Marilyn Votaw’s Sermon on South Africa
Faith is an Action Verb
Marilyn E. Votaw
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Mark 10:46-56
In today’s passage from Mark, we meet Bartimaeus, the blind beggar. Bartimaeus is a cheeky fellow. He’s pushy and loud and acts up a bit. As I was reading this passage and, quite frankly, panicking about writing this sermon, I was hit over the head by the action in this story. Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus springs up and says, “My teacher, let me see again.” And Jesus says to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” It seems to me that it’s Bartimaeus’s action as well as his belief in Jesus that heals him.
It will come as no surprise to many of you that I believe that faith is an action verb like running or singing or hugging. Faith, for me, is something you do, not something you have. Faith is not shy and retiring. Faith is not an abstract concept. Rather faith animates our minds and hearts. Faith moves our hands and feet to serve the world and faith sustains us on that journey.
A couple of years ago, I dreamed that God was calling me to ministry. That’s ministry with a small “m”. That vision led me into a long process of discerning how and where to live out that call. I researched the AIDS epidemic, studied South African history and culture and read up on the orphan crisis and residential care. Fortunately, I also started meeting with Terry McKinney for spiritual direction during this time, and together we began to do a bit of archeology on my life and explore my beliefs. We wanted to understand how I experience God in the world. At first, I was afraid that God was calling me to minister to others and completely sacrifice my life in that service. I was afraid that I would be eaten up in the process. But, as Terry and I talked and prayed together, we realized that God’s call to me was both an opportunity to heal my life AND to minister to orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa. I think that God’s call to us is always for us AND to serve others. Around this time I also began to notice that God doesn’t send me the abstract miracles that I prayed for as a child. God sends me people.
Patricia is one of the foster mothers working for Home From Home in Cape Town. She’s 39 and had a biological child when she was 16 and is now a grandmother as well. Patricia is married, which is unusual among the foster mothers. Her husband, Nestor, is from Congo and a calm, steady soul who shares Patricia’s passion for God and parenting. Patricia has been a foster mother for about a year and has six foster children ranging in age from 8 months to 7 years old. Several of her children are HIV +.
About a month after I arrived in Cape Town, Jane, one of the Home From Home directors, asked me to help Patricia apply for the grants that the South African government provides for foster children. Home From Home supports the kids in their care with funds raised in the private sector but to be able to serve more children, Home From Home’s model depends on the government doing its part. Patricia doesn’t have a car or a driver’s license so, at minimum, I would need to take her from office to office on her quest for these grants. And so it was that over a couple of weeks, Patricia and I spent several very long days together in the car and in waiting rooms tackling the formidable government bureaucracy to apply for foster care grants for her children.
When we started, 3 of her children were without birth certificates and, since having a birth certificate is the first step in the grants process, we started by trying to obtain them. For her 8 month old, Patience, we had to first go to Somerset Hospital where we thought she had been born and get a maternity certificate that proved that a female child was born on the baby’s birth date and to the mother listed in the court order that had placed the Patience in Patricia’s custody. Then we had to take the court orders, the baby’s clinic card and the maternity certificate to Home Affairs to apply for her birth certificate. The first woman Patricia spoke with at Home Affairs said that a birth certificate couldn’t be issued with the documents she had because the two court orders she had for Patience conflicted with one another. A court clerk had misspelled Patience’s last name on the older of the two orders. She’d have to go back to the magistrate to have the orders amended.
Discouraged, Patricia and I sat together while we waited for the 2 other birth certificates we had applied for to be printed and lamented the reality of yet another trip to the courthouse in Cape Town. While we were waiting, Patricia wondered aloud if she would have been turned away if she’d only produced the most recent court order, the details of which matched the other documents she had for Patience. And then, we had a bit of luck. The first lady left the desk for lunch. Patricia decided to start over and approach the woman who was covering the lunch hour, but this time she would only show the most recent court order that was correct. We reasoned that she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying just one more time. The second lady was unsure at first and checked with her supervisor who, with a broad sweep of her hand, indicated that it was no problem. We were elated. We left Home Affairs with 3 birth certificates in one day! Surely this was some kind of record!
My time with Patricia was sacred and holy. Not only because we were engaged in helping her children but because, while we sat in the car and in the SASSA offices in Belleville and told each other about our lives, I was a witness to Patricia’s faith. Her faith in God’s care and plan for her life were in every word she uttered and even in the way she slowly began to trust me. She told me about the dream she had a few years ago in which she believed God was calling her to care for vulnerable children and how fortunate she was that Nestor was such a good man and willing to join in her vocation. She also told me of her 3 siblings’ deaths from AIDS and about her 22 year old nephew who was now at the end of his battle with the disease.
In those long, hot hours of waiting together, we prayed. We prayed for the functionaries in the magistrate’s court, Home Affairs and SASSA. We prayed that we would have the right documents. We prayed we wouldn’t go crazy. We also laughed a lot. Particularly about the heights of ridiculous we were encountering on our travels. It was either that or cry.
On the way home from our last trip to SASSA, where we were finally successful in submitting applications for grants for 3 of her 6 children, she admitted that she’d had doubts about me. When Jane from Home From Home asked her to let me help with the grants, she just wasn’t sure. What would I be like? Would she like me? Would I like her? After all, she’s a Xhosa-speaking South Africa woman and I’m an English-speaking American. What would we talk about? But she said that she put her faith in God and that God would lead us both. And so God had, she said. In those long stultifying hours in the many waiting rooms, we had talked about what we had in common — our concern for her children. And we had become friends.
I’ve learned a lot from Patricia. About the particulars of her life in South Africa. About surviving the unsurvivable. She says, “God makes us stronger that we think we are.” I think this is both a statement of Patricia’s unshakeable faith — God makes us stronger than we think we are – and it’s a prayer – Please, God, make us stronger than we think we are….
As if her friendship wasn’t enough, Patricia gave me a gift before I left. She gave me a picture that her children drew for me. And she asked me if I was coming back, when I was coming back? Did I know how grateful she was for helping her and for being her friend?
Faith is an action verb.
God sends me people.
Thanks be to God.