrificial life. If you are a prophet you must be ready to live a sacrificial life. A true prophet is one who Paul, the Apostle, had in mind when he said:‘therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecution, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, I am strong’, according to Second Corinthians, 12:10.
Friends, when I talk of prophetic words and action, this is what I mean now. This is a decade of words and action for the nations of the world and the Church of Christ to walk into the destiny they have chosen to come into. Those who have chosen to live out Kingdom values will come into the fulfilment of God's end time purposes. All that God has prepared for them will fall into place and they will see the salvation of God's redemptive work on them. The Day of the Lord will be upon them. Those who have chosen to reject Kingdom values will come into the greatest trials, crisis and turmoil that men have ever seen. The onslaught of satanic forces will ruin their lives, families, ministries, businesses, health, relationships, and belongings. The days of evil will be upon them. Those who have chosen to do these things will be in that kind of life.
Those who act and choose to hear God's voice and walk in the present truth will move to the next level, they will shine in the dark places and have power to discern deception. They will not be caught in confusion. That was the oath of the founder of this church. His truth and his light shone all over the world and it brought some good impact on this earth. These are the times to hear from Him who speaks from above and not hear him who speaks in deception and lies through those who are not connected to God. That is what God is telling us: that we are not after division - but we are after peace and we are after love that comes from our hearts. These are times for us to act to tune our ears to hear the true shepherds and not listen to the voice of strangers. John, 10: 5-10 talks about Satan. The work of the thief is to steal, to kill and destroy. So when Satan comes in the church, when the mind of Satan enters somebody, that person comes to divide the church and to do evil things. Satan will come to instigate your life and your mind to do something which is contrary to what God wants from us. There are already many strangers within the institution of the church, expressing ‘successful ministry’ and gifting, but without God’s presence and favour.
Friends, when I talk about this, I mean that there are some people who may come with a good notion (especially in Africa, I don't know about other countries). They may come and say, let us join this group. Now, let us talk of terrorists in the world. If somebody comes with such a notion in a Church to bring a vision to begin to teach the young people that if they join such a group, they shall destroy the whole world, that is not the right notion for God - that is from the enemy. The work of the devil is to steal, kill and destroy. The work of the devil is to come into the Friends’ church to begin to divide the people so they should not be united and the Church will eventually die off. That is his notion and this is his principle and this is one of his objectives - to destroy the Church, to divide and rule. These are times to act and compare truth with Truth and compare truth with lives. How do you compare truth with the Truth? I am a Christian. How does your Christianity reflect in the world according to the Bible? Let me give you one example: one time in Uganda some time back we had a man who was a so-called prophet, he had a congregation and he told them that God has communicated to him that the world is going to end and he told them to go and gather their belongings, eat whatever they want, bring some in the church and share together, and then they confined themselves in one house. The man brought petrol oil, he put it on the house and he lit the fire. All the people died. That was intentional. Those are the people I am talking about. Compare the truth and understanding if this is the right spirit from God. If you tell me of the end of the world, is this the right spirit from God? Have you read the Bible - what does the Bible say? These are times for us to act and receive fresh words in the Truth. Does the Church believe in deceptions such as these? We believe Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but if we say I don't believe in the Bible, what does it mean? If I say I believe I am a Quaker and I don't believe in the Bible, what does it mean? Ask yourself.
These are the things that God wants to be addressed in our 21st century. Whom do you believe, whom do you believe? We will come and be manipulated by satanic activities, and be tossed about if we don't believe in Truth. You must believe in Truth, but if you don't believe in Truth, a sorcerer will come around and tell you when you practice (sorcery) you shall get money, and you will follow him. Somebody who is a thief will tell you if you become an intentional thief you are going to be rich, and you go with them. What is that? Believe the Bible, you will find the Truth.
These are times for us to act and receive fresh insight in Truth. The Bible tells us very well and very clearly to go in the whole world and preach the whole Truth; it tells us to go in the world to preach in the name of the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Friends, first be realistic - if we shall continue to keep quiet and not go out and preach the word, do you think Quakers will continue to exist in this world? That is the question. If we continue to keep quiet, the Quaker Church will not be in existence. If you continue to be in that kind of life, we don't see a Church ahead. This was happening in East Africa and the elders of the Church sat down and thought of how this Church should be revived, because they saw all the young men had left the Church and they said: ‘what do we do?’ They sat because they have good buildings, but you find there are only two people. The Church has some good objectives for people, so what did they say? ‘Let us give freedom of worship, let us give freedom to the youth to express their gifts to the Church, to praise God.’ That's what they are doing right now as we speak; the Church has reached out. As I speak, in Uganda, we have the church in Northern Uganda. As I speak, in many parts of Kenya now where the Quaker Church had not penetrated, it is there. If they sit and said that ‘we are content with being quiet in the Church’, then the Quaker Church in Uganda would have gone away some years back, but now we see it is expanding rapidly because they are worshipping in the open air. They are following the trend of the old Quakers, praise be to God.
We, the current Quakers, with Christ's mission must rise up as a prophetic voice from God to rescue those who are perishing and have lost hope in the world. This was the vision and the mission of George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement in which we are all represented here today. That was his vision - to reach the unreached and to preach the Word. Other Quakers died because of the Truth; they spoke the Truth, people understood them and those who did not like the Truth killed them, but if they had kept quiet, nobody would have bothered with them. Do you hear what I am saying?
Now, this is a challenge to us, the current Quakers, to do the same - that we should hail the vision of the founder of this Church. We have concentrated on one thing - Friends are very good at contributing for the poor, contributing for the needy, where violence is at the forefront, but we have forgotten a very important thing - to bring many people into the family of Friends. George Fox spoke of what he received of Christ and acted by setting up the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men and women by preaching the word of Truth. In his testimony and ministry, he endeavoured to open Truth to the people's understanding and to base them upon Christ Jesus the Light of the World. He didn't keep silent and converted many to Quakerism - he spoke the Word. He preached, he went in many places, he preached and the people understood him and he changed the world because he was speaking, he was not silent.
As followers of Christ in this movement, we need to keep the legacy of our founder. We all need to examine our hearts by asking ourselves one simple question: are we still in the business of promoting the vision George Fox received from the Lord or have we deviated from the foundation? The Apostle Paul says:
for we are God’s fellow workers; you are God's field. You are God's building. According to the grace of God, which was given to me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ’. (I Corinthians 3:9-11)
This question still stands: how are we building on this foundation that George Fox laid by the grace of God? If George Fox was to turn around and come back to life, would he have congratulated us as true representatives of what he initiated or not? That is a question - it's a very challenging question, Friends, that each one of us should have to contemplate on. Let me repeat it - the question still stands: how are we building on this foundation that George Fox laid by the grace of God? If George Fox was to turn around and come back to life, would he have congratulated us, the representatives of what he initiated, or not?
As believers and followers of the Christian faith, we need a total transformation in our lives so that we can go to another level of faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. We, the Quakers of today, like our founder George Fox need to continue proclaiming the message of the Cross of Christ which lead to repentance of sin before God the Father. Just look at one of George Fox's letters that he sent to William Penn and analyse it. To the King, he said:
the principle of the Quakers is the Spirit of Christ who died for us and is risen for our justification and by the spirit of Christ we are led out of unrighteousness and ungodliness. It brings us to deny all plotting and contriving against the King or any man. And the Spirit of Christ brings us to deny all manner of ungodliness, as lying, theft, murder, adultery, fornication, and all uncleanliness, debauchery, malice, hatred, deceit, cozening, cheating, brings us to seek the peace and good of all men and to live peacefully; and it leads us from such evil works and actions as the Magistrate’s sword takes hold upon. Our desire and labour is that all who profess themselves Christians may walk in the Spirit of Christ, that they, through the Spirit may mortify the deeds of the flesh, and by the power of the Spirit cut down sin and evil in themselves.
(extracts from George Fox's letter to William Penn Journal of George Fox, ed. J. Nickells, p699)
George Fox spent much of his time in prayer and fasting and lived a solitary kind of life. I wonder whether the Quakers of today do the same. It is hard to find a Quaker sitting somewhere actually fasting without eating, just going somewhere in the forest or in the mountain and sitting there trying to meditate God's word - it is hard, we are used to eating! It is harder to pray - sometimes when we are in silent worship, some of us begin to snore! Sometimes when we are in the church, when somebody is preaching, some people are reading newspapers, some people are just thinking how they are going to check things on the internet, thinking of how they are going to look at the television set, thinking of what they are going to do, thinking of how they are going to create something. Now, what I am saying is this: he condemned the people who could speak of experience of Christ and God, but lived not in the life of Christ, people who could not lead the world after them. People who got the form of godliness, but denied the power of God, who inwardly ravened from the spirit, who persecuted those that operated in the power of God. He condemned these people. He regarded these people ‘to be the wells without water, the clouds without rain and the trees without fruit.’ Jude, 1:12. He saw that if you are a Christian and you are not preaching to another person to bring them to Christ, then that person is a cloud without water or a tree without fruits so you are not producing, instead you are just there. That is the way he described to them. After his message, some people examined themselves and some of those who found the character George Fox found in their lives repented and accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. When you accept to follow Jesus and approach him as your Saviour, you become His temple where He dwells. You should prove yourself to be the pillar and ground of Truth, part of a spiritual household of which Christ is the Head. Because He (Christ) is not the Head of a mixed multitude.
Friends, because of time, I would like to say that this is what God put on my heart to share with you; there are a lot of things that I would share with you if I had the opportunity, but because of time, let me say that is the message today and may God bless you.
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